Lock screen in OS X: Show keychain status in menu bar

MacDevCenter has written a brief tutorial on the OS X Keychain. It doesn't completely demystify the keychain (I'm still a bit unclear about what it means to unlock or lock an entire keychain), but it helps. I like the idea of showing the keychain status in the menu bar; as a side-effect I also get a convenient 'lock screen' shortcut.

MacDevCenter.com: A Look at Keychain Access (and Why You Should Care)

... If you choose to go down this route [lock keychain], you may quickly run into one of the disadvantages of being over-careful about security: websites and email clients and all sorts of other applications start pestering you with dialogs, asking you to enter your keychain password every single time something needs to be done. To avoid this, return to Keychain Access' preferences panel and check the "Show Status in Menu Bar" option.

Now you've got quick, easy access to your keychain controls from the menu bar, and you can lock and unlock whole keychains without having to mess around inside of Keychain Access itself.

Note that there's also a Lock Screen command, which may come in handy if you have to leave your machine unattended for short periods of time. It will ask for your username and password before letting you get back to work.

Another good policy is to create several keychains. One for boring day-to-day stuff--this might as well be your default login.keychain file, one for Secure Notes, and extras for any passwords and certificates that you need to keep extra secure.

Using the Keychain for secure notes is a bit silly. Much better to create an encrypted disk image to hold that sort of thing, and mount it as needed. Just be sure NOT to store the password for the disk image in the keychain!

Creating buttons for OS X (Photoshop required)

Random Tech: Beautiful Aqua Button Template and Tutorial

PDNOnline has a fairly detailed overview of Aperture

They've put a good review together. Biased towards the positive certainly, but it's not hard to see where they ran into problems. After reading about the pending update I'm hopeful I'll be moving to Apterure withing a few months: Putting Aperture Through Its Paces: Part I

Another OS X cache related problem

OS X caches cause no end of trouble. This one caused a 'corrupt font' error in Office:

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

...So you would think it was a file in my home directory. Wrong! The culprit was Apple's system level font cache, which caches fonts by user. Deleting /Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS/(uid)/, where (uid) is my user id (just check with get info if you don't know your id - yours is the one you own) solved the problem.

Google and Firefox: getting more serious? Two extensions

Google has published two useful extensions to Firefox, one related to blogging, the other to spotting phishing scams. I've installed both. Interesting by itself, but is this an early sign of a more vigorous Google/Firefox collaboration? I don't remember Google previously delivering anything for Firefox before IE.

Philip Greenspun's on building a digital SLR system and selecting lenses

Philip Greenspun's Weblog. Phil is a great writer and photographer. I liked his pithy summary comment: "[If you don't want to read this article and are impatient to get started immediately, get a Canon Digital Rebel XT and Sigma 30/1.4 lens.]" and this other emphatic opinion:

... The market leader in the professional/advanced amateur photography world is Canon. If you don't have a major investment in lenses you will probably want to buy a Canon digital SLR. The number two spot is occupied by Nikon, which is also a reasonable choice. Fuji and Kodak have made digital SLRs that accept Canon- and Nikon-mount lenses. Once you get beyond Nikon and Canon it becomes very difficult to rent lenses and the companies that make the more obscure systems don't have a large enough market share to invest enough money to build competitive bodies. Leica, Minolta, Olympus, Pentax, and Sigma are the small vendors in the digital SLR market. Unless you have an enormous investment in lenses for one of these brands the only one of these worth considering for purchase is Olympus, due to its innovative Four-Thirds system, discussed below...

I got an XT with the kit lens, and a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens. I think my next lens though will be the Sigma 30/1.4, then after that a vibration-damped zoom if/when Sigma makes one.

Porting MSN Virtual Earth to an OS X Dashboard Widget

MacDevCenter.com: Dissecting a Dashboard Virtual Earth Widget. Intereting. Now if only the Dashboard was properly implemented! (Widgets should live on te desktop, not in some silly floating layer.)