Fixing Time Machine Backup Errors

Recently, I had been getting an error from my Mac's Time Machine as follows:

That pretty much kept telling me that it couldn't perform the back up.

At first I thought it was a problem with my back up disk as Time Machine had mentioned. So I did the following:

1. Deleted the Time Machine partition on my back up disk through Disk Utility
2. Repaired the back up disk

I tried the process again, but it still gave me an error. 

After searching for similar problem, I came across some posts that advised to disable spotlight indexing, but that didn't seem to help. Finally, I stumbled across a post that mentioned the use of the OS X console application to see what was wrong. 

Through the help of the Console application (which can be found in Applications > Utilities > Console), I was able to determine that what happened whenever I started a back up was that it would give me a error message whenever it tried to back up a particular file. Turns out that the file was locked, and could not be copied by Time Machine, so it kept saying that there was a problem with the back up disk.  Deleting this file fixed the problem, and it seems like Time Machine is backing up things just fine right now.

Opening a MHT or MHTML File on a Mac

You have this friend (or prof) that likes to use OneNote or Windows Journal a lot because they happen to have a tablet PC. Then one fine day they email you a .mht file.

You try to open it, but to your horror, it seems like your mac can't open it.

Then you do a google search and it leads you to this page.

Fear not. There are two things that you can do in this situation.

1. Get the Opera browser that has the ability to recognize the file format.

2. Just rename the file to have a .eml extension and then try to open it. Mail.app will recognize the file and open it for you. (Note: I have only tried this on the latest version of Mail.app on Snow Leopard, it may not work on older versions of mail).

So, it seems like you can open a .mht file on a mac without downloading anything after all.

Fix broken dictionary app in Mac OS X Leopard

So, it seems like the Wikipedia update broke Apple's dictionary application, because some developer at Apple figured that they'd never update Wikipedia. If you change Wikipedia's MonoBook theme to something else, it stops working.

Nevertheless, there seems to be an easy fix for this (sort of). Here's what you can do for now (I think I read about this at smartassism a while ago, but I've tried to describe it a much simpler way here). The instructions pretty much tell you to revert to the older version of Wikipedia:

1. Go to wikipedia in Safari because Dictionary.app uses Safari to load Wikipedia
2. Log-in. If you've never done this before, you can create a new account by clicking Log-in/register at the top right of the page. While logging-in check the Remember me for 30 days box. This box will set a cookie in your computer, because you probably don't wan't to sign into wikipedia every time you want to use it from Dictionary.app.
3. Once you log-in click on My preferences at the top right again, and click the Appearance Tab
4. Set your skin to MonoBook and save your preferences
5. Restart Dictionary.app and Wikipedia, the most complete and reliable source known to mankind, will work perfectly again

Locking Your Mac Instead of Logging Out

Unfortunately, it isn't possible to lock your Mac as easily as one can lock their Windows computer (by pressing the Windows Key + L key) by default. It takes a little bit of setting up, but once you set it up, you can lock your computer with a flick of the mouse (really).

Unable to create BootCamp partition with Snow Leopard

Recently I was trying to install Windows on my Mac to run SolidWorks (yes, it's Windows Only). However, for some reason, Snow Leopard's bootcamp assistant refused to create a partition for me. It kept saying:

The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.

I had created a Bootcamp partition once before with Leopard so I was puzzled when something Mac wasn't working! (Okay, no, Apple's computers are just as fallible as other computers). And there was no was I was going to go through formating the hard drive again, installing Windows would take long enough!

However, after trying several different things I was finally able to get Snow Leopard to partition the hard drive so that I could get Windows 7 to work. I'm not sure what worked, but I'm pretty sure that others are likely to have similar problems, which is why I took the time to write this post.

Open PDF files inside Firefox on Macs

One thing that I find annoying on a default Firefox installation is opening PDF files. Interestingly enough Safari seems to open them fine right inside the browser. However, Firefox by default requires you to download the PDF file first and then open it.

