Extension.

## Apple Aluminium Keyboard – Allocate the function keys

I’ve recently got myself one of the new shiny Aluminium keyboards, and I like it very much, but: It offers me 19 Functionkeys, which is nice, but completely useless, because you cant allocate them in the “Keyboard & Mouse” system preferences.

Therefore, I needed a solution, and tadaaa: it’s called Spark and it is free. Spark starts a daemon and lets you allocate any application, apple script, system feature (like sleep, restart, shutdown, etc) or any assigned keyboard action (as “insert date” for example).

## A Clock as Wallpaper

I don’t like the small digital clock in the menubar, and the alternative floating clock above all my windows is no solution either. Therefore I searched for a working analogue clock in form of a wallpaper, which I found at Vladstudio. The application for OSX is freeware and all clocks are fully customizable.

## Clock Screensavers for Mac OSX

FIQLO

MeisterSinger (Attention: Link to the .dmg File)

Quartzclocks

TimeBallz (PPC only)

Worldclock (Typographic Clock)

Fractal Clock

Polar Clock

Dropclock

Pong Clock

## Useful Applications for University

These are some Mac applications I use on a regular basis while studying

1. Elements as my very sophisticated periodic table. Provides every information necessary and has a decent look and feel to it.
2. Grapher is a mathematical plot software, included in OS X. The biggest advantage over almost every other mathematical software is its approach for displaying and editing the equotations in a readable format. Instead of throwing something like \sum_{i=0}^n i^3$at you, it displays $\sum_{i=0}^n i^3$ like it should be. Sadly, Grapher lacks documentation and tutorials, so it is kind of hard to get into but very rewarding in the end. 3. MathType is a tool to generate LaTex equations quick and in a humane way. Drawback: Very expensive (57$).
4. texMaker as my preferred LaTex editor.
5. pearDict is a freeware translation tool for the desktop with leo.dict.org-integration.
6. iFlash is a virtual flash-card application. It supports different learning modes, integrates audio and pictures and offers a good workflow.
7. NovaMind proves itself very useful for mind mapping, because you can generate mindmaps really fast. It looked and felt a little bit weird at the beginning, but as soon as I got the hang of it, i didn’t want to switch back to OmniGraffle.

## Fullscreen Applications on OS X

Sometimes I need apps running in fullscreen, without dock and menubar. OSX is natively not able to fulfill my needs, but with MegaZoomer fullscreen works with all applications based on Cocoa, but some, like iTunes for example, are based on the Carbon-Framework and therefore are not able to zoom. You need a hack.

1. Close iTunes
2. Rightclick iTunes.app: Show Package Content
3. Go into “Contents”
4. Edit “info.plist”
5. Insert “LSUIPresentationMode” and “4” like above
6. Save “info.plist”

If you now open iTunes again, the menubar and the dock disappear and can be accessed if you touch the edge of your screen (with the mouse, of course).

## Infocom Adventures on Mac OSX

The best Client for playing Infocom Adventures on the Mac is Zoom, and despite the fact, that these games are older then I am, they are still fun to experience. To play, you need the .z files from your original media, that you of course legally own.