Handy macOS keyboard shortcuts

Every now and then I forget these two helpful macOS shortcuts – maybe others do too, so I’ve decided to share!

Immediate logout
Command + Option + Shift + Q

Show/hide hidden files
Command + Shift + .

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Axial SCX24 LED light pinout

It seems a popular thing to put additional lights onto SCX24’s of all flavors (C10, Deadbolt, Wrangler, Gladiator, and now the Bronco).  Interestingly though, no one seems to want to share information for how to add functioning brake lights and reverse lights.  I’ve created a pinout after putting tail lights, brake lights, and reverse lights on my C10.  Please do keep in mind that this is for the Axial AE-6 ESC/RX and may not be compatible with the newer SCX24’s that use different electronics.

Axial AE-6 LED Pinout

Axial AE-6 LED Pinout for tail lights, brake lights, and reverse lights.


Note:  To do the tail and brakelights as combination units with the same LED, I use a larger resistor to allow through about 5ma per LED for tail lights.  Then the brake controller turns on and sends a parallel charge to the LEDs giving an additional 15ma per LED.  You can sort this out by using a parallel resistor calculator and making sure that your two resistors together in parallel do no exceed the value you were looking for as a maximum for the LED you chose.

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Manjaro – want your desktop icons?

While this is really more of a note for myself, it may help others.

If you would like to have desktop icons in Manjaro, this can be done by installing gnome-shell-extension-gtk4-desktop-icons-ng.  If you already have this installed, make sure you have gone into Layouts and turned on desktop icons.

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7 Handy Chromebook keyboard shortcuts

I love to use keyboard shortcuts to speed up my everyday workflow.  Chromebooks have many of the same shortcuts as Windows and Mac (copy, cut, paste, print etc), but here are some that are OS specific.

Show Chrome OS version at login screen :: ALT + V

Set screen resolution to default :: CTRL + SHIFT + 0

Lock screen :: CTRL + SHIFT + L

Log out :: CTRL + SHIFT + Q

Toggle Caps lock :: ALT + SearchButton

Launch Task Manager :: SearchButton + ESC

Show all keyboard shortcuts :: CTRL + ALT + ?

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Mac scripts and Chromebook tips – hiding Mac applet

I’ve been thinking about adding some posts on here with tech tips.  Here’s a taste of what I’m thinking.

You’re all done creating a nice little applet for Mac OS, maybe using Apple’s built-in Script Editor.  Now you want it to run on a client computer in the background, completely hidden from view.  There are two things I always consider in this situation.  One is obvious, you want to hide the icon in the dock and menu bar.  The second consideration is to mask the identity via the process name.

Starting with the process name makes sense because it is also the easiest to change.  Simple adjust the name in the Bundle Info section, or manually adjust in the info.plist file.  Now if you open Activity monitor, instead of seeing something obvious like “Joe’s updater app” it could be more innocuous like “updagent”.  Quite frankly though, this name doesn’t matter unless you are trying to keep the end user from closing the application on purpose.

The one most people are concerned about is hiding the application from the dock and menu so it isn’t in the way during normal day-to-day activities.  This is done simply by adding a line in the info.plist file.  The line to add is:

Application is agent (UIElement) : YES

That’s it!  Now you have a hidden, and fairly covert, applet running in the background.

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