MAC Attack: piercing the skin

WiFi Connection Issues: MacBook Pro to dlink router

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:35:00 +0000

After I upgraded from an iBook G4 running Tiger to a MacBook Pro running Leopard, I could not access the WiFi at my mom's house. I assumed the OS upgrade was to blame; not so. The problem was with the dlink router (USR8054). The solution? To upgrade the firmware. This is how I did it:

Step 1: Connect to the internet/router via ethernet cable.

Step 2: Locate the firmware for your specific router on the USRobotics Support site. Here are the options for USR8054 router: http://www.usr.com/support/product-template.asp?prod=8054

Step 3: Download the latest version's corresponding zip file to your computer.

Step 4: Unzip the file (by double clicking it) to reveal the .bin file.

Step 5: Access your router via: http://192.168.123.254/
*The default username is "admin". Leave the password field blank.

Step 6: Navigate to the Wireless > Firmware page. Press the "Browse" button and locate the .bin file on your computer to upload it.

Your router will restart automatically and everything should be up and running for you again! Good luck! (P.S. It took me more than a year to figure this out!)

The SST-PR-1 Mystery Solved

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:25:00 +0000

Last week, I noticed that a "Device" had suddenly appeared in my Airport menu: SST-PR-1 (encrypted). I'd never seen it before so I Googled around and discovered that the mysterious appearance (and disappearance) of said device is the subject of many conspiracy theorists.

Some believe it's some sort of Secret Service surveillance unit and others are convinced it is simply an indication that a Sears truck is in the area.

I am happy to report that it is indeed a Sears vehicle -- a van, to be precise. Today (only a few minutes ago) I looked out my office window to see a Sears van parked at the end a neighbo(u)rs driveway. The driver, presumably, waiting for his GPS to point him in the right direction. On a hunch, I clicked on my Airport menu and, after a few scans, the SST-PR-1 device appeared. I am but 2 feet away from my digital camera and desperately wanted to snap a picture of the device in the Airport menu with the van in the background, but alas, just yesterday, the batteries died.

Regardless of my lack of photographic evidence, since I definitely saw it, I am 110% convinced that SST-PR-1 is indeed, a Sears vehicle.

SST: Sears Service Team, perhaps?...

Don't F*ck With Terminal

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:18:00 +0000

Long story short, I was attempting to gain permissions to a DVD, which my computer recognizes as a "volume". (Nothing, illegal, btw.) I read up a bit (a very, little bit) on Terminal, and thought I'd try a few commands. Not only did I not gain access to this volume, but I accidentally permanently muted my system volume.

Fortunately, an hour of Googling lead me to a help discussion which suggested I re-set or zap the PRAM. Thankfully this worked, and I have vowed never to open the Terminal app again! (At least not until I educate myself on Unix commands.)

Consider yourself warned!!

Password Protect Files and Folders

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:10:00 +0000

DH recently told me he had text file that contained all of his passwords for every site he visits, including his banking and financial institutions. If ever his MacBook Pro was lost, stolen or hacked into, someone would have access to all of this personal information and it could devastate him. So I told him to take these 5 quick steps to password protect it:

1. Open "Disk Utility"
2. Click on the "New Image" icon and choose where you want to save it.
3. Select the size you'd like and set encryption to AES-128 (leave the format at read/write).
4. Click create and enter a password.
*Note: Be sure to uncheck the box below it so the password is not saved in the keychain. There would be no point in doing this if the password was saved in the keychain for anyone to use. There is no backdoor workaround for this, so be sure to remember your password!!
5. Launch the Disk Image you created and drag your personal/private files/folders into the image. When your done, eject the image. From that point forward, you will require the password to open it.

ACK! Adware/Spyware!!

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:59:00 +0000

About a year ago - after owning my MAC for over a year - just for fun, I decided to run an adware/spyware/tracking cookie scan on my iBook. And to my pleasure, nothing came up.

