Sometimes, it’s nice to shake up routine. For the past 14 years, I have been manually uploading my comics to my FTP server. This procedure involved three steps:

1. Open my FTP application (Transmit)
2. Navigate to the proper folder on my computer
3. Drag the file into the appropriate folder on the server. (I keep all my comics within the same folder on my server.)

As is the case with my comics, every time I make a revision (and in some cases I’ve revised a strip 20 times over the course of a day), I’d have to repeat the above steps each and every time.

So…

…given all the whiz-bang computing power we have at our disposal in 2012, shouldn’t there be a better way?

Thankfully there is, and it’s called automation. To automate the steps above, I used two applications: Hazel and Automator.

Hazel ($24.99) is an incredibly powerful program that automates filing, organizing and cleaning files and folders that live on your computer. Automator is an app bundled with Mac OS X that bills itself as a “personal automation assistant” using drag-and-drop workflows.

To preface this discussion: there are many ways to skin this cat. This is what worked for me.

First, I’ve created a rule within Hazel called “Latest Toons”. This rule will examine the date of the file and checks to see if it was created within the current week. If that condition is true, two actions will be performed.

1. Hazel will set a color label on the file (marking it green).
2. Hazel will launch an Automator workflow to upload the file to the appropriate folder on my server

I use Panic’s Transmit ($24.99) for all my FTP tasks. Transmit comes with an Upload action that is accessible from within Automator.

In Automator, I selected the Upload action and moved it into the workflow area. Next, I configured the Upload action to use one of my Transmit “Favorites” (a bookmark of sorts that contains all my FTP login info, including the correct path to open on the server). After configuring the action, I saved the workflow for Hazel to access.

Now, whenever a new comic file is saved in my pcw_toons folder, Hazel automatically uploads the file into the appropriate folder on my server. Translation: I’ll never have to manually upload a comic to my FTP server EVER again!

To sum it up: Automation is a powerful method of saving time on repetitive tasks. It lets your computer handle the mundane, routine activities while freeing you up to focus on the real tasks at hand. And with tools like Hazel and Automator on the Mac, it’s never been easier!

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• Directory Fragmentation: It’s Real
• Singing the Praises of Wunderlist
• Review: Forklift 2.0
• Raven Takes Flight: The Web Browser for the Rest of Us.
• HyperDock: First Look

One big advantage of owning a display like the HP ZR24w is that it supports both landscape and portrait modes. While I’ve been using my display almost exclusively in landscape mode since I first purchased it, curiosity about the idea of “going vertical” got the best of me, so I went ahead and flipped the display over to portrait mode.

Portrait mode is fantastic for making comic pages. Instead of only seeing a portion of the full image, I can see the entire comic page in one go. To fully use the display for illustration in this mode, I had to adjust my Wacom tablet driver settings to match the orientation of my new display. No biggie. Once the settings were adjusted, my tablet worked like a charm!

Having used this setup all weekend, I’m starting to prefer portrait mode over landscape. I’m curious to know if other digital artists work with portrait mode, and what they think of using a display in this fashion. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

-Krishna

Update: One week in, I’m positively sold on the portrait display. I’ve never been more productive.Similar Posts:

• Number 3 Does It
• First Impressions of the HP ZR24W 24″ display
• Not So Meticulous: My Thoughts on Dual Display Setups
• Samsung 305T (Slight Return)
• The Great 24″ Monitor Hunt

I love desktop wallpapers, but the problem I have with most backgrounds is that they make it more difficult to see folders and files that I have on my desktop. Take the image below:

It’s a great image – full of contrast and color – but the crisp detail of the photograph has a nasty side-effect: it makes the text underneath the hard drive icons more difficult to read.

What’s my work around?

Simply take the image into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor) and add a Gaussian blur to it.

You’ll still have all the wonderful color and contrast that makes the image so appealing, but now it’ll be much easier to discern the icons from the background. Give it a try. You might actually like it.

-Krishna

If you’ve ever been in the process of moving your files and realized midstream that you need to open a folder on your hard drive, you’ll come to appreciate the power and simplicity of DragonDrop.

DragonDrop is an elegant and useful Mac app that lets you set down what you are dragging without worrying about keeping the mouse button held down. It works great with files, folders, text snippets, etc. and has already improved my productivity ten-fold. It sells for $4.99 at the Mac App Store, and is easily worth its asking price.

How does it work?

Drag a file or set of files and shake your mouse cursor back and forth. A transparent DragonDrop window appears. Stuff your contents in the window and retrieve them when you’re ready to move them into their proper location. That’s it!

If you’re not a “mover and shaker”, you can use DragonDrop’s Menu Bar icon instead. DragonDrop’s prefs (shown below) are simple and self-explanatory.

In the snapshot below, I’ve selected three files and shaken my mouse cursor. The DragonDrop window (or portal, as I like to think of it) appears.

