Opposite Day for Monitors

May 26, 2006 by Eric Richardson

I just went into OS X's keyboard shortcuts to disable the Alt-Esc Front Row combination (that I'm always hitting by mistake) and noticed an impressive looking Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-8 set to "Reverse Black and White". Obviously I had to play.

In a very straight-forward fashion, it's a shortcut that turns your screen into a negative. The odd part: I like it. I wouldn't object to using those colors for blogdowntown at all. And the UI elements actually work pretty well too.

Perhaps it's not the most useful of functions (for the abled, at least... it is an Accessibility function), but it's an oddly fun way to view the web. It makes you feel like you're in a really high-tech movie, to paraphrase the guy I work next to.

Welcome Back Virtual Desktops

May 25, 2006 by Eric Richardson

Since I got my Intel iMac at work back in January I've gone Apple and used Expose instead of my familiar virtual desktops. I had even come close to convincing myself it was a reasonable change.

Then today I saw the Smackbook Pro hack and ended up at the site for VirtueDesktops. A couple hours later I realize just how much I missed the cleanliness of virtual desks. Sure, some OS X features like Expose are fun, but they work that much better with virtual desks than they do without.

Now if only there were a key sequence to toggle off visibility of the icons on my desktop.

Still Here

May 25, 2006 by Eric Richardson

I'm not sure how May turned out to be the most neglected month this blog's ever seen. I guess I was just busy, and when it comes right down to it blogdowntown gets the attention.

Just to pretend I post more, I'm going to make two posts right in a row.

Can't Seem to Remember

May 05, 2006 by Eric Richardson

I always forget how to rename a bunch of files at once, and I always end up having to ask pcg. This time I'm recording it so I remember next time. :

for i in *.jpg ; do j=`basename $i .jpg` ; mv $i $j.gif ; done

Or:

j=`echo $i | sed 's/.jpg/.gif'` ; mv $i $j ; done

Now I know where to look next time I forget.

Riding to the West Side

May 03, 2006 by Eric Richardson

I rode my bike the 0.55 miles into work this morning. That always feels a bit odd to do. But the bike wasn't for that trip, it was for the one I'll be making this afternoon when I ride from Downtown to Loyola Marymount (GMap Pedometer, or for Google Earth).

It's roughly a 15 mile ride, so even in my out-of-shape state I think I can make it there in an hour or less. And it's a good thing, too, since if I were to decide to take public transit the quickest the Trip Planner thinks it could get me there is in an hour and a half. It wouldn't help me figure out how long it would take going Blue to Green to a bus, so that could possibly be a little quicker.

The best part of all? I get to ride there but not ride back. I swear, if you send me on a 15 mile ride with 15 miles back I'll be a lot slower than if I just set out to ride 30 miles one way. Something about coming back and I just don't get along.