Author Archives: Max Swisher

About Max Swisher

14-year-old web developer and writer. Avid collector of vinyl, cameras, and typewriters.

BumpTop

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Do you own a computer? Does it run something other than MS-DOS or another code based system?

Then you have a desktop. The desktop is supposed to be what it is… a desktop. But desktops arent flat. Desktops have depth. You can put stuff on top of other stuff to sort it, you haave sticky notes…Turn your desktop into a desktop with BumpTop.

Here’s your usual Desktop.

Old Desktop...

But open the BumpTop application and turn your desktop into a desktop!

That's a real desktop!

As you can see, BumpTop changes my desktop into a true desktop, giving it a room kind of feel.

That’s truly the whole point of BumpTop. It really Goes even farther than that b y allowing you to make files bigger or smaller, depending on their importance. To do this, just click on an item once to select it, hover over the selected item, and click either grow or shrink. If you get the pro version, this can simply by done with the pinch of your fingers (only with a multi-touch trackpad). I would show you a screenshot of this, but when modifier keys to press for the screenshot make the small box with the options disappear.

Want something to be on a wall? Just click and drag it there. Pretty simple. Want to see one of the three available walls? Just double click it. Still on a wall you can make things bigger or smaller.

One of my favorite features is called piles.

Folders are overrated.

Just select a few items (A great new kind of selecting tool, as squares are just too hard to use), hover over one, and a menu will appear; you can click clean up to make the files into a neat grid, you can grow or shrink the multiple selected items, but there is another option:Make Pile. This will put all of the files into a neat little pile, which you can select, press “Return” and name the Pile. You can also make the pile bigger or smaller. Due to the basics of physics, you can’t have a pile on the wall. Yet do you want to see what’s in a pile?

Luckily, BumpTop integrates almost perfectly with QuickLook. You can select a pile and press spacebar to see the QuickLook of the files inside like you had selected all of the items. To open a file in the pile, you can double-click the file which will popup a little box with all of the files of the pile in it. Click a file to open it. Piles is really convenient for organizing things other than using folders.

Try taking a file and setting it kind of to the side but on top of a pile. This works with the sticky notes (you can click the new note button to create one, and move it around like a file), which is what is shown below:

Talk about physics!

This can be done with all files on your desktop.

Als

o just an FYI, If you want to change the backgrounds of the walls and floor, that can be configured in the preferences located in the menubar icon.

Overall, BumpTop is a great cross-platform way to expand your desktop 3X, and give you a great fun experience.

Plus…. IT’S FREE!!!!!

You CAN in fact get the pro version with a few more features, but If you are looking for an AWESOME and FREE way t have some fun with your desktop, it’s called BumpTop

BumpTop Mac Homepage

BumpTop Windows Homepage

BumpTop Mac Download

BumpTop Windows Download (compatible with Windows 7!)

GrandPerspective

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What does your hard drive look like?

No, I don’t mean a metal block. I mean the inside. No, I don’t mean a needle on some disks (depending on if you have an SSD of course). I mean on the disks (or chips, if on an SSD).

That’s what GrandPerspective is for.

But an even better way of using GrandPerspective. I was using a bit more than half of my hard drive space, but after using grandperspective and deleting the reallybig blocks that appeared, I was able to cut downTunes movies that I never watch anymore.Upon opening grand perspective, you will notice a window. I reccommendyou selecct your home folder, as scanning the Library and System folders will be useless and you can’t delete anything off of them. It will scan, and after you finish it will come out like the below image. The big blocks are files that take up A LOT of space. Smaller blocks take up less space. This gives you a perspective of what is taking up your hard drive space and how much hard drive space it is taking up, hence the name. Click a block to see its path at the bottom of the window. Click reval to open the containing folder in the Finder.

In finder, you can delete the big file then go back into grand perspective and press Command>Option>S to rescan the folder and conquer all of those other big files.

P.S. If you decide to scan your whole hard drive and you see a big block thatis located at /var/sleepimage, that cannot be deleted. It is the image that your RAM is saved to when you sleep the computer.

Also, for PC, try WinDirStat, download from Cnet available HERE.

Homepage

Download

My Top 5 favorite things about Mac

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I love my Mac.

I actually was a PC fan for multiple years. Up until the summer of 2008, I loved PCs. I felt bad for all of the people who had tiger machines and I had absolutely no I dea what mac products were out there.

But in the summer of 2008 I went to a computer summer camp called DMA where I took a class on web design. At DMa EVERYTHING was Mac. The game design classes were using Windows (The main gaming platform after all) on bootcamp.

