Silvermac

You already know how to use the QuickView in OS X, select the document or image and either click the QuickView icon in Finder or press the space bar.

However, once the file is displayed you can either view it in the default size (fit to window) or in full screen view.

There is another way to zoom the view, though. Once the file is displayed hold the Option key on your keyboard to display magnifier pointer and click somewhere on the displayed file. The file will zoom-in to where you just clicked.

You can click 10 times to zoom in 10% increments to a maximum 200% magnification. At any stage you can let go off the Option key and move the image around within the window.

To zoom out simply hold Option+Shift and click on the file, again in 10 steps.

Last weekend I visited Ron Mueck’s exhibition at Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art and took a few shots of his amazing sculptures.

The Big Baby, 5m long sculpture of a newborn baby girl.

See the larger image here.

Mask, is Ron’s selfportrait, approximately 3m long sculpture.

See the larger image here.

To illustrate the real size of it here is another shot with some people in the background.

For a few years I’ve been using Flickr to post and share my photos, but as my Pro account was expiring a few weeks ago I have decided not to renew  but rather to move on. Yes, my Flickr account is still alive, but since it’s no loner a Pro account only the latest 200 uploaded photos are displayed.

Why did I move on?  Well, Flickr hasn’t changed a lot in years and the interface feels so yesterday. One of the major issues I had was the white background with no options to change. Yes, there are some third party ‘gateways’ to display the pictures on black background, but that’s really not it.

I explored number of alternatives and here are some that I have found: Zoomr, PBase, PhotoBucket, PhotoNet, SmugMug, Deviant Art, Zenfolio,  23, PicasaWeb, Fotki, Fotolog, Photo Dekho, Photo Buzz, Humble Voice, WebShots, DropShots… and all of them have their advantages and disadvantages. Some are free, some you pay for, most of them have a basic free account, but if you want real stuff you have to pay. Some of them look great, some are far from great and some just consfused the hell out of me.

In the end I have signed up with SmugMug. I found that SmugMug is the closest to what I really wanted, it has an excellent professional looking interface, number of ways to display your portfolio by using over 50 themes, endless ways of customising your site and has an awesome set of tools for uploading and managing your photos.

The Power and Pro accounts even let you point your own domain name to your SmugMug account, which is pretty cool. All account types offer unlimited storage and traffic for photos with Power and Pro accounts including unlimited HD videos.

Have a look for yourself , you will get a 14 days free trial account and if you decide to sign up , don’t forget to use the SmugMug discount coupon X6dRIaxh10P1k - that will save you $5.00 of the regular price for any type of the account.

By the way, my SmugMug gallery is here if you’d like to have a peek and let me know what you think.

One of the very frustrating things in Mac OS X is that you cannot click a button and show Desktop. Well, you can … sort of. You have three options:

• Press F11, this will engage expose and move all windows to the edge of your screen,
• Click anywhere on your desktop while holding Cmnd-Option on your keyboard – this will hide all programs, except Finder if open, or
• You can use ShowDesktop, a free application by Everyday Software that sits in your dock or your menu bar and shows desktop by simply clicking on it.

I was upgrading BIOS on my ASUS EeePC 1000H today and was surprised to find how many users are asking the same question in so many forums – How to upgrade BIOS on 1000H?

Surprisingly, it’s dead easy. This is what you need to do.

Go to Asus website, click on Downloads and select your hardware from the list, then select your operating system. The operating system is not  important when it comes to BIOS updates, but this option will give you a list of all drivers for your PC and your OS, so you can download them as well if you need any.

Once you’ve downloaded the bios update file, unzip it and rename it to 1000H.ROM and copy the file to a CD/DVD or to a USB drive.

Needless to say, plug in the power adapter, you definitely don’t want to lose power while upgrading BIOS.

Plug in the USB drive or an external CD/DVD drive with a disk containing 1000.ROM file and reboot. When you see the EeePC setup screen (grey) that prompts you to press F2 if you want to enter setup, press Alt+F2.

The setup will scan any attached storage devices for the .ROM file and once it’s found it will start the upgrade process. The upgrade takes about 2-3 minutes and at the end you’re asked to press the power button to restart the computer.

That’s it, as easy as it gets.