Toby's Technical Ramblings » Mac

Tech Tweets – Thursday 15th March 2012

Toby — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:27:24 +0000

Here is a run-down of the tech tweets I have posted today.

It’s time to start using JavaScript strict mode : http://j.mp/AtVbzW

HTML5 is not ready yet – and will never be (and that is a good thing) – http://j.mp/x7AREq

Defensive Programming: Being Just-Enough Paranoid http://j.mp/wI0qOZ

@roryjeffers: @tosbourn I think @barcampbelfast is soon and @sazzy is speaking at the Ulster Festival of Art & Design on 21st of this month.

Nice Mac app that gives nice simple calendar functionality – http://shauninman.com/archive/2011/10/20/day_o_mac_menu_bar_clock

You can follow me on twitter here.

Speed up Lotus Notes on a Mac

Toby — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:55:20 +0000

If you want the frankly sluggish Lotus Notes to perform a bit better on your mac then one thing you could try is adding the following line to your Preferences.

UseBasicNotes=1

As settings go this is about as self explanatory as they come, this will tell Notes to use a slightly cut down version of itself. There is nothing I personally haven’t been able to do since switching this setting on and the program is more responsive and has better loading and closing times as a result.

The preferences file is called Notes Preferences and can be found in /Users/{you}/Library/Preferences/

Thanks to @geoffhiggins for the tip.

Show hidden files on the Mac OSx

Toby — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 08:55:30 +0000

Cheers to Jonathan for this one;

In the terminal type

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

Then

killall Finder

Bloody Windows…

Toby — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:40:29 +0000

About a month or two ago I was given a Mac in work to use to replace my shitty old Windows laptop.

I have to admit I was very dubious at the start because I have a deep hatred for the Mac fanboy culture (and I still do) however I was quickly won round by the Mac’s responsive hardware and slick OS.

It didn’t take long to realise why some people where very fanboyish about the whole thing (there is still no excuse for it though!) and I starting considering changing my home setup to a Mac.

The main reason why I didn’t was because my Windows machine is relatively new and fairly bitching, it cost a lot and I would like to get a lot of use out of it.

That and the fact that Windows is a fine operating system for what I use it for, sure there are annoyances but there is nothing I personally need to do that Windows Vista couldn’t do for me.

My stance changed about 4 hours ago however whenever after installing the latest service pack the night before (how ruddy cavalier of me!) my computer refused to start. Long story short the service pack seemed to have half installed and borked the OS completely, I ran different repairs on it but to no avail.

Now I am in the process of downloading a live Linux CD in order to run and then backup a couple of files/folders that I would like but are deemed not important enough to have running on my normal backups. Once this is done I will be installing Windows 7 onto the machine and starting from scratch.

I have played about with Windows 7 and like it, but the very first time it gives me any amount of crap I think the back will be broken and an order will be being placed with Apple.

Bloody Windows…

(p.s that image was found by googling the term shit vista!)