Arts IT Savvy

There are some OS X keyboard shortcuts you don’t want to forget when, for example, your bluetooth mouse runs out of juice and you can’t find your tether-mouse, like, control-F2 (highlight the menu bar). Others you need to know when the computer is off or staring up; e.g. hold down the C key to boot from an optical drive. Having forgotten some of these useful shortcuts once too often I’ve put together a handy-dandy, double-sided, tri-fold crib sheet containing every default (many are configurable) OS X keyboard shortcut I could think of. I thought this might be of use to others so here it is: Default OS X Shortcut Keys (external link). Comments, sugestions, corrections etc. always welcome. – Originally posted at PSDC.

Apple have released their new laptops, with a new MacBook, and Macbook Pro (with various optional configs as per normal).

New Apple MacBook

Not sure when they will be available here – around Xmas based on previous experiences.

Letting go of old technology.

It’s not that I don’t know where to dispose of the old tech, but bringing oneself to actually let go of it, especially when it cost so much to acquire it in the first place.

Heading back chronologically, (including the current platform(s)) I have:

Apple McBook Pro running Leopard (OSX 10.5.5) and Windows XP (and Vista, and Apple ][e)

HP Desktop Pentium 4 running Windows Vista

Toshiba Tecra Pentium 4 running Windows XP

Pentium 3 733 running Windows XP

486 DX4 100 running DOS 6.22a and Windows 3.11

386 SX running DOS 5

Apple ][e running DOS 3.3

Sinclair ZX81 running CP-M

I think I have a problem!

Apple are releasing a new iPod Touch and iPod Nano.

The Touch now includes a built-in speaker and increased battery capacity (and up to 32GB storage), while the Nano has increased capacity (up to 16GB), and an increased range of colours for those who care about the fashion.

Strangely, in my opinion, the Touch still does not appear to have Bluetooth capabilities, which I would have expected given it’s ever converging role with PDAs (and its ability to have contacts, calendar, email etc), and the increasing range of bluetooth headsets.

Our web team have made an appearance in the latest edition of the Apple University Consortium (AUC) Wheels for the Mind magazine, discussing the transition of the Arts website from it’s original polymorphic form into a consistent one under the university’s CMS (Content Management System).

Somewhere in the vicinity of 74000 files needed to be transitioned, that without the automated processes the web team developed would have taken an estimated 15 years (based on another faculty’s experience) if done manually (which coincidentally is about as long as the Arts website has been running) instead of the 18 months that it did take.

Contact Peter Stagg in ArtsIT if you would be interested in getting a copy of the magazine, which is an interesting read (even for non Apple-officianados).