There are geeks, then there are Geeks
How much happier could a geek like me get? Well for the first time since I started putting down my Mac thought patterns down on digital paper (this blog) I can say that I am proud of the keywords used to find nutMac. My top 25 keyword are predominantly TextMate, QuickSilver, MAMP, HTML, CSS, SQL, websearch and various combinations therein. If that is not THE most geekified set of words, I don’t know what is. The only word missing from the list is Unix!
So what does this mean? I guess I could use it as some sort of metric that what I write is important particular demographic. I mean, these keywords are an exact reflection of what I write about. These are things I have searched for myself wishing to find an article that answered my needs. Maybe my articles are answering the needs of geeks like me. That would be pretty cool if you ask me.
So if you read this blog, you must be a geek. But not any geek; you are a Mac geek and probably one that knows a little more than the average geek about OS’s, hardware, software or some form of programming. You are hardcore (if not just work with me here). So if you like what goes on here, but crave something more of an audio nature, please check out the podcast from MacBreak Tech. I have raved about them in the past and I am going to do it again now. This show is for geeks. Real geeks. Crack the case open, pull on the wires, hack it with a bash command kind of geeks.
The first time I wrote about the show, there would be only 5 or 6 comments per episode. Now they get 15 to 25 per show, and the geekier the show, the more comments! Take, for instance, the show where they turned an old G4 Power Mac into a NAS drive (a long standing request of mine). How geeky is that? It got 25 comments! You have to be a hardcore geek to understand WHY anyone would want to do this (the correct answer is “because you can”, by the way).
The number of outlets for this kind of geekery are few and far between (outside of flame bait, forum arenas where the main topics are Kirk vs. Picard ) so when a show as well put together as this one comes along, one that doesn’t cater to the ADHD, Digg skimming, tech trend surfer, it is a refreshing and very welcome change.
Thank you John, Kenji, Ben and Craig for making MacBreak Tech.
Sneak peek #5
So what the FRIG is the hold up? I am a cow to the paying gigs, that’s what! It’s sad to say but I rarely get time to continue with this side project. It’s good to be busy I guess. It means I am doing my job right.
So this sneak peek is a dead giveaway to what the project actually is (not that there was much wonder anyhow). I have six more pages to get through, more or less, and I am done! Let’s cross our fingers for a summer roll out?
Option drag
So it’s been a bit. Many mac stories have come and gone and had I not been overwhelmed with work at those moments I would most certainty add my two cents to the stream of consciousness. The same can be said right now too but I just had to free my brain from the coding and scripting matrix that has become my life. So today I bring you a quick and dirty little tip, another one of those little known or long forgotten OS tricks that will save you a ton of misery.
I would like to believe that this one is long forgotten versus little known since the latter would imply that Apple is not the best at getting word of it’s most basic features out there (FYI: Apple is doing a bang up job of teaching you little tips at http://www.apple.com/business/theater/). Everyone like the drag-n-dropiness of Mac OS X right? It’s great for moving things right? Well it’s also great for copying things too! You can copy items from one place to another by simply holding the option key while you move your item. This will leave a copy in it’s original place while making a new copy to add to the location you finally decide on.
This isn’t just for moving items from folder to folder, the same is true when working within documents. Highlight a word or phrase, click and hold on it then press and hold the option key to make a copy of that word or phrase, ready to be positioned wherever your heart desires.
PlusKit demystified
Well let it be known that I don’t think any self respecting RapidWeaver user should be without PlusKit but until now it has been hard for me to qualify that statement. When I have spoken of it’s features and abilities, most have stared back at me blankly, not quite grasping what I was telling them. Thanks to Loghound and kkbrux of CRM Technik I can now just point them to this screencast that shows exactly how PlusKit will make your life easier.
Center… float… IE… they don't mix!
I am about to drop a metric butt-load of geekiness on you right now. I have had a LONG standing issue with certain types of navigation menus that float list items (still block elements) in order to apply graphics and dimension to anchors that are made block level (which is inline by default)… the problem lies in positioning the list itself. Because the list items have been floated the entire list itself wants to float that way and no amount of dickering with the code can convince it otherwise.
What I would really like to do is center that list and for years this has baffled me. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of styles of navigation that can be centered, but this very specific one, one which allows for all sorts of graphical hover states, active states, etc… I have spent hours trying to solve this puzzle.
Out of nothing more than absolute desperation I thought to try applying inline-block to the <ul>. inline-block, however is so poorly supported that it has made it a nearly useless function of CSS 2.1, so applying it here would have done little more than satisfy my curiosity. And what would you know… it worked… In Safari!
Well I am that much closer but there are two more issues now; Firefox has nothing more than wet dreams about supporting inline-block and IE only supports inline-block on inline elements (which a list is not). The fix for Firefox is not all that tough since they have a proprietary display state, display: -moz-inline-box; that works… sometimes. IE, on the other hand, had me stumped. That’s when I found this website who credits the genius of this guy for coming up with a brilliant solution.
I won’t get into the full course meal here (you can read that for yourself) but what it came down to for me was this;
- overcome IE’s has-layout bug which can be done with either
height: 1%;or the proprietaryzoom: 1;(I had to use the latter since the former defeated the layout I needed in this instance) - Next I needed to tell IE that the block element that I turned into inline-block was actually inline… confusing? Anyhow, not wanting anyone else to see this I have to precede it with a star, like this
*display:inline; - so the end result was this:
ul#myList { display: -moz-inline-box; /* for Mozilla*/ display: inline-block; /* for real browsers */ zoom:1; /* fix for IE has-layout bug */ *display:inline; /* IE thinks a block is inline */ }
So what does this mean for me? Well I have a few themes out there that will get an update soon to take advantage of my new centering ability and a few that I have been holding off making because of the former limitation. And one theme that is about to be released… 