I have been spending the morning catching up – both with Moreno and Saidi having basically been out solid for the last three days, and with a whole bunch of digital content.
As you know I tend to put all of the cats stuff up on their iWeb site, and all the Almerimar Life stuff on the Almerimar Life site, but from time to time (well once so far) I come across something that I reckon can go up on this blog as well.
First up is a video of Moreno doing his now daily work out. He tends to do this about 7am, usually with me but on this ocassion I managed to crawl out of bed and grab the camcorder. He is amazing, he will do this for the best part of 20 mins – he has so much energy.
The second video just happened. I left my camera out after taking the Stacks picture and I thought it was really cute, especially right at the end ….
Once your cat (sorry – not sure if that was M or S) has got the hang of cleaning the front element of your lens, are you going to encourage it to clean the sensor? A flick of the tail for regular dust bunnies, or a proper licking for those hard-to-shift bits…
Some people use an Arctic Butterfly for that job, but you’ve got the latest and greatest – a gato español! 🙂
Somehow this post reminded me of an extremely funny cat story I came across many years ago, when the interweb was much smaller and younger: Cat Bathing As A Martial Art. This particular copy of it has the bonus of another story I’d completely forgotten about – “Giving Cat A Pill” – slightly further down the page.
I wonder, Chris, if you recognise any truth in either of them? 😀
(Apologies in case you’re already familiar with them…)
Excellent suggestion, I will have a word with Moreno to see what his rates would be – see if I can afford the extra prawns he will no doubt demand!!!
I loved the way he brought both paws over his ears at the end 🙂
Hmmm, just noticed that this new edit plugin doesn’t seem to allow me to click on inserted links and see the relevant page? Anyone else seeing that problem?
I have had to catch two stray cats in the last couple of days and they are powerful animals when they are determined, so yes there is a lot of truth in those stories.
You try getting a pill down a cats throat – almost impossible!!!!
> Anyone else seeing that problem?
Links work fine for post #1, in which the edit window has expired. The edit window for post #2 is still active, so although I see the target of the link in the status bar when I hover over the link, I get the edit window when I click on it. Jumping over to Camino from Safari and viewing the same page, I find that the link works fine there, even although the edit window still has a couple of minutes left on it. So, I’d expect other visitors to be okay. It looks as if my posts are affected for when I visit in my primary browser during the edit window. You might be different as the site admin… Elevated privileges and whatnot…
Cats can be very entertaining! When I was a kid, we had cats. They would have a ‘mad half hour’ as we called it, where they’d act really daft at the end of the day. This would be spontaneous and very energetic, as well as funny.
@Gary – that was along the lines that I was figuring/hoping! As I stay signed in as admin all the time I don’t get the true picture of how things are working at times – I didn’t pick up the original edit issue initially either.
@Jeremy – they are that, and demanding as well. When they decide it is play time, boy it is play time!!!
> that was along the lines that I was figuring/hoping! As I stay signed in as admin all the time I don’t get the true picture of how things are working at times – I didn’t pick up the original edit issue initially either.
Good thing there are plenty of choices of browser for our platform of choice then – it should be easy enough to keep one for occasional testing where the state of not being logged in is important.
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I “discovered” a neat trick the other day that makes this a (two-step) snap to do. It depends on your alternative browser of choice making available a service to open a URL in said browser. NB Service menu entries only appear after you’ve run (and quit?) an application for the first time. I think they all do, except the current FireFox, though I get the impression that the new FF v3 beta might add this.
I’m currently in Safari, so when I go to Safari > Services I can see several entries which will fit the bill: “Open URL”, “Open URL in Camino” and “Open URL in Opera”. If I don’t currently have any text selected, these entries will be greyed out. If some text is selected, then I will be able to choose one of those entries with my mouse and have the selected text treated as a URL and passed to the appropriate browser, launching it in the process if required. (Of course, this is open to abuse. Please don’t go selecting any old random text, because this will just upset your browser! 🙂 )
Now this is all good and well, but the Service menu has always been a little inconvenient to access with mouse or track pad. You have to be kinda determined to get it. It’s definitely not for casual users. 🙂 The trick is to assign a keyboard shortcut to one or more of these menu entries. Open System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts. Click the [+] button at the lower left of the window to add your own new shortcut – a window will drop down to allow you to enter your settings. Leave the “Application” at “All Applications” for this tip. This refers to the app from which the shortcut will be recognised. For the “Menu Title”, type in the text from the Services menu. eg “Open URL in Camino”. You must get the text exactly the same for this to work. Then put the cursor into the “Keyboard Shortcut” box and enter a suitable shortcut – something that’s not already in use for something else. One you’ve completed the three settings, click [Add] and go test this new setup.