The downside to this of course is that if you need only simply "view" several files a day, each file you view adds to the clutter of the "download" folder on your computer. Of course, when you have a mix of necessary PDF downloads and unnecessary "temporary" downloads, the result is not optimal.

On the other hand, Firefox does have a plugin for Intel or PowerPC macs which will enable inline PDF viewing, a great tool if you view a lot of PDFs in a day. Simply go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7518 to install the plug-in for Firefox.

Snow Leopard - A highly uncritical review

The good news/features

Faster + More Space + 64 bit computing

Yup. Snow leopard is more faster and occupies less space. Plus it uses 64 bit computing. Enough said.

Little Things

Plus, I love the little things, like ability to resize icons, and to play movies and video files right form the icon. It's pretty handy, and makes Quicklook look a bit useless for media files (although it is a totally useful feature when it comes to documents).

I especially like how the circle around the play icon for music and video files indicates the information of how much music has already been played. It's great to be able to listen to music without even waiting for QuickTime to open.

How to enable Hibernation on a Mac

Did you know that you can still "hibernate" your mac (as in shut down the machine and save all the information in your ram to your hard drive) instead of just putting it to sleep (where the ram is still powered on, and the machine can randomly wake up when it detects change)?

Turns out that Macs also have the hibernate feature. Except, it's not available by default. This is most likely because Apple just wants you to use their sleep feature instead of shutting down the computer all together.

Nevertheless, ever since OS X 10.4.3, all Macs can go into what is called 'Deep Sleep'. How you ask? Very simply put, all you need to do is use this widget called Deep Sleep. Once it's installed (and authenticated) merely clicking on the widget will put your Mac into a deep zzz... To install all you need to do is download it and agree to the prompt that asks you to Install the widget. Then, for your first use, just open Dashboard, and click on the widget. The first time you use it, you will have to authenticate it by providing your administrator password. Thereafter, all you need to do is just click on the moon!

Note: If you have a Intel machine, it should work flawlessly. However, if you have an older PPC machine, you'll have to read the user manual to see if you're in luck.

Alternatively, you can also tinker around with the Terminal if you wish to do so. Normally, this is what the mac uses:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

However, you can change it to:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1

to enable DeepSleep.

Happy Zzzzzing!

On a side note: the way I came across this feature by "accident" was when my battery ran out of power. So I removed the battery from the computer and plugged in the computer without the battery installed. Interestingly enough, the computer booted into a state that was exactly they way I left it before my reserve battery power ran out. Knowing this fact piqued my curiosity regarding a possible Windows like hibernate feature on the mac, leading to the discovery of the wonderful widget.

Download Free Parallels and VMware Fusion alternative for Mac

Have you checked the price of Parallels lately? It's going to cost you about $80 dollars (USD) plus taxes. The price of VMware Fusion is also the same. If you're like me, and paying for virtualization software just isn't an option (I mean, you already paid for the operating system you'll be running on it... except if that operating system is Linux), you'll want to look into something else to help you run Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. and Mac OS X at the same time on your computer, without having to use BootCamp and going through its cumbersome install process.

Turns out that you don't have to pirate virtual machine software to be able to run a virtual machine. I just came across a great FREE virtual machine program for the Mac Desktop developed by Sun Microsystems called Virtual Box that does the exact same thing. It even has support for expandable virtual machine drives, and provides virtual machine tools (so all you have to do to use the mouse in the virtual machine is hover your mouse over the VM window, and to go back to your Mac just move you mouse away from the mouse window).

All you need to do start using VirtualBox to take the place of VMware Fusion or Parallels desktop is your Windows/Linux/Solaris/etc. DVD/CD or even just an iso image (so you can technically test out Windows 7 on your mac too although Aero won't work!). When VirtualBox opens up it'll give you the opportunity to create a new hard drive for your VM and allow you mount your .iso image or use the CD drive to install windows onto the virtual hard disk.

On top of that VirtualBox supports other features too that parallels does. For example, you can use Fullscreen mode and increase the size of the window to increase the resolution of the screen. You can also share folders between your Mac and the Windows or Linux virtual machine. Beware of viruses though, because they can still infect your mac partitions through the shared folders (provided they were written to take advantage of this). So you'll still have to keep your virtual machine updated and tuned up.