But, for the last couple of days, I've been automatically, and seemingly randomly redirected to a site trying to sell me ErrorSafe software. PC users are probably more than familiar with this uber nuisance, but I had been blissfully oblivious... until now. This kind of thing used to happen all the time on my PC, but I'd *never* experienced anything like this on my MAC. I decided to use (the free demo of) MacScan once again, only this time, it found 32 instances of spyware. From 0-32 in a year!

To be fair, I do recall receiving an ErrorSafe pop-up that asked if I wanted to download the software. I didn't click "No" (thinking that was most certainly a trick), but instead hit the "x" to close the window altogether. This is, apparently, how it gets you. I may as well have just clicked "Yes".

If you see this ErrorSafe pop-up/window, immediately hit cmd+Q to close your browser; it's the only way to prevent this thing from getting on your system.

I have read that this annoying ad is just that for MAC users; an annoying ad, and does not pose any sort of threat to my system, but still; finding 32 tracking cookies was not what I had expected.

Fortunately, MacScan seemed to do the trick. I have since gone into my Firefox privacy settings and I am now only accepting session cookies from trusted sites. Phew!

Reset OSX Admin Password without the Tiger CD

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:33:00 +0000

My husband gave my dad his old G4 desktop a few months ago. When we went to change the administrator password, something happened (perhaps the consequences of one person manning the keyboard and the other manning the mouse?...) and, for whatever reason, the password was accidentally reset to something-ruther, with no way to find out what it was. After reading several articles, we thought the only way to reset the admin password was to reinstall Tiger via the bootable CD... only the Tiger CD was in NY, and we were in Toronto.

We thought we were screwed until we discovered a set of commands that esentially allows you to reinstall Tiger without the CD (thus allowing you to recreate the administrator account). This info can come in handy if, say for instance, you purchase a used MAC and the seller disappears before giving you the admin password.

Some don't think this info should be public, but let's face it -- if someone gets a hold of your computer, unless your files are encrypted, your info/privacy is compromised.

From what I've read (I don't know this for sure), this method should work with 10.3.9 and 10.4 versions of Tiger. My dad's running 10.4.9 and it worked beautifully. Good luck!:

1. Make sure your MAC is off.

2. Turn on your MAC...

2A. When you hear the “chime", press and hold the Apple/command key and the letter 's', until you see a (scary!) black and white screen. (You are now in "Single User Mode".)

3. Type the following and be sure to include the spaces, as indicated:

/sbin/mount -uw /

PRESS ENTER/RETURN

rm /var/db/.applesetupdone

PRESS ENTER/RETURN

reboot

PRESS ENTER/RETURN

Your MAC will restart (this could take several minutes) and take you to the Tiger installation wizard (where you will be prompted to create a new administrator account and password).

If Nerds Could Wish...

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:15:00 +0000

Wish #1:

Dear Flickr,

I'm in love with you. I would marry you and have ten thousand of your babies if it weren't for the fact that you do not allow me to re-order the pictures in my Photostream. Please make it so that I can do this.

Thank you,
The (hopeful) Future Mrs. Flickr

Wish #2:

Dear Firefox,

I'm in love with you. But I'm also in love with photography. But you and photography don't get along. Here, lemme show you what I mean.

This is you:

Photo as viewed in
Firefox v2.0.0.1
And this safari:

Photo as viewed in
Safari v2.0.4

See the difference? Of course you do; it's UNMISTAKABLE. Please, Firefox. As soon as possible, could you figure out how to read ICC profiles? I don't want to have to open Safari every time I go to Flickr.

Thank you Kindly,
Em

¿Dónde está more hard drive space?

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:28:00 +0000

Want to add an extra GB (or more) of available space to your hard drive? Got 15 minutes?

Then download Monolingual:

(From their site:)

"Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space."

When you launch Monolingual, you can choose which languages you want to keep and which ones you want to ditch. Watch in amazement as it quickly runs through every installed application, library and system file removing thousands of MBs worth of useless files.

I just finished running it and I went from 6.42 (available) GBs to...

... :: drumroll :: ...

... 8.17!! That's a grand total of 1.75 extra GBs!

