Clogged Epson printer heads
iCal and Time Zones
Safari Printing Bug
Speech Not Enabled in OS X by default
What is TCP/IP?
Application Switching in OS X
Basic Audio Editing using Apple's apps without Quicktime Pro
Trash on the Desktop
Icons for PDF files
How To Save Desktop Space And Make Finding Files In Mac OS X A Lot More Efficient

Clogged Epson printer heads

Avoid cleaning clogged Epson printer heads - turn the printer OFF when you aren't printing.

Apparently Epson inks can spoil over time. It's recommended that you turn off your printer when you are not using it for more than a day, and it will park the print head and seal the ink. Otherwise, exposure to air will cause the inks to go rancid after a couple of months, leading to clogged print heads and the usual trouble.

iCal and Time Zones

iCal uses the time zone you're in to store dates and times. If your trip will take you to a different time zone and you want your appointments to reflect tehhc orrect time inthat time zone, either change the time in the Date & Time tab of the Date & Time system preference (this won't cause iCal's appointments to shift) or change the time zone to that of your eventual destination while you're at home, enter events, and then shift the time zone back to your home zone. When you shift the time zone to match that of your destination, your appointments will reflect the proper time.

Safari Printing Bug

Occasionally Safari (V1.0) only prints the portion of a web page visible in the Safari window. This occurs when the page uses frames. Apple's solution is to click on the block of text that you are trying to print immediately before printing. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107601

Speech Not Enabled in OS X by default

With OS X there is no need to have individual programs with text to speech capabilities since this can be handled by the operating system. Simply open "System Preferences" and click on "Speech" icon and select the "Spoken User Interface" tab and under "Other Spoken Items" check the "Selected text when the key is pressed".

By assigning a key combination to this command you can have text to speech conversion in a program simply by highlighting the text and using your assigned keys. This works for both OS X and Classic applications. This approach does not have TextEdit speak features like work highlighting or pause and resume, but the ability to get text to speech in any application makes it convenient to use.

What is TCP/IP?

People often ask this and Apple's info system can give some answers. eg Open Transport: TCP/IP Control Panel Simplified. and Open Transport: TCP/IP Configuration

Application Switching in OS X

Mac OS X's Dock uses the Command-Tab key combination to switch applications but that combination is used in FileMaker Pro to move from record to record.
To fix this first download the free Application Enhancer (APE) haxie http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/ape. When installed, this doodad allows other applications to perform tricks generally forbidden by Mac OS X (such as killing the Command-Tab key combination). After installing APE, go to http://www.ragingmenace.com and grab the free PullTab. Once you install this little gem and log-out and back into Mac OS X 10.2.x, Command-Tab and Command-Shift-Tab will no longer switch applications, allowing programs such as FileMaker (and third-party application-switcher utilities) to use these shortcuts.

Basic Audio Editing using Apple's apps without Quicktime Pro

To edit mp3 tracks you can use Quicktime Pro - but that costs money.
Here's the easy way with one of Apple's free iApps.: import the entire piece into iMovie, then crop the part of the song you want to keep. Empty the iMovie Trash, save the file. Quit iMovie, open the movie's media folder. The file there should be named something similar to the original mp3 file. Rename it with a .mp3 extension. Now you can open in iTunes and play it.

Trash on the Desktop

Make an alias of any file or folder on your desktop. Name the alias whatever you want. "Trash" might be a good one! Then, using Cmd-I, "Select New Original..." for this alias. A dialogue appears and in the Go To field type /users/yourname/.trash (where "yourname" is your user name). Press the Go button and in the list will appear ".trash." It'll be highlighted (but greyed out, but it doesn't matter) so hit the Choose button. Now your alias points to the Trash.

To get a Trash icon for this alias open the trash in a window and hit Cmd-I, click on the Trash icon and copy it to the clipboard. Go back to your newly created Trash alias and Cmd-I (Get Info) and paste in the Trash icon.
You can now drag your new Trash alias to the Finder toolbar, and also keep it on the desktop.

(Note: this alias of the trash icon can't change to show whether or not the trash contains files. So when you get your trash icon in the first place make sure the trash is empty, it's better to always show empty than always show full!).

Icons for PDF files

When you create a pdf file in OS X it defaults to having the Preview icon. If you are sharing the file with say, a PC user, you might want it to have the Acrobat icon.
If you right-click (control-click) on the icon, select "Open with" to select Acrobat Reader, then close the document, the icon for the file remains for Preview. However, if you right-click (control-click) on the icon, select Get Info, click on "Open with" and select Acrobat Reader 5, the icon for the file changes to Acrobat. If you have more than one file to change, just select all of the files, right-click (control-click) on the icon, select Get Info, click on "Open with" and select Acrobat Reader 5: the icon for each selected file changes to Acrobat.

How To Save Desktop Space And Make Finding Files In Mac OS X A Lot More Efficient

You don't have to have your hard disk icon showing on the desktop.
Go to the Finder Preferences and deselect hard disks. Leave Removable media and servers on there so you know what is mounted and what isn't. Then open the Finder window, press the "computer" icon, and drag frequently used hard drives to your dock. This saves desktop space and makes finding files a lot more efficient - all you have to do is mouse over the disk icon in the dock, click and hold down the mouse and you get a popup hierarchical menu of your disk's contents.

Weissberg's First Law.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
the first woodpecker that came along would have destroyed civilisation.

MACinations August 03