I’ve been dreaming for a long time of a system-wide keyboard shortcut to maximize/resize the current window in OSX (windows-style, where the window fills the screen or not, rather than going to the dock). In pretty much every application the ‘Window’ menu item has Minimize (shunt to dock) and “Zoom” which resizes the window and has the same effect as the green “+” jewel in the window header. The Minimize item has the easy-to-use keyboard shortcut CMD+, while the Zoom item has no shortcut and no hint at how to get one.

I looked around and found some totally whacked out solutions involving applescript or bash scripting but finally found an incredibly simple and obvious method using System Prefs. I recommend it for everyone who is sick of using the mouse to hit the tiny green jewel.

Detailed steps to set a Maximize keyboard shortcut in Mac OSX 10.6

• Launch System Preferences from the Apple menu
• Go to Keyboard settings
• Go to Keyboard Shortcuts tab at the top of the window.
• Go to Application Shortcuts in the sidebar of the window.
• Click the small + button
• In the popup thing make sure ‘All Applications’ is selected for Application:
• In the Menu Title box type in exactly: Zoom
• In Keyboard Shortcut type in the shortcut. I recommend Command-Shift-M
• Click Add button.
• Restart each app you want it to work in.

Note on restarting apps: These shortcuts work on an app-by-app basis so it will only work in a given application after the app is restarted. Thus if you restart your computer it will immediately work in all apps.

Note on choosing a shortcut: I chose Command+Shift+M (Command is the ‘apple key’) because it matches the Command+M keyboard shortcut for Minimize/send-to-dock and will be easy for me to remember. You can set it to another combination if you want, but think carefully as you don’t want it to be something that any other applications use or you might have strange results.

Physicist Stephen Hawking (via. acidcow)

The GoldenPalace.com Monkey (Wikipedia Link), was discovered in Bolivia and named by auctioning off the decision to the highest bidder. The proceeds went to the national park where the monkey was discovered.

Pointed out by Eddie Avila as both the worst and best thing about Bolivia.

I would have called it George Bush.

So yeah, as the title of the last post (which has slowly become ludicrously out of date) implies, WordCamp Montreal was in fact pretty awesome. If you’re a visual kind of person check out the photos.

Now a few months have passed since then and its time to move on. Move on to something other than WordPress events? No. Move on to smaller, more regular, less stressful WordPress events (and hopefully some posts here on my blog about other topics, we can still dream).

We’re going to use the Montreal WordPress Community group on facebook to organize evening meetups about once a month (join the group to get invited automatically). Patrick and the members of Station C have generously offered to let us use their coworking space for our get-togethers. This is great cause its sexy and well stocked with tools, but sad cause its not that big. Hopefully we can keep a healthy level of attendance without exploding.

The first meeting will