Drop your files into the portal until you are ready to retrieve your files.

DragonDrop is one of those little apps that quickly makes itself indispensable. I can’t imagine using any Mac without it. DragonDrop has eliminated the need for me to use a dual-paned window (a la Forklift or PathFinder) to move files because I can invoke it at a whim.

I’ve tested DragonDrop version 1.1.5 for about a day now and I’ve already given it a hefty workout. I haven’t run into any snags or bugs in my usage, but I’ll update this review if I run into any problems.

Conclusion

If you move files on a regular basis (and who doesn’t, really?), DragonDrop is easily the best $5 you’ll spend and earns a mighty 5 Bob Weiners. Highly Recommended.

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• Review: Teleport 1.0.2
• Down with Divvy
• Review: Palua 3.0
• Mac Software Picks: HyperSpaces
• Review: Memory Cleaner

Two weeks ago, shortly after I wrote my blog post entitled “Mac Spring Cleaning: Rethinking How I Organize My Data”, I ordered myself a shiny new 120GB Other World Computing Mercury Electra 6G solid state drive for my Mac Pro.

I’m no stranger to solid state drives; I’ve been using them with both my Macs for almost two years now. SSDs have given a new lease on life for both my machines, which are over 4 years old (ancient by computing standards).

Three factors influenced my latest SSD purchase.

• My 40GB OWC SSD was no longer cutting it for all my apps / OS.
• The prices on larger SSDs have come down within the past 3 months. (I paid $150 for my 120GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G.)
• I wanted to perform a complete rebuild of my Mac Pro as a performance tune-up.

Rebuilding an OS and apps is like moving into a new house: it takes time to move your stuff (installing apps) and it takes a little longer to settle in (adjusting all your apps settings the way you like). It’s tedious, but in the end, you have a clean, organized place you really like coming home to.

Carrying the moving analogy, not everything made it into the new “house”. First and foremost, Corel Painter X didn’t make the cut. While Painter is a good program for what it does, I can do everything I need to do illustration-wise with Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop.

Setting up most of my apps was pretty easy. Ironically, the apps that weren’t as easy to reconfigure were iTunes and iPhoto. I manage all of my media and photo data on a separate internal drive; it took some Googling on my part to properly configure both apps to find their content.

Side note: iTunes is in desperate need of a make-over. My suggestion would be for Apple to split up iTunes into separate apps to manage music, movies, etc.

With the new 120GB drive, performance screams. Part of it is because of the extra head-room on the SSD. Sketchbook Pro, Photoshop, etc. all make use of the extra fast scratch disk space on the drive.

Furthermore, reinstalling Photoshop cleared up some wonky behavior (such as the delay encountered when typing text using the Text tool) and allowed me to modify, remove and optimize a few of my workflow actions / scripts. Sketchbook Pro runs like butter now: super fast with no lagging whatsoever.

In the end, while rebuilding the OS and apps was a bit tedious, the expended effort was totally worth it.

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• The Solid State Drive Experience: First Impressions of the OWC Extreme Pro SSD
• After the SSD: Re-evaluating my Apps
• Windows 7: My First Impressions
• Feeling the Itch (SSD drives)
• Review: OWC Mercury Elite AL-Pro mini 500GB drive

I’ve been thinking a lot about file structure and folder organization lately, particularly when it comes to managing and accessing data across multiple Macs. While I’m accustomed to my current folder structures, I feel that I’m not managing and organizing my data as efficiently as I could.

To that end, I feel that I need to overhaul my approach.

Here’s my proposal:

First off, I plan on moving all my current projects and data files from both laptop and desktop Macs over to Dropbox. Doing so will let me access these files from either machine I happen to be working from. Having these files on Dropbox will also permit me to access them from any other machine, so long as the computer I’m sitting at has a connection to the ‘net.

Older projects and data files that I rarely access will be archived onto a NAS device, which will, in turn, back up to both a secondary hard drive as well as a remote server (via Backblaze).

Furthermore, my plan is to add a larger capacity SSD to my Mac Pro (120 GB) for housing all my apps and the OS. I will also dedicate a separate hard drive to exclusively house all my music and movie files. I think I’ll also have a separate drive dedicated to photos, as well.

Of course, I’m looking for thoughts and feedback on my proposal. On paper, it seems like my new methodology could work, but I want to make sure I’m not overlooking something significant. How do you organize and share your data across multiple machines? Sound off in the comments below.

-Krishna

In the “I’d love to, but I can’t” department.

Flash Player (see image above) does not detect any mouse clicks, so I’m hopelessly staring at a worthless dialog box. I’m running the latest Lion and I’ve installed the latest Flash Player (version 11). Maybe I’m missing something…

Anyone who can successfully help me troubleshoot the problem will get a PCW sketch mailed to their doorstep.

