Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Terminal Basics

    So this is the first in what will be an ongoing series of articles involving the utility called Terminal. Terminal, also known as the command line, offers you direct access to the Unix bedrock of Mac OS X. To some, it is very familiar territory. There are network admins and power users who use terminal a lot all the time.

    At the other end of the spectrum are most of the rest of us. Terminal is something we’ve heard about, or maybe even used once or twice, usually with some trepidation due to the dire caveats of doom that people who write articles about terminal make very prominent. With good reason — you can certainly get into lots of trouble. (Like erasing your whole drive instead of emptying your trash or overwriting your iPhoto library with that hilarious picture from “*funnycats.org*”:http://www.lolcats.com that you downloaded for reasons even you don’t fully understand.)

    With these and many other scenarios there is no undo or undelete, and I can’t count the number of support calls I have taken that start “OK, so I was messing around in Terminal…” That being said, many really destructive actions require a special command and an admin password, which should at least make you stop and think about what you are doing. We see this in the regular OS environment all the time, but it goes a step further in Terminal. In the normal Aqua environment, you are still protected somewhat — there are things you simply are not allowed to do, even as an admin user.

    However, there are tons of things you can do to get comfortable with Terminal that are pretty safe. The basic format of Terminal commands is a command followed by modifiers and variables such as the commands which will show all the invisible files on your machines. Let’s give it a try.

    Open a Terminal window. Copy and paste the following into the window:

    *defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE*

    To be able to see this, you will need to relaunch Finder, like so:

    *killall Finder*

    Now if you look in the Finder you will see all the normally hidden folders visible and accessible but grayed out.

    Reversing this command is as simple as entering the first command again, changing TRUE to FALSE.

    *defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE*

    Relaunch Finder again, and the files will be hidden once again.

    *killall Finder*

    Hopefully you were able to follow along and see this happen. The point I wanted to make is that you see how easy it is to reverse this change by changing the variable. Remember NOT ALL CHANGES ARE REVERSIBLE — especially removing and deleting — and a good backup is critical for mucking around with a powerful tool like terminal.

    If you think about it, what we did above is basically change a Finder preference — the difference is that you are doing it in Terminal since this option is not listed in the Finder preferences in the GUI. This is actually one of the most common uses of Terminal by non-professionals. There is a world of hidden system preferences that you can access from the Terminal which will let you customize your machine in a myriad of ways.

    “*Here is a link to a Macworld article that has 25 easy Terminal tips.*”:http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/25_top_os_x_terminal_tips?page=0,1

    We’ll be back next week with more!

  • _Hello all,_

    It definitely feels like fall. Mid-40s in the morning and somewhere in the high 60s for today according to noaa.org. It’s one of the things I like about going away for this particular weekend — when I leave, it is summer, and when I come back, it is fall.

    Sifting through my loaded inbox last night I saw that I got a lot of responses to the article I wrote about grep last week. In addition to a few specific questions about grep (which I will try to answer individually) there was a common theme involving trepidation with command line usage in Terminal. Although it’s good to be weary of the power of Terminal, it’s helpful to be familiar with Terminal commands. Based on this feedback, over the next few months, we will try to include a Terminal-oriented article in each issue. From easy, practical stuff, to serious power usage, to just fun things to do. If you follow along, we’ll get you to the point where you don’t groan when you see a tip or trick that starts “OK, now open a Terminal window!”

    Please feel free to send questions or feedback.

    Thanks for reading!

    Liam
    “*liam@smalldog.com*”:mailto:liam@smalldog.com

  • The 64GB iPod touch (4G, White) is $40 off for one week only — plus you’ll receive a free Black Hammerhead Slider Case…

  • My wife beat me. Grace is retiring and will be leaving Small Dog Electronics — specifically the Hammerhead/Chill Pill division to pursue other interests, including a month-long intensive Spanish immersion classes in Costa Rica. Grace was a huge asset to the company and a customer service superstar for our wholesale customers.

    We are celebrating her birthday today, so you still have a chance to wish her a happy birthday — her grace@smalldog.com address will always work since she is returning to her normal role as my most important and influential business advisor.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
    _Don, Dawn, Kali_

  • SPECIAL: MacBook Air + SUPERDrive

    SuperDrived? SuperDriven? Well, regardless of the fact that I clearly made up that word, you can get a great deal on the 11-inch 1.6Ghz MacBook Air with External SuperDrive (USB).

    *This week only, save $50 off the regular price of the two together AND get free shipping.*

  • SPECIAL: The Magic Bundle

    This is a fabulous set up that I love using in our stores when I check out all the demo product that I never really get to use at my desk. (Though I may have to buy this for myself!)

    * Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard
    * Apple Magic Trackpad
    * Twelve South Magic Wand

    You know how the keyboard and Magic Trackpad work…but The Magic Wand is cool little accessory that connects Apple’s Magic Trackpad to your Apple Wireless Keyboard, creating the sleek, one-piece input device you’ve been imagining.

  • Plastic Fantastic Winners!

    We received over 60 entries to our most recent contest where we asked folks to send in their dog to be immortalized in our Small Dog plastic dog collection. One of the many things that I’ve learned while working at Small Dog Electronics is not only do we have the best customers in the world, our customers have the best dogs in the world! The pictures and stories that were sent in were fantastic and choosing two out of 60 was tough.