The only feature that VirtualBox does not support is 'Unity' mode or 'Coherence' features that allow you to run Windows applications just like a mac application without having the ugly windows desktop behind it. So you can minimize Windows applications to the dock and move them around just like a mac application. However, for the price you are paying (nothing!) I think its a great trade off. Besides, I was never a fan of that feature anyway.

If you want to run Outlook, Photoshop for Windows or any other windows specific application, or just want to test out things on the windows side, Virtual Box should be able to handle anything you can throw at it. In fact the configuration screen looks just like the VMware Fusion or Parallels configuration screen. The only downside is that if you ever upgrade to VMware or Parallels, the applications will not recognize the virtual machine hard drive created by VirtualBox, and you'll have to start from scratch.
So if you are looking for a great free (and karma free too) way to get Parallels Desktop/Parallels Workstation/Parallels Workstation Extreme on your desktop, look no further than VirtualBox - the ultimate free VM solution!

Make opening new windows and tabs in Safari faster

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the fact that opening new tabs and windows in Safari takes way longer that it used to? Especially when you are running a lot of other applications on your mac, or are using battery power? I for one think that Safari is not the fastest browser, to open or to use anymore, and sometimes FireFox even seems faster than it. I remember using the older version of Safari (version 3) and remarking how fast it opened on a Mac compared to Firefox. However, the newer version just seems a whole lot slower.

I think I have stumbled upon the main culprit – Top Sites. It seems as though Apple has tried to imitate the look and feel of Google Chrome and/or Opera. In fact, the beta versions of Safari 4 reminded me of Google Chrome, given the tabs at the top and the top sites feature that popped up when you opened a new window. Unfortunately, in imitating the most visited websites (or as Opera calls it... Speed dial) Apple has slowed down the speed of Safari. Of course, copying ideas is always good, because that means more competition. However, Apple has sacrificed speed for aesthetics, and turned the browser into a resource hog with its almost useless zooming effects and reflections. What I do find cool is the coverflow history pane. Now that is something beautiful and efficient.

However, luckily, there is a way to get rid of the beach ball of death that comes up whenever you open a new window or tab... disable Top Sites. I for one have found that Safari's speed has improved tenfold, and opening a million new tabs doesn't slow it down anymore. Of course, if you don't feel like disabling Top Sites has caused an improvement in speed, you can always switch it back. What I plan to do, as soon as I get some more time is to create a HTML page which you can use as the 'top sites' features. However, you'll have to pick and choose your 15 - 20 sites before hand and hard code it into the html. Nevertheless, that way you can have the top sites feature, and make sure that you wont be getting the spinning rainbow coloured ball as your cursor.

How to disable Top Sites in Safari for new windows and new tabs

Thankfully, disabling this feature is really simple.

1. Open Safari and Click on Safari in the menubar
2. Then click on Preferences...
3. Under the General tab, change 'New windows open with:' to Empty Pages using the drop down menu and do the same for 'New tabs open with:'
4. Close the Preferences window
   

That's all there is to it. Plus, if you still want to use top sites,you can! All you need to do is click on the top sites button in the bookmark toolbar (shown below in the red box with the arrow pointing to it), and top sites will open up in the current tab.

Now Safari should run faster and you'll still be able to use top sites!

Mac Tip: Use Nocturne or a shortcut to make your screen dark

Here's a great little mac tip that'll help you if you feel that having a screaming white background for all windows on your screen is a bit too overpowering for your eyes. Instead of having a white background, that hurts your eyes and perhaps is not as conducive to your creativity (citation needed...) why not turn the background black and the text white! May be, you'll even save a attowatt of power in the process too (again, citation needed...).

Anyway, here are two tips that you can use to turn down the brighteness of the screen by inverting the colours of your screen to get a much darker background.

