Beutelevision » Apple Computer

Making Aquamacs kill and yank work with the clipboard

Thomas Beutel — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:08:12 +0000

My favorite editor on the Mac is Aquamacs (me and Emacs go waaay back) and something that has long been a productivity killer for me was the different actions of C-y and CMD-V.

This is due to there being two clipboards, the one belonging to the Mac and the one in Emacs (the kill ring).

Often I would use one or the other and get the wrong pasted contents. Then I’d have to stop, back up, and find the original contents and do it again. Worse, sometimes the contents would be cut or killed, meaning that I would have to undo the cut/kill, redo the cut/kill, then yank/paste.

Well, I finally had enough and looked for ways to harmonize the two clipboards via the .emacs file. Here is what I came up with:

(defun swap-and-kill () "Swap point and mark, then clipboard kill region" (interactive) (exchange-point-and-mark) (clipboard-kill-region (region-beginning) (region-end)) (deactivate-mark) ) (global-set-key "\C-w" 'swap-and-kill) (global-set-key "\M-w" 'clipboard-kill-ring-save) (global-set-key "\C-y" 'clipboard-yank)

Now everything goes to the Mac clipboard, even if I use my beloved mark and point with C-w.

I found most of the clues for this solution here:

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CopyAndPaste

It’s like deviantART meets the App Store

Thomas Beutel — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:02:26 +0000

John Fort over at the Big Tech Fortune blog writes about Tyrese Gibsonâ??s Mayhem which is the first digital book for sale on iTunes 9. This strikes me as something that would interest the deviantART community of digital artists and writers. Imagine selling your artistic creations to millions of iTunes users for $0.99 a pop, just as iPhone app writers have been doing at the App Store. Good for artists. Good for Apple.

John mentions that the tools to create the e-book is based on standard web tech: HTML, CSS, and Javascript. My guess is that some day, not too long from now, we will see something like Pages (or maybe GarageBand) for iTunes where you can create your own digital creations and submit them to the iTunes store. It will probably dwarf the App Store in total volume.

Update: ReadWriteWeb has more to say about this.

iTunes 9: Option-click the green button to get the mini-player

Thomas Beutel — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:03:16 +0000

The first thing I noticed when I upgraded to iTunes 9 was that clicking the minimize (green) button no longer selected the mini-player. A quick search revealed the answer: now you have to option-click the green button to get the mini-player. Thanks to Maclife for the answer.

When Memes Collide – Apple is Expensive vs. Windows is Vulnerable

Thomas Beutel — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:56:42 +0000

I always get a kick when the Apple is Expensive meme trotted out as a reason to consider less expensive alternatives. How ironic it is that on the very same day there is news of massive computer infiltration and document loss. The article doesn’t mention the operating system of the computers that were compromised, but I do have a guess.

A look in the mirror – Safari 4

Thomas Beutel — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:28:01 +0000

I just installed Safari 4 and the first thing it did was to show me my top sites – the 12 sites that I go to most frequently. My initial reaction was “Weird!” and then “I need to get out more often!”

Here is a fuzzy pic of what I saw:

Download is available at http://www.apple.com/safari/

How to Backup Only Purchased Music in iTunes

Thomas Beutel — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 22:11:53 +0000

I was asked recently how to backup purchased iTunes music, and after trying the normal backup function, I discovered what everyone already knows – that iTunes wants backup everything, including movies and TV shows. While I appreciate that Apple wants to backup all purchases (see bottom of How to backup up your purchases for a complete list), I just wanted to backup music.

With a hint from Macrumors, I found a way to do it. First create a smart playlist as follows:

Select this playlist, then press the Burn Disc button at the bottom right. Burn it as a data disc so that it saves all of the track data as well.