The thing that makes this quick to use is knowing the browser shortcut [cmd]-L. That will highlight the address for the current web page (assuming you want to use this to test the page you’re currently in on, say, Safari, in Camino). Then press the new shortcut for “Open in other Browser” and, hey presto, you’ll see the same page opening in the other browser. After you’ve got the hang of this, it’s a doddle to tap [cmd]-L followed by your other shortcut and be transported almost instantly to test your current web page in another browser.
NB This probably only works in Service-aware applications. I can’t mind offhand, but I think it will fail in “older” Carbon apps. But who uses them nowadays anyway?
NB2 If a shortcut exists already and you don’t like it, you can override it.
NB3 “Open URL” refers to Safari.
NB4 This keyboard shortcut technique can be extended to other deeper sub-menu entries within Services, such as Services > TextWrangler > New Window With Selection. It’s quite neat – as long as you use them often enough for your clever shortcut to become embedded in your noggin! 🙂
Phew!!
phew is right, you win the prize for the longest and most thorough comment ever (well you would if there was a prize!!)
That is a really good tip – appreciate it 🙂
[quote comment=””]phew is right, you win the prize for the longest and most thorough comment ever (well you would if there was a prize!!)
That is a really good tip – appreciate it :-)[/quote]
Mmmm. Yes… It did turn out to take a little longer to explain than I original anticipated. I’m glad you didn’t turn round and say that you already knew and used it! 🙂
There is a lot that I don’t know. I tend to be a frequent user rather than a smart user of the Mac. I have a number of things that I do a lot, and a group of applications that I use a lot. I tend to stick within that ‘comfort zone’ these days, so am always grateful for good tips 🙂
> so am always grateful for good tips
Okay – here’s another general tip you might find handy. There’s a nice little feature in TextExpander that you might not have noticed – I didn’t notice it and its significance until recently.
I have several TextExpander shortcuts to create HTML tag pairs such as <b></b>. This was all good and well for me, but I often found that I had typed something and then decided, either immediately after or sometimes later on upon proof-reading, that I wanted to, for example, italicise or embolden part of the text. I’d then have to delete the text, enter the shortcut and then paste my text back inside the tags. It kinda spoiled some of the efficiency TextExpander provides.
What I discovered to make this easier was the extra control that you can put into the content of the shortcut. You can enter a “token” which will cause the current Content to include the contents of the clipboard. So now, using the <b> example I have two abbreviations. The plain one which enters an empty set of tags (eg “bbb”) and the extended version which enters the tag, but with the clipboard neatly pasted inside (eg “bbbp”). What I now do is quickly highlight the word(s) I want entered between the tags, use [cmd]-x to cut it from the text and then use my extended abbreviation to put it back in surrounded by the tags. It’s one of those things that takes longer to describe than to do.
This token to which I referred is accessed from the little [+v] control that’s located between the Content pane and the Abbreviation field. Put the cursor into the Content pane at the location in your expanded text where you’d like the clipboard to be pasted, click on the control I just mentioned and select “Clipboard” from the menu. That’s it set for use.
If you’re going to use an empty set of tags – because, perhaps unlike me, you think ahead better about what you’re going to type – there’s another handy trick found underneath that same menu. You can control the destination of the cursor when your abbreviation has been expanded. Using the same example, enter your tags <b></b> in the content area and put the cursor between the two tags. Then, from that same pop-up control, select [+v] > Cursor > Position cursor here. That will add a different token into your shortcut and this time, when you use this shortcut, both tags will have been typed for you and the cursor automatically positioned so that you just have to type your text.
I currently use these most often when I’m tryping comments to posts like this! 🙂
Just realised that I forgot to mention a hybrid of these two tricks – typing the text required for a link. I’m sure you’ll agree, these are always a nuisance if you have to type the full thing manually.
The basic construct is, of course, <a href=”link“>anchor</a> and requires two “arguments” – the link and the anchor text. When I’m typing comments to posts like this, I’ve often gone off and found a web page that I want to quote, so I’ve got the live page handy in another browser window. So I highlight the page’s URL using the [cmd]-L shortcut mentioned earlier and copy it using [cmd]-c. I then flip back over to the window in which I want to type the link. I then type my abbreviation and have the link text automatically pasted in the href”” part. The abbreviation is set to then place the cursor between the two tags and all I have to do is type my anchor text.
Again, once it’s set up it’s much easier to do than to describe.
I find that TextExpander can sometimes be a frustrating utility, but when it does work, it works really nicely. 🙂
Excellent – they will come in handy for sure!!!
Thanks