Stuff 'n Shit

Auto quit "Continue Trial" when launching the Ps CS6 beta

Every time you launch the Photoshop CS6 beta you see a "Continue Trial" message, which you have to dismiss before using the app.

Ps_cs6_trial_message

You can auto quit this with Keyboard Maestro

Stop_the_ps_cs6_beta_crap

Download the macro, import it into Keyboard Maestro and it should auto quit Adobe Application Manager when you launch Photoshop.

Toggle Pixel Snapping in Photoshop CS6

Marc Edwards of Bjango made some actions for the Photoshop CS6 beta that enable and disable pixel snapping using F15 and ⇧F15. I wanted to use a single key to toggle them on and off so made some macros in Keyboard Maestro.

Pixel_snapping_toggle

Once you've imported the macros into Keyboard Maestro you can change the key you use to toggle them (make sure you use the same key to activate both macros). You shouldn't need to change the F15 and ⇧F15 keys used within the macros (and the Photoshop actions), it should work even if you have the smaller keyboard without those keys. But you can change them if you like.

I added Growl notifications to show what's happening but you can disable or delete them in Keyboard Maestro if you prefer.

Better Hazel rules for renaming & sorting TV Shows

Piotr Gajos pointed me to these excellent tutorials on MacTalk.com that convert, rename and sort downloaded TV shows into the appropriate folders using Hazel (especially part 2). So all credit for the following goes the author on MacTalk.com. All I've done is tweak them and provide download links.

I didn't want to convert anything or manually add the metadata as I use Plex to watch them rather than importing them into iTunes, so I just used the part that sorts and renames the TV shows so that they appear in Plex. I  tweaked them a little to how I wanted them renaming and also made it all work using Hazel only (where the other ones also use Automator for some of the renaming).

They're much better than the old ones I created as it's not necessary to create separate rules for each TV show. It should recognise any TV show by the name, copy it to a folder to be renamed and then automatically sort them into their appropriate sub-folders in your TV Shows folder. It even works with new TV shows and creates the necessary folders in your TV Shows folder.

The rules aren't available to download from the tutorials on MacTalk.com. So after remaking them myself I thought I'd export them so that other people could download them, and not have to remake them again themselves. (I'm using the latest version of Hazel 3 on Lion. If you're using Hazel 2 or earlier they might not work.)

To use them first download these rules and import them into Hazel for your Downloads folder.

01_downloads_folder

Create a folder somewhere for copying the TV shows to, so that they can be renamed and then sorted into your TV Shows folder (mine's called "Media Sorting").

Double click on the "Copy TV show to Media Sorting folder" rule and change the folder at the bottom to point to your own folder for sorting the TV shows.
02_add_your_ms_folder

Then download these rules and import them into Hazel for media sorting folder.

Media_sorting_folder

Edit the top 2 "Sort to..." rules to make them point to your own TV shows folder.

03_add_yout_tv_shows_folder

That should be it.

If you find any TV shows with different naming formats that aren't picked up by Hazel you should be able to create some new rules to work with them. Or let me know and I'll see if I can get it working with them.

Media Sorting folder rules (updated 6/3/12) 

Also check out:

Custom iOS 5 Push Alerts

Now we can change apps' names as well as icons it makes a few things possible. Not just with Twitterrific

(download)

Here's how it's done:

I used 4 different push apps. Boxcar, Push 4.0, Howl and Prowl.

Twitterrific
I grabbed the icons from Twitterrific by using PhoneView (can also use iExplorer). The resources are located in Twitterrific > Twitterrific.app. 

I renamed them to match the names of the app icons in Boxcar. Then I copied the Info.plist file from Boxcar to the Desktop. I opened up the plist file and changed the Bundle display name from Boxcar to Twitterrific (after a tip from Klein Maetschke). Then copied the edited plist file and Twitterrific icons to Boxcar. Boxcar already has Twitterrific's notification sound but if you prefer to use a different push app you can grab the sound from Twitterrific, rename it to match 1 of the other app's sounds and then replace the old sound with the new 1.

After changing resources in an app you need to change the phone's language (Settings > General > International) to a different language in order to respring the Home Screen and clear the cache (rebooting the phone doesn't make the changes take effect). Keep changing the language until the changes take effect. Once you've done this go back to Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards and remove any of the foreign keyboards that have been added. Thanks to Tom Klaver for the tip.

Transmission
I used Prowl for Transmission, changing the name and icons like I did with Boxcar/Twitterrific.

On the Mac running Transmission I used Prowl's Growl desktop plugin to send push alerts. I didn't like the standard Transmission Growl message as it said "Transmission" twice, so I turned off normal Transmission Growl alerts in Growl's preference pane and made Transmission run an AppleScript once downloads had finished (Preferences > Transfers > Management > Call script when download completes).

iOS Alerts
I just changed the name of Push 4.0 app with the same method as above and use it for RSS alerts and a Twitter list.

Growl
I used Howl for some Growl alerts (other than Transmission) sent from my Mac mini (when Handbrake conversions have finished,  when Speed Download finishes downloading, when someone adds a file to a shared Dropbox folder etc.) Like Prowl is has a Growl desktop plugin (so does Boxcar). In Growl's preferences you can setup individual alerts for specific notifications, so don't have to have every Growl notification for apps your using pushing alerts to your iPhone or iPad.

Here are some of the icons I used http://cl.ly/ATJE
If you use the icons in different apps to the ones I used make sure the names match the app icons they're replacing. 

 

Homebrew AirDrop

I like the idea of AirDrop in Lion but wanted to be able to send files to my other Macs without having to open the AirDrop Finder window, without having to accept receiving the files on the other Macs, and without the Macs having to be turned on (or awake).

So I came up with something using AppleScript, Dropbox and Hazel.
With this you drop files onto the droplet (app) on the Desktop or placed in the Dock.

1_drop_files_onto_the_droplet

It then shows a dialogue window asking where the files should be copied to. 

2_choose_a_button

You select a button and it copies the files to a specific folder in Dropbox. Once the files have synced over to the other Macs, Hazel (running on each Mac) moves them to the Desktop.

If you want to try it download the files http://cl.ly/AK1N

Put one of the “Copy to Macs” droplets on the Desktop (or wherever you like, and drag it to the Dock).
Place the “Homebrew AirDrop” folder in your Dropbox folder.

Open one of the “Copy to Macs” droplets in AppleScript Editor and you can change the name of the buttons to whatever you like. If you do this then also change the names for them at 2.a and 3.a to match the button names.
If you want to move the “Homebrew AirDrop” folder to another location in Dropbox then change the path in the AppleScript (2.b and 3.b, (and 4.b. if you use the 3 button version)).

Then on the other Macs open Hazel, add the folders (~/Dropbox/Homebrew AirDrop/Send to Mac 1, or Send to Mac 2) and create a rule similar to the screenshot.

3_hazel_move_from_dropbox_to_d

Update Dropbox using Hazel (after downloading the latest DMG file)

If you regularly download the latest beta of Dropbox from their forum then you can use this script to update the app from the downloaded DMG file using Hazel.

16_hz1_update_dropbox

If your system HD is called something different to "Macintosh HD" you'll need to change that in the script.

If you use a custom icon for Dropbox (so it shows up in Growl messages) you can get it to update that also with this version of the script (fill in your name for your user/home folder in the script and make it point to the location of your custom icon).

The Dropbox forum thread for the latest beta has an RSS feed to let you know when a new version is out. (I've stopped using RSS so setup the feed to send push alerts to my iPhone with Boxcar.)

Dropbox_new_build_50

 

(I don't really know AppleScript so if anyone knows of a better way to do this please let me know.)