Virtual Playground

There are some tips mentioned in Mac magazine. I am sharing with you here so that you will find useful. There are lots of ways to speed up your mac via apps available in the internet. But still there are some built in commands that you can go through it via terminal to switch off the unnecessary things that you are not using to scale up your mac's performance. Below are some of the tips

Dock Animations:

There are some times when you see that the dock animations are not that necessary, If you find yourself in that situation, you can use the below commands to disable it.

defaults write com.apple.dock autohid-time-modifier -int0;

killall Dock

Hit Return after the above command. To get the animation back use the below command

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier; killall Dock

Disable Dashboard:

To be frank, i can ask the majority of the mac users, how many of us are using our dashboard regularly, I can confidently says that it is very few. There are some resources used by it default. So whey waste on something you never use!!. You can disable via the following command.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -bool YES;

killall dock;

To bring the dashboard back use the following command

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -bool NO;

Recently I came across a problem in my office, where one of my employee's PC CD drive did not work. But had to install a software in the system. I was wondering if I can convert the entire disk contents into an .img file and then mount the same using the clone drive copied via USB pen drive. Below is the process of converting any CD/DVD into an .img file using a Mac. 

Insert the CD/DVD into Optical Drive and wait for it loads.

Now Open Disk Utilities (You can get from /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility)

After Disk Utility is loaded, you can see your disk is mounted in the left side bar of the Disk Utility. Select the Disk.

Now in the Popup box, In Save As text box, Type the Name of the image file as per your wish and select the place where to save the image file in Where section.

Select the Image Format to DVD/CD Master and Keep the Encryption option as None. Recheck the options, which should be like below image. Then hit Save button and wait till it saves the image file.

The output Image file will be in .cdr format. In Mac .cdr image works perfectly. However we have to change as .iso file format which is globally accepted by all operating systems. Now we are going to convert .cdr image file to .iso file image using terminal. So Now we are going to do something little bit typing in Terminal. Don’t worry i will guide you every single step.

Launch Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/)Now my .cdr image file is located in desktop. So Lets Navigate to desktop in terminal by following command. (use proper command to navigate to your file location.)

and hit Enter/Return key. Now your Terminal is targeting your desktop location. Now type the following command to convert the .cdr file to .iso file. ([filename] should be replaced with your  file name of cdr file. Check below image.) and hit Enter/Return key. It will start converting.

hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o [filename].iso [filename].cdr

Now the terminal have converted your .cdr image file to .iso image file, which can be read by operating systems like Windows and Mac. This is the simple way to create iso image file from DVD or CD without using any third party apps. Now you can burn this iso to DVD/CD. To Mount this image just double click the file in Mac and In windows you need virtual drives to mount the iso image file. If you have any doubts, kindly drop us in comments.

Image Reference:

Today I was working with the Mac mini in office. I was trying to reinstall the OS. But i could not find the option key in my non-mac keyboard.

What I did was i logged in to my mac with the Logitech windows keyboard attached. I went to show the Keyboard viewer and slowly checking the visual feed back that i get from the keys that I press.

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This is an interesting article on the usage or the selection of colors for the website. In the analytic Illustration, it show how important for us to decide upon the color palette depending upon the client users business goals.

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Some time later today i was just researching the internet and I was searching for the perfect Free or open source type of agile project management tools. Either online or like a open source project where you can download the software and install in the server and access via web. I stumbled upon a particular blog where the author has listed mostly all of the tools that are offered for the agile project management tools.

Agile Scout

When I just went through each and every product that was available i was so much with information and i was confused at first but later researching further into each and every tool I found some of the products that are really good and worthwhile. There are some products that were present at the time of writing of that particular post but now some projects are out of existence. So from this vast list of product list i have selected few of the tools that are really for free without any hidden cost or anything.

Below is the list of products that I find useful and this is a summarized list where the products are mostly free and no hidden pricing or limits.

1. Trello.com

Trello is the fastest, easiest way to organize anything, from your day-to-day work, to a favorite side project, to your greatest life plans.

  2. Easy Backlog

An intuitive time saving backlog management tool for Agile practitioners working in or with agencies.

  3. Kanbanpad 

Kanbanpad is a project management tool so easy to use you'll wonder why you haven't tried it yet! Take a look of how easy it can be and start using it right away.

4. Plan that

Using Planthat you and your team will always know what is in the queue for this week and the ones coming. Prioritize and estimate tasks and immediately see the impact on your whole schedule.

At the time of writing this post. The team of plan that have decided to stop further progress on plan that web app. Instead of closing it off, they have given option for any company for partnership/Acquirement of the whole product. If any of you is interested in this project, you can very well contact the respected personnel on the website.