Month: February 2008

Mac OS 10.5 Leopard: Instant Screensaver Activation

It’s a shame that the Mac OS  doesn’t have a “lock screen” function similar to Microsoft Window’s “Winkey + L”. One way around it is to set a password for when the screensaver is activated and then use the Hot Corners function and designate a corner of the screen to activate the screensaver.

Turns out that in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard there is a shortcut to activate the screensaver. Here is a tip from MacOSXhints.com, from the finder navigate System > Library > Frameworks > Screensaver.framework/Versions/A/Resources. Inside you should be able to find a file, ScreenSaverEngine.app. Running that will activate the screensaver immediately.

Unfortunately there is a slight snag with this tip. Apparently if you have it set to auto activate the screensaver at a preset time and you also manually activate the screensaver, the preset time screensaver will also activate at the same time as the already running screensaver causing some wierd video issues and also using up a lot of GPU. The recommendation is to create an Automator action. Steps how to set it up can be found on the second link above.

Gung Hei Fat Choy!!!

Happy New Year! We are now officially in the Year of the Rat. A lot to be thankful for:

It’s a beautiful day here in San Francisco, Andrea and I, for the most part, are healthy, Stripes is doing well, I have the most important person (Andrea), My parents, sister, and family are in good health, Work here at the Office of the Public Defender is great, and I have great co-workers.

So can’t really complain. BTW, you might notice that things look a little different around here. Say hello to Bui4Ever theme #17. It’s not quite done, I was hoping to get it all finished in time for Chinese New Year, but unfortunately there is still quite a bit to do under the hood. If things don’t quite look right, it’s because I’m still working on it. The site organization of information is changing; hopefully for the better. Things should will be easier to find. For now, you may have to rely on the search.

Gung Hei Fat Choy.