Watching Video Games

It's long a go since I was able to complete computer games / video games. Through either lack of skill or lack of motivation I usually give us after a week or so, and when I return to the game I've ususally forgotten the controls. Then I discovered game walk-throughs on YouTube, and I've been catching up on some games I could not complete;


Resident Evil 4;



Uncharted Drakes Fortune;



I Am Alive



And I found an amazing game I haven't even played yet; Heavy Rain;


It has been fantastic catching up with old games I haven't completed, and seeing the new game "Heavy Rain".

OS X Finder tips

I was doing a bit of investigation into the Finder options accessible here;

And here's what I found;

The options I found useful (under General) was that you can choose to see Hard drives on the desktop and also Connected servers  - which is very useful. Additionally you can choose to change the default folder that Finder opens up each time you do a new Finder window - this is a great option.

Under "Sidebar" you can choose what appears on the sidebar in Finder, and adding your computer is useful, as you can then expand the computer and expand the network and connected servers, providing a very useful way of navigating.

Under advanced you can turn on to "show all filename extensions" which I find useful.

Zero inbox

A policy I practice at work is having my email completely under control, that means having techniques to make sure I get through the email, and ways of managing the inbox to make sure that emails in the inbox are either (a) unread or (b) not there / filed away.

So techniques for getting through my email are;

• I get in early and e-mail is my number one priority, and I will get through the whole inbox until it is empty (see below), from there I will move on to the tasks of the day.
• I usually have another email reading/actioning session after lunch, my lunch break is booked in for 1 1/2 hours so I can have a decent lunch break and then have plenty of time to get through the additional email that has built up - without being interrupted by meetings.
• I have turned off email notifications - therefore I do not get disturbed during work time
• Occasionally I check emails outside of these time windows, but prioritise the ones that are looked at.

When reading/actioning email during these time windows I use the following technique

• Starting from the top read each email
• I have Outlook 2010 quick steps for moving email to certain folders; 1) Reading list; 2) In progress; 3) Done; 4) Delete; and OneNote setup to accept email.
• If the email is spam or not of interested click delete
• If the email is of interest, contains a document or some business acumen information, non project related, then click "reading list" - then take some time out at a later time to read through these emails or delete them.
• If the email is a simple task that can be done quickly, or something that can be replied to quickly then do the task or reply and click "done" (If it contains information that is of use, before clicking "done" click "one note" and choose the appropriate place to file it away).
• If the email cannot be actioned quickly, needs a good 10+ minutes of effort or reading then right click and copy to the task list (this allows you to add in attachments). Choose the timings when to action the task, and choose a category for the project. If it contains useful information use "one note" to file the email. Then click "in progress".
• The key is not to spend more than a few minutes on each email, and if you need to spend more than that it either goes to (i) The reading list; or (ii) The in progress list (with a task created).
• There are also in progress email, that you don't need to action but you want to keep track of, these can go in the "in progress" list to.

Therefore when you are doing work and processing the tasks of the day, you can prioritise this work, and you have all the related emails in "in progress" and all the related knowledge in "One Note".

Being disciplined about keeping your inbox to zero, gives you a sense of control, and by filtering out just the tasks that you need to progress, with associated tasks you can then categorise these tasks per project and appropriately prioritise and schedule this work. And suddenly you've got a pipeline of work, and an effective way for new work to come in via the inbox, and no feeling of being swamped by your increasing inbox.

Add tasks to Things with Siri

You can add reminders to Siri that get transferred to you Things inbox, and the reminder is then removed from reminders. It is fantastic and works perfectly! It describes it here http://support.culturedcode.com/customer/portal/articles/183236-using-siri-with-things on the Cultured Code website but does not describe how to turn it on and use it! Well here is how you can do it;

1) Create a list in Reminders called "Things" or whatever you would prefer
2) In Things on your iPhone, under preferences, go to "Reminders & Siri"
3) Choose to "Show Reminders" and choose the "Things" list from earlier
4) Now word your reminder to Siri as "Add [item] to my [listname] list" which would be something like "Add bake a cake to my Things list"
5) This will add the reminder in Reminders, it will go into the Things inbox and delete it from reminders. You can then go into Things inbox and choose to import the reminder or move it to a project

Fix AppleScript to create new tasks in Things

This fixes the problems highlighted here https://culturedcode.com/forums/read.php?7,59076 on the cultured code forum.

By making a series of changes to the script provided here https://culturedcode.com/things/wiki/index.php/AppleScript:Create_new_tasks_from_Mail_messages,_adding_Growl_notification using the code changes suggested here http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1416945 gives a script which creates a new Task when you receive a message with the title "Add to things" - you need to set a rule that runs the script on receiving a message with that as a title. It then creates a task in things with the task name the same as the description, so make the message body short!

using terms from application "Mail"

on perform mail action with messages newMessages

repeat with newMessage in newMessages

tell application "Mail"

set taskName to content of newMessage

set taskNotes to taskName & " (From " & the sender of newMessage & ")"

tell application "Things"

set newToDo to make new to do with properties {name:taskName, notes:taskNotes}

end tell

tell application "Growl"

set the allNotificationsList to ¬

{"Task Created"}

set the enabledNotificationsList to ¬

{"Task Created"}

register as application ¬

"Create Task from Multiple Mail (Growl Enabled)" all notifications allNotificationsList ¬

default notifications enabledNotificationsList ¬

icon of application "Things"

notify with name ¬

"Task Created" title ¬

"Task created in Things" description ¬

taskName application name "Create Task from Multiple Mail (Growl Enabled)"

end tell

end tell

end repeat

end perform mail action with messages

end using terms from

At the moment the body contains line breaks, and makes the task format strangely in things, if you know how to add some code to remove the line breaks from the subject I would appreciate it!

