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

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

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

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

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

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 […]


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