The Mind of Dr. Mac

There are some times — like when you’re watching a DVD movie or burning a DVD with iDVD — that you don’t want your Mac to sleep. Sure you can open the Energy Saver and/or Desktop & Screen Saver System Preference pane and make your adjustments there, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could suspend both — sleep and screen saver — with a single click? 

Well you can. All you need is a copy of Caffeine, a freeware application from Lighthead Software. Launch Caffeine and a little coffee cup icon appears in your menu bar, like this:

To turn Caffeine on and stop your Mac from using its screen saver or sleep temporarily, just click the coffee cup icon in the menu bar and it will fill with coffee to let you know it’s turned on, like this: 

To change the default duration Caffeine is enabled, Command + click the coffee cup icon in your menu bar and make your selection from the Caffeine menu that appears, like this:  

How can you not love that? It’s free, it’s easy to use, and it’s handy as all heck!

Click here to learn more about and/or download a copy of Caffeine.

Here’s a tip I saw in the December issue of one of my favorite newsletters, Jay Nelson’s excellent Design Tools Monthly.

Speaking of which, this post has now officially turned into two tips for the price of one…

The first tip is that if you’re not familiar with Design Tools Monthly (A.K.A. The Executive Summary of Graphic Design News), you should be. In a nutshell, each issue of DTM is filled to the brim with tips, bug fixes, industry news, software & hardware updates, font news, and much more, all delivered in a concise bite-sized chunks with no filler or fluff. Every issue is brimming with useful, helpful, and just plain wonderful tips, hints, news, and products. Click here to visit the DTM Web site, then download the free sample issue and see for yourself.

Now, here’s the actual tip about auto-deleting ZIP files after extracting the contents:

You probably know that when you double-click a ZIP file its contents are extracted. Once I’ve extracted the goods, I usually don’t need the ZIP file any more, so I drag it to the Trash.

I’ve always wondered why ZIP files weren’t smart enough to drag themselves to the Trash after revealing their treasures. In a second I’ll show you how to make ZIP files do just that.

But wait, there’s more: With the advent of Mac OS X Leopard and its Downloads folder, most of the ZIP file action ends up taking place there. Well, I like the idea of downloaded files going into the Downloads folder but I prefer the extracted files to appear on the Desktop until I figure out what I want to do with them.

This tip lets me do that too…

Here’s how:

1. Open the CoreServices folder (Hard Disk/System/Library/CoreServices).

   

2. Launch the Archive Utility application.

   

3. Choose Archive Utility–>Preferences.

   

It turns out this “hidden” Archive Utility application is responsible for what happens when you expand a ZIP archive. So, as you can see in the top half of the Archive Utility Preferences window above, I’ve configured mine so expanded files are saved to my Desktop and the ZIP archive file then moved to the Trash. I’ve also made it so when I create a ZIP archive (by right-clicking and choosing “Compress”), the ZIP file appears on the Desktop automatically, making it easier for me to drag it into a Mail message (which is almost always what I do after creating an ZIP archive file.