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July 28, 2005
System Preferences | How to zoom in on the screen
Want to quickly zoom in on something that appears on your screen? A small, fuzzy CCTV image, perhaps? This capability is built into Mac OS X. It's designed to help visually impaired users, but it can come in handy for anyone.
When working with images in Photoshop for example, I now prefer the Mac screen zoom to Photoshop's. With the Mac screen zoom, the view follows the cursor, so unlike Photoshop, there's no scrolling involved. Or when using the living room Mac, (which acts as our TV, VCR, DVD, stereo, etc.) the screen zoom makes it possible to see what I'm doing from across the room, like browsing TV schedules or movie reviews on the web. A wireless keyboard and mouse are somewhat essential in this regard.
So — zooming in CCTV images...
To Enable Zoom
- Open System Preferences
- Select "Universal Access"
- Select "Seeing" from the row of buttons across the top
- Under "Zoom," click the "On" button
To zoom in
Hold down the ALT and APPLE keys and then press the PLUS key (beside backspace)
To zoom out
Hold down the ALT and APPLE keys and then press the MINUS key (beside the plus key)
Granted, the keys may be in slightly different places on a laptop keyboard. And granted also, I'm using Tiger. In your version, the button to turn on Zoom is slightly different.
If you want to make adjustments to the Zoom behaviour, go back to:
System Preferences > Universal Access > Seeing, and in the Zoom area, click the "Options" button. Then fiddle with the settings and test it out to find out what they do exactly.
Posted by Brad at 01:12 AM | Comments (2)
July 13, 2005
Are you ok?
When I heard the news of the London bombings, the first and only thing of relevance I could think to do is send you an email to say we were okay. Since then I've had a few email messages from friends checking that we were alive and well. After talking to other people — everyone has seemingly been exchanging these messages — it seems slightly odd that the subject line so often seems to be, "Are you ok?" Often there is no other message, just the three word question. It's email condensed to the level of text messaging.
In the wake of the bombings, there was a flood of these brief, call and response messages back and forth across the normally conversational telecommunications network. People used text messaging and email like ham radio operators: the point of communication became solely focussed on simply re-establishing communication.
— Are you OK?
— Yes. Are you OK?
The bombings took place on Thursday, July 7th. Tomorrow is Thursday the 14th. At noon, everyone is meant to stop for two minutes of silence. When I say stop, I mean go to a public place and not move for two minutes. It's partly in remembrance, partly an act of community. Apparently, the buses are stopping.
I like it. In it's purest form, it's like a giant sculpture of a city and it's people as a memorial for those who were killed. I'd like to see lots of photo and TV documentation. I mean, I'd like to see it. And I'd like to see television pictures of it happening across the entire city. It seems like the only reasonable response.
Posted by Brad at 11:01 PM | Comments (3)
