Mac basics: Setting up time-machine

Despite being one of the most important utilities on the mac, i realized that many people have absolutely no idea how Time Machine works. I thought that this would be an apt time to do a quick tutorial on backing up your files since the new school semester is starting. Yes, B and A, I wrote this for you.

Most people I talk to tell me things like “I don’t know how to use Time Machine” or “I just send stuff to myself via email” or “I back it up to a thumbdrive”. Sure, you could do that, but those are additional steps needed in selecting your files, uploading them etc. With Time Machine, you literally just need to plug in your external hard drive, and let your mac run in the background. I typically run time machine once a week, just to make sure my important files are backed up. I’ve had far too many bad experiences where I’ve lost days or even weeks worth of work by accidentally deleting a file.

A very important aspect of Time Machine for me is the versioning ability - put simply, I can go back in time and select a specific version of a file (usually a word document that I have modified) and restore it. Another crucial aspect (but less frequently used) is when i reformat my mac (or get a new machine) and i want to transfer all my old files, system preferences etc. into the new machine. I just need to restore the entire backup from Time Machine and voila, good as your old machine!

For me Time Machine is a little bit like insurance - you hope you will never have to use it, but when you finally need it, you’ll thank yourself for having the foresight to back up your documents and files.

I mean it when I say it is a two step process -

1. Plug in your hard drive

2. Click “Use as Backup Disk” when the pop-up dialog comes up.

It’s a little bit pointless for me to cover the entire process in detail since it has been so extensively covered on the web, so here are a few useful links -

APPLE’S OFFICIAL GUIDE

CULT OF MAC WALKTHROUGH (WITH SCREENSHOTS)

For this post, I will highlight some slightly more advanced techniques that I prefer, specifically -

1. Excluding specific folders

2. Restoring specific files

3. Deleting ENTIRE backups

EXCLUDING SPECIFIC FOLDERS

This is particularly helpful when you have limited space on your backup disk, and you only need to back up certain folders.

Right-click the time machine icon in the dock and select “open time machine preferences”

Select options from the Time Machine window

Immediately, you should see a pop-up window that allows you to select folders to exclude from backup.

Click the + sign at the bottom left of the window and select the folders to exclude.

Unfortunately the Time Machine only works like a blacklist (an exclude list of the folders) rather than allowing you to select the folders that you really need. Hopefully apple will have this feature in future updates. For myself, I prefer to exclude my Music and Movies folders since I already back those up in the home server.

RESTORING SPECIFIC FILES

Knowing how to back up your Mac is crucial, but the ability to restore files changes the game. left click on the time machine icon in the doc again and you should enter the window below:

Do the following steps detailed on the screenshot -

Note: The backup versions are listed as horizontal bars on the right of the window. Simply select the date which you want to restore from and proceed from there.

[Click the screenshot to enlarge]

To exit the time machine window, simple hit up the “esc” key on your keyboard and you should be out.

**Delete backups

This helps you to reclaim your hard drive space. DO NOT delete your backups via finder it will take a very long time and you will probably end up messing up your permissions. Instead, enter time machine again, right click on any blank space and select ‘delete backup’ 

be patient it will take awhile to trash that backup, especially if a single backup averages more than 100 gb (like mine).

so that’s it, really…no excuses not to back up now! i suggest making a habit of plugging in your time machine every week (near the exams I’m paranoid enough to back up once a day and also to my dropbox!) and just letting time machine run on its own. Other than the initial set-up, it really is a no-muss, no-fuss solution to backing up all your hard work.

ios 5 landing

i probably am one of a handful over on this side of the globe specifically up and waiting for ios 5 to drop, but I’m pleased to announce that it’s finally here. you need to update itunes to 10.5 first though, and then it’ll start to pick up the huge ios 5 update which clocks in at around 700 mb.

i’ll try to write down some of my thoughts tomorrow after using the new ios.

ios5 drops on october 12, US time…which would make it, wednesday, sg time at the earliest. i have to say that i am REALLY excited about it. it’s taken the update a really long time and there are some key features/ improvements that have been a long time coming, to say the least.

to sum up, the key features i’m really looking forward to are -

• icloud
• imessage
• the new notifications center
• reminders
• using the ‘+’ on the hardware volume button as a camera shutter release.

this should clear up some of my major bugbears with the current ios.

notifications

i really hate it when a new notification comes in and it completely disrupts whatever i am working on at the moment. the new notifications does a clean job of keeping everything where you want them, without being disruptive.

reminders

secondly, FINALLY apple! a REMINDERS app native to the ios ecosystem. third party apps do a great job, but i just want something that integrates tightly with ical on the mac.

imessage

imessage won’t be that amazing for me since I have whatsapp and I like to keep my non-iphone friends in the loop, but i like that there is compatibility for itouch and mac users so i can imessage any apple device and it transmits across all of the devices.

a good overview of the new features ios 5 brings is in the video.

unfortunately the word on the ground is that this major update is only compatible with the iphone 4, so iphone 3g users will be out of this one, just like how siri will only run with the newer iphone 4s, which i am not too fussed about in any case since i don’t really see how siri will fit into my current lifestyle, especially since I don’t drive often enough to capitalize on the voice recognition features that siri offers.

