Photo Editing Madness

So I’ve been getting my arms wrapped around photoshop … slowly. I can now do a lot of the basic tricks but by no means am I an expert. Meanwhile, some very reasonably priced competitors seem to be cropping up. I’ve been playing with the demos of Pixelmator and Acorn. They actually are good for most of my needs. They certainly load and process a heck of a lot faster than Photoshop CS2 on my intel mac. However, as far as I can tell there is no magnetic lasso, which I find really helpful. I’m definitely a novice when it comes to photo editing however and welcome comments and emails from you veterans out there as to your thoughts on the matter.

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iPhone 1.1.1 – No Problem

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Well gang, I installed iPhone version 1.1.1 today with no problems. I had installed Nullriver’s installer.app on my iPhone a few weeks ago and then removed it. It was really easy to set up but there were no compelling applications to make me want to keep it. All the talk about “bricking” hacked phones did not concern me since I never “unlocked” it outside of AT&T.
Version 1.1.1 is a nice incremental upgrade. They played with the calculator icon and added a double tap to the home button which quickly gets you to your phone favorites list. If you are playing the iPod the double tap gets you to the iPod controls which is also nice. It also adds a purchase from iTunes button that can only get me into trouble.
They put in a setting to turn off edge while roaming so we don’t have to hear about any more morons going to Europe and running up thousand dollar phone bills. Interestingly this setting is defaulted to turn it off which makes a lot of sense to me. The people who run up these bills would not be smart enough to turn it off themselves so Apple did it for them.
While these tweaks and improvements are nice, I really wish they would get around to syncing the Notes application. I’m speculating (wishing?) that this will happen with the Leopard release. Time will tell.

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Compacting Sparse Disk Images

A lot of you have seen my screencast on how to make an encrypted sparse disk image. As I explained in the screencast, sparse disk images grow when add files into them but don’t shrink when you pull files out. As my sparse disk images used to bloat I would occaisionnally make a new one and copy the files into it and discard the old image. Recently however I discovered an automator workflow that compacts an existing sparse image without requiring you to take all those insane steps I used to. So lets walk through it now.

Step One … Load Automator

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Now some of you may be Automator veterans but for me it is just that funny looking icon I always pass over.

Step Two … First Script

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Click on the “Finder” category in the Library column then click and drag “Get Selected Finder Items” from the Actions Column into the work area of Automator.

Step Two … Second Script

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Click on the “Automator” category in the Library column then click and drag “Run Shell Script” from the Actions Column into the work area of Automator.

Step Three … Change Pass Input

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Change the “pass input” drop down from “to sdnin” to “as arguments”

Step Four … Remove Text from the Shell Window

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Step Five … Fill in the Window

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Type in the following in the window….
hdiutil compact “$@”

Step Six … Save It

Go to Automator’s File menu and “Save as Plug-in”. Give it a name like “Compact Sparse Image”. Also make sure “Plug-in for:” category says “Finder”.

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Using the Workflow
1. Find your sparse image in the finder.
2. Make sure it is unmounted
3. Cntrl(Right)-Click, Mouse down to Automator and run your script.
Now all of the above probably sounds like a lot of work but it really is not. Once you have it set up you can regularly compact your sparse images. Let me know if it works for you.

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Review – MarsEdit 2.0

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So I’ve been blogging now for six months and until very recently, I did it all in the Wordpress web client. There really is nothing wrong with that. It is perfectly fine. Of course it is also perfectly fine scrub your floors with a toothbrush and self perform your own dental work. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it is possible.
I’d heard about applications that allow you to blog without a browser but never got around to trying any of them out until red-sweater released version 2.0 of MarsEdit. I’ve now been using it for about three weeks and I’m very pleased with it. MarsEdit is a blogging tool that, at its most basic level, allows you to write and edit posts, import media, and upload your genius to your blog without having to wrestle your way through the online editors.
It works with most of the big blogging engines. I’ve been using it with Wordpress both on my wordpress.com site and, since moving my blog to its own server, on the macsparky.com server with no troubles whatsoever.
The main window allows you to see your text and html as you type. Fortunately for me, it does most of the html work for you. I can add links, photos, technorati tags, and a variety of other coding that, frankly, I’d have no clue how to pull off without MarsEdit doing the work for me. It also pulls my online tags down from my site so I can mark up and add new tags right from MarsEdit.
In addition to the local media support, version 2.0 also allows for Flickr support which is nice for those of you who blog from your Flickr photos. I wish, however, that it supported the OS X media browser.
When my eyes start getting bleary, I can also print out drafts of my entries and proof-read them on paper before uploading. A practice which I sadly do not do often enough. Since that “post” button seems irresistable to me, I often end up posting entries with grammatical errors. I’m not talking your simple comma splice. I’m talking in your face mis-spellings and conjugation errors that would make Strunk and White turn in their graves. Once again MarsEdit to the rescue. You can edit and repost within MarsEdit.
Version 2.0 also supports html markup macros. While in principle I understand what that is, in practice I’m clueless so you are on your own to figure out that feature. I do know that I was able to copy in an html snippet on National Talk Like a Pirate Day and it was ready to post a very nice code embedded entry at MacSparky. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and I didn’t push the “Post” button that time.
Wordpress does not play nicely with Safari 3 so it was even more onerous for me blogging through the browser because Safari would work to a certain point and then fail. I kept forgetting to open Camino and as a result, many times I’d end up writing an entry twice. Using MarsEdit, I can now easily write and upload without any browser.
You can download a free 30-day trial of MarsEdit at Red-Sweater.com. If it hooks you it will cost $29.95. For MarsEdit veterans, the upgrade will set you back $9.95.

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The Super Secret Saved Indicator

A good friend, Gabe Wilson, showed me a very cool trick native to OS X regarding saved files. If you look at the top left corner in the close, minimize, maximize bubbles you may sometimes see a small dot in the middle of the red circle. This dot is telling you something. It means the current document is not saved. So if you press the red button and that dot is in it, very bad things will happen. Cats will live with dogs, the universe may implode, and worse yet, you’ve lost your document.

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Now if instead of your dot, you see an “X”, you are good to go. Document saved. You are free to close and move on.

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Stop Procrastinating

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I recently finished an excellent book on why we procrastinate by Neil Fiore called “The Now Habit“. What I really like about this book is that it doesn’t give you the usual slogans for fighting procrastination (“Just Do It”, “Man Up”, etc..) and instead talks about the way we humans are wired and why we procrastinate. There are a variety of reasons. For some of us it is a defense mechanism, others are afraid of success. We all have our own groups of hang-ups. Either way, he goes deep into these motivations and allows you to dig yourself out in a way that is both enlightening and uplifting. I strongly recommend the read if these things interest you.
There was also a good article posted this morning at GetRichSlowly.org that is a little less cerebral yet still helpful. My favorite tip there is “Don’t Multitask”. I really think anyone that multitasks on purpose is making a mistake. Just do one thing at a time. Do it right. Anyway, you can check out the article right here.

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Lucky Number 12,000

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Well I’ve been doing this blog a few months now and noticed tonight my total views just hit 12,000. Probably a drop in the bucket in internet terms but still I’m so pleased to have loyal readers. I enjoy all of your emails and comments and look forward to learning more and growing this blog with all of your help. Google hasn’t really found MacSparky on the new server in that the older wordpress blog (which is no longer being updated) is still getting most of the search hits but we will get the new blog rolling soon I think. Thanks gang!

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