Southern Fried Geeks blogs

Meteorologist (An app for watching the weather)

Computerwhiz1 — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 03:42:17 +0000

One thing that I think everyone should have in their notification bar on their computer is a weather applet. One the PC these are plentiful, but on the Mac I never really hear about any. I did however run across this little jewel which is open source and gets the job done wonderfully. Its name is Meteorologist, or Meteo for short. In this video below I show you where you can get Meteo and how to use the features it has to offer.

Automatically Backup Your Thumb Drive

Computerwhiz1 — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:11:12 +0000

One day a few weeks ago I thought I had lost my thumb drive, luckily, I didn't but it made me realize that I should back it up. If I were to have really lost it, there would have been multiple school projects that I would have not had time to redo before they were due. So I set out to find a way to have my thumb drive automatically back up when I plug it in. I ended up finding that you can make an Automator Application to back it up, and you can use a little program called "Do Something When" to run that program when your thumb drive mounts. The video below shows you how to set everything up and get it all working. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section.

Dictionary App Tips

Computerwhiz1 — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 01:05:58 +0000

One of the things that I have noticed over my years of using the Mac platform is the amount of interesting little utilities included with the OS. Today I demonstrate the Dictionary app. Not only does it look up definitions of words, but it also has built in Wikipedia as well as an Apple reference. Watch the video for more, and enjoy! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or future video topics feel free to leave those in the comments section as well.

Using Auto Correct in Word

Computerwhiz1 — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 17:10:51 +0000

This week I follow up on the iWork auto correct tutorial with one on Word. In this video, I will show you how to customize auto correct for you. For the most part everything is very easy to do. As always, feel free to comment if you have any tips or questions and if you have ideas for future video topics, leave those as well. Thanks!

Customizing the Finder Sidebar

Computerwhiz1 — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:58:31 +0000

Recently, I have been doing videos on the customization of the Finder application on the OS X platform. This week, I am continuing the Finder customization trend. In this video I show you how to customize the sidebar in the left of the Finder. This is officially called the "places". Also, remember that if you have any questions, or video suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section, and I will try to get back to you.

Change Your Icons in OS X

Computerwhiz1 — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 20:59:51 +0000

Lately, I have been doing lots of posts on the customization of a Mac. This week I continue this trend with a video on how to change icons. I think that changing icons is probably one of the biggest visual changes you can make to you Mac. You can do it just because you like one icon better than the default, or you can use it to easily distinguish one folder from another. What ever your reason for doing it may be, its a very simple process that most people are unaware of. Also in this video I talk about some of the other customizations that you can find within the "Get Info" window. As always, enjoy and feel free to comment.

Using Auto Correct to Your Advantage

Computerwhiz1 — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:24:59 +0000

If you're like me and in school, or even typing for a blog like this one, then you know how tiring it can be to type an entire blog post and check it for grammatical errors. I will admit I make errors in grammar more than I would like to, but there are just some things that I don't catch, or don't look for just being lazy. What we take for granted though is the fact that we have computers to type on. We have the power of technology to check our writing for us. Now, while no modern program is going to pick up on the smaller technical errors, they will pick up on the big nasty ones. Thats why this video is all about autocorrect. Besides just checking for spelling errors, it can also replace commonly mistyped things for you. An example would be typing "teh" instead of "the". This is something I do all the time and autocorrect will fix it for you. As a matter of fact it even tried to fix it in here while I was purposely typing it. However, the possibilities don't end here. While autocorrect is intended to be for grammar and spelling, it can also be used for efficiency. You can use it to change "1/2" into a proper fraction, or even something more like changing "[company name]" into the name of your company. Things like this can help out when you have commonly typed phrases or names that might be quite lengthy. The video below will show you how to do this, and as always feel free to comment and ask questions. Stay tuned if you use MS Word instead of Apple's Pages. The word video will be up week after next.

Give Finder a Touch of Personality

Computerwhiz1 — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 01:44:23 +0000

One thing that I do with my Mac when I first set it up is to customize it. Things like screen savers, desktop backgrounds, icon size, dock size, 3rd party utilities, and more. One application that you have a great ability to customize is Finder. Most people that don't have some other application installed to replace finder's functions will use finder everyday. Something that you use everyday should be customizable, and Finder is. Most people don't know about it because it can be hard to find, but in this video I will show you where they are and what they do. Enjoy, and remember as always feel free to leave comments, suggestions, video ideas, and anything else you can come up with.

Stop Missing Dock Icons Forever

Computerwhiz1 — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:23:21 +0000

One problem you might have while using your Mac is disappearing dock icons. Now, while I suppose its possible that this could be some fluke on the tech end, it usually never is. Usually, it is your own fault. Yup, thats right, you did it. Perhaps not consciously, but you did it. This is actually not that uncommon especially on trackpad based devices. You simply have to drag the icon out of the dock in order to remove it. There are ways to prevent this though. In this video I will show you how to "lock" your dock using a few different methods. Enjoy, and remember if you have questions, comments, or ideas feel free to comment. ** defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true **

Predictive Text in OS X

Computerwhiz1 — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:57:57 +0000

Have you ever watched TV with the closed captioning turned on? If you have then you might have wondered how in the world they could type the words that fast. Sure there is a bit of a delay with live TV but they would still have to type extremely fast and completely flawless. One trick up their sleeve though is predictive text. Predictive text is when a computer shows you a list of possible outcomes for a word based on the characters that you have already entered. In this video I will show you how to use this feature build right in to Mac OS X. If you have any questions or comments fell free to post them.