My instructor loved Macs. And the thing was, I had really never used a Mac and I was fine using it. I knew how to get around, it all simply made sense. And finally after one week of class, I wanted a Mac.

AnI love the simplicity, but here is a list of the top 5 things I love about my Mac.

5. The Menubar

Having the File, Edit, View etc. menus at the very top o the screen has proven to be easy and I like it. Why? I don’t really know…

4. The Dock

Instead of having application shortcuts cluttering my desktop or “Quick Launch” icons, The applications are right there in my Dock. And after launching an application instead of each window that appears of the application showing up in the menubar all of the windows are part of the one running application which is indicated in the dock. And when a new application is launched it shows up to the right of all the others. Also, when you minimize a window it goes to the right of the divider. With a cool animation! And then Stacks. Stacks is AWESOME! I love how I can move a folder there and instead of opening a new window to see what is inside of it a cool little fan or grid springs out to give me easy access. And having the trash bin right there? It just all makes sense and saves a lot of space compared to the windows menubar.

3. Mounted drives on desktop

When plug in a USB disk or DVD or whatever, instead of going into My Computer, It’s just right there on my desktop. And when I unplug it, it’s gone. Once again, it just all makes sense.

2. Built in printer drivers

My old HP printer stopped working, so I needed to connect to a printer downstairs (Oy). The printer was being shared through windows on a computer downstairs. If I was using a PC, it would be driver mania. On my Mac? It al makes sense. Open System Preferences (another of my favorite things instead of control panel), go to Print&Fax, Click the obvious +, Select windows, and select the computer downstairs, and select the printer connected to it. I want the Gutenprint, I click done and tada, I can print to it. So simple, no CDs or finding drivers on the web needed! YAY!

1. Spotlight

I have no idea what I would do without spotlight. I need to open an application. I can do it in 4 clicks, a ew scrolls, and some hard searching through alphabetized names. Or, I can find it in 5-* keystrokes, which will take much less time if you consider how much moving around the mouse you need and how fast you type. Just press Command>space and type the name of the file, application, iCal event, address book card, email, or even past visied webpage and press the return key to open it. No Start, All Programs, Etc. involved! Say I want to open system preferences. Instead of going and opening finder, going into Applications, scrolling until I find it, opening it, and closing the Finder window, I just press Command>space, type Syst and press return. System PReferences opens and the spotlight search dissappears and when you reopen it and it will have cleared the search for you. There is Google Desktop for PC users, but that takes up quite a lot if CPU. Spotlight is awesome!

Easily create an Ubuntu pen drive

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Ubuntu. The most popular and (i think) best linux operating system there is.

Especially because it’s lite. It takes up less than a gigabyte to install.

But go before that. Go back to putting in the CD. You know how you could select “Try ubuntu without any change to my computer”? That’s where this post is coming from. You can create a CD but have it save data and instead of a CD be s USB disk.

This is actually simpler than it looks. You will need an internet connection (which I’m assuming you have as you are viewing this page), a PC with Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) installed, and a USB disk, and preferably a mac as well.

First, open a web browser and go to www.ubuntu.com/download to get yourself the .iso of the Ubuntu install. disk. Then, plug in your USB disk to your Mac, open disk utility, select the disk and select Erase. In security options select Zero Out Data, and put the disk format to MS-DOS (FAT). Click erase, then go into the drive (not the partition), click the Partition Menu, from the Pop-up select 1 Partition, and on the right I would title it USB and slect the partition type to be MS-DOS (FAT) and click Partition. Let that finish, then Eject he disk from your mac. Unplug the disk and plug it into the PC that is running the latest ubuntu on it and has the .iso from ubuntu.com/download downloaded. Close all of the running applications and in the menus go to System>Administration>USB Startup Disk Creator. Here, drag in the .iso file to the top box. Select the USB drive from the box on the bottom. Change the slider that appears to a desired amount. I have a 4.4 GB drive and I let it have 1.5 GB. This is because I still wanted to use it as a normall USB drive.

Now click create startup disk and let it do the rest. It will take 10-30 minutes, but the outcome is great. Plug in the disk to a computer and on most computers on the initial bootup screen (usually with the logo of the computer manufacturer) hit escape. Select USB[-HDD/Hard Drive] and you are good to boot. Select “try ubuntu without making any changes to your computer” from the menu that follows and you will boot right into the ubuntu operating system from your USB disk. Here you can setup email, download files, etc. and after shutting down you can plug the USB drive into another computer and boot using the same process and your files and settings will remain.

If you can, try putting it on a necklace. This way you have an operating system with you and all you need is another computer, which there are probably plenty of around these days.