Important!: The ReadMe document (easily accessed via the Help menu), contains the following bit of pertinent information regarding Adobe applications. They really should have made this a default function (who reads those "ReadMe" files, anyway?), but, nevertheless, please complete this step before proceeding:

"Adobe's newer applications have a self-heal feature which checks for the existence of certain files and refuses to launch the application if one of those files is missing. This feature does not distinguish between files that are critical components of the program and those files which are not needed, e.g. localization files. Therefore, you should exclude Adobe's (applications) from being processed by Monolingual. Open Monolingual's preferences window, add "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional" (for example) and deselect the checkbox next to the item."

Uninstalling MAC apps... for real!

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:33:00 +0000

No doubt you've seen programs like AppZapper before. And I'm sure you thought to yourself (as I recently thought to myself): "Why would I need a special program to delete applications from my MAC, when all I have to do to uninstall them is to drag the app to the trash?"

Well, yes, that's true -- but not entirely. If you drag an .app to the trash, the application itself is deleted, but what about all the other files associated with it, like install preferences, caches, and other support files? Do you really want to spend the time to locate and delete those files yourself? And then how do you know, for sure, that you're deleting the right files? This is where AppZapper comes in handy.

From the site:

"AppZapper is for people who want to confidently try new apps while knowing they can uninstall them easily. Drag one or more unwanted apps onto AppZapper and watch as it finds all the extra files and lets you delete them with a single click."

Sure, it's not harmful to have these "extra" files sitting on your hard drive, but they can take up valuable space. For example, several months ago, I decided that while GarageBand is a terrific program, I was just never going to use it and I preferred to have the space instead. I dragged GarageBand.app to the trash and figured that was it. Today, I typed "garageband" into spotlight and found several (large) support files associated with the program.

From this day forward, I can guarantee that as long as I own AppZapper, I will never drag an application to the trash ever again. Today, I removed over 250MBs of useless files from my hard drive. And boy, does that feel good!

Cost: $12.95 USD (free upgrades for life)
Requirements: Tiger

Twitter Treat

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:29:00 +0000

I don't know if I "get it", yet -- but I'm certainly willing to give it a fair shot.

TUAW describes Twitter as "... a real-time presence sharing site that allows users to quickly and easily tell their friends what they're up to."

There's now also Twitterific. This TUAW article does a good job explaining what it is and does so I won't bother.

So... why would you want to constantly update people on what you're doing? Because, with apps like Twitterific, it's really, really easy... so, why not ask yourself... "why not"? In short, it's a complete waste of a very insignificant amount of time.

Despite my above admission, it does have a useful function; away or status messages are a good way to let colleagues know what you're up to; that you don't want to be disturbed or that you're out of the office and unable to be subject to their disrupting. But, since I work from home (and approximately 8 feet from my only colleague), it isn't, at all, necessary to notify him of my every move.

Perhaps I will invite people I know to sign up so I can see how interesting (or not) it is to track their daily lives. As Twitter has become more popular, spoof accounts for "celebrities" like Darth Vader and the new iPhone have begun popping up. Equal parts stoopid; equal parts entertaining.

Also, a good thing to mention; if you want to use Twitter, others don't need to sign up for an account to see what you're doing. All you have to do is post a badge on your site. As you update (either via the Twitter site or using the Twitterific app), it updates. Just check out the column on the right of the main page ----> and you'll see what I mean.

If the creators of Twitter or Twitterific happen by this post, I have one suggestion: since I have two internet persona's (one real, and one fake), I created 2 Twitter accounts. It would be... terrific if either Twitter or Twitterific would allow me to sign into both accounts (and post to both accounts at the same time) or to at least to run/manage each account simultaneously.

Anyway, if you find this post and you decide to sign up, look me up and we'll see if this app is worth all the Twitter-Chatter it's garnering. (Sorry. Habit.)

Edited to Add: Just to clarify; you do not need to be a MAC-user to sign up for Twitter. You can post via the site. (Twitterific, however, is a MAC app.)

Form Filler-Outter App

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:35:00 +0000

Y'ever come across a digital form (.pdf or otherwise) that needs to be filled out, but the fields aren't actually fillable? This leaves you with the following shitty options:

1. You have to print it out and fill it out by hand. (No matter how impeccable your penmanship, this cannot possibly look professional).

