HeySage

The Sage has been a fan of AskANinja since the early days of its conception. When the latest episode popped up in The Sage’s iTunes he coudn’t believe it. The description said:

The Ninja interviews Will Ferrell and Jon Heder. (Disclosure: Par

The Sage thought it was a joke but when The Sage fired up the episode, The Ninja was actually interviewing the ice skating duo. If you have never watched this incredible show, now is the time.

In this episode The Sage shows you how to make screengrabs using the built in features of OS X (difficulty level: easy).

You can watch the latest episode here

How do we do it

There are three ways to make a screen grab anywhere in OS X. They are:

1. ⌘-Shift-3

   This method will make a screen capture of your entire screen. All you need to do is press all three keys at the same time and an image will be placed on the desktop.

2. ⌘-Shift-4

   This method will bring up cross hairs that you can use to make a selection of the area that you would like to capture. All you need to do is simply click and drag. Once you let go the screengrab will be made and the image will be placed on your desktop.

3. ⌘-Shift-4 and then The Space Bar

   The third method (⌘-Shift-4 and then The Space Bar) makes a window grab. If you would like to capture the contents of a single window this is the preferred method. Once you press ⌘-Shift-4 the cross hairs will become visible. Pressing the space bar changes the cross-hairs to a camera. As you move the camera over a window it becomes highlighted. Simply click to capture that window. Once you do the .png file will appear on your desktop.

It is probably worth mentioning that you can make screengrabs by using Grab, a free application that ships with OS X. With grab you have the option of grabbing a window, selection, screen, or timed screen. The options can be found under grab > capture.

Last but not least, grab can be accessed through the services menu of any application that supports services.

OK, OK, I guess The Sage has to comment on John C. Dvorak’s recent Market Watch nonsense. The Sage will refrain from breaking down the article and pointing out the flaws in his argument (many have already done this quite well: MacUser Cult of Mac) and simply remind you that Dvorak rarely has anything nice to say about Apple.

Anybody that has ever listened to TWIT, knows that Dvorak does not “pay” for anything. Maybe Dvorak is just upset that Apple will not be “giving” him an iPhone. Maybe that is why he says:

If it’s (apple) smart it will call the ithe iPhone a “reference design” and pass it to >some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands >of any marketplace failures.

Maybe if Apple does that he can get himself a “free” iPhone. The Sage believes the technical phrase for Dvorak’s article is that, “He is a hater!”

Technorati Tags: Dvorak, iPhone

The Sage has finally decided to jump on the Twitter band wagon. For anybody that does not know what Twitter is, Twitter is a social networking service that allows you to post what you are doing, what you think, or whatever you want. It allows users to send messages via phone, instant messaging or the Twitter website.

Twitterific is an application that streamlines the process of posting to Twitter. Now to the point of this Post. If you would like to see an amazing implementation of the Google Maps API check out TwitterVision. You could waist days watching this!

While watching TwitterVision The Sage saw that somebody was listening to TWIM (one of The Sage’s favorite podcasts) so he decided to make a screen grab (above). He also saw a Twitter from somebody listening to MBW (another favorite). And minutes later, The Sage saw a post from Lee Brimlow, the actionscript expert, of gotoAndLearn (among may other sites).

Technorati Tags: Twitter, TwitterVision, Twitterific

As the Sage goes through the hoops of getting HeySage.com up and running he feels compelled to share the steps. The Sage is currently attempting to claim his blog at Technorati. To do so he must post this link to his Technorati Profile.

Well, now that’s done!

Technorati Tags: Technorati Claim

On a recent episode of The MacRoundtable Ray Slakinski, founder of PopCurrent, mentioned a wonderful blog publishing plugin for TextMate called BlogMate. BlogMate is a free, graphical plug-in for TextMate that allows creating and editing blog posts for some types of blogs (Wordpress most certainly) from a floating palette within TextMate. BlogMate is developed by Todd Ditchendorf.”

Now for the review. The Sage was able to download the plugin, install it, configure it, and publish a post with it in just a few minutes. As previously stated the plugin offers a free floating palette and has a very straightforward UI. Once configured any open HTML or Markdown document can be published by simply clicking the “Send Post” button in the BlogMate pane. This will bring up a dialog box which prompts you for the title of the post and allows you to configure the time stamp. To set the category of the posting, all you need to do is check the Categories that apply in the Categories pane of the BlogMate window.