Think Different

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. — Steve Jobs

RIP Steve Jobs

iphone minimalism

In a fit of impulsiveness and frustration at my inability to instill some self-discipline in myself, I went ahead and deleted ALL the games in my iPhone. Including all the paid ones like street fighter, cut the rope, flight control… My favourites like cut the rope, zombie highway (new addition), veggie samurai etc. I don’t usually play the games but if I get really hooked on one I usually end up sacrificing sleep and productive hours playing it.

Apparently cold turkey works best for me. And in any case, it’s not hard to find something to occupy me on the iPhone.

I find myself doing alot more reading on it now - especially long form articles (rather than books-still prefer the holding the physical copy). For those interested, the apps I use to save articles (and also syncs with the web service) are instapaper and readitlater. I shelled out money for readitlater pro but actually there really is no need to. The free app does the job just as well with unlimited articles and offline saving (incredibly important for places with zero wifi or 3G connectivity). But I suppose paying for the full app is just my way of saying thank you to the makers for a great product!

Other things that I do in replacement of playing games -
 Watching videos- I managed to grab vlc before it went off the AppStore so I transfer videos to watch before converting. But I recently discovered player x which provides subtitle support so I might switch over from vlc pretty soon. I also blog alot more now because I find that usually by the time I get home I’ve pretty much forgotten all that i wanted to say.

Rss reading- I do alot more RSS reading on the iphone now. I don’t like having to visit each site individually so I hook up the RSS feeds with my google reader. If you haven’t tried using an RSS service, I highly recommend this as a tool to save you lots of time scrambling all about the interwebz. MobileRSS still provides one of the most complete RSS experiences for me because of the number of web services tie-ups - email, evernote, readitlater and instapaper. MobileRSS hooks up with my google reader account which has 400+ feeds so I have enough of a field day wading through all of them.

So that’s it really! I don’t really miss the games that I’ve deleted (yet)! I’ve given up doing any sort of work on the phone because the screen size just makes it impractical to open, view and edit documents. I prefer to highlight PDFs anyway which I can’t do on the phone so I have to end up reading the file on the computer anyway.
 

How to Close All the Windows in (Pretty Much) Any Mac Application [Video] →

How to be a Preview ninja

I’ll be talking specifically about one application today - Preview. For law students, one of the most important applications we will need on the mac is Preview, which does the job of opening PDFs, Photos etc.

If possible, I like to do most of the tasks via keyboard shortcuts so i don’t really have to keep moving my wrist around. what! stop judging me.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Rotating the pages: Select page, hit up Cmd + L (rotate left); cmd + R (rotate right)

Add bookmark: cmd + d (most frequently used when I need to drop the task for the moment and I have to close preview, and I don’t want to lose my place)

Annotations: Underline: cmd + ctrl + U; Highlight: cmd + control + H

- As these two annotation tools are most frequently used in my book, I’ve highlighted them. But for the sake of completeness, I’ve also included a screenshot of where you can find the shortcuts to all the annotation tools in Preview.

Part II: How to combine PDFs (easily one of the most frequently asked questions I get). seriously guys, google is your friend! learn how to use it. but I will cover it in the next post anyway. check back!

Mac 101: how to install applications

I know this may seem like a d’oh entry. But trust me, when I first got my mac, coming in cold from an era of PC installers etc, the simplicity of installing (and uninstalling) applications really threw me offguard.

In any case, here’re some quick step-by-step instructions on how to get those new applications up and running:

Installing applications

1. You’re likely to have downloaded a .dmg file in your downloads folder (or wherever you saved it). double click it to “mount” the .dmg file on your desktop, which should look like this (i’ve changed the icon on .dmg files for my mac but it should state .dmg)

2. Once you double click it, a new finder window displaying the contents of the .dmg file should pop up. looking like this:

drag and drop the application (e.g. dupeGuru ME) into the accompanying Applications folder shortcut. If there is no Applications folder shortcut, don’t panic. just drag and drop the application into your applications folder sitting pretty on the dock.

3. THERE IS NO STEP 3.Ok fine, dismount the .dmg file from the desktop by right clicking and selecting eject. This is more like a 1/2 step.

voila!

Uninstalling applications

1. Open the applications folder. Drag and drop the application to trash. Done and dusted!

There’s a more advanced way of getting rid of your applications together with lurking preference files but that’s for another day. for most of us though, this one-step uninstall serves our purposes!

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spentmoments:

workspace

Need for Speed

As we install more applications on a mint mac, our login/ bootup time becomes increasingly longer. No longer do we have the speedy bootup when we first got our macs! Although I rarely shut down my mac, thanks to the almost-immediate wake up time of the mac, I try to shut it down every 7-10 days just to make sure the entire system gets a bit of rest. 

I realize though, that I have a ton of login applications that start up automatically with my mac, which, aesthetically, tends to clog up my menubar quite abit, and more practically, it takes my mac a way longer time to get everything set up on reboot. 

Here’s a quick tip to get your mac booting up quickly just like it did out of the box - at the login window, after typing in your password (or if you have none, after clicking on your user profile), simple hold down the shift key. this should prompt the mac to start off loading only the default menu bar applications, which you can see in the screenshot below - I only have time machine, the battery meter, airport, language, time/date, bluetooth and spotlight. I haven’t done a time check yet but I think it’s safe to say that my mac goes from zero to hero in less than 15 seconds flat!

i think this is important for situations when you need to boot your mac from cold to access something quickly, and you don’t need menubar applications like dropbox for the moment. 

SUMMARY: 

hold SHIFT at the login screen to ensure speedy bootup!