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Alias Management using AliasHerder

I regularly present to audiences using PowerPoint. I frequently interleave canned demonstrations (videos) throughout my presentations. I like to keep directories for each session with the PowerPoint documents and videos I showed that day’s audience. But I dislike the idea of spreading copies of the same file around my hard drive when I use the same content many times.

OSX supports aliases, which are small files that link to the original documents. But there are a lot of quirky things about aliases.  For instance, my Mac has no ability to replace the alias with the original file.  Alias copies always produce another alias. This means when someone requests all my content on a USB, it is not possible to group select and copy. For each file I have to “show original file” and then copy that file. This is a real pain if there are many files.

After I requested help on a Mac forum someone referred me to AliasHerder. This simple tool will convert aliases to the original file. So, I can now copy an entire directory of links to a USB and quickly replace the aliases with the originals. This is done with three simple steps:

  • Select all files and aliases I wish to copy.
  • Drop the files and aliases to their target destination.
  • Drag the target folder to the AliasHerder icon on my dock.

The internet is a wonderful place that people in need of miniature tools to ease their troubles can find help within hours. I happily donated this afternoon $4USD to AliasHerder’s author.

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2011 Singapore Elections: Results and Aftermath

To briefly review, on 7 May Singaporeans chose their members of parliament (MPs) in the country’s 16th parliamentary elections. Because of the ruling party’s control of media, districting, and district consolidation into GRCs, the People’s Action Party (PAP) had maintained 100% of the 87 seats in parliament in every election from 1968 to 1989. The PAP earned 66% of the popular vote in the previous election which allowed it to carry 82 seats into the 2011 election. Under these conditions of incredible dominance, and frequent taxi driver grumbling, Singaporeans went to the polls in early May.

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KitchenAid Mixer Fail

I have owned a KitchenAid mixer for years. A couple years ago I upgraded my first one to the Professional 600 series for its improved power for kneading doughs. While I only occasionally make bread with the mixer, I frequently use it to make fresh pasta. Fresh pasta is a staple meal for small groups of guests that love to drink wine and chat around the kitchen.

When I moved to Singapore I purchased a converter to allow my 110v appliances to work on my home’s 220v power. I remember palming this eight ounce hunk of plastic in the hardware store and wondering if it was what I needed. My fading memories from college electronics surfaced notions that thick iron bars and scores of copper wire turns were needed for voltage conversion at even moderate amperage.  Transformers should be heavy, right?

But, shit!, surely this $40 converter would blow a fuse before doing something catastrophic to my mixer, right? Two hours later I knew this to be untrue. When I connected the 575w mixer through my piece-of-shit converter and flipped the switch, I soon heard something like a 22 caliber pistol going off in my kitchen. From that moment on neither the mixer nor the POS converter worked. I eventually purchased a S$150, 5kg converter that has succeeded for other appliances with the POS version failed. But the mixer was dead.

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2011 Singapore Elections: SRCs and GRCs

Before Singapore’s elections of a couple of weeks ago, I spent time trying to figure out what was going to happen and how it worked. In U.S. elections, votes are cast on numerous issues.  Citizens vote on multiple representatives from the municipality up to the federal government. In California we were annually bombarded by propositions born from an active electorate and an incompetent government. But from what I could tell, each Singaporean was only choosing his area’s member(s) of parliament (MP). And as I dug in even more, I saw that some were not even choosing that.

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Photoshop: Font Too Large

Last night I purchased for my Mac a copy of Photoshop Elements 9 and I have been spending this public holiday (Vesak Day) playing around with it. I was editing images for a possible website redesign when I ran into a snag. I used the text tool to overlay a message on a picture but the text appeared incredibly large. It was gargantuan! I could fit no more than one or two characters in the entire image.

I tried Googling “photoshop elements inserted text too large” but came to several pages that did not solve my problem. I played around with Photoshop some more and eventually solved my problem. Since the questioner on the above page did not get a satisfactory answer I wanted to document my discovery here, as public service to anyone else out there with the same problem.

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2011 Singapore Elections: Property Values

Just over a week ago Singapore finished its first general elections in five years. I enjoy politics here nearly as much as I do in the states. Singapore is a strange country. It is mostly democratic. And its elections are a fun subject of my occasional consideration. My host country does not protect the speech of its citizens and guests, so entries like this will show deference to the law by omissions. I think I have a handful of election-related thoughts to jot down. We will see how many blog entries arise.

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