A blog by Cameron and Shannon

Now I’m going to teach you how to install and set up Quicksilver. Once we’re done here, you will be ready to use it every day, and almost immediately, you will wonder how you ever got by in OSX without it.

This goes for all of you — but this article is specifically for those of you that have never heard of it (heretofore arbitrarily referred to, for the sake of clarity, as “normal people”). The rest of you can do what I did and slog through one of the dozen or so instructionals online.

I am forewarning you: This article will be long, but that’s because I’m making it easy. Fear not! I’ll walk you through every step — this is a guide for laypeople such as yourself, and it’s based precisely upon my personal experiences with slogging through the aforementioned tutorials.

Alright, enough hype-talk. Let’s answer the first question:

What is Quicksilver?

Well, it’s mysterious, for some reason, and it just shouldn’t be. Blacktree (the people responsible) describe it as “A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.” Zzzzz. You probably checked out around the word “extensible”, and I don’t blame you.

However, maybe that’s as clear as it gets: it’s true, Quicksilver is an interface. It’s kind of like a Spotlight (you know, command-space on your keyboard) that can also perform actions — like “email this item” or “open this item in X program.” So it doesn’t just search; Quicksilver searches, and then it can act.

However, Quicksilver’s greatest weakness (at least to non-power users) is that it’s too powerful — it really can do all sorts of stuff. You can do things using Quicksilver that aren’t necessarily any quicker or better than doing them the regular way. That’s a very subjective call, though — so for this article I’m limiting the Quicksilver techniques to the ones I personally use day-to-day.

That said, you and I aren’t looking for a tool that can do anything — our goal is to have a tool that can make your computer easier to use, period. Fortunately, we can easily mold Quicksilver into just that.

Um, okay. What can Quicksilver do for me?

When we finish, you’ll be equipped with the following:

• The ability to launch applications with a single keystroke
• A slim, trim dock that only shows what programs you have running
• A near-instant search tool that knows to look at ONLY the files (and bookmarks) you care about (like a custom Spotlight search)
• A quick, easy way to resize images for email (without Photoshop)
• And just for fun, a calculator and a dictionary.

Even if that doesn’t sound like much, trust me, it’ll change the way you interact with your computer from now on.

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Items of interest this week:

Taco Bell’s Big Bell Box & Bacon Club Chalupa

As a followup to my previous post, I feel the need to speak out regarding the Big Bell Box and Bacon Club Chalupa.

The Big Bell Box

Taco Bell’s Big Bell Box is comprised of a taco, a Bacon Club Chalupa, a burrito, a thing of Cinnamon Twists, and a drink. Who cares, because you can buy all of those items separately, making the Big Bell Box nothing more than an extremely arbitrary combo meal served in a box instead of a tiny grocery bag. The KFC Big Box meal presents you chicken in a manner otherwise unachievable; unless the Big Bell Box is modified to also include something unique (e.g. a single tortilla), it will fall short.

The Bacon Club Chalupa

I generally don’t eat chicken at Taco Bell, but if you add Bac-O’s and mayonnaise and put it in deep-fried flatbread, you’ve crossed the line — as well as a number of other lines that have been drawn after that, Yosemite-Sam and Bugs-Bunny-style. I can’t follow you down this road, Taco Bell … but I’ll be here when you get back.

You’re Going To Learn Something Next Week

I’m going to teach you how to use Quicksilver. If you have any idea what that sentence means, the article won’t be for you. It’s going to be called “Quicksilver for Normal People”, and it’s going to be straightforward and simple, and afterwards, your Mac experience will never be the same. I promise.

Flickr Now Has Video

Flickr now has video, and I’ve decided that I like it. I made one video while sitting on the couch one evening, and it garnered a (for me) fantastic amount of comments/attention, so I made a second, more entertaining video, which has been completely ignored, so whatever. Expect more of these occasionally. They’re fun to make.

I Now Have A Film Scanner

Thanks to a bonus, I have now ordered a film negative scanner, and will be starting a photography site at a domain I’ve had reserved for this very purpose. More on this very soon; I’m excited. As soon as it comes in I’ll get a splashpage up, so that you may share in the excitement. (I’ll probably write a post about the incredibly tedious process of deciding what to buy — expect that next week, too.)