Help?

-Krishna

It’s been over 2 years since Apple released a new Mac Pro model. With Apple’s stock at an all time high (breaking $600 a share today), and consumer products like the MacBook Air, iPad and iPhone taking the lion’s share of sales (no pun intended), pro users of Apple’s hardware are wondering whether Apple still cares about supporting them. The jury’s still out, but the writing appears to be on the wall…

Does an iMac make sense as a Mac Pro substitute? No. And here are two reasons why:

1. The iMac is not expandable. Pro users need the ability to add RAM, storage and video cards to expand the machine’s capabilities. An iMac is a closed system, with limited upgrade potential.
2. The iMac saddles the user with a glossy-screen display. I’ve used the iMac display, and while it is sharp and vibrant, it is also a reflective mirror. An expandable system like a Mac Pro gives the user the flexibility to choose a display from any number of manufacturers.

My Mac Pro is 4 years old. With the addition of RAM and a solid state drive, it’s still wickedly fast, handling pro apps with aplomb. I would buy a modern Mac Pro if it were available, and I know I’m not alone.

In short, an expandable machine like the Mac Pro is needed in Apple’s line up. Let’s hope Apple upgrades this venerable machine.

-Krishna

Out of the box, Apple keyboards are setup to where the function keys operate in Apple Mode. Within Apple Mode, users can use their function keys to perform a variety of tasks, like play or pause iTunes, adjust screen brightness, and even invoke Dashboard or Mission Control. To access the function keys as function keys, particularly on a Mac laptop or small-sized Apple keyboard, you’ll have to press the Fn key along with the function key.

As a Mac power user, I regularly make use of my keyboard’s function keys. Programs like Flash and Photoshop have various keyboard shortcuts that are specifically assigned to function keys, and it’s a pain in the tookus to have to hit the Fn key + Function Key (i.e. F1) each and every time I need to invoke a specific function.

The developers at Molowa must have experienced my pain, because they are the developers behind Palua, a little Mac software gem (99 cents at the Mac App Store) that lets the user easily toggle the functionality of the Function keys on the Apple keyboard.

Palua installs as a menulet on the Mac’s menubar. Here’s how it works:

Hit Command-Option-Tab (or make up your own keyboard shortcut) and your Function keys toggle to one of two modes:

1. function key mode
2. Apple mode (adjust volume, brightness, etc.)

Once toggled, the keyboard stays in the specified mode until you toggle it back. Bliss!

This functionality, by itself, is pretty nifty, but Palua goes several steps further to earn its status as a Mac gem.

First up is Palua’s Preferences tab, which lets the user assign a configurable keyboard shortcut to toggle the function keys. I kept the default settings. Also within the Preferences tab, the user can elect to specify the default function key mode. (Apple keyboards are set to ‘Apple mode’ by default.)

In the Smart Mode tab, you can choose the default behavior of the function keys, depending upon the app you’re running. So, for apps like Flash and Photoshop, where I use function keys all day long, I’ve set the behavior of my function keys to operate in function key mode. For iTunes, I’ve assigned the keyboard to work in Apple mode. To sum up, you can choose which mode your function keys are in depending upon the app you are running. Yes!

But wait! There’s more! You can also change the look of Palua’s menulet icon. I chose “Black” so I can easily pick out the Palua icon from my menubar.

Palua does what it’s supposed to and then some. At a mere 99 cents on the Mac App Store, it’s a no-brainer purchase for power users. Because of its ease of use and its polish, Palua rightfully earns 5 out of 5 Bob Weiners.

-Krishna

Share this review with your friends using the buttons below!

Similar Posts:

• Down with Divvy
• Software Pick of the Month: DragonDrop
• MenuPop: Bringing the Mac Menubar to your Mouse

It’s the holiday season – and I wanted to give my Mac Pro a gift for its dedicated service for the past 3 years. So last week, I ordered 2x2GB memory sticks from site sponsor Other World Computing. This brings the total memory of my system up to 14GB.

The reason for this upgrade?

My computer had a tendency to exhaust all its available RAM (thanks to the myriad of graphics programs I run concurrently on my system) to the point where the OS began using virtual RAM (aka my solid state drive’s limited space) to compensate.

The extra 4GB of RAM should alleviate that issue. The OWC RAM came within a few days and installation was as simple as snapping the extra modules into one of the memory riser cards. All 14GB were recognized when I powered the Mac Pro on.

With memory prices so incredibly cheap, adding more RAM seems to be a no-brainer of an upgrade.

-Krishna
Similar Posts:

• More RAM!
• The Solid State Drive Experience: First Impressions of the OWC Extreme Pro SSD
• Adding a Rocket to a Dinosaur: The Mac Pro Solid State Drive Rebuild
• Windows 7: My First Impressions
• A Rebuttal to Ben Brooks: the Mac Pro Experience