Method 1 - Use a shortcut to invert the screen colours on mac

For the first method simply press Command (the key with the apple logo) + Control + Alt + 8 to invert the colour of your screen. It'll make all the white colours black, and all the blue colours orange. However, if you'd like to invert the colours on your screen a bit more gracefully, I'd like to recommend Nocturne. Nevertheless, here's what you get for using the default "accessibility" option provided on your mac without downloading anything: (note: image was similated using Photoshop.. so that you can get an idea of how it looks)

Method 2 - Download Nocturne and Switch to Night

Nocturne

(Free, Mac Only) is a little app that you can use to gracefully invert the colours on the screen to get a much darker background. When I say gracefully, I mean that Nocturne wont just invert all the colours on your screen, but only the desired ones. For example, blues will remain blue and wont be inverted to orange. The same goes for other dark colours like green and so on. You can also do other things like switch the screen to grayscale and pretend like you are using a computer with a monochrome monitor from the past, except its a million times faster. Likewise, you can tint colours to suit your liking and use the light sensors on your Macbook/Macbook Pro to trigger nocturne, and hopefully reduce the stress on your eyes.

Although you might not need it all the time, nocturne is a great little app that is worth the download. Plus, it barely hogs any memory so its great to have it sitting around on the menubar in times of need. It's quite a big step forward from the default inversion tool, and its FREE!

How to search the web faster with Inquisitor

Have you ever wondered if there was an easier way to get to your search results without having to actually see the search results page? If you ask me... there is! It's free, download-able for Windows and Mac (and iPhone!) and it's called Inquisitor.

Originally, in order to search the web, you'd have to go to a search engine first. Like Google, Yahoo or MSN for example. Then you'd have to type in a query, and hit enter, and search the best results from a list of 6 billion search results (although you see them 10 at a time, there are a LOT of search results). Then you'd click the 3rd or 4th or may be even 1st link to go to the website.

Then came the advent of toolbars and inbuilt search bars, from where you could search the web without having to go the search engine website first. Plus, with the search query features you didn't even have to type in the full "thing" that you would have liked to search for.

Now there is a better way to search the web faster:

Instead of going to the website, inquisitor (sponsored by Yahoo I must say) takes the place of the normal search tool in your browser (currently it only supports Safari, Firefox and IE). However, the most important feature that inquisitor has is - it displays the SEARCH RESULTS of top 6 results from search results page right in the drop down menu! So, you don't even have to visit the search results page in most cases. You can directly go to the search results page without ever having to visit tie middle man. Plus, it also finishes your queries for you if you want, and gives you the option of searching similar queries in different search engines. Plus, it tells you the websites you've already visited, so if you're searching for the same website again, you can go to it instantly!

So the next time you want to search, you'll not only be saving time, but you'll also be saving some mouse clicks.

How to play tetris on your Mac with Terminal

Today, I noticed that it's the 25th anniversary of Tetris, through a Google doodle (you can learn some amazing things from a Google logo as it seems). So I figured, that it was only fair that I download tetris and play it since the last time I played it was ages ago. Turns out, if you use a mac, you don't have to download tetris.

Did you know that your Mac has another game besides chess that comes pre-installed with every Mac? Yes, your mac also has tetris, as it turns out. Although its not as easy to access as chess, and you'll admin privileges to do so, it still is a great time waster as TUAW (although the instructions on TUAW are kinda wrong.. they say tetrix instead of tetris... ) puts is.

So here's how you can start playing tetris on your mac. It's harder than normal tetris though, because it doesn't really give you a lot of options, but nevertheless, it's free.. and you don't have to download anything.

So heres what you do to open it:

1. Open Terminal (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal or Alt + Space , then type in "Terminal" and press enter)
2. Then type in:
emacs
3. Then press the enter key, and after emacs loads, press the Escape key
4. Then type in:
x
5. Your cursor will start blinking beside the blue text, after which you should type in tetris and press enter!

To control the game: Use the up and down arrow key to change the block configuration, and obviously use left right keys to change the location of block. And press the spacebar to let the blocks come down quickly. Press the p key to pause.

