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In today’s installment of Terminal Thursday we’ll be encrypting a single file from the command line courtesy of an excellent tip from the guys over at OSXDaily. The openssl utility ships with your Mac - and it’s pretty easy to use.
An OSXDaily reader posted a comment asking if there was a drag and drop way to encrypt a file. We’ve got a solution - sort of. Murphy sees this as a perfect place to introduce a shell script that prompts the user for input. Just kick off the shell script and you’re prompted for the file you want to encode. You can drag the file onto your Terminal window and hit enter. You’ll be prompted to set a password and you’re done.
You could make a similar shell script for decrypting the files too. And you’re not stuck with Murphy’s method, which dumps the output in a pre-configured folder. You could concatenate an extension onto the encrypted filename instead. Whatever works for you.
The screencast assumes you’ve seen Murphy’s post about making a shell script, so you might want to check that one out before getting started. It also introduces basename - which helps us extract a file name from a full path.
A word of warning from the original post: Don’t forget your password. Chances are you’re not going to find a way to break triple-des security.
UPDATE: Carry out this process with a Widget.
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You can add a nice finishing touch to your travel movies by including a map that shows where you were. For geographically challenged viewers you can start zoomed way back from your map - and zoom all the way in to the specific spot where you shot your video.
The problem: That can be a LONG way to zoom - and the viewer might not appreciate it. Murphy has a solution. Break the zoom into two phases using two copies of the same map still-image. One zoom goes from country level down to the regional level. Then cross fade into a zoom that starts a little closer in and finishes at your locale. The fade makes the journey far easier on your viewer’s eyes, and gives your production a polished look.
You can take your efforts a step further by making another copy of your map still and placing a graphic on it, like an arrow. The second zoom could fade into this still, making it clear exactly where the movie was shot.
You might have to do some experimenting with the distances and speeds used for the zoom. Also, it helps a lot to pan toward your final destination in the first zoom - which you can do by just dragging the image in the iMovie viewer. Your audience will see where they’re heading in the first zoom - letting them know where they are with regard to the big picture.
Watch the screencast if you’re totally confused!
Click here to see another cool iMovie effect. Or watch this Final Cut Express trick.
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Tapping out a text message on a cellphone keypad - not the best. If the stars line up and you have a Bluetooth phone and a Bluetooth enabled Mac and a cooperative carrier than you can bang out those messages on your Mac and let the phone send them.
To be honest, Murphy doesn’t do this much. He doesn’t send many SMS messages to start with. On the rare occasion when a message needs to be sent to a phone he uses teleflip.com. In the U.S. that means address an email to the 10 digit mobile number in front of @teleflip.com and click send. There’s a decent chance the message will arrive as a text on the recipient’s phone.
But let’s say you need to SMS someone frequently and their phone doesn’t have an email address. This could be useful.
More honesty: Murphy just thought this was a cool feature, practical or not. The screencast is short. The key to success is when you’re pairing the Bluetooth phone with your Mac. Make sure you enable the phone for Address Book use.
If you’ve got Skype installed it works as an SMS pipeline from Address Book too.
Finally - be prepared for disappointment. Not all carriers will support this feature. In the U.S. carriers like Verizon have a tendency to cripple Bluetooth functionality - along with OS X features like this one.
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If you’re new to the Mac finding your way around takes some time. Instead of minimize and maximize there’s a strange looking button at the top right of every window. And you have to keep clicking it because you forget what it does. And then after you click it you say, “Oh yeah.”
Finding things in System Preferences can be hit or miss for new users too. It’s worse when you don’t even know what the thing you’re looking for is called. Luckily the System Preferences have a search box that’ll help focus your search. It even uses a cool special effect to shine a spotlight on the item you’re looking for.
Yes - a search field is pretty obvious and you probably don’t need Murphy to point it out to you. But sometimes it’s the stuff right under our nose that we fail to see.
The screencast shows that the search field can be a little hit or miss too. But when you’re not sure where to look it’s a good place to start.
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Back to school season isn’t the only time to buy a new computer. Some students are enjoying their last days in school. Time to take advantage of those academic discounts before your Faber College ID expires.
You want to buy Photoshop Lightroom? The introductory price was tempting, $199 instead of $299. Add that to the Photoshop upgrade price and it’s still a chunk of change. But there’s another approach. Maybe you - or a third grader in your home - qualifies for educational pricing.
Here are some sites where you might qualify for education pricing:
Adobe offers some dramatic discounts. Your k-12 youngster can get Lightroom for $99! Visit the Adobe Education store (link is for North America) for details on who qualifies and pricing information. Click here for the European store.
Apple offers educational discounts too. For example, if you’re looking at the black Macbook you could knock a hundred bucks off the Apple Store price. (If you don’t qualify for the education discount you can score a $100 rebate at Amazon
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You can find other good deals in the Apple Education store too. Like Final Cut Express for $149 instead of $299. Pricing may vary by school.
For other products you can check outlets like Campus Tech and Academic Superstore which lists Microsoft Office Professional for well under $200. That’s even less than the upgrade price and a big savings over the full retail price which is over $400. Mac Office users? There’s no Intel version of Office yet, but you can still grab the Office Student and Teacher Edition for Mac.
Thinkpad user? Click here for the Lenovo / IBM education portal.
If you’re a dude who’s getting a Dell, check out the k-12 or Higher Education Store. But be forewarned - an institutional buyer tells Murphy: “Be vigilant on the Dell website. Often the educational discounts and affinity programs deliver their discounts by bundling underpowered processors, insufficient RAM, and puny service agreements. Try multiple configurations and options. Even the day of the week or time of the month can affect the discounts offered.”
So before you barge out to Best Buy or New Egg or wherever you do your shopping - ask your husband if he’s a teacher. Or check with the wife - see if you have any kids in school. It could save you some hard-earned scratch.
Other sites:
(prices may vary from those at time of post)
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