    Before we looked at the entries, we came up with some criteria:
    #We wanted to make sure that we covered as many different dog breeds as possible in our collection
    #We wanted to make sure that we selected dogs who might be recognizable either because of unique shape or coloring
    #We needed to make sure that the dogs that we chose would be easy to mold

    We then sifted through the collection of submissions, got teary-eyed reading through the obviously loving stories of your submissions, and narrowed down our selection to a handful of the entries who best met our criteria. We then looked at that group and chose two who in some way either moved us emotionally by their picture OR by the impact of their stories.

    And the winners are…

    Julie Rigby’s dog, Favor who just stole our hearts with such a photogenic face and
    Chandra Aubery’s dog Apache who is honored posthumously and has a wonderful mask.

    Thank you to everyone who entered and for sharing the love that you have for your companions. We really do have the best customers who have the world’s best dogs!

    We’ll be posting all the entires on our Flickr site next week when we get spare moment. You can reach our Flickr page here.: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smalldog/

  • Text to Speech in 10.8

    I’ve been playing around with the *Text to Speech feature within the Dictation & Speech settings in System Preferences* in 10.8, and was reminded that I mentioned in a previous issue that I’d report back on my impressions. (Thanks, Jim M.!)

    Text to Speech is a nice feature for those of you who prefer hearing to reading — and less time squinting at a screen is always better, especially if you’re prone to eye strain or are visually impaired. I chose the voice “Alex,” since it’s designed to be the most natural and least robotic. (The other voices, especially Victoria, are nostalgic to me, though, as they remind me of when I first used a Mac with OS 8.6 — I’m sure many of you go further back than that!)

    Upon setting it up, I wasn’t prepared for how much it would affect my workflow. At first, I found the audible prompts unsettling, but quickly got used to them, partially because I use a dual-screen setup at work. This meant that I could concentrate on my main screen, a 30″ Apple display, and not have to look away for certain things.

    To go beyond Alex’s alerts and prompts and have “him” read something to you, copy the text you want dictated to the Clipboard and launch TextEdit. Then, paste the text into a new document and select where you want Alex to start speaking. Choose *Speech >Start Speaking* from the Edit menu in TextEdit, and listen to him go.

    Alex stumbled on a bunch of unusual words at first — he read from a list of grocery items, including Stevia and Echanacea, and pretty much butchered them. However, it got the job done, and of course, I knew what he meant. (As my mother-in-law says, “listen to what I __mean,__ not what I say.”)

    I’ll talk (write?) more about the other half of this technology, Dictation, next week. __That’s__ where it gets fun.

  • Meet "Nessy" Arbour

    It’s been a few weeks since I last introduced one of the “young gun” employees of Small Dog. This week I wanted to introduce readers to one of my favorites, Nessy. Nessy, short for Vanessa, is on the right of the attached picture, shown during a trip to the fair with other SDE employees.

    She joined Small Dog in early 2011 and has been working the retail sales floor in South Burlington. Recently, she’s been making the journey to our Waitsfield headquarters to help out in our Hammerhead division once a week and that’s how I’ve gotten to know her a little better.

    Nessy is originally from Maine and I think that is the basis of her very down-to-earth personality. What I love most about Nessy is how optimistic she is about life and its little idiosyncrasies. She seems to look on the bright side of things and appears to be perpetually happy. You can’t help but feel the same when you spend time with her.

    Nessy is a recent college graduate and she studied Chinese which is why we asked her to travel to Waitsfield to assist Hammerhead. She’ll help us converse with our representatives in China and translate documents when needed and she’ll get a chance to test her skills. Perhaps she’ll teach me a few Chinese phrases while she’s here!

    Recently out of college, she doesn’t have a dog but she does have a rabbit — a French Angora named Lenore. (That’s a very sophisticated name for a bunny, but not quite as sophisticated as my cat’s name, Mrs. Middleton-Snugglesworth, but that’s a whole other story!) Lenore is very fond of electronics and by “fond,” I’ve been told, she likes to eat them. She is also very good at shedding — a good trait for an Angora bunny to have.

    If you’ve been to our South Burlington store, you’ve probably had a chance to talk to Nessy. If not, be sure to introduce yourself. She’s the young woman with the winning smile who also knows a heck of a lot about technology!

  • MAC TREAT #189: Screen Capture in QuickTime

    Recently, I wanted to capture a set of commands to create a video tutorial, and I was ready to download a third party application to help me record them. Turns out, in Snow Leopard and later, QuickTime (v10+) does just that — and it’s included in the OS.

    * Screen Recording mode is located under *File > New Screen Recording*
    * Once the window pops up, access the audio input, quality, and mouse icon settings under the arrow in the bottom righthand corner
    * Then, select which best suits your video (I chose “None” since I intended to use text boxes instead)
    * Click the red button under Screen Recording to start your screen capture
    * You’ll be prompted to either record the whole screen or to select a portion of the screen to capture (If you select a portion of the screen to record, you’ll need to click Start Recording to begin)*
    * From there, everything you do will be captured, and you’ll be able to stop the recording by clicking the Stop icon or by pressing *Command-Control-Escape*

    You can then save the movie as 480p, 720p, or 1080p quality, and there are options for iPod touch, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac and PC compatibility.

    QuickTime does a great job of producing a basic screen capture. If you find that you need more options, “*Camtasia*”:http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html is nice alternative, as well as the light-weight “*Jing.*”:http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

    __*Note that the exact prompts may differ depending on your OS. I am using Mountain Lion.__