How to lock your Mac OS X screen on demand

If you’re migrating to Mac OS X from Windows, you might be looking for a shortcut to lock your screen. This is a two-part fix: first you have to require a password to unlock the screen, then you have to learn the shortcut to lock your screen on-demand.

The RIGHT way to record extension numbers in iPhone contacts

Do you use your iPhone to make business calls? Sooner or later, you’re going to need to store a telephone number that includes an extension number for your contact.

Rather than fumble around adding spaces and even brackets around the extension (which we tried initially!), we thought we’d show you the correct way to add extension numbers to your iOS contacts.

Why I'm Openly Secular

Atheists. We get a bad rap. People assume we’re angry all the time. That we’re immoral. That we…um…worship Satan*. And we crash kids birthday parties and burst all the balloons. Just because we can.

The reality is, atheists are regular people. We go to work. We raise families. We listen to music. We participate in society. We just don’t believe in gods.

Why I became an atheist

I don’t remember the exact day that God stopped existing for me.

What I do know is that I was raised as Catholic in the height of Northern Ireland’s ‘troubles’. Growing up in the Glens Of Antrim, we didn’t just have religion. We had some world-class folklore and superstition too. Giants and leprechauns and banshees and Jesus. And I loved it all.

Exclude directories and file types from Spotlight search

Your Mac’s Spotlight application might be one of the most underrated part of the OS X ecosystem. Spotlight indexes all the content on your Mac, making it simple to find documents and data that might be buried deep within your file system.

It’s so fast, I’ve started using it to quickly pull up contact cards. It’s so much more efficient than starting up the Contacts app and digging through people’s names.

Change the default email application on OS X (to Airmail 2 in this example)

The latest version of the  versatile email client, Airmail 2.0, was released recently. I’ve been considering switching from Apple’s default mail app for some time now, and with this new version of Airmail I decided to jump ship.

The problem is, every time you click on a web link in your browser, Mail.app automatically fires itself up. Very irritating! So how do you set up Airmail (or an alternative email client) as your default in Mac OS X?

Fix Screen Sharing between Mac OS X and Ubuntu

A little while back, Ubuntu made a subtle change that broke Desktop Sharing to Mac computers. I keep a headless server upstairs to serve media files across my network, so screen sharing is essential to manage the server. However, when Ubuntu made their change – requiring encryption on the VNC connection – Macs lost the ability to connect.

How to disable Facebook's video autoplay on iPhone and Android

Facebook introduced their long-awaited video autoplay feature a few months ago, and apparently it’s been wreaking havoc with mobile data plans ever since. Autoplay is switched on by default, so when a video appears in your feed and you pause momentarily on it, the video will start to play.

Here’s the kicker: It’ll do this regardless of whether you’re on 3G or connected to wi-fi.

The fact is, if you’re downloading lots of video content over 3G, you’re going to very quickly hit the limit of your data plan. If you’re on a contract, you most likely won’t discover this until you get your next bill. Let me predict your next thought: how do I switch this autoplay feature off?

How to decompress .gz files in Linux

I’ve been struggling this morning with a compressed SQL file – it had been given a .gz file extension, and I was trying to use the tar command to decompress it. Apparently this is stupid – there’s a dedicated utility to decompress a .gz file – gunzip.

It’s as simple as this:

$ gunzip big-database-dump.sql.gz
$ ls big-database-dump.sql


(The ls command simply lists the extracted file, by the way)

If you’re using Ubuntu, there’s a very easy way to extract the file using the GUI – simply browse to the .gz file you want, right click on it and choose the Extract here command.

However, the time to use the tar command is when you’re opening up a file like drupal-6.15.tar.gz

tar -zxvf Drupal-6.15.tar.gz

Hope this helps out other Ubuntu/Linux newbies who’ve struggled with file decompression!

Disable autoplay on your Mac to stop DVDs playing automatically

One annoying aspect of Mac OS X is the way is automatically launches the DVD player whenever you insert a DVD in the drive. You might not be ready to watch the movie right away or you may be planning to make a backup of the disc using Handbrake or something else.

You can easily disable the autoplay feature on your MacBook. Follow these simple step-by-step instructions:

1. Click the Apple icon at the top of your screen and open the System Preferences applet. Browse to CDs and DVDs.
2. In the When you insert a video DVD section, set it to Ignore. This will stop the MacBook autoplaying media, leaving you to choose which application to launch.
3. Alternatively, if you want to use a different programme to view DVDs, drop down the menu and choose Open other application. Browse for the application you want.
4. Close the System Preferences applet when you’re finished. Job done.

While you’re browsing the DVD and CD settings, you can also play around with the settings for music and photo discs. But does anybody actually use those things anymore?

