Looking to get a little bit more friendly with that new Magic Mouse? Look no further.

I have been using BetterTouchTool since I got my hands on the Magic Mouse to be able to middle click in apps like Maya, Nuke, whatever. I actually asked the developer Andreas Hegenberg for very specific middle click functionality (being able to click with one finger in the center of the mouse and to have an adjustment for the exact parts of the mouse that would respond to it) and he came through 100% within 48hrs:

He has recently added many other types of gestures, and a favorite of mine, a single tap right on (or right above) the Apple logo. I have a few tools I have made to make my day to day workflow a little bit more efficient. fn & layout are simple workflow tools that promote laziness to its full extent and the Magic Mouse has managed to make them a little lazier!

960×600 .mov

iPhone

If your mind is blown then comment or email and I will uhh. . . un-blow it for you. Hmm. . .

[BetterTouchTool]

720p

Just trying out a technique using the iPhone to capture some handheld camera data and use it in a comp. Even with only 640×480 pixels and an envelope with hand drawn tracker markers it still works very well.

Section of the iPhone camera track:

Watch it on an iPhone

This is a fantastic way to take the “perfect” out of the CG camera without messing with the CG methods of doing it. Randomization does not equal human, the way a human moves while holding a camera, large or small, is very far from random. Should be fairly simple to move data like this from application to application once a good track is put together.

Essentially the poorest, least efficient, laziest man’s version of James Cameron’s SimulCam without any of the benefits, except the human feel.

(Vimeo. . . I just can’t deal with Flash in my life anymore, I will still upload to you for continuity’s sake, but I want iPhone viewable embeds!)

And animators need some frame by frame action damn it!

I love everything about monome. Hand-crafted in the mountains, grid pattern with orange and gray squares, the technical interest required to really use one to its full potential, and most of all, it is a wide open device with many possibilities.

Take a look at what is possible with one:

And check out some more info. They come in all shapes and sizes nowadays, originally starting with a 40 node grid, and as long as people keep tinkering with them, they will get more and more interesting over time. Brilliant.

And if you are feeling generous my birthday is in November. . .

[monome.org]

Did you know you can look at this website on an iPhone!? Who knew? Now. . .if you add this site to your homescreen you will also get a sexy icon to go along with it, because who can go a day without checking up on what I am up to?

For the nerds: you can easily setup your site with this functionality by including a file named “apple-touch-icon.png” in the root of your site. Most people recommend starting with a simple square 158×158 (72dpi) image, you don’t have to worry about round corners or anything, the iPhone will take care of that for you.

My icon in it’s original form.

Maya is great, it can handle all of them CG’s that are so popular now a’days. What isn’t so great is that due to it’s fancy pants nature, it can crash at very inopportune times leaving you with your hopes crushed and tears streaming down your face. . .

Luckily, Maya does store recovery .ma files on every operating system that it is available for, on the Mac they are stored in a hidden folder (/private/var/folders/), and in those hidden folders are folders that a normal human doesn’t really understand.

However, it is very easy to set up a search that will indeed search these hidden folders for .MA files, allowing you to easily find your latest recovery data.

I quickly made a saved search (smart folder) that anyone can use to quickly access this default recovery location:


Maya Recover Smart Search
(1kb .zip file)
[Mac OS X 10.5+ if you are using 10.4 you are kidding yourself)

Just unzip the file, and place it in a easy to find directory (I recommend the default Maya directory in your User/Documents/maya folder, so it is always easy to find). I don’t care how cool you are, if you have used a 3D app, it has crashed on you before, and you have shed a tear. If you try this out leave me a comment.

UPDATE: This will-not always work 100%, sometimes it can miss some temp files, because it doesn’t always search the entire nested directories, so if you aren’t seeing it, another method is to go to a Finder window press Cmd+Shift+G, and type /private/var/folders/ and press return. In that “folders” folder is a bunch of arbitrarily named folders, in one of those there should be a -Tmp- folder that will likely have some .ma recent recovery files.

[andoru.labs]

I am absolutely terrible at keeping track of my spending, I really didn’t have a simple and quick method.

Now, however, I have discovered an incredibly user friendly and efficient way of doing just that, all using Google Docs, so it will always be available from anywhere with Internet access. Google makes it EVEN cooler with access to all these things Offline as well meaning as long as the info has been recently synced up, you can check your balance spreadsheet, email, etc. without an internet connection, using Google Gears.

Here is my new gameplan:

I followed a Doc written up by Nick Espinosa, that allows be to access the Form to Add a Transaction or Deposit in many different ways, the main one being right from my email Account, other include a simple bookmark, etc. You could even do this with an Internet capable phone (iPhone, I wouldn’t recommend the others). So basically whenever you spend some $, you simply open up the form, fill out the info, press Add and the data will be sent to your Google Docs Spending Report spreadsheet, which you can also access easily from Gmail, or just a simple Bookmark, to checkout your total Balance, or really do what ever you want with it.

You could even make Pie charts of the different categories of your spending, or a line graph to watch how the amount of money you have is falling drastically. . .

Anyway, it is fantastic, I highly recommend trying it out. And for those not using Gmail already, come on already, it is not that tough to switch your email address, and it is definitely worth it.

Also I can email anyone the link the the Google Docs template from my own account so they can use it as reference as well. The part that will take the longest is creating your own custom form that you will use to add data to your spreadsheet. So worth the 10 minutes it took.

[LIFEHACKER)