Pretty cool huh?

Protecting your computer on a public network

Do you own a laptop? Have you ever used your laptop at a public wi-fi (wireless internet) location to use the free (or paid) wireless internet services? Often, places like Libraries (or at least some libraries here in Toronto), Starbucks, Coffee Shops and even some restaurants offer a wireless internet service which anyone can use if they bring along their laptop or mobile computing devices.

Why should you care about protecting your computer while using pubilc wi-fi netoworks?

Although this is pretty cool, one thing that you must be aware of is that using these networks might not always be the most secure thing to do. Using public internet might mean that you are opening up your computer for lots of snoopers and malignant people to take advantage of your computer. In fact, after a recent visit to the library I noticed that many people (unknowingly I presume) were actually sharing the files on their computer with everybody else in the network. As a result, anyone else on the network was also able to freely access these shared files and folders. What’s more? Some people even stored files (fortunately, being the good citizen that I am, I did not open these files or do anything malicious with them!) in these folders!

What does all this mean?

It means that if you use your computer on a public network, you have to be extra secure.Theoretically, someone could delete files, edit files and even transfer malicious files to the computer to execute code (plus, if you never visited any website or downloaded anything… and you get a Windows UAC prompt, you’re likely to just click Confirm and allow the malicious application that some transferred to your computer to happily go on performing its evil tasks!)! If this doesn’t sound more scary than Conficker, I don’t know what will.

How can you protect yourself?

Protecting your computer while using public networks should be the first thing you do, even before you start using the network. In this post, I’m going to assume that most of you will be using Windows Vista. The settings for Windows XP (you might want to make a google search if you are unsure… most things that I mention here for Vista also apply for XP, but configuring them for XP might be a little different) are similar, but since most laptops now come with Vista, I’ll only cover the Windows Vista and Mac OS X in this article.

The first thing that you should do is turn off all File Sharing.

To do so on Windows Vista:

1. Double click on the “Internet Icon” in the system tray in your taskbar. In the picture below, it’s the icon between the “Battery Icon” and the “Volume Adjustment/Speaker Icon”. Doing so should take you to the “Network and Sharing Center”. If there’s no “Internet Icon” then, you’ll have to open your start menu (or click on the “Windows Orb” and type in “Network and Sharing Center”.
2. In the '”Network and Sharing Center”, under Sharing and Discovery click on arrow beside any topic that has a “Green” light (meaning that the sharing for that area is turned on.. and anybody on the network will be able to see whatever you are sharing). Then, simply select ‘Turn Off’ and click ‘Apply’.
3. Then accept the Windows UAC prompt.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for any other feature for which file sharing might be turned on.

Doing so will make sure that no files/folders, be it the Public folder on your computer or any other folder, is shared on the network.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Click the Apple Button on top left hand corner, choose ‘System Preference’ and go to ‘Sharing’. There, uncheck all checkboxes to make sure that your computer isn’t sharing anything.

Step 2: Use a firewall to prevent any direct connections from other computers

Often, although you might disable any sharing of files, other computers might still be able to connect to your computer through any other ports (think of them like ‘doors’) that might be open. So naturally, the best and easiest way to protect yourself, although not the most ‘sure fire’ way, is to turn on a firewall that will try and block most of the attempts to access your computer. If you don’t yet have a firewall, you might want to consider getting a free firewall if your computer is not running too slow (although if it is running a bit on the slower side, you might want to check out this article to speed up your windows computer).

At the very least, turn on Windows Firewall, which will prevent incoming connections (or others) from accessing your computer.

Step 3: Use an anti-virus program and keep your computer updated

Well, there isn’t much you can do after you’ve secured all the entry ways into your computer, so the only other ways to make sure that nothing else malicious is already on your computer and there are no ‘security’ holes in your computer are to run Anti-Virus software and keep your computer updated.

As for the Virus software, you don’t always have to turn on heuristics for it to keep on searching your computer all the time and making it really slow. Like I mention in my article to make your computer a bit faster, just turn on it’s basic settings and let it perform a scan once in a while when you are not using your computer. However, if you do across a suspicious (and when I mean suspicious I mean really suspicious…. like a birthday greeting card from your friend) just manually scan it.

