state

Apr 27 2009

Field Trip

Setting out across the solar system, the planet or the state? Get to the destination of your choice with these armchair traveler picks.

mu Field TripFactbook

Access the CIA’s online World Fact Book. Learn all about exotic places you can’t pronounce. Download a map and flag. It’s the next best thing to being there, minus the hassles of international travel.

mu Field TripMaestro

Tag along with the Opportunity and Spirit on Mars with this mini control center from NASA. I’m not guaranteeing how long the rovers will be broadcasting, but this is the best software for playing along at home.

mu Field TripBull Market

For those of you that’d trade Mars for Wall Street, you’ll want to download Bull Market for quick menu-bar access to your favorite stock quotes from Yahoo! Finance. Retrieve quick updates on your portfolio stocks easily.

mu Field TripWeather Map 2.5

Wherever you’re headed, know what to wear. Download quick weather maps for your region with this tiny AppleScript app and get a heads-up on Mother Nature’s mood.

Have fun and learn something. See you next week with more good stuff.

Brian

mu Field TripDownloads provided by MacUpdate

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Apr 27 2009

What Is File System Journaling?

Brought to you by: James

Have you ever wondered, “What is File System Journaling”? Don’t worry, most of us have. File System Journaling was originally a feature only available to the server world. Finally, File System Journaling has made it to our favorite home computers.

Have you ever wondered why web servers seem to be in 100% working order after a crash/restart? File System Journaling is the answer. FSJ keeps a constant record of changes made to the volume after each startup. Should an unforeseen event occur, such as a power failure or kernel panic, FSJ will return your HFS+ volume to its last know “good” state.

FSJ keeps you up and running against most unforeseen accidents. The effect of restoring the drive to its last known “good” state is hardly noticeable (except for the fact that everything works perfectly). This effect also helps prevent drive errors by removing any partial data written at the time of the unexpected shutdown. The record that FSJ keeps also helps to progressively speed up start time, and uses very little disk space.

Are you in OSX 10.3 or higher? If you are, have you noticed that your drive does not need to be repaired after an unexpected shutdown? Have you noticed that your startup has been getting faster since you installed 10.3 or 10.4? Both of these are due to that fact that FSJ is enabled on 10.3′s and 10.4′s installation.

How do you enable FSJ in 10.3 or higher? All you have to do is restart from your 10.3 disk, open Disk Utility (under the ‘Installer’ menu), select your drive, and hit the ‘Enable Journaling” button. If you don’t have 10.3 or higher, just download and run Journalizer (note: FSJ requires 10.2.2 or later). If you have a new hard drive that you want to set up with FSJ active, just choose to format it was “HFS+ (Journaled)”.

Keep in mind, that if you’re a fan of using fsck, you’ll have to enter ‘/sbin/fsck -fy‘ instead. But trust me, you won’t find any errors. Have fun with FSJ!

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Apr 27 2009

Digital Zoom

I’m sure that some of you have poked around all of your System Preferences, including the Universal Access pane, but you’d be amazed at how many Mac users are unaware of “Digital Zoom”.



Since the early days of OS X, Digital Zoom has been a “hidden” feature, nestled in the Universal Access System Preference pane. Digital Zoom zooms in on your mouse pointer to give you a close look, with minor distortion at any object. This can be very helpful in such instances as fine print and reading words from very small pictures (concept art, illustrations, etc).



To active Digital Zoom, hit command-option-* . To zoom in, use command-option-+ and command-option– to zoom out. To return your screen to its original state and turn off Digital Zoom, hit command-option-* again.



Well, I hope you have enjoyed this quick tip and have fun zooming!

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