matthew andersen

A bunch of people have asked me where they can start learning about how to use the Terminal.app in Mac OS X. Unfortunately, this is a pretty loaded question with no direct answer. So I’ve been slowly working on a tutorial to introduce people to “The way of the terminal.”

It is available here: http://barelystable.com/tutorials/terminal/

So if you have a desire to find out a little bit about the underbelly of Mac OS X, please read it. You’ll note that there are pages that are devoid of content currently, I will be updating from time to time. I’d also like to get some feedback on what people would like to learn and I’ll work on those. Please comment, yo!

Really I just wanted to post something and keyboard shortcuts are as random as any other reason. For some reason a lot of shortcuts aren’t widely known. There are two shortcuts I find really helpful when turning on my computer at school. If class has started or something and you can’t remember if your computer is muted or not, you can hold down the “mute” key immediately after pressing the power button. This should cause the boot chime to be silenced. I haven’t tried it yet on the new Macbooks, but it worked on my old MacBook Pro and I’ve used it on the Air too.

The second shortcut every good “Genius” knows. Holding down the mouse button, or in some cases the spacebar, will eject an inserted CD at boot. This prevents the annoying “wurring” noise I get when I leave in an old video game or something in the drive before turning it on. However, this does come with the obvious clicking as it ejects.

There is an article for most of the interesting shortcuts available: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343

Probably my favorite mint is ICE BREAKERS mints from Hershey’s. They’re strong, come in a couple of different flavors, and come in sturdy plastic containers that survive life in my backpack.

I go through one every two weeks or so and these little plastic boxes seem pretty handy. Today I came up with at least one useful thing to do with them. After spending 10 minutes untangling my iPhone headphones, while simultaneously devouring my last mint, I struck upon genius.

Presenting the IceBreakers Mint Headphone Case. Crappy name, easy hack. Enjoy.

It will probably end up with an Apple sticker on the back of it by the day’s end as well.