Also, don’t forget to let Windows install the Microsoft updates when it bugs you do.. you don’t always have to do it right when it starts bugging you to.. but it’s a good idea to do it when you have the time.

xMod - Change hidden Mac OSX settings for Leopard!

I've always wondered if there was some application like the ones for windows where you could tweak additional system settings to make the mac perform better or customize it. Turns out, there's a great little application that can do a lot more than that.
It's called xMod, and it's a small, free utility that can do a lot of things. You can find a whole list of stuff it does on their website, but here's a list of things I find interesting:

• It can repair permissions to make sure everything is fine on the OS X file system. (Yes, I know, disk utility can do this too.. but xMod can do so much more!)
• It can check the SMART status of your Disks, and tell you if your hard drive is about to fail (hah. and you thought computers couldn't have fortune tellers)
• It can verify preference files (these are the settings and so on for the applications on your Mac) and find out if there are any errors in them
• It can tweak finder and it's appearance. It can also tweak screen capture settings and menubar styles. Plus, it can also make your screensaver as your desktop wallpaper! (Sort of like Windows DreamScene, but it takes up too many resources on your computer and will slow you down, so I'd recommend that you only have your screensaver as your desktop wallpaper when you aren't doing any actual "work" on your mac)
• It can change the appearance of your OS X dock to make it a 3d dock or a 2d dock
• It can disable dashboard
• It can Enable 'Sticky' mode for Dashboard widgets (so you can drag them on to your desktop if you wish)
• It can:
  
• Enable/Disable Spaces
• Add dock spacers
• Remove Dead tracks from iTunes
• Change a whole load of Disk utility/Address Book/Expose/ Terminal/Safari Options!

Plus, you can change all the things listed above with just clicking on the 'Apply button!'. Undeniably, xMod is a great little application that's powerful and easy to use at the same time!

Adding annotations to Pictures in Leopard

Unfortunately, for some weird reason, Preview does not allow one to add annotations to a picture file by default. You can, however, add annotations to a PDF file quite easily without changing things around (so you can just go to Tools > Annotate and start annotating). But if you want to do the same for a screenshot or any other picture file, you'll have to add the annotation tool in the toolbar!

To do this, first open Preview (simply click on a picture file). Then right click on the Toolbar > Customize Toolbar > Drag and Drop the Annotate Button to the toolbar and click Done.

Then, when you open a picture file, you'll be able to use the Annotate button to draw arrows, squares, circles, and much more! You can even add notes to a picture, in case it's a picture of your cat that you'll be e-mailing to icanhascheezeburger!

Text to speech conversion on a Mac

Here's a quick tip (well.. technically quick because its easier in Leopard!) for all you mac fans out there, who are looking for a better way to proof-read your work. Why not get your Mac to read out the text to you, and then you can see if there is a problem in the text?

Here's how you can get your mac to read any text that you want with it's super-powerful text to speech conversion feature. (Windows also has this feature, but its a bit more annoying and a bit more complex to use... more about that later)

First, click on the Apple button on the top left hand corner of the screen and click System Preferences. Then click on Speech and click to the 'Text to speech conversion tab'. Finally, just check the box beside 'Speech selected text when the key is pressed' and click on Set key. Then hold down a combination of keys (I set this to Command + Option + S, but you can set it to anything you prefer).
Now, to use text to speech conversion, just select a bunch of text (with your mouse... as if you were about to copy the text).. and press Command + Option + S. You're computer's voice (Alex for Leopard) will read it out to you. Alex is really smart, and he can understand things like commas, names, numbers and even dollars. It'll even try to read special punctuation to the best of its abilities, so you'll be able to hear if you've missed a comma or forgotten to close a quote. So it's perfect to use this to proof read your essay that's due in 6 hours.

It's fast, efficient and easy. What more could you ask for?