1 quick trick to use Spotify with the Nike+ or Runkeeper running apps

No matter how good you think your music collection is, it’ll never be Spotify good. They estimate that they have a collection of over 20 million songs…and growing every day. That’s a hell of a lot of tunes.

Which brings me to the next question any smart runner will ask: how can I listen to Spotify when I’m running?

5 reasons you should join a fitness class

If you’re one of those people who struggles to establish a fitness routine, joining a class might get you on the right track. Whether you’re just getting started on your fitness journey, or you’re a gym veteran, joining a fitness class can bring you some major benefits.

Over the past few months I’ve experimented with a variety of classes, from circuit sessions to Tabata right up to the plyometric craziness of Insanity. Here are some of the biggest reasons to join a class and watch your fitness levels go through the roof:

How to block email from a sender in Gmail using filters

You might be shocked to learn that Gmail doesn’t offer an official way to block senders. So, what are you supposed to do when you find yourself on an annoying mailing list or circular and there’s no easy way to unsubscribe?

Luckily, Gmail’s filtering system gives you the power to block a sender with a simple rule. Today, we’re going to show you how to do that in a few easy steps. You’ll discover how to set up the rule the first time round, then add additional email addresses that you want to block. Let’s get started:

Mac tip: How to remove a mis-typed autocomplete entry from Google Chrome

Here’s an annoying thing that Google Chrome does: if you type in a URL that contains a spelling mistake, it will actually hold on to that entry and present it as an autocomplete suggestion the next time you start typing in that address.

Stop your MacBook from sleeping with the Caffeinate command

A frequent bugbear with OS X on my MacBook Pro is that the screen will dim and then sleep if I leave it unattended for any length of time. That’s a nuisance because I can be running FTP operations or SSH sessions that I need to keep active and OS X will just go to sleep in the middle of them.

Handling pseudo selectors like :hover in SASS

SASS is an amazing CSS preprocessor that allows you to rapidly code websites using nested rules and variables and a lot more.

However, one thing the basic SASS instructions won’t tell you about is how to handle pseudo selectors when you’re nesting your rules. I’m talking about :hover, :before, :after and :visited states. Do you create a whole new CSS rule for a pseudo selector, or is there a way to nest them?

Command line tip: How to restart Mac OS X networking

If you’re a terminal warrior like me, you’ll occasionally need to reboot the OS X network interface. There’s a quick way to do this through the command line – but first you need to know the identity of your network interface.

Run the ifconfig command in your terminal and find the interface with an IP address attached to it. On my MacBook Pro, the ethernet interface is en0 while the wireless interface is en1.  Yours may be similar.

Shutting down the network interface

Now that you’ve identified the interface, shutting it down and restarting it is a breeze. Run this command:

sudo ifconfig en0 down

And to start things back up again…

sudo ifconfig en0 up

That’s it. It’s a simple command that’s worth remembering – or bookmarking!

WordPress tip: Split up long posts into multiple pages

Many professional web publishers will opt to split up long posts into multiple pages: it breaks the article down into digestible chunks and also has the added benefit of reducing your site’s bounce rate and keeping readers on your site for longer. (Reducing the bounce rate of your website sends positive signals back to Google about the usefulness of your content.)

iOS tip: Prevent font size scaling when device orientation changes

I’ve been messing around with mobile design this weekend. And among some of the mind-bending media queries and  cross device checking, I noticed that when I changed from portrait to landscape orientation on my iPhone, the font size seemed to scale up, upsetting the design.

After Googling around, as you do, I discovered a quick fix for this. It’s probably something that most mobile/responsive designers include as a matter of course these days, but simply adding this Webkit-specific line to your stylesheet fixes the awkward scaling issue when you rotate your phone screen:

body {
	-webkit-text-size-adjust: none;
}

Add the above to your existing body rules, and it’ll clear up orientation change weirdness.

Any other mobile design tips and tricks you want to share? Leave me a comment.

On November 25, 2013 By GerardIn Web DesignLeave a comment

How to take a screenshot on a Nexus

I’ve recently given in to temptation and bought myself a Google Nexus 7. Having come from a predominantly Apple/IOS background, I was bursting to try out an alternative mobile operating system. Especially one which seems to actively outperforming Apple’s product.

I won’t go into a feature for feature comparison right here. Suffice to say, when I wrote my guide to setting up an alarm clock on the Nexus, I suddenly realised I had no idea how to take a screenshot on the device!

Page Up and Page Down keyboard shortcuts on Mac OS X

Here’s a quick tip for anybody migrating to a MacBook from a Windows machine. If you’re used to navigating documents and web pages by keyboard command, you’ll know that the Pg Up, Pg Down, Home and End buttons don’t exist on a standard Mac keyboard.

So what are the alternatives?