The only downside The Sage could find is that the uploading of images or other media is not streamlined as it is when using the TextMate blogging bundle. When using the TextMate blogging bundle the image is uploaded to the location specified by the user in the WP-Admin configuration panel and the appropriate link (in HTML or Markdown) appears in the text so that when you post, the image will display properly. When using BlogMate you must manually upload the image.

The Sage found a simple work around so as to get the best of both worlds. All you need to do is create a document from the blogging bundle template and then remove the “Title:” text at the head of the document. Then you can post the document using BlogMate. This is currently The Sage’s preferred method of posting although he may choose to incorporate MarsEdit in his future work flow.

All in all, BlogMate offers a free, quick and easy way to post to a supported blog using TextMate.

Technorati Tags: BlogMate, TextMate, Bloggin Tools

In the past, The Sage had always written his blog postings in HTML and in a plain text editor (e.g. TextEdit or TextMate). With time The Sage moved on, and began to write his blog postings in PHP Markdown (for ease of use and appearance reasons). The Sage had always heard how great Mars Edit was, so he finally decided to give it a try.

Initial Impressions:

• The UI is very clean and straightforward.
• You can format your posts in Markdown, Textile, SmartyPants, plain text, HTML, or choose to insert line breaks.
• Uploading and posting images is seamless. You simply select “insert image or file” from the HTML dropdown menu and select the weblog, your desired path, and alignment. From there all that is left to do is Click Upload and Insert.
• Control over comments, categories and trackbacks is simple. They can be controlled using the options fly-out panel in the editing window.

The only thing that MarsEdit lacks that The Sage would like to see is contextual support for Markdown. Currently you must write all of your markdown by hand (no big deal) or use an external editor like TextMate or BBEdit.

All in all The Sage is quite impressed with this little app that can. When you consider its power and ease of use you quickly realize that it is more than worth the $25.

Technorati Tags: MarsEdit, Blogging

The first episode of the Heysage Podcast, The Macintosh How-To ScreenCast, is finished an up on the server!
You may watch the podcast here and subscribe to the podcast feed here

In Todays episode The Sage shows you how to created an encrypted disk image.

Q: What is an encrypted disc image?

A: Think of it as a password protected folder

Q: Why would you want to create an encrypted disc image?

A: Well, the main reason is to create a folder for which to house contents that you would like to keep secure and protected. Examples of things that you may keep in an encrypted disc image are:

• A document with password.
• Quicken or Quickbooks files
• Anything you would like to keep safe and secure

The fact of the matter is that if you have a Macbook, Powerbook, iBook or whatever and it is lost, anybody can get into your computer (even if you have configured your Mac to require a password at login), with a reinstall disc. You have to remember that we are talking about a Mac. So, all the thief has to do is insert the installation disc and away they go with all of your data.

So how do we do it?

1. Go to Utilities -> Disc Utility
2. Select File -> New -> Bland Disc Image (or Disc Image from Folder if you prefer)
3. A dialog box opens. In the dialog box enter a Name for your disc image and choose a destination to save the disc image to. Also choose a size and the encryption type (AES-128)
4. From here you will prompted to create a password. Enter you password (twice) and uncheck (or not) the box which saves your password to your keychain.

At this point you are through. You have created the .dmg file or disc image. To open the image all you need to do is double click the .dmg file that you created. Once you do, you will be prompted for the password. Once you enter the password, the disc image will mount on the desktop. From there you can double click the mounted disc image to open the folder. With the folder open you can drag and drop anything you would like into the folder. Be careful though, when you drag a file into the image it will place a copy in the folder. You must go back and delete the file on your drive.

Hope that his helps. Feel free to email any feedback, questions, or comments.

Technorati Tags: How To OS X, OS X Tutorials

While The Sage is waiting for Episode 1 of The HeySage Podcast to render he felt it necessary to write a quick review/tutorial on the TextMate Blogging bundle. The blogging bundle in TextMate only takes a few minutes to configure and you can configure the preferences file for one or multiple blogs. There is a screencast on the TextMate site which clearly demonstrates how to set things up and use the bundle. For those who prefer reading the steps are as follows:

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow what a way to kick off CS3. It appears that Adobe is having some technical difficulties. The Sage thinks they should try using the cinema display and see if that will work! So far CS3 looks awesome, if only we could continue with the presentation.

Technorati Tags: Adobe CS3, Adobe Press Release