November 11th, 2008
For most Mac users, I would recommend using iWork for your “office” tools. With Number’s ‘08, making a graph is just a matter of clicking a button. On the other hand, with Microsoft Excel, there is a little more clicking involved, making it a bit less user-friendly. Since most jobs these days require that you use Microsoft Office, I figured this would help out many individuals.
- First open up Microsoft Excel.
- Type in the “X-Axis” values into the first column.
- In the second column, type in the “Y-Axis” values. Feel free to use more columns depending on your data.
- Once you’ve finished that up, select all of your “Y-Axis” values.
- From the menubar, choose Insert > Chart…
- You’ll be prompted with the “Chart Type” window. Choose a type that suits your needs.
- After clicking the “Next” button, you should see a preview of your graph showing the data ranges.
- After confirming the data ranges, click on the “Series” tab at the top of the window.
- To name the data, click on “Series1″ (or any “Series#”) and type in the title you want in the “Name:” field.
- When you’ve named all of your series, click on the triangle icon in the “Category (x) axis labels:” field towards the bottom of the window.
- Select all of your “X-Axis” values from your sheet. In the small pop-up for the X-Axis values, click on the upside down triangle icon to save those values.
- Click the “Next” button when the “Series” window reappears.
- In the “Titles” section, enter the main title for the graph and for the X and Y-Axis.
- You do not usually need to change the settings in the other tabs (i.e. Axes, Gridlines ,etc.), but feel free to.
- After clicking the “Next” button, the “Chart Location” window appears.
- Check off “As object in” or “As new sheet” depending on where you want the graph to be inserted.
- After clicking “Finish”, select your graph and go to File > Print… from the menubar.
Screenshots: 2-4, 5, 6-7, 8, 9, 10, 11-12, 13, 15-16, and 17.
November 7th, 2008
One problem many Mac users have been noticing lately is the bug Mac OS X 10.5 that does not include attachments when you save Mail messages as RTF. Thanks to Andreas Amann, this bug can be easily remedied with his AppleScript package for Mac OS X Mail. Here is how to export a message to RTF and include attachments:
- First download the AppleScripts from Amann’s site (link on bottom of site).
- To install it, just double click on “MailScripts Installer” in the MailScripts.dmg.
- Next, go to Mac OS X Mail and locate the messages you want to export.
- If you want to export specific messages instead of all of them, make a mailbox called “RTF”
- Right-click on the messages you want to export and choose “Copy To” > RTF.
- In the menubar look for the AppleScript icon next to the Volume icon.
- In list of AppleScripts that appear, all we care about is “Mail Scripts”.
- Inside of “Mail Scripts”, choose “Archive Messages…”.
- Now, select the mailbox RTF.
- In the “Selection Criteria” window, make sure you pick “Rich Text Format” and “Include Attachments” under “Export Format”.
- After making any other changes, click OK and the mail message will appear on your Desktop (or elsewhere depending on where you chose to export it) in RTF format with all attachments included.
- Once you’re finished exporting, you may want to remove the messages (which are copies of the originals, so they’re safe to delete) from the RTF mailbox so they won’t get exported again for the next time.
Screenshots: 2, 4, 5, 6-8, 9, and 10.
October 17th, 2008
If you’re like me, then you are overwhelmed by the vast selection of computer books and which one to choose. When I’m about to spend weeks learning a web programming language, I prefer to do some quick background info online. Mostly basics such as: why use it?, what can it do for me?, and samples. Once I look through some online tutorials to the point of confusion, then do I get a book. Not just your regular “all-in-one” book, but the Visual QuickStart Guide book. I’ll admit, I’ve bought the “all-in-one” book, and honestly, they suck (for beginners). Assuming you (the reader) are about to begin learning web programming or something else from scratch, it’s best to have a well-written, easy to follow book.
