Windows Linux Mac

Are you a college student like me who has a different schedule every day?

While I’m usually pretty good about setting my alarm clock for the right time, it doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan.  I have come across a nice piece of software every student Mac owner should have.

Aurora is an alarm clock that runs on your Mac. It even integrates with iTunes on your Mac. You can set an alarm that goes off at a different time for every day if you want.

Want to sleep in on the weekend, but afraid you might forget to set your alarm for that 8am class on Monday? Aurora solves that problem. But what if your Mac is…

Are there some settings in Ubuntu you aren’t sure how to change? Is something still not exactly the way you want it?  If so, you should give Ubuntu Tweak a try.

Ubuntu Tweak allows you to change hidden system and desktop settings.  Ubuntu Tweak is ONLY available for the GNOME Desktop Environment (not Kubuntu, or Xubuntu, etc).  However, the author states that Ubuntu Tweak will run on other distributions. If you have any experience with this please post in the comments!

To download Ubuntu Tweak, visit their download page.  There you can either download the source files, the .deb package (easiest method) or download the package via the command line.  The download page provides more information on the different ways to download Ubuntu Tweak.

Once you download Ubuntu Tweak…

I like to use keyboard shortcuts mostly because I find that it’s faster. Since I keep my keyboard on a tray and my mouse on the desk above it, I find that if I use my keyboard to do as much as possible, I don’t have to reach up and use the mouse too much. So, here’s how to make a keyboard shortcut to open any of your favorite programs.

Step 1: Go to the start menu and navigate to your favorite program, then right click and select properties.

Step 2: In the properties menu, select the shortcut tab at the top.

Step 3: Where it says Shortcut Key you will be able to choose your own key combination…

Ok, I know most of you probably already know how to take a screenshot on your Mac, Cmd+Shift+3 right? The only problem with this is it takes a screenshot of the whole screen and saves it to a file on your desktop.

What if you only wanted to capture a certain window or section of your screen?  What if you want the image copied to your clickboard instead of saved on the desktop?

Here are some other screen capturing shortcuts that you probably did not know about.

Screen capturing shortcuts that save the image in a file on your desktop:
Cmd+Shift+3: will capture the entire screen (this one most people already know)
Cmd+Shift+4: You can capture any part of the screen you want by dragging cross hairs
Cmd+Shift+4 then press spacebar: You can capture…

Why on earth would you want to invert your colors on your Mac? Well, what if you’re on an airplane, it’s a night flight and you’re looking at something that has a lot of white space. You might be able to decrease the brightness on your screen, but sometimes that may not even work. If that’s the case, you can essentially make a negative of your screen. Here’s how to do it:

Just press Ctrl-Option-Cmd-8 on your keyboard. This will change it back as well.

Here’s what my home page usually looks like:

This is it’s negative:

Changing your icons allows you to change the look and feel of your system. It mainly changes the standard icons to something new.

The first place to look for icons would be gnome-look.org. Click icon on the left. Or just click here. Search around for something that you like.

I like to keep my system looking dark since it doesn’t hurt my eyes too much. With my background being a night picture of London, it was only fitting for me to choose an icon theme that was mainly black. My favorite set is called black-white 2 gloss.

Once you’ve found your icon set, you will need to download it. I usually download everything to my desktop just so that I can find it easily, but that is up to you.

Your file should…

If you are used to using Windows, you probably have a favorite font.  Even if you use Open Office, you still need to have Microsoft fonts installed so that when you open documents created in Word they will look right.

Also, most web pages are created with Microsoft fonts in mind. So, if you have Microsoft fonts installed, web pages will look the way they were intended to.

To install the fonts make sure you have the multiverse repositories enabled.  To do this, click System -> Administration -> Software Sources.  When the window appears, make sure there is a check mark beside all of the repositories except “Source code”

Once you have done this, type the following code in the terminal to update the available software:
sudo apt-get update
When the update is finished, run…