Grazing Apples

I pretty much live inside the little Grazr box these days, writing code, testing, re-testing, tweaking, adding features, testing again... Since I'm always using 'live' files, I sometimes end up grazing across large sets of interrelated posts and blogs. Sometimes I can't help but get sucked into reading new blogs and particular articles that I never would have found any other way.

With the recent whirlwind of Apple related news due to the WWDC I happened to come across several interesting Mac related sites. This is just one of the fun advantages of being able to skim posts without 'drowning' in subscriptions. I use a Mac so I was particularly interested in a set of quick tips and mac ideas I "grazed" that I thought I would share.

Two of the tips are from "The unofficial Apple Weblog" or TUAW. First, apparently I'm not the only one who likes to see the enclosing folder for a search result in Spotlight. I've often gotten annoyed at spotlight results for files where I have many, slightly divergent, copies residing in different locations (mainly due to different versions). Sometimes, when doing a spotlight search, I end up with a drop-down list comprised of the exact same filename multiple times with no context. You then have to do 'show results' and even then *where* the file is, isn't displayed. So I found myself right clicking to 'reveal in finder' to see the file. Well like they say in the TUAW article, I probably should have discovered this on my own, but holding the command key when you click on the item in the results drop-down opens the containg folder in the finder. Hazzah!

The next tip is another set of keboard shortcuts that I find myself using all the time. Keyboard shortcuts for sleep, restart, and shutdown.. Put the computer to sleep with option-command-eject, restart control-command-eject, and shutdown control-option-command-eject. Seems simple enough but it bypasses all the menus, dialogs, and 'are you sure?'s that normally show up.

The last tip was from Hawk Wings, a blog for tips on using Apple's Mail program. The article is about using Apple's Mail.app as a system to implement a particular type of workflow from David Allen's book "Getting things Done".

While I'm not really interested in that particular workflow, I did use some of the tips to create some 'smart folders'. Smartfolders are one of those features I knew about but just never got around to exploring. Setting up a few to automatically filter and sort e-mails regarding Grazr business, support e-mails, personal stuff, and a 'needs attention' folder, helps me keep things from falling into the infinite inbox abyss. It's really helped me organize a bit and feel a little more on top of things.