Windows to Mac tips part 2: internet shortcuts

I've been used to dragging the icon to the left of the URL in a web browser to a folder and it gets stored as an internet shortcut on Windows. You can do the same in Safari on the Mac and it is saved as a webloc file. However, the URL part is stored in the resource fork. In order to get a more portable webloc file in which you can view the stored URL as plain text, you should drag the full text of the URL to Finder. This still results in a webloc file, but the URL is readable as plain text so that you can open the webloc file in a text editor. 

There are some other solutions: storing the URL as text clippings rather than weblocs and converting weblocs to urls with Applescript and again.

How not to make PowerPoint slides

There are a large number of these on You Tube, but this one is funny.

Thanks to Adrian for spotting this ... 

BBC Magazine: Midweek quiz: Old computers

You can test your knowledge of old computers at the BBC Magazine site. 

Windows to Mac tips part 1: screen grab

Since there is no handy "Print Screen" or "Prt Sc" button on a Mac, you need to know the following:

Command + shift + 3 = whole screen

Command + shift + 4 = select a section

The results are dropped onto your desktop in PNG format.

Friends have also recommended utilities such as "Grab" and "Onyx", but I haven't tried those yet.

Bash foreach equivalent

I can never remember the bash equivalent of tcsh's "foreach", and now I need to remember it having moved over to my nice new shiny MacBook (did I mention that?). 

There's a quick reference here at Mike's Blawg.

Instructions about moving Windows Outlook PST files to Mac OSX Mail

After becoming the proud owner of a shiny new black MacBook recently, I've been reading up about switching email from Windows Outlook (2003) to Mac OSX Mail. Demdike has some done some research on switching from Outlook to Mail via Thunderbird. My plan A for now involves using VMware Fusion to get Office 2007 running on the Windows virtual machine that I've installed. This seems to be the most pain-free way of switching email over for now. Plan B (medium term) is to actually move over to using the Mac proper for email.