Being a “visual” learner myself, I am able to use my photographic memory to remember certain things from images or books. With the Visual QuickStart Guides, you are always greeted with the background of what it is you’re trying to learn, why you should use it, and lastly how you should use it. Let’s say you’re reading a book about PHP. Each chapter of the book will show several lines of code along with a screenshot (showing the output from the code). Having a screenshot helps me the most because it allows me to focus on the reading and not have to use my computer to see what the output would be. Therefore, saving me time, and frustration.
The first chapters give you the basic tools you need to grasp what it is you want to learn (syntax, rules, etc). By the time you reach the last chapters of the book, there are more realistic examples that will get you going on a project. Once you’ve finished the book, it’s great to keep around for referencing or you can always use the corresponding website for extras. This is why I love using VQS Guide — it allows me to conquer something without all the frustration and anger. That’s one thing I dislike about online tutorials is you learn only bits and pieces, not the whole. To learn something completely, you must start from the beginning and learn the basics to get going. That’s what Visual QuickStart Guides will do and will do it very well.
October 14th, 2008
When it comes to photo editing, iPhoto’s capabilities are not up to par with Bridge or Aperture. Thanks to Apple making Aperture it’s quite easy to import your existing iPhoto library. With Adobe Bridge, the import process is less user-friendly, but in the end you will have all of your pictures from iPhoto easily accessible from Bridge.
- Open up the Pictures folder in Finder.
- Locate the iPhoto Library file.
- Right-click on it and choose Show Package Contents.
- Inside the contents, locate “Originals” and “Modified”.
- Hold down Shift and select both folders.
- Right-click on choose Make Alias.
- Drag both the aliases into the Pictures folder in Finder.
- Create a new folder and place both the aliases in the folder.
- Now, open up Bridge.
- In the sidebar you should see a Pictures folder.
- Double-click it and open the folder that contains the aliases you made.
- Now all you do is browse through the folders in chronological order until you find the picture you wanted.
- Keep in mind any changes you make using Camera Raw will not show up in iPhoto.
Screenshots: 1-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-11, and 13.
October 12th, 2008
A Nice feature that is conveniently built in with Mac OS X is the Archive feature. It allows you to compress files to reasonable sizes that are more manageable. If you deal with lots of archives and prefer to keep your Mac as organized as possible, you may be glad to hear that you can change the Archive preferences.
- Open Finder
- Go to Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices
- In CoreServices, right-click on Archive Utility and select Show Package Contents.
- In Contents > Resources, locate Archives.prefPane
- Double-click on the file and you will be prompted to install it in System Preferences.
- In System Preferences, click on Archives.
- The “Save expanded files” field affects the files in the archive you open up.
- The “After expanding” field allows you to choose a location to put the archive after it expands.
- The other options should be left with their default settings, unless you want to change them.
- If you don’t want to keep it System Preferences, just follow steps 1-3 (excluding Show Package Contents) and open up the Archive Utility. From there, go the Archive Utility menu > Preferences.
Screenshots: 1-3, 4, 5, and 7-8.
October 9th, 2008
With the new version of iTunes, version 8, you now have the capability to use Grid View as a more organized music selection. One feature in particular that bothered me was the genre section in Grid View because it’s not very customizable for the user. Mostly for me, it’s just that you can’t edit the genre album covers with one of your own. There is a way to use existing album covers from your iTunes library, but still not a way to place your own cover as the default genre cover. With a little creativity and Photoshop, this can be done.
- Open up iTunes.
- Go to Grid View and select Genres.
- Now look for any genres you want to replace with your own cover.
- Open up Photoshop, and make a 256 x 256px image for the album cover.
- Save it as “genre-80’s.jpg” or whatever genre name you want, to the Desktop.
- Right-click on iTunes in Finder and choose Show Package Contents.
- Put the album cover in the iTunes > Resources folder.
- Browse through Contents > Resources > genres.plist and open it up with a text editor (ex. Coda).
- Type in the following code for the genres you want to add album covers for:
<dict>
<key>matchString</key><string>80's</string>
<key>resourceFile</key><string>genre-80's.jpg</string>
</dict>
- Now quit iTunes and open it back up.
- You should see the new album covers you made.
Screenshots: 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 15.
