Here’s something useful if you want to “maximise” your browser window on a Mac. Just drag the following link into your bookmark bar: FS
I have it in position 1 in Safari (at the far left). This means that I can use the keyboard shortcut Command-1 to activate it, and it’ll make the browser fill the screen without navigating away from your current page.
I also find it useful to be able to quickly change to other window sizes, especially when I’m testing a website layout. To do this, I use the following links:
I have these set up in a group called Size in my Safari bar. The two of them take up hardly any space, but they’re really useful.
Uh oh… I’m starting to get e-mails from friends saying the following:
hey, go here and we both get a free ipod
pretty pretty please :)
Followed by a link to getitfree.net. Around 2004, a company called Gratis Internet offered the same deal in America, and made $20 billion. Here’s how the deal goes:
- Give them your e-mail address.
- Complete a “sponsored offer”.
- Get five friends to do the same.
Which sounds nice. Of course, in reality this doesn’t work. It’s a pyramid scheme. So very few people will receive a free iPod. Most of them will just have an inbox full of spam instead.
It’s easy to fall for. Most people will see that it relies on exponential growth to work. (You probably know 5 people, but do you know 25? 125? 625? Do you know them well enough to sign up for spam for them?) But it’s human nature to want to put that aside and try hard to believe that it could work, and that a nice shiny iPod will be arriving in the post for you without you having to pay for it.
The fact of the matter is: No matter how inviting that “free ipod” e-mail is, or how colourful the ad on facebook is, you will not receive a free iPod by signing up. Instead, you’ll give them your e-mail address and the e-mail addresses of at least five of your friends. Not good.
Frenzic is a new Mac game released by the Iconfactory.
It’s a puzzle game, where you fit wedges into circles. It’s fun and addictive.
It has a cool interface, which makes it nice to look at and very difficult to take good, transparent screenshots of. It also has nice things like global high scores. It launches quickly, it’s polite with your system, games don’t take too long… I’d imagine this will become pretty popular. It’s one of these “causal games” that people keep talking about.
Update: Have a look at my profile, and add me as a friend if you have the game.
Just felt I had to gloat a little.
- January 20th: Games on the Apple TV
- Today: Apple TV A Gaming Platform
Okay, so it’s just a rumour. But I was there first, okay?!
My friend got us tickets to an advance screening of Hot Fuzz. You’ve probably seen Shaun of the Dead, and if you’re lucky you’ll have seen Spaced. Well, Hot Fuzz is kinda like those, but it’s better. Well, I think so, anyway. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a movie reviewer. Here’s what Wikipedia says about the plot:
Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is the finest cop London has to offer, with an arrest record 400% higher than any other officer on the force. He’s so good, he makes everyone else look bad. As a result, Angel’s superiors send him to a place where his talents won’t be quite so embarrassing — the sleepy and seemingly crime-free village of Sandford.
Once there, he is partnered with the well-meaning but overeager police officer Danny Butterman (Nick Frost). The son of amiable Police Chief Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent), Danny is a huge action movie fan and believes his new big-city partner might just be a real-life “bad boy,” and his chance to experience the life of gunfights and car chases he so longs for. Angel is quick to dismiss this as childish fantasy and Danny’s puppy-like enthusiasm only adds to Angel’s growing frustration. However, as a series of grisly accidents rocks the village, Angel is convinced that Sandford is not what it seems and as the intrigue deepens, Danny’s dreams of explosive, high-octane, car-chasing, gunfighting, all-out action seem more and more like a reality.
Anyway, it had a great cast; Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were there, of course, and joined by some old favourites like Bill Bailey, Olivia Colman, Steve Coogan, Paddy Considine (check him out in My Wrongs), Bill Nighy and Martin Freeman.
Edgar Wright directed it, and his quick cuts and misdirection keep you laughing during the ‘slow bits’. The narrative style wa— you know what, just go and see it. You won’t be disappointed.
If you use a Mac to do any sort of programming or coding or blogging or anything, I hope you know about TextMate. It’s the best text editor, and one of the best third-party Mac OS X applications.
I’m a fairly recent convert. I tried it for the duration of the trial period, but I didn’t really get anywhere with it. Since then, AJ Mann obtained a spare licence through MacHeist, and was kind enough to give it to me. Since then I’ve persevered with it, and it’s… well, it’s amazing.
The increase in speed which simple things like column selection give you is surprising. My previous favourite, SubEthaEdit, had a similar feature called “block editing”, but I’m using it far more in TextMate, where it’s accessible simply by pressing the option key.
But Textmate’s bundles are the source of its real power. Of course, I mainly use the HTML, CSS and Javascript bundles, but this is the first time I’ve used the blogging bundle and it’s full of nice surprises. I used the cat tab trigger, and instead of just inserting the “Category:” snippet, it connected to my blog and retrieved a list of my existing categories, displayed them in a nice dialogue box and inserted the one I chose. How awesome is that?
I still use SubEthaEdit for its collaborative features, but for everything else there’s MasterCa— I mean, TextMate. And with TextMate 2 on the way, and being a free upgrade… it’s just so cool.
I recently came across my Newton MessagePad 2100. It had lots of drawings on it, some from my GCSE revision, and some that my roommates and I had done.
I had no way of transferring them easily, so in the end I scanned then straight from the screen. It worked quite well.
Anyway, have a look at the revision ones or the fun ones. Or see them all together, but out of order.