Tantek's Thoughts 2010-4

Keyboard Shortcut to Open Mac OS X System Preferences

Hannah: I wish there was a keyboard shortcut to open system preferences.

Tantek: That would be useful, wouldn't it. ... Your wish is granted.

On Mac OS X 10.6 (likely works on previous versions)

From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences...
On the Hardware row, click Keyboard
At the top of the window, click Keyboard Shortcuts
In the left column, click Application Shortcuts
Click the [+] (plus sign) button just underneath the right column
Make sure the Application: pop-up shows All Applications (or pick it)
In the Menu Title: field type System Preferences... (case-sensitive!)
Tab/click/activate the Keyboard Shortcut: field
Press the shift command comma keys simultaneously
You should see ⇧⌘, appear in the field
Click the Add button and close the System Preferences window
Click on the Apple () menu and note the System Preferences... ⇧⌘, menu item

Now no matter what application you're in, if you simply hold down the shift key and press command-comma (the normal application preferences shortcut), it will open System Preferences instead.

Afterwards I found this article on Macworld which explains pretty much the same thing in prose, however they recommend command-option-dash as a shortcut.

I prefer shift-command-comma for the System Preferences... keyboard shortcut because my muscle memory is already trained to think command-comma for the application Preferences menu item, and it's easier to just think "shift" (like shift-up to the level of the whole system) for system-wide preferences.

Update: On Mac OS X before 10.6, you may need to type in an actual ellipsis character (…) in step 7 System Preferences… (via @ljharb: 1, 2).

Bringing Back The Blog

8 years ago this month I started blogging my thoughts on tantek.com. That lasted just 6 years; there was no seventh year of blogging.

I continued publicly posting to Twitter, Pownce (moment of silence), Flickr (currently 7 months behind), my PBWiki, and comments on others' blogs. But it wasn't the same. I had gone from owning (most of) my content, to digital sharecropping.

The past two years I watched lifechanging, brilliant, and some longlived sites get killed by owners that knew not what they had, or just gave up. Even Twitter, one of my favorites, was unreliable enough, often enough, to be frustrating.

Last year I told myself this year would be different. Among personal struggles perhaps I'll recount someday, I thought about how should personal publishing work? How did I want it to work?

Inspired by the works of others, yet focused on scratching my own itch, I finally built Falcon and launched it on tantek.com this past January (using the open source CASSIS language/framework), and subsequently conceptualized my thoughts on the future of independent publishing.

Encouraged by the energy, enthusiasm, and optimism of the implementers at the Federated Social Web Summit (presentation) a month ago, I decided little text notes were not enough, it was time to rebuild my blog.

It's simple, it's undesigned, and it's got plenty that can be improved. But I can now write posts, have Falcon show them on my home page and their own permalink pages, PuSH them with a multi-object-type Activity Stream to realtime subscribers, and snowflake syndicate them to Twitter.

It's a start.