benzwu » Mac

Playing God: Mac User

benzwu — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:54:20 +0000

Screen Capturing on Mac – Shortcut

benzwu — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 23:20:50 +0000

Command-Shift-3 = Captures the entire screen.
Command-Shift-4 = Freezes screen, allowing you to select a portion to capture.
Command-Shift-4 then press Spacebar = Allows you to capture a specific menu or window. Just move the camera cursor to the object you want to capture.

Instability after memory upgrade on MacBook Pro

benzwu — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 12:56:23 +0000

If you happen found instability after upgrading memory on your MacBook Pro, I hope this trick will save you from a lot of frustations and data loss like I did.

Simple, try to changing the slot.

After switching with 4 GB a piece RAM, random lock up was haunting me at worst 10 times a day. I compared to my friend, Alisanta, he put the new RAM on the outer slot. On next lock up, switched the slot immediately. Hey, it works!

New package manager on the block for os x, homebrew

benzwu — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:14:14 +0000

I was using combination of macports and porticus UI to get open source application such as wget and such. To day I tried homebrew, a package manager like macports based on Ruby. Quite simple and nice. In 15 minutes, I decided to remove all my ports and go live with homebrew instead even though the package list not as long as macports.

Just a bonus, to uninstall macports go to

http://guide.macports.org/chunked/installing.macports.uninstalling.html

To install homebrew, is pretty dead simple one liner,

ruby -e “$(curl -fsS http://gist.github.com/raw/323731/install_homebrew.rb)”

The installation folder is in /usr/local

Here is some FUC (Frequently Used Command),

brew search FOO
brew info FOO
brew install FOO
brew uninstall FOO
brew list
# update homebrew to latest set of “formula”
brew update
# show which installed packages are out of date
brew outdated

Compress files individually in Mac

benzwu — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:53:47 +0000

To compress selected files individually instead of 1 zip files, we need to setup script to handle this. Luckily we do have the “Automator” to seamlessly integrate to finder.

These are the Steps for Automator 2.1, should be similar for minor version:
1. Open Automator
2. Choose Service
3. Service receives selected = files or folders
4. in = Finder
5. Drag Run Shell Script to the right pane.
6. Pass input = as arguments
7. Paste this code to the script area
for f in "$@" do zip -j -9 "$f.zip" "$f" done
8. Save and name your script, “Compress Individually” should be fine or just make one up that informative enough for you.
9. Try to right clicking on files, and you should find it on the lists

The Vista Effect

benzwu — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:58:21 +0000

At first I was thrilled to hear that Microsoft about to use Vista for windows successor. Such a nice name but Microsoft sure gave it a very bad name.

When users with high expectation teased by “heavenly” words and advertisings and then got smacked with awful product, that is what I called “The Vista Effect.”

The Microsoft itself tried to clean Vista name with the series of campaign ads but it seems the air were too foul to clean. Now they drop to use “Vista” name anymore and revert back to Windows for Vista’s successor.

Apple as Microsoft’s rival even mock them on their ad titled “V word”. Watch it here or download it here.

When your massive marketing and advertising are not coupled with good product, “The Vista Effect” may lurking in the shadow behind you. The marketing and advertising may backfire and hit back hard.

Creative Ads

benzwu — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:01:44 +0000

Among many ads, Apple’s Get a Mac campaign ads are among my favorites. It’s simple, Mac style clean white background. Lately they just launch new ad titled “Bean Counter”, it told us about how “PC” spend the money for ads and fixing Vista bugs. The ending is hilarious. You got to watch this on Get a Mac ads page or download it.