Note you need to place this in the new place where Mail expects scripts to be, navigable via the rules definition screens under Mail preferences.

How to restore Mac to factory settings / how to sell on your Mac

I did a google for “How to restore Mac to factory settings” and all the hits back seemed to be talking about deleting everything manually and then restoring the operating system from a disk! There is a much better way; I’m assuming your intention to restore to factory settings is because you want to sell on or pass on your Mac to someone? Follow these simple steps and you will effectively do what the title suggests.

1. Make sure you have a full back up of all your files, and you have transferred them to a new Mac and it is working and you have verified all your files have been copied.
2. De-authorise your computer in iTunes on the Mac you are getting rid of
3. You should have already disabled Time Machine on the Mac you are getting rid of, as part of the transfer to the new Mac.
4. Now create a user account with admin privileges for the person you are passing the Mac onto, if you don’t know who this is going to be make it something generic like “Administrator” - the most important thing is that you give them full admin privileges that you current account has.
5. Check that you can log in to the new account, and that it has admin rights. This can be done by unlocking a setting in System Preferences where it will ask you for your admin password.
6. Make the hard drive appear on the desktop by going to finder > Preferences > and choose “Show hard drives” on desktop.
7. Change the hard drive name to take our your name; right click on the hard drive > get info > update the name.
8. Change the name of the computer to take our your name. Go to System Preferences > Sharing > the change the computer name.
9. Now under System Preferences > User & Groups, unlock for changes and then choose the user account you want to remove and click the minus sign. It may take up to 10-15 minutes to process (giving a bouncing ball and even saying “unresponsive” in system monitor - however it will come back).
10. Once you get to the next screen you will be able to choose to delete the home folder of this user and its contents and choose “delete securely”, then click ok/apply.
11. Leave the computer to delete the account - this may take up to 12+ hours depending on the size of the user account (for me it took this long for 200GB+ user account). You can monitor progress by doing a get info on the hard drive and watching the available disk space increase over time.
12. Once deleted there should now be lots of spare space.
13. The remaining steps are manual, if you have any files stored outside the home directory then these need to be deleted. Apps do not get deleted, so these too will need to be manually deleted if you don’t want them transferred to the new user.

And that in a nut shell is it - you’ll then be giving the new owner basically a brand new laptop reverted to factory settings.

iPad naming convention

So the iPad is now know as "the iPad 4th generation", and the iPad is now no longer referred to as "the New iPad", rather the "iPad 3rd generation". In stores you can buy the iPad Mini, the iPad 2 and the iPad 4th generation (referred to as the iPad with Retina display).

I did predict some of this, and my explanation was that they wanted to make the iPad launch less of a big event then it had been previously. This is to (a) be realistic that there isn't significant hardware feature changes coming at the moment (and so to reduce expectations); and (b) to allow them to release and refresh the series whenever they want, like the other hardware lines (MacBook Pros, iMacs, Mac Minis, etc). They haven't gone the full distance though as they are still referring them to as "nth generation" like the iPods rather than like other hardware that isn't referred to by generation but rather the year that it was made on. For example my previous MBP is referred to as a "late 2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch", and my new MBP will be referred to as a "late 2012 MacBook Pro 15 inch with Retina Display".

What this means is I don't think the next iPad will be a called an iPad 5 or an iPad 4S; it will be known as the iPad 5th generation, and will probably still be called the iPad with Retina display. Will it be released in March 2013, that is quite interesting, and I'm going to make the prediction that they will indeed refresh early 2013 to give the 5th generation a speed increase, and potentially some additional ports, it's unlikely it will get a higher res screen. It may get thinner, have a slightly different look, and perhaps have an even longer battery life.

The interesting thing is that the iPad 2 still lives on, but the iPad 3rd generation has been killed off; I can see the rationale as now we have 3 iPads at different price points; the iPad mini, the iPad 2 and the iPad with retina display (4th generation). But what happens when the 5th generation comes out next year? Will Apple continue to sell the iPad 2 at a discounted rate? You know I think with the iPad Mini they now have 3 viable products - and so I predict that the iPad 2 could be enhanced (but non-retina), so we will then have an iPad Mini, an iPad and an iPad with Retina display. Alternatively the iPad 2 will be dropped and we will just have the iPad Mini and the iPad. With the iPad having a retina display - this will probably not happen until the MacBook Pros are merged with the MacBook Pros with retina display.

It will be interesting to see what will happen. And now there is an iPad Mini will we see an iPad Mini with retina display? And will the iPad Mini get refreshed early 2013 as well?