2. Convert the document and open it in Word (or some such word processing program) and create a text box over each field. (And I can tell you from experience, that not only is this a HUGE pain in the ass, but those damn text boxes never seem to go exactly where you want them to.) *You could also use PhotoShop, but I don't think it's a program the average person would own.

3. Use an actual typewriter to fill it out. (If, of course, your grandfather will let you borrow his.)

4. Spend an entire day (or more) recreating the form into one that is fillable. (Although, if it's an "official" form, this is not advisable.)

None of those options appealed to me in the least, so instead, I used Formulate:

"... a simple Mac OS X application that allows one to overlay text on top of a PDF file."

Brilliant. (And, FREE, might I add!) I'm surprised this little gem of an app isn't spreading like wild fire. It could use a little TLC (I can't seem to change the font size or type, although the option to do so appears in the menu), but it's incredibly easy to use and total lifesaver.

My advice? Download it now before you need it. (And before it costs money.) At a measly 84KB, it's definitely worth it.

iArt

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:33:00 +0000

Do you have an iPod? And a printer? Then you can make your very own iPod covers.

I had seen this link before but I thought the cover in this Boing Boing article was just beautiful -- right up my alley. (And, might I add, a great, last-minute stocking-stuffer. You can personalize it with photos, etc...)

And if you're into high-tech, super arty iCustomization, check out this Boing Boing article on laser etching for your laptop.

Thanks to Boing Boing for (all of) today's content!

Dock Dividers

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 21:27:00 +0000

I'm a bit of an organizational freak. I wouldn't describe my house as "immaculate", but as far as organization goes, it's in pretty good shape. I would rather throw something out or give it away than keep it for the rest of my life "just in case" I'll eventually need it. I'd rather re-purchase a new whatever-it-is, instead of having to stare/walk around/dust it. I cannot tolerate clutter, of any kind, for long periods of time -- especially on my iBook.

I have no files or folders stored on my Desktop and the only apps listed in the dock are ones I use at least once every couple of weeks. Otherwise, they're out o' there.

Maybe that's why I got so jazzed when I accidentally discovered Dock Dividers.

A silly thing - a simple thing, and yet it brought me so much joy. They do exactly what you'd expect; they're little dividers (with .app extensions) that you drag onto your dock.

Not only are my app icons colour coordinated, they are now also organized into groups pertaining to their use. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing!

`Tis the Season...

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:20:00 +0000

... To "spruce" up your desktop with some holiday cheer! (And to, apparently, use really bad puns!)

I'll admit that I'm a bit of a scrooge when it comes to the holiday season. I was pretty miffed when I was at the mall on Friday and I could not escape the incessant Christmas music or holiday decorations. It was just Hallowe'en for heck sakes and it isn't even snowing yet! In order to combat my near-fatal case of "the bah-humbugs", I decided to decorate my desktop with some customizable festive cheer using the following 3 (free!) MAC apps. (Thanks to tuaw.com for their article.)

First up is Snö: "... a useless application that makes snow fall over your desktop."

The second, is MacLampsX (similar to the popular Holiday Lights for OS9) which: "... strings rows of Christmas tree bulbs around the edges of your screen."

And last but not least, is X-MasTree 1.3: "A Christmas Tree for your Mac." It's customizable and you can even opt to have the number of days left until Christmas displayed.

The result can look something like this:

Feel free to complete the effect with some winter/Christmas icons. And if my "bah-humbugs" were contagious, perhaps the Not A Merry Christmas icon set is the thing for you.

Update: Just found TreetopLights, by Free Range Mac. It's, basically, MacLamps and X-MasTree combined into one program... and I like it!

HAPPY HALLiWEEN!!

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:40:00 +0000

You still have one more day to get your iPod a costume.

...
...
...

Yes -- you read that right. iAttire sells costumes - for your iPod.

And just when you think that's the stoopidest thing you've ever seen -- I show you a guy dressed as a working iPod.

You can love your iPod... just don't *love* your iPod.

Have a spooktakular Halloween!

