Category: Software

Archiving selected emails to a single file.

David Rostenne

I needed to gather about 50 emails into a single file so I could sift through them and pull out a variety of information. Going through them one at a time in Mail was going to take longer than I wanted, or was willing to do at once, so I decided to save them to a single file so I could do it later.

It turns out to be very simple: you select the relevant emails, in my case the result of a search, and do a “Save As..”. At this point you have a choice of how to save them, and I chose the default “Rich text Format”. I ended up with one file with all 58 emails in it.

Now I can open it in TextEdit and delete the parts I don’t want.

How to run the same application more than once!

David Rostenne

I spotted this trick on macosxhints.com: An easy way to run multiple instances of any program

Apple’s Developer Resources has a copy of the man page for open and explains it like this:

-n  Open a new instance of the application(s) even if one is already running.

So what can you do with it, and why?

I had no real use for it until this morning when I wanted to test the CPU load on Safari of a web site, without having to close all my windows and their tabs. So I fired up the terminal and did;


open -n /Applications/Safari.app

… and then there were two Safari icons in my Dock!

The MacOSXHints article warns that there is some danger having multiple copies of an application open, as they will all be trying to read/write to shared files like preferences.

Let me know if you have any cool uses for it!

“Introduction to Mac” Workshop coming up on January 26th

David Rostenne

I will only quote part of the announcement regarding the Workshop Tom and I are offering next weekend… all the details are on Tom’s site: Introduction to Mac course, in Ottawa, Ontario, on January 26th, 2008.

As you can guess from the course title, we will be doing an introduction to the Mac, from the outside in!

Some of the major applications which will be covered include; Mail, Safari, Address Book, iCal, iChat, and the iLife suite of applications. There will be time at the end to address specific questions, which we expect will arise!

As Tom says:

Now that the details are (finally) worked out, I can safely announce that Dave Rostenne and I are offering our first combined course for users who are new to Macs, or have just "switched". The course will take place over at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO), and you can find details on their special events page or in this printable PDF file.

When

Saturday, January 26th, 2008 from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, with an additional hour afterwards (4:00 PM to 5:00 PM) for questions and answers.

The cost and how to register

The cost is a very reasonable $79, and to register, you can either call (613) 562-3824 or email ADMIN@SPAO.CA. Register soon, because seating is limited to 20 people!

We hope to see you there!

AppleScript 2.0!

David Rostenne

Thanks to df for pointing out that Apple has posted release notes for AppleScript in Leopard.We can now ask if an application is running, without AppleScript launching it to find out. ;-)Some nice additions to running AppleScript on the Command Line:

  • use # to comment out a line
  • start the script with #!/usr/bin/osascript, and make it executable, will enable it to be run in the shell
  • osadecompile is a command line script to display compiled scripts as text

Now osascript also supports additional arguments on the command line, so now you can run a script and provide strings for it to use. see the osascript man page for details, and an example. This feature was available in Tiger, I just never noticed until now!

“Quicksilver: 5 things that make it awesome!” from Oak Innovations

David Rostenne 1 Comment

I spotted these over at Oak Innovations blog.

My favorites of the 5? Running an action with a timed delay, or at a specific time. The second was learning how to chain commands together.

Here’s the list:

  • Do something in the future
  • Quick Triggers
  • Chain commands together
  • Run terminal commands
  • Master working with text files
    •

    If you are a Quicksilver user, fanatic, or just curious.. it’s worth a read!

    Merging Keychains?

    David Rostenne 1 Comment

    Does anyone know how to merge multiple Keychains in Mac OS X?

    I know I can copy items from one keychain to another, but that involves authenticating twice.

    I tried going in and adding those other keychains to be part of my list, but they don’t stay. Frustrating.

    Why am I doing this? I replaced my computer, and was not able to transfer my account at setup time, so I ended up with some old keychains that got copied over.

    Suggestions, comments, rants?

    All are welcome!

    Dave

    How to get pictures off a Vivicam 55 under OS X

    David Rostenne

    Grandpa got his grandson a $10 digital camera while they were on vacation, and I got annoyed at having to boot up the Thinkpad to get photos off of it.

    Since Vivitar does not make drives for the Vivicam 55, and only made the 55B OS X compatible… I had to go do some digging to get it to work.

    From Google groups I ended up in digital-products.info and grabbed 905C OSX10.4.zip. Inside are a PKG file, and a Quicktime component,

    Copy the Quicktime component to /Library/QuickTime/, then install the PKG. Reboot. grumble.

    Open Image capture or iPhoto.. and it works!

    Anyone want 20 snapshots of the frame around our living room window?

    living_room_window_frame_01.jpg

    “Clipboard Contents: A New Sensory perception”

    David Rostenne

    It seems that Dan has hit upon a new form of sensory perception, particular to the computer age! He coined the term ‘Cliposeption’ for “the sense that there’s something on the clipboard.”

    Maybe we can add on ‘Clipophobia’ to that? The fear that you just overwrote something important in the clipboard?

    There is a related fear, which I get when I use Linux/UNIX, that of selecting something (usually the URL in the browser’s address bar) to delete it and paste in where I want to go, only to realize that I just over wrote my clipboard. ‘Selectoparanoia’?

    I can add a phobia on to that as well: several of my clients refuse to remove Apple’s default items from their Dock. One person had been using their machine for almost 2 years, and when I showed them that those programs they never used could be removed (and replaced easily) so they could have a dozen fewer items in their Dock they got visibly upset.