Year: 2011

Addicted to Learning?

Aeronautics - parts of airplanes
Aeronautics

I spent so much time in school you would think I would be glad to be done with it… and I was, for a while anyway. Yet after a few months of school free existence, in the evening I often found myself picking up text books or reference manuals.

I’ve come to realize, that I greatly enjoy the act of learning and gaining knowledge. So, I’ve enrolled in a couple of graduate classes in Aeronautics, just because I find it to be a fascinating subject.

OSX Startup Shortcuts

Startup Shortcuts

  • Hold the ‘x’ key during startup. This will force the Mac to boot from OS X, no matter which disk is specified as the startup disk.
  • Hold the ‘c’ key during startup to boot from a bootable CD or DVD.
  • Hold the ‘n’ key during startup to boot from a networked computer that has a NetBoot volume.
  • Hold the ‘t’ key during startup to boot in FireWire Target Disk Mode. This mode lets you use any Mac with a FireWire port as the source for your bootup system.
  • Hold the ‘d’ key during startup. If the Apple Hardware Test DVD is in the optical drive, the Apple Hardware Test will begin.
  • Hold the option key during startup. The OS X startup manager will appear, allowing you to select a disk to boot from.
  • Hold the shift key during startup. This will boot your computer in Safe Mode. Safe Mode disables login items and non-essential kernel extensions from starting up.
  • Hold Command + ‘v’ during startup The command key is the key with the cloverleaf symbol. This shortcut will boot your Mac in Verbose Mode, with descriptive text sent to the display during the startup process.
  • Hold Command + ‘s’ during startup. This shortcut will boot your Mac in Single-User Mode, a special mode used for troubleshooting and repairing complex hard drive issues.
  • Hold down the mouse’s primary key during startup. On a two- or three-button mouse, the primary key is usually the left button. This shortcut will eject a CD or DVD from the optical drive.
  • Hold Command + Option + ‘p’ + ‘r’ during startup. This zaps the PRAM (Parameter RAM), an option that long-time Mac users will remember. Press and hold the key combination until you hear the second set of chimes. Zapping the PRAM returns it to its default configuration for display and video settings, time and date settings, speaker volume, and DVD region settings.

In all cases, you should use the keyboard shortcut combinations immediately after pressing the Mac’s power switch, or, if you used the Restart command, after the Mac’s power light goes out.

 

OSX Screenshot Shortcuts

Shortcuts

  • Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
  • Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
  • Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
  • Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
  • Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
  • Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard
  • The following keys can be held down while selecting an area (via Command-Shift-4 or Command-Control-Shift-4):
    • Space, to lock the size of the selected region and instead move it when the mouse moves
    • Shift, to resize only one edge of the selected region
    • Option, to resize the selected region with its center as the anchor point

Formats

Different versions of Mac OS X have different formats for screenshots.

The default screenshot format can be changed, by opening Terminal (located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and typing in:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format
killall SystemUIServer

Where image_format is one of jpg, tiff, pdf, png, bmp or pict (among others). If you omit the second line, you will need to log out and in again for the change to take effect.

Grab and Preview
Instead of using the keyboard shortcuts above, screenshots can be taken by using the Grab application included with Mac OS X. It is located at /Applications/Utilities/Grab. Some versions of the Preview application have an option under the File menu to take a screenshot.

From the Terminal
The screencapture command in the Terminal can also be used to capture screenshots, and is useful for scripts. Here is an example.

screencapture -iW ~/Desktop/screen.jpg

Harvard Graduation

Harvard Grad
Harvard – May 2011

After years of schooling, I finally graduated from Harvard in May 2011! Hurray! You’d think after all of these years I would want to take a break and relax, but I find my brain seems to be stuck in “learning” mode, so I’ve decided to try and learn Japanese so I can be a proper anime otaku, lol!

2011 Soaring Season Begins

2011-02-26 Flight Path
2011-02-26 Flight Path

I’ve been working on my sailplane to get in back in shape…last weekend I didn’t fly it, instead I spend 12+ hours cleaning, polishing and waxing everything except the bottoms of the wings. Today I wired up my new flight recorder and PNA. I thought about finishing waxing the wings, but I just couldn’t… with cloud streets like I saw today, I just HAD to fly. It was AWESOME! there was incredible lift, averaging about 4kts, but going up to 10+kts! I downloaded my flight from my flight recorder,so you can see there was good lift today… I made up above 5000′, and actually above the cloud bases at one point.

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