I used the PNY MicroSwivel which is great because it is 4GB and nobody would think that it was a USB disk until you opened it. And then you boot it up and your friends think you just screwed up their whole computer, until you shut it down, unplug the disk, turn it on again, and it’s like nothing ever happened!

Art online silent auction!

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So I have started a digital artwork collection and I am auctioning off a 19X13 Hi-Res glossy print of this piece [link]

This piece is titled Pentaflame, and is 1/10 of the prints. The piece of artwork is signed.

The current highest bid is $25.

Send in your bids to auction@goodmorninggeek.com

The highest bid by the end of 2009 will be the winner.

Google Chrome

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As many PC users know, Google Chrome is by far the fastest most stable most simple and most versatile web browser in existence. It’s lean and makes sense. But many Mac users are stuck with Firefox, which is bulky. And even worse some PC users still use internet explorer: The bulkiest, fattest, slowest, most insecure, and overall worst web browser.

So all of those Mac users wanted Google Chrome. And right then what did they get? They got a buggy, unstable, feature barren dev-release alpha of the web browser. I had it, an I was not happy. No flash! Back to firefox I went.

The Google Chrome omepage always had a sign-up button for the developer emails, but no browser.

UNTIL NOW!

On 11/8/2009 Google released the official beta of Google Chrome for Mac.

And it’s everything you expected.

Speed

Google Chrome got its reputation for speed. It’s fast, fast, and literally seems to suck down all of the information and coding and stick it right in front of you in the form of a web page.

I decided to test the speed of it against the other most popular web browsers.Here’s a countdown from slowest to fastest.

Safari: Believe it or not, but Safari was the slowest of them all. It took a painstaking 11.488 seconds to load Good Morning Geek! [Yawn in anticipation of the page loading]

Internet Explorer: Yes, Safari was slower than internet explorer. Internet explorer was able to get the text fast, but not the images. It took a total of 9.62 seconds to load Good Morning Geek. [Yawn in anticipation for the page to load]

Firefox: Just as predicted, Firefox came in second place for the web browser race. It took Firefox 5.607 seconds to load Good Morning Geek. [Small Yawn]

Google Chrome: is the winner (after all that was the whole point of the testing)! It got a remarkable 2.49 seconds to load Good Morning geek with images and all. Google chrome is FAST…


Stability

Yup, it’s stable. This is because Google Chrome has a new process for each tab. If one tab crashes, that oe process crasher, and the rest of the processes (tabs) are left intact.

I tested this using the Activity Monitor and just deleted one of the processes called Google Chrome Helper; the title for the process of each tab.

An the result I got was the tab looking like this:

Crashed Tab

But the other tab:

The other tab survives!

Yet, there is in fact a downside to this. It sucks up all of your CPU! But the results always vary.

I’m writing this post in Google Chrome. I have the post edit open in one tab, and Pandora [link] in the other. I am using very little CPU, but at points depending on what you’re doing it can max out a 2 core intel processor.

But yesterday when I was doing the same thing but had another tab open, my CPU was in fact maxed out.

Google chrome is fast and stable but because of its stabilization techniques it tends to take up memory and CPU.

Features

These features work on PC Mac and Linux, so first download the app (bottom of the page) and try them yourself.

  • Rearrange tabs by clicking and dragging them.
  • Make a new window from a tab br dragging the tab out of the window.
  • Drag a tab back into a different window by dragging it from one window and dropping it in the desired window.
  • In the OmniBar type in the name of a search engine like google.com or ask.com and press tab. What you then type will be searched by the search engine without loading the search engine’s homepage.

And many more!

So go get your copy of the fastest cleanest and stablest browser ever!

Google’s write-up and videos of Chrome’s Features

Mac

PC

Linux

Tip/Trick: Save battery on your iPod touch

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Your battery life is important… If you don’t believe me, you will when your iPod dies while writing an incredibly important business email.

You can use a few simple little tricks to increase your battery life.

1. At least every month, drain your iPod until it dies, and fully recharge it. It’s even better to do this every time you need to charge/discharge your iPod. This tip works for everything that runs on batteries: laptops, phones, you name it.

2. Turn off Wi-Fi if you’re not using it! It discharges battery fast.

3. Turn down brightness! If you are in a car at night you don’t need the screen at full brightness!

4. If you are concerned about your battery draining in less than an hour, consider getting your battery replaced.

5. Gameplay drains battery as well. You can ultimately get 2 hours of battery life with gameplay, that is if you have followed all of the other tips above.