Printing Tip of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 23:41:00 +0000

I needed to print some address labels today, but I ran into a slight snag. My printer is on the top floor of the house, and I was down on the main floor. The prospect of having to run upstairs to insert a sheet of labels into the feeder, run back downstairs, hit print, run back upstairs to retrieve the sheet of labels and then run back downstairs again to use them, did not sit well with me. (Especially since my feet aren't quite 100% after the surgery.)

I suppose I could've carried my laptop up the stairs and back down, but I felt silly doing that since we set up Airport specifically so we could print wirelessly (i.e. so we don't have to be in the same room as the printer, to print.) What to do, what to do?...

Step 1: Hit Cmd+P to open up the print options window.

Step 2: Choose "Scheduler" from the drop-down menu below "Presets:"

Step 3: It will ask you if you want to print "Now" or "At" and then allows you to enter the time when you want to print. For example, I figured I'd need about 2 minutes to get up the stairs and load the labels. So I chose "At", and set the time for 2 minutes in the future. Since it was 1:57pm, I entered 1:59pm.

Step 4: Hit "Print". Your job will print at the exact time you specified. Done and done!

I could not believe how easy it was. I remember the IT guy at the large corporation I worked for last year struggled to figure out how to delay print jobs. It only worked half the time and only on certain printers. It was a total mess. This? Was MUCH easier, and I discovered it quite by accident. I hope it comes in handy for you, too!

Fine iTune-er App

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 23:16:00 +0000

I've got over 5 hours of movie soundtrack music loaded into iTunes, and half the time, I don't even know what track I'm listening to... but sometimes, I wanna know. In order to find out, I have to stop what I'm doing, click on the iTunes icon in the dock, read what it says, and then close it back down. This is hardly convenient.

Thankfully, there's iController. After installing and launching it, the track title and artist scroll in a small section of the top window bar. You have the option to have this info briefly appear in the middle of your screen, but it is easily disabled via preferences (just ctrl+click on the scrolling message for access). There is no clutter, no extra windows need to be open, it's not distracting and it doesn't intrude on any valuable screen real estate. A quick glance is all it requires.

If you're looking for an application that does all this and more, give QuickTunes a try. It has some nice options -- just none that I would use.

"Cool" New App

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 23:14:00 +0000

Rumour has it, those new fandangled MacBook Pros can get hot. How hot? Try "fry an egg" hot. Or "McDonald's coffee" hot.

Fortunately, the clever folks (or folk -- I think it's just one dude) over at eidac have created smcFanControl:

A "cool" application that allows you to control your MacBook's internal fan and drop the temperature by 40 degrees.

Save your legs from third-degree burns and extend the life of your laptop?! Sounds like a good idea to me!

Apple Store in NYC

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:53:00 +0000

The 5th Avenue Apple Store (across from Central Park) as seen the afternoon of Wednesday October 18th, 2006:

Neat.O.

Doggie Christmas Present

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:43:00 +0000

Are you in need of a Christmas present for a MAC-loving dog?

Hint: If you know me, you are! ;o)

Introducing... the iPaw:
At $11.99 CAD, it's a steal!

Prepare to Have a Dorkgasm

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:12:00 +0000

This new (free) MAC app is gonna make my husband's life a hell of a lot easier.

Introducing teleport (from abyssoft)...

"...a simple utility to let you use one single mouse and keyboard to control several of your Macs. Works on Panther and Tiger..."

"Simply reach the edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your other Mac! The pasteboard can be synchronized, and you can even drag & drop files between your Macs."

Looking forward to seeing this puppy in action!

Best.iToy.Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 15:43:00 +0000

Introducing ... ::drum roll:: .... iKaraoke!!

From Griffin's site:

"iKaraoke sends the music from your iPod to your stereo minus the lead vocals, so you can step up to the mic and sing the lead in your favorite tunes."

My poor, poor, husband.

This may result in the first ever iDivorce.

Cross Browser Bookmark Link

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 15:20:00 +0000

At long last, I have finally found a cross browser 'Bookmark Site' script that works. (Although, I *hope* you're NOT still using IE!)