Also, if you are using Tiger, you won't be able to set a key (And Vicky will be the voice of the computer). So if you want to read a piece of text out loud, first select the text, Click the name of the Application in the menubar, Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text.

Tremulous: Free Open Source Online Multiplayer Game

Here's a good computer video games that isn't expensive. It's free You don't need expensive consoles or super fast computers to play it. And you don't need Windows or Mac to play it because it runs on Linux too (You can however, use a Windows and Mac to play it too... if you wish to do so).

Plus, this games also has elements of a first person shooter game, real time strategy and additional multiplayer online game features. It's based on the Quake engine, and has two main skillsets of aliens and humans.

The game I'm talking about here is called: Tremulous.





It's free, open source (yes, that means hackable too...) fast and easy to learn. The objective of the game is this: There are two teams, humans and aliens. Each team has to build their own base and defend it, while attacking the enemy base to destroy it. Plus it looks pretty good too.

Naturally there are several unique elements in the game. For example, you need to be able to shoot (with several different kinds of weapons that work differently), build a base (both human and alien bases are different) and learn how to use an alien (because aliens can't shoot.)

Plus, since its free there are loads of people all over the world playing the game. You too can host your own game server from your very own computer (provided you have a good internet connection and a fairly fast computer) and all you need to play is a regular mouse and keyboard.

We'll instead of me telling you more about the game, why not give the game a try. May be you'll like it, may be you wont. But it's free.. so you've got nothing to loose.

Mac Tip: Look up words in the Dictionary

Here's a great little tip for people like me who have a vocabulary of 23 words. With OS X it's super easy to find out the definitions of any word that you come across on the internet, when you are using Safari.

When you come across a word you don't know. Simply select the word, right click and click Look Up in Dictionary. As soon as you do that the dictionary will pop-up showing you the definition of the word.

Additionally, you can open dictionary (its in your Application folder) click Dictionary in the menubar, and click Preferences... and and beside contextual menu select 'Open Dictionary Panel' and you won't even have to open the dictionary and a panel like below will appear.

This tip is especially good when you are reading articles that are full of so many uncommon words that its hard to decipher. In a way, having applications like the OS X dictionary make the computer a much better choice for students and life long learners.

Mac Tip: Extended Menubar Replacement for Dual Monitors

Sometimes, having dual monitors is a great thing (see: 21 killer tips to increase your productivity on your computer). Having dual computers is even better, but at least having two monitors allows you to drastically cut down on the time you spend at your computer.

When I'm using multiple monitors (or multimon) on Windows, I like to use an application known as UltraMon, which stretches my taskbar to other monitors. So I can minimize a window, and it'll minimize to the taskbar on the monitor the window was originally on. UltraMon even adds two arrows to the title bar of each window, so can you move you windows from one monitor to the other with only one click.

However, there is no such alternative on a Mac. As far as I know, it's not possible to have a dock on each monitor/screen, and it's not possible to have a separate menubar for each monitor as well. This gets pretty annoying quickly... because often I have to come back to my primary monitor to launch a window or access the menubar for an application that's on my secondary window. Of course, this constant moving around makes me more prone to mistakes and less productive.

I still don't know how to solve the dock problem, but for the menubar problem, there is a round-about solution. It's called DejaMenu. Instead of extending your menubar, it provides a context menu that contains all the menubar entries when a keyboard shortcut is pressed. So this way, all you have to do is press the keyboard shortcut, and use the menu that pops-up instead of going back to the main monitor all the time.

Using Deja Menu to 'extend' your menubar to any monitor

First, download the application from the DejaMenu Website. Then, open system preferences, and click on 'Universal Access' and check the box next to 'Enable access for assistive devices'.

Then, open DejaMenu, and configure the keyboard shortcut. Now, when you press the keyboard shortcut over any application, a context menu should pop-up, containing menubar items. So, in a way, it's kinda like stretching your menubar on another screen.

Furthermore, as the author says on the page, you can configure a mouse button to emulate the keyboard shorcut, which is going to increase your productivity all the more (and plus, you don't have to remember any keyboard combinations)!