6. If you have other battery issues, keep track of what you do and time how long the battery lasts. When the iPod is in auto-lock (automatically turns off or you press the sleep button) It will use very very VERY VERY little battery life. Therefore, when timing don’t count the time the ipod is asleep. After seeing how long until it dies, go into the apple store and tell one of the people walking around about your problem. This doesn’t require a genius appointment, and who knows. Maybe that’s supposed to happen. Ad if it’s not, then it’s time to schedule a genius appointment.

How-to: Create huge posters and cool entryways

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You like that picture on your computer. but you want to put it on your wall. Wait. You want it to COVER the wall. But, it’s too expansive to print on big paper at kinkos, etc., etc. So what do you do? You use an online tool called the rasterbator.This great tool will simply take your image and make the pixels big dots. The size of the dot will depend on brightness of the poto and how big you want it to be.

To use to this online tool, just click HERE, upload your image, crop if desired, size to the number of pages you want it to be, SELECT MULTI-COLOR ON THE NEXT PAGE, and download and print the PDF. Well, then of course there’s cutting it and putting it together, etc.

So originally I had a big picture of the aple logo that was screddd and hanging from my door, shown below.

Old Entry...

But I was getting very bored of it.

So I had just made my new logo, and I decided that I should create an entry thing with my logo. I was having some problems with the software I had previously used, so I used the rasterbator this time. Below is the image I uploaded to the rasterbator.

Original Image

As you can see, it’s simply two of my logos on top of each other.

So after downloading the PDF I printed it out (turned out to be about 30 pages) and put it together… with nothing but scissors and Scotch tape. This is quite the challenge as with a normal printer there will be a border, which you have to find a way to fold over.

After piecing it I did what needed to be done: I cut the whole thing in to strips EXCEPT FOR THE TOP. Then, I simply hung it above my door and this is what I got.

New Entry

As you can tell, this one hangs much mower than the old entry, and in a cose-up, you an see how this tool really fit it to this big of a size.

Pixels to dots

The rasterbator did just what I said it would do – pixels to dots. The brightr, the smaller the dot (as more white will appear). And of course, the bigger you want the picture, the bigger the dot.

But some people go REALLY far with this thing.

Whow...

Special Thanksgiving How-to: Floppy Disk Notepad

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Everyone knows what floppy disks are. They mark the real beginning of the evolution of data storage, which meant smaller space and more capacity.

Yet, now they remain useless, as they only hold 1.44MB. I can’t even put a song onto that much.

But after you think about it, you can see that floppy disks are very versatile – in the same way as duct tape.

In fact, you could almost definitely make a floppy disk wallet.

But the thing that I really want to show you is a floppy disk NOTEPAD!

Floppy Notepad!

I must say, making it was simple.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • 2 Floppy disks with lock switches (more on that later)
  • A small stack of the paper of your choice
  • Scissors
  • A hole punch (preferably 3 hole)
  • A Pencil
  • Zip ties

First things first- Your floppy disk needs to have a lock/unlock switch. This is so 2 holes on the same side are exposed to put the zip tie through, as shown below:

Two Holes!

After, trace the outline of a floppy disk on a stack of no more than 4 sheets of your preferred paper (I used graph paper). Next, cut about 1/4 cm. inside from the lines you traced and cut out the square. After cutting out one stack, you can make another outline and do the same thing somewhere else on the paper(s).

Cutting...

After you should have a nice stack of papers.Split the stack into shorter stacks that can be done by a hole puncher. On the top paper of each stack put your floppy on it and trace the inside of the litle holes that are on the floppy disk.

Tracing the holes...

Next, go at the stacks with the hole puncher. Punch as close as you can to exactly centered to the tracings you made from the holes on the floppy (exactly centered might have you cutting through the edge of the paper). After, line all of the stacks and floppies up (one floppy on top, the stacks, then one floppy on the bottom). put the zip ties through the holes on the floppies, then the holes in the stac, then the other floppy. loop it around and tighten until it is VERY LOOSE!! You don’t want it tight or else it won’t be able to open or close! You should be able to have the two floppies open side by side with a little space in between, as shown below.

You need space between the disks!

Now you’re done! Trust me, everybody will be JEALOUS of how awesome it is.

Now go off and write…well…whatever needs to be written!

Go write... well...whatever needs to be written!

***I hope you enjoyed this special how-to, with “special” images. I’ll do something special for most of the major holidays in the future.***

How to make a new and improved awesome mousepad

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Okay.

This is like a follow-up post to this one: [link]

But, there’s more!

So this was really an improvement upon the last one.

The reason this is here is because if you were using the other mousepad for a while, you may have noticed wax residue building up on the bottom of your mouse.