IE (v.6 and under) is not a standards-compliant browser, which is why, in most cases, webpages (like this one, for example) don't appear as they should. They do, however, appear fine Firefox and other standards-compliant browsers. The new IE 7 is supposed to be standards-compliant, but, as they are not supplying a MAC version, I have no way of testing it out.

Want to test out the 'Bookmark Site' script? Just click here to bookmark this site!

Free App: AirPort Radar

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:14:00 +0000

At first I thought this was another one of those handy-dandy flight tracking widgets, but AirPort Tracker it's actually a:

"free and convenient tool for quickly scanning the area for AirPort and other wireless networks. It will work with AirPort cards, MacWireless 11g PC Cards, and 11g PCI cards."

* Courtesy of macwireless.com

If you're in the habit of taking your laptop with you everywhere you go, this could very well come in handy. I look forward to testing it out the next time I leave my house.

Top Ten OSX Shortcuts

noreply@blogger.com (Emily RugBurn) — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 17:04:00 +0000

If you're new to MAC (hell, even if you're not), you may not be aware of the bazillion shortcuts available to make your life just that much easier. Seems like everybody has their own "favourites" list, so without further ado, here's mine:

1. These are pretty obvious, but since I use them every day, I couldn't leave them off "the list".

cmd+A: Selects all text/images in a window.
cmd+C: Copies Info
cmd+X: Cuts Info
cmd+V: Pastes Info
cmd+P: Opens up a Print window

2. I am combining the following three shortcuts into one because they all relate to the same thing: managing windows.

cmd+N : Opens a new window.
cmd+W : Closes a window.
cmd+Q : Quits the application which you are currently in.

* These shortcuts also work in Firefox - including cmd+T which opens a new tab.

3. Again, obvious, but I just used it so thbpppt!

cmd+Z : Undoes the action you just performed. I call it the "Whoopsy! button".

4. Yes, I have mentioned these screen capture shortcuts in the "Intro to MAC" post, but they're so handy (and still a little bit secret) that they bear repeating:

cmd+shift+3: Takes a screenshot of your current screen and saves the image to your Desktop.

cmd+shift+4: Transforms the mouse cursor from an arrow into crosshairs. Click and drag the crosshairs over the area of the screen you want to capture. When you're done, just release the mouse button and Ta-da! The screenshot of the selection you specified will be saved to your Desktop.

cmd+Shift+4+spacebar: Turns your cursor into a camera (yes, a camera!), which lets you select the specific window you want to capture.

* Add the control (ctrl) key to any of the OSX screenshot keyboard shortcuts, and the screenshot is copied to the clipboard instead of being saved as a separate image file. This is mucho convenient for quick "pasting" into another application.

5. Want to quickly switch from one open application to another?

cmd+tab (+tab+tab...): Let's you quickly scroll through open applications. Just land on the one you want to switch to and let go!
+Q (while using cmd+tab): Let's you quit the selected program.

6. Need extra screen real estate?

cmd+option+D: Hides/Shows the dock.

7. Want to go to another webpage but you're too lazy to move your cursor to the top of the browser window, select the current url and delete it?

cmd+L: Selects the entire URL allowing you to easily type in your new destination.

* This works in Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.

8. Are you a former PC-user? Are you missing the "home" and "end" buttons?

cmd+←: In Word (and similar word processing applications), the cursor skips to the beginning of a line (same as PC "home" button).

cmd+→: In Word (and similar word processing applications), the cursor skips to the end of a line (same as PC "end" button).

* Similarly, the cmd key used with the up and down arrow keys allows you to skip up and down whole paragraphs.

9. Tired? Need a nap?

option+cmd+eject for 2 seconds: Instantly puts your computer to sleep.

10. To be honest, I'm not sure why you'd ever "need" this, but it might be fun to mess with someone when they step away from their computer(!)

ctrl+option+cmd+8: Inverts the screen colours.

I'm sure you've noticed that a lot of the OSX menus list the shortcut keys to certain functions, but I can never remember to which key the symbol relates. Here's a handy-dandy legend:

If you're looking for something specific or want a bigger list of OSX shortcuts, Apple has their very own list for your perusing enjoyment.