Being the homepage of Matt Gibson, a random geek, writer and photographer from Bristol.

Taking Screenshots from the Command Line in OS X

March 9, 2010 Posted in Geekery, Graphics, Mac by Matt

I was so impressed with this I had to share. I was looking for a way of taking screen shots of a user taking a screen shot. Yes, that’s a bit meta. Basically, I wanted to grab some screen shots for a tutorial piece on how to capture screen shots on a Mac. So I wanted […]


The Finder, the mini-Finder, and Cool Interactions

May 31, 2009 Posted in Geekery, Mac, tips by Matt

Lukas Mathis recently gave a lovely detailed analysis on his blog about how the Finder  —  and various other OS’s file managers  —  interact with applications when it comes to opening, saving and creating new files. This made me want to mention a couple of very nice interactions that the Finder has with applications at the kind of “should this […]


Finder Image Previews Randomly Not Working

February 1, 2009 Posted in Geekery, Graphics, Mac, Updates by Matt

Just a quick note: if you’ve got problems in OS X with your Finder previews not showing up, apparently fairly randomly, I may have the answer. This was my problem: some of my JPEG (and other) previews would be fine, some would be just showing the default “it’s a JPEG” icon. Quick Look actually worked […]


Confusing Time Machine Error Message

August 5, 2008 Posted in Graphics, Mac, rants by Matt

Following on from my last post, here’s another in my series of confusing, annoying or just-plain-baffling error messages. “This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 1.2 GB, but only 1.5 GB are available.” Rrrrrright. Last time I looked, 1.2 was, in fact, smaller than 1.5. I think Apple may have […]


Screencast: Creating an iTunes Music Visualizer in Quartz Composer

December 5, 2007 Posted in Animation, Design, Graphics, Mac, Screencast, tutorial by Matt

I’ve put together a basic screencast tutorial which introduces you to Apple’s Quartz Composer, the graphical programming environment which ships with OS X. Quartz Composer is a graphics generator, capable of drawing 3D graphics, animations, and all sorts of Good Stuff. And you make it work just by dragging little boxes about and connecting them […]


Shameless Plug

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  • Sync files between my computers
  • Back up my stuff, and
  • Work with friends and clients using shared folders.

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