Crikeymiles.com

I don’t normally blog on these sorts of topics, (in fact I don’t normally ‘blog’), but I’ve been using OSX since 2004, when I bought my little eMac for university, and ever since then I have been routinely frustrated by the “missing” keys in OSX. I previously only used Macs at home, and only composed long documents for work on Windows machines, so it never became a real issue. However, I recently switched to a MacBook Air for work, and it suddenly started bugging me: where the hell is the delete key? How do I navigate text properly with my keyboard!? Why the HELL doesn’t application window switching work in Microsoft Office??!!?

Switching windows in MS Office

The cmd + ` shortcut to switch windows does not work in Microsoft Office. This is annoying, but there’s an easy fix. I remapped the “Move focus to next window” shortcut to “alt + tab” (like in Windows, you can use whatever you like). This can be done in System Preferences->Keyboard->Keyboard Shortcuts->Keyboard & Text Input.

Delete is not backspace

fn + Delete

Delete (rather than backspace). This is great! I’m loving having the delete key back. However, there are also some options to it, which get really weird. (This is probably because I don’t come from a Vi world or something…)

alt + Delete

If you are inside a word, this command will delete from cursor to start of the current word. If you are in a space, it will delete from cursor to start of the previous word (even if you are on a following line). And it doesn’t treat punctuation as a separate word, just like the following text navigation keys do.

cmd + Delete

This should delete whole line from cursor to start of the current line, but it doesn’t seem to work everywhere. (For example, it doesn’t work in the WordPress form that I’m composing this post in).

Navigating Text

These commands move the cursor around, and you can add shift to any of these to select.

cmd + <-

Home (move cursor to start of line).

cmd + ->

End (move cursor to end of line).

alt + ->

Start of previous word.

alt + <-

End of current word.

alt + up arrow

Start of current paragraph.

alt + down arrow

Start of next paragraph.

Moving Around a Document

These commands just move the viewport around, rather than the cursor.

fn + up arrow

Page up.

fn + down arrow

Page down.

fn + <-

Home (viewport, not cursor).

fn + ->

End (viewport, not cursor).

ctrl + left/right

I also recommend going into System Preferences->Keyboard->Keyboard Shortcuts->Mission Control and disabling the ctrl + left/right commands to move from space to space, or you will have a tiresome animation taking you away from your document if you ever hit the wrong modifier key. I’m on a multi-touch trackpad so I don’t need the key shortcut, but if could be remapped to anything.

Thanks to Lifehacker.com for the delete keys. A full list of Mac keyboard shortcuts from Apple is here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343.

I received an email from Nicholas Dobson, author of the very fine “Frustrated Songwriter’s Handbook” and founding member of the ICS.

I’m building a huge playlist of ICS music, stuff people made with the 20-Song Game, and I’ve been giggling like crazy listening to your “Breakfast Cereal” song – an excellent example of what I like to call the “Instant Observational Songwriting” sub-genre of lodge music . Something very intimately hilarious about that session you did, very classic.

“There’s all these crazy traditions that have sprung up within the psychotic strictures of the 20-Song Game. Like “micro-filler”, which is the maniacal little songs people create to pad out their track list for the way, or the Self Reflexive Song, where the person sings about them self writing songs. Instant Observational Songwriting is like an externalized version of the latter, for those of us that can sing and play an instrument at the same time. I’ve heard lots of examples of IOS, and of course have joyfully produced lots of it myself, but I was having a hard time finding THE godlike example of it. I used one of my songs as an example of micro-filler, and so I definitely needed to find someone else’s song for IOS, so that I wasn’t hogging the glory by having all the educational examples be MY stuff. Hurray!

What could I do but accept? An honour indeed. Thanks to the ICS for some great times and some hilarious music.

Nice. So I downloaded the new Firefox and there’s this persona thing. Easy to make, I thought. I was right. Here’s three:

Vanessa and I couldn’t decide on a single shop to put a wedding list in, so I decided to make this here Wedding website. It is a list of all the nice things that we imagine that people will want to to get us! In time, we will add maps and other wedding details, but for now it is a list linking to stuff on other random shops and websites. Once people have claimed a gift, they should put their name against it by editing the item and putting your name in the “Bought By…” field. I hope people can work it out!

Okay, set your homepage to http://www.crikeymiles.com/randomsearchengine

Now every time you hit “Home” you will be whisked to one of 13 search engines. It favours google.co.uk 33% of the time but the rest are random. Free yourself from the tyranny of single search engine abuse! Spread your wings and soar free! See new places! Meet new friends! Huh!¬

Check out my ECD graphics work at Masterpiece Multimedia by clicking here.

Responding to student Adam Lambert, who was developing an educational CDrom for use in schools by young children, I authored and coded this interactive learning tool. The user was invited to explore a bold and colourful map of Birmingham, and choose various locations.

Upon entering each location, the user would be treated to one of selection of short films about that location/landmark, selected at random each time they entered.

Check out my ECD graphics work at Masterpiece Multimedia by clicking here.