Murphy Mac

Your Mac has a built-in dictionary that works in your Cocoa applications with a keyboard shortcut. Cocoa applications are kind of tricky to identify without using developer tools. If you know an easy way please post it in the comments. Anyway - you can always try the shortcut, which is Control+Command+D. In Cocoa applications you’ll get a pop-up defining the word under your mouse pointer.

There’s a comment thread on gizmodo about this feature. Posters there mention that it doesn’t work if you move your Dictionary application out of the Applications folder. Since this is a Monday post at Murphy Mac - where we try to help the beginners and switchers - we’re going to recommend against moving applications from your Applications folder.

Software update probably won’t update applications it can’t find in that folder - which is a good reason to leave them there. The dictionary loses a function if you move it. And who knows what happens if you move your other applications.

But maybe you’ve rearranged your applications so the folder isn’t so cluttered. There are other ways to handle that. Tune back tomorrow and we’ll make a custom Applications folder and add it to your Dock. Without breaking Software Update or the Dictionary.

There’s a brief screencast in case you’re away from your Mac and want to see this feature in action. Using the dictionary Murphy finds out what Murphy means.

Bewitched. The Brady Bunch. Friends. Gilligan’s Island. What do these shows have in common? Fake twins.

With Final Cut Express you can make twins too. And it’s probably a lot easier than it was in the Bewitched days. All you need is a stable place for your camera - and a copy of Final Cut Express. You could use Final Cut Pro too, but if you have that you probably don’t need to read this post.

Here’s what you do: Set up your camera and film your subject while they’re positioned on the left side of your frame. Film them for as long as you want your scene to last. With the camera still rolling have the subject move over to the right side of the frame. Make sure there’s a neutral zone between the two sides that is never crossed from either end. Film the same duration on the right side as you did on the left.

It’s important that the camera is very stable. In the end product any camera shake will only show in half your shot - diminishing the effect. That’s why Murphy lets the camera keep rolling while the subject moves from one side to the other - to ensure the camera doesn’t move. You can easily cut the portion where the subject crosses over later.

In Final Cut Express you’ll cut that middle portion out, then place your right-side footage on the first track and the left-side footage above it. You crop half the top track out and feather it a little. Boom - Samantha and Serena.*

One of iMovie’s strengths is its simplicity. Final Cut Express has a longer learning curve, but the possibilities for creative editing are limitless. Murphy is still working with Final Cut Express 2, not the HD version. But FCE2 still allows up to 99 tracks for one video. If you’re frustrated by the limitations of iMovie you should take a look.

The software is essentially the same as Final Cut Pro - with certain features removed in exchange for a greatly reduced price. Click here to save $20 at Amazon over the Apple Store price.

Download the QT video created in the screencast.

* Corrected as per comment below.

The Terminal is incredibly efficient when you need to make a few folders at once. You could come up with something in AppleScript or maybe Automator - but the Terminal makes it really easy.

By now you might know that Murphy always has a tiny Terminal window open. It’s great for zapping files to the web host or checking a calendar or even just restarting the Dock. As long as it’s open you can use it to create some folders too.

The screencast covers making multiple folders at once, spaces in folder names, and creating an entire hierarchy with a single command. The last part comes from a tip on Lifehacker.

In the screencast Murphy uses backslashes to escape spaces in a folder name. You could also use quotes around the name.

If you create the same groupings of folders all the time you could assign the command to an alias or create a shell script.

You might want copies of certain DVD disks, like your OS X install disks. You can duplicate them using Disk Utility - which is built into your OS.

If your originals become scratched or just stop working you’ll still have a disk. Murphy suggested you keep a copy of the My Mac Won’t Boot print-out in your laptop bag. That’s a good place to keep your Tiger install disk copy too.

Murphy had no trouble copying the retail Tiger disk he bought for his PPC G5. The DVD holds less than 3GB of data. But the Tiger disk that came with his Macbook Pro has a lot more data on it. Copying such a disk is a little trickier. We’ll come back to that in a second.

Murphy has always used the procedure in this Apple Support Document for disk burning. Most of those disks were iDVD projects or backup disks.

But an article at CreativeBits has a different suggestion for copying your oversized Tiger Install DVD. Based on comments for the post you should follow the steps exactly.

There are a number of comments where users report a “not enough space” error when they try to burn. Nobody has posted a solution to that issue, but Murphy suspects they aren’t using dual-layer DVDs. Your Mac may or may not be capable of burning dual-layer disks.

Using the method in the Apple Support Document Murphy successfully created a bootable Tiger PPC DVD using a single-layer disk. We’ll update this post after trying the method used in the CreativeBits guide on a bigger disk. But based on the comment thread it appears to work.

Don’t forget to back up your MiniDV tapes too!

Force Quit almost always works when an application gets confused and stops responding. But there might be an extremely rare occasion when Force Quit doesn’t do its job.

At that point you can use the kill command followed by the PID number of the locked-up application. Where do you find the PID? Use the top command. PID? Top? What are you talking about Murphy? It’s all in the extremely short screencast, so take a look.

Let’s also mention that Murphy doesn’t use Force Quit all that often. This sounds like the commercial - but the Mac just works. Maybe once every couple of weeks. Compare that to Murphy’s Windows machine, where Task Manager is in the Startup Items.

If there’s one thing that Microsoft really needs to fix it’s the way Windows handles non-responding applications. The little pop-up comes up asking if you really want to end the program. You say end now and it pops up again. And again. AARGH! Maybe it’s better in Vista? Let us know in the comments.

We’ll revisit the “top” command soon. But for now the screencast will tell you what you need to know about killing applications.