Zipping capabilities are limited in these free OS versions. For example, it isn’t permitted to set password on the zip file, so make sure you don’t send sensitive information through the internet or to other people. It’s also not permitted to adjust how much compression is applied, or making an EXE version (for decompressing on a system that doesn’t have Zip capabilities). In order to get zipping with passwords and other enhanced features, you will still need to resort to purchasing an application, for the Mac, it can be StuffIt Pro; for Windows, it can be WinZip. There are other free utilities that that offer enhanced features for free, like from 7-Zip or WinRAR.

What is a Zip file?

Zip files are a way to take many files on a disk, bundle them into a single file and apply compression to them to shrink the final resulting files into a smaller result than the sum of the total set of files being package/zipped/compressed. The files are made of the original files represented in a compressed format. Many operating systems have built-in Zipping or compression capabilities now, so you won’t have to buy an application for simple compressing/bundling tasks.

In simple terms, if you have a lot of the same letters and numbers in a document, Zipping the document would count how many duplicates there are, where they are located, and take them how, thus compressing the document. The document is not readable in the compressed format, but it can then be “unzipped” and the document will be reconstructed to it’s original form with all the duplicate letters, numbers, and other characters.

The files that don’t compress well are JPG photo files and other formats that already in a “compressed” format. It does still mean thought that you can “package” or “bundle” your files using Zip even though the compression may not reduce the file size. This is particularly important when you want to send one file to someone. For example, you have 50 new photos you’ve taken of a place you visited, you want to send those to someone, zip them up in to one “zip package” file. This eliminates sending all 50 files. The compression won’t be good, so the file will be large, so watch out for that. But you can still send the single file.

How Do I Zip Files?

This can be accomplished the same way on either Mac or Windows:

1. Pick a set of files, or a folder that contains the files to package/compress
2. On Windows, right-click and “Send To | Compressed (Zipped) Folder”
3. On Mac, right-click or ctrl+left-click and choose “Compress Files”

A single file will be created with all original files packaged and compressed and bundled into it for storage, email delivery, or thumb-drive transport.

• Command-Shift-3 shortcut for taking a screen capture of your entire screen and saves it to the desktop as “Picture x.png”, where x is an incrementing number.
• Command-Shift-4, which gives you a crosshair cursor so you can choose which area of the screen you want to capture and saves it on the desktop like the previous command.
• Control-Command-Shift-3 (or 4), which, instead of creating a file on your desktop, copies the capture into your Clipboard memory, so you can paste it where you want.

We hope this tip has helped you to make better use of your time, and enhancing the blog-space by showing through pictures, what to do or say. Happy “grab-ing”.

I wanted to get the new Lexar Professional UDMA 300x speed Compact Flash card for my DSLR and I’m finding out a few things needed to make this all work.

First, my Nikon D70s doesn’t transfer at the 300x speed and not many new cameras do. The camera will still use the CF and at the highest rate the UDMA will allow for the cameras slot. That’s OK, I wanted to get the images downloaded off the card as fast as possible. So, I had to get all the components together that would allow the fast possible speed, yet be a complete high-speed set so when the time comes to upgrade the other devices, everything is at it’s peak.

The components required from photo shoot to post-processing are the following.

Camera to memory card to memory card reader to computer

Each of these have different transfer rates. The Camera (CF) being about 70x, the memory card reader (9 pin 1394b Firewire) is 300x, the computer (Apple Macbook 6 pin 1394a Firewire) is about 150x.

Because the Lexar camera reader has 9 pin 1394b Firewire connections and the Macbook has 6 pin 1394a Firewire connections. I am having to find an adapter that bridges this connection “disconnect”.

I wish it did. But I have a solution … so read on. I understand beforehand that the original topic surrounds  free software, and I have no qualms about free stuff, but I wanted to give a best answer, and it required leaving the realm of free software. I encourage free software, use it, and am extremely grateful to those that produce it. I write reviews like this to help benefit them.

First and foremost. A few products and environments that I like: I love Google “stuff”. They make my life much easier. I love Mac too because it doesn’t crash and it’s user friendly, it’s useful for my family and helps me with my artsy stuff. I like UBUNTU because it’s free and fast and universally supported. Finally, I like Windows because they have great support and fast time-to-market and it’s easy to write programs for it with .NET.

As I am both a Windows software developer (on Windows) and a professional photographer/creative designer (on Mac) I have both systems. I only Develop (write software applications and do database administration) on Windows and I only do photos on my Mac. I’m hoping to do programming on Mac, but have to learn more about it.

My solution to this discussion about Picasa on the Mac is to buy Lightroom from Adobe. What’s super-nice about it is that it takes only one license to use it on both Mac and Windows. If I have to do a few things like cataloging and photo work on Windows I can, then transfer it to the Mac.

It’s also super-nice because if someone migrates from Windows to Mac, you have a Catalog (database) that functions on both machines. Just copy it over and run it in Lightroom for Mac.

The Lightroom engine is written to work with the same database structures on either machine, which are Operating System agnostic (meaning it doesn’t care what machine the database is on).

It’s been my answer. My wife loves Picasa and we run Ubuntu at home! I like it too! But I love the richer features of Lightroom. I like the simplicity of Picasa. But at the expense of being able to work on both of my machines daily, and have a professional workflow system. I had to buy Lightroom! Sorry to bust up the FREE stuff like this and suggest something that doesn’t help the free community. But this is what I had to do.

If it grabs the attention of Google to get “the party started” and get moving on it to rollout faster, then so be it.

Some additional notes: I’m trying to get my wife on Lightroom. But we run Ubuntu on our family computer, on an AMD-64 PC. Picasa runs great there too. We love it. We just had our own conversation recently that I need to upgrade our family computer and I would like to make it a Mac.

She said “As soon as Picasa comes to the Mac it would be a great move.” =)

So … the battle right now is “to teach her Lightroom”, or wait for “Picasa on the Mac”. She’s leaning towards “Picasa on the Mac”. That sounds great for me ’cause I’d love to get them Macs.

There’s more to this story than I will tell here; but that’s because I want to retain some of the particulars as my own personal details which is the catalyst and posture for the increase in my faith. “For those that have ears to hear”, this is one of the keys with which progress and an increase in faith and a relationship with Heavenly Father can be maintained – by retaining sacredness of a miraculous event, even by keeping most or or all the parts of it personal.

Only under the conditions as dictated by the spirit should a story, or event certain parts of it be told. I will tell you this story under those conditions, that hopefully will help others with the appreciation from a gospel perspective of the good works of a person and if at the least from a worldly sense, a greater appreciation for a Mac product. So this is not a sales pitch for Mac, but a personal story about my appreciation for my Mac, and at best, others can see that living righteously with best intentions does amount to something. So long as it’s recognized and directed towards the right Being.

Thus the story… (which took place on Aug 6, 2008)

Preface

As you know from reading other posts in my blog that I am currently the Scoutmaster in my Ward. It has been one of the more challenging assignments I have had. Youth 12-14 years of age, teaching scouting skills, going on camp-outs to practice those skills, and then rewarding for the efforts. Well, 12-14 year olds really have a mind of their own let alone the “natural” inclination to figure out how society expects them to behave. It must come from adult training, learning, and experience by example.

This experience was also one of my tests. A test to see if I would “go off my rocker”, swear, or demonstrate a poor way of handling a bad situation in front of the boys. What example would that set if I react poorly. Well, in my opinion, the outcome of this situation is a direct reflection on how I handled the situation. This can be said for most outcomes, whether they are good or bad. They reflect how we’re living and how we test during the trial.

I’m telling this story because the outcome here was favorable, if not, again, miraculous. A story can be told that was not favorable, and yield a positive learning experience, but fortunately, this one was not one of those. Maybe it is, depends on how you look at it, I guess.