(Click here to see the post of how to get it off)

So, I decided that I was going to try and spray cinch on it o get rid of some of the wax. Bad idea! It crumble like wet paper. I decided I wouldn’t try that again.

So I decided I would cover up the wax paper with something else. I didn’t want to try wax paper again for obvious reasons written above. So, I was looking through my drawer of rolls of foil, wax paper, saran wrap, etc. and I found some parchment paper. “Hey, this will be great!” I said. So, I go to tape it on to the bottom. I first try standard scotch tape, the cheap alternative to duct tape. And low and behold, it just comes off. I barely pull at it and it just comes right off.

So, I go to the standard of stickyness- duct tape.

And, the same exact story.

So, I try melting it with an iron, and  een try the super sticky spray adhesive. I’m pretty sure that worked, but it would be a big hassle to try and do that with my mousepad. So, while I am waiting for it to dry, I just go at it again with my original plan – Scotch tape. I add a lot of extra flap on the bottom, and I  very carefully tape it to the cardboard on the bottom of my mousepad. I carefully press down the tape to both the parchment and the cardboard. So far so good. I carefully do the rest, and I finally have it done. It’s pretty fragile, but it’s the same amount of smoothness, and has no wax, preventing any residue from getting on the bottom of it.

The end result looks maybe a bit cleaner.

Here’s the comparison:

Old Wax Mousepad

New Parchment Mousepad

As you can see, the newer one doesn’t look as…well…waxy.

Here’s the super careful scotch tape job i did:

The tape's holding on... barely

But, it’s great!

With the parchment paper it also seems much cleaner.

Have fun with your new and improved awesome mousepad!

TinyGrab

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMzqEykTO-8]

This isn’t a free application, but it is definitely convenient.

I got this application fron MacHeist which is a service that gives away free software and donates a tonto charity. Plus, it’s completely legal.

So, you want to share something on your screen with your friends.

You would do -Shift-4, selectwhat part of the screen you want, release, and put the file automatically saved to your desktop in the email or IM application. Then you have to wait for it to transfer, which is alwys slower than FTP or HTTP connections.

In fact, my skype transfers usuallly run 20kbps. SLOW.

TinyGrab solves the problem. Launch TinyGrab, and it will show up as a little cloud in the menubar.

Now, just take a screenshot as you usually would.

You can also use -Shift-3 to take a picture of your whole screen, or -Shift-4 and then when you get the cross-hair press space to select a whole window to take a screenshot of.

Next thing you know, the icon in the dock will change and have a blue arrow on it, and will have an orange arrow on the menubar icon.

The dock icon will look like this:

TinyGrab Uploading

And momentarily, it will make a “Boodeep!” sound, and the icon will look like this for a short moment before returning to normal.

TinyGrab is done uploading

So, it’s on the internet. Where is it now?

The answer is in your clipboard… literally.

After the icon has a chckmark, than go into any application and press -V.

The link will be http:/grab.by/*.

Th HTTP connection is much faster than the connection through skye transfer or IM.

TinyGrab is about 12 dollars, or exactly £10.

TinyGrab Homepage

TinyGrab Free Trial Download

How-to: Make your own awesome mousepad

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No, this isn’t from scratch, but this is how to turn your old and dirty mousepad into an amazing super-sleek mousepad.

Sadly, the below picture is pretty much all I can show you.

Superpad

Super-Mousepad!

But it was pretty simple to make and pays off. Here’s what you’ll need:

Old and dirty mousepad
Duct tape
Cardboard
Blue tape
Wax paper

So fist cover the old and dirty mousepad with duct tape. Do it strip next to strip, as close as you can but NOT OVERLAPPING! Do this once vertically and trim the edges, then do another layer horizontally using the same technique.

Now that you have a fully duct-taped mousepad, it’s going to be a bit rubbery and hard to you the mouse on it. So, carefully take a large and un-crinkled sheet of wax paper and cut it down to be about 1 inch bigger than the duct tape mousepad on each side. Now, fold over the edges and use duct tape to tape them down on the back. At the corners they will have to fold, so try to keep that as neat as you can.

There you go! Or at least for a little bit. I found that the wax paper will crinkle, and make it look kinda bad and feel bad too. So my remedy is to cut a piece of cardbord to the same size as the mousepad, and duct tape it on to the bottom. Now it won’t bend. But you just eliminated the grip, so it slides a lot. My remedy for this? Just use blue tape to tape it to your keyboard tray or desk.

So, what’s awesome about this mousepad?

• Instead of just having plain waxpaper down, it provides a bit of a cushion
• It’s super smooth and easy to track on
• Easy to make
• Puts that old icky mousepad to use
• Another great way to use duct tape

Happy Tracking!