2 Mac Tips for Tuesday!
Hey folks, time for a few Mac tips, one old and one new and both from MacOSXHints.com. And of course, the above image of Chewbacca fighting Nazi’s while riding a squirrel…bow before his glory!
First the oldie:
Freeeeeeddddooommm…for Dashboard Widgets.
You know those awesome Dashboard widgets, so niche and fun and useful (they’re going a bit by the wayside, but some of us still love them), well it turns out you can have them on your Desktop too!
The tip is designed to used by developers for testing, but it’s available to you now, just because you’re special. The jist is, you run a simple Terminal command, then restart the Dock, and voila!
Get the full scoop and instructions here.
Once it’s done, just open Dashboard, select a widget, and close Dashboard. Then you’re free to drag them around your Desktop. My favorite use of this is the Mac OS Server widget, which gives me vital status information. Now I just keep it on the Desktop, rather than having to open the Dashboard.
Now the new(ish) tip:
Quickly! To the VNC!
You’ve got shortcuts to all your favorite stuff: folders, applications, websites, even servers. So why not to your prime VNC locales? This tip shows you the simple process for creating .vncloc (short for VNC location) files. It’s easy, and once you’re done, you can drag them anywhere (your Desktop, Dock, Finder Sidebar, etc.).
Get all the goods on it here.
That’s all for now, enjoy! Comments, Questions, Suggestions? I’m here to help and always looking for feedback!
I recently posted a tip about using Favicons in your browser bar as icons, and removing the name of the bookmark, so they look like cool little apps. Someone then asked if there was a way to customize existing favicons or add them to sites that don’t have them.
My initial thought was, “Of course not, that would involve me altering the code of someone else’s site, which is not a good idea, unless it’s my site of course.” And that children is how you successfully begin and end a sentence with “of course”. It’s not an easy thing to do in these modern times, but it can be done.
Then I thought, wait a minute, this is the interwebs, anything is possible!
As it turns out, there’s this extension for Chrome that does just what we need: assign custom images as Favicons to your favorites websites. It does require that you have an image hosted somewhere (I just used my public DropBox folder), and that it be 16x16 size.
I now have cool, custom icons for those pesky sites without them across my bookmarks bar. Thanks universe!
Biz Tip #3.14
“First rule of government spending: why build one, when you can have two at twice the price?” - S.R. Hadden, Contact (1997)
First rule of IT: never ship a piece of equipment out into the field unless you have a replacement on hand. Laptop, printer, cell phone, doesn’t matter. When it breaks, your user doesn’t have time (and sometimes the aptitude) to get it replaced and get themselves running again.
Sure, there are warranties and coverage programs, but they take time to submit and fill. Having the replacement on hand means your down time is minimal. Follow Yoda down the yellow brick road of logical conclusions: no equipment leads to standing around, standing around leads to lost profits, and lost profits…leads to suffering.
Beyond the inefficiency, this rule applies to company equity as well. If you can’t afford to have double your technology, you can’t afford to have it at all. Avoid owning anything you can’t replace, or find an alternative.
Don’t buy the Mercedes if you can’t pay the maintenance bill.