The Activity

In order to receive their Swimming merit badge, the boys wanted to plan an outing to visit my parents house, who have a swimming pool. They wanted to go there because there are great toys, a slide, diving board, and it’s all around better than a public pool. I took my Mac, that has my scouting software installed on it so I could make updates to their rankings and activities.

We had a great time and they did manage to get their merit badge. Although some of them about drown =). Not really, they had a ton of fun.

Heading Home

We gathered up all our belongings and the assistant scout master prepared to take off with a few boys to get them home. I had the rest of the boys and I put my things in the trunk of my 2004 Pontiac GTP Supercharged.

I started up the car, backed out of the driveway, and started down the road. The driveway is on the downslope of a slight hill which then forks at the bottom which goes to the left or to the right just 50 yards from the driveway. It levels out after the turns, I needed to turn right. I turned and then heard thumping on the roof of the car. I saw something slide off the roof on to the ground. A scary feeling came to my stomach remembering that I rested my laptop on the top of the car while I was loading everything else. I looked in the rear-view mirrors and saw my laptop on the ground.

Ouch! I quickly stopped the car and backed up – careful to not run over my laptop, but to protect it from other cars that could come around the bend behind or in front of me. I got out, noticed it was laying on it’s bottom side so the top was up and I didn’t see a scratch on it. After picking it up, I examined the entire case. There were scratch marks all along the entire bottom, and a few abrasions on the edges and corners. Miraculously nothing that seemed drastic.

You know that empty, troubling feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when something really bad has happened. That’s what I felt. My photos, my scout stuff, journal items, lots and lots of documents. I have backups, but it was still something I didn’t want to have to be paying to replace or get fixed. You know how it is.

During this whole event, I didn’t overreact or swear, or say anything except the following, “Ah, shoot, there went my laptop off the car.” The boys said, almost in unison, “Are you serious?”. When I got back in the car, I said, “Oh, this is not good, I need to see if it will turn on.” They were all in shock at the event and awaiting my answer. I opened the lid, pushed the Power button and waited. The resounding Mac tune started and came to my login screen. I typed in the name and password, and it was working. “Holy cow!”, I said among the “Wow’s and Ahs” from the boys.

Humble Adoration

I turned off the computer and started to give a silent prayer that was extremely sincere (you know how sometimes some prayers are more sincere than others when we all know from Sunday School that all our prayers should be just as sincere). Well this was a moment, humbly speaking, that was a little more sincere the some of my others. I didn’t mind. It felt good to give thanks to get that feeling out of the pit of my stomach. I had nothing to lose to thank Heavenly Father for taking care of the laptop. This again, is a key.

Gratitude Where it Belongs

Gratitude always belongs directed towards our supreme being. I didn’t do anything different. I wasn’t being punished. I wasn’t what made the situation favorable. I’m sure I was being tested to see if I would act according to the example I was premeditated to do. There is nothing but gratitude for the outcome, remembering, with nothing else to lose, that my Heavenly Father was the executor and I am the benefactor.

If anything is learned from this lesson (and others I’ve had, thus the reason I know how this works and the keys and steps to increased development) is that we’re 1) prepared and obedient, 2) remain calm and in good form during the test/trial, 3) recognize God from whom we get everything regardless of the outcome, 4) recommit ourselves to increased faith and adoration to Him because of the event and outcome, 5) help others to know of God through the experience (or not if the spirit dictates), 6) continue to be obedient.

If this helps you to have a better day, or learn to have better days, then it was worth telling. If at the least, I love my Mac, it’s a durable beast, now called Tiny Might Mac; to go along with my childhood moniker Tiny Might Moe

P.S. One additional key – which I’m writing after this is all done, is that after reading this story for myself, I read it and laughed out loud. It was pretty much a second draft writing and went so well … that this is an indicator that the spirit is good with the outcome and what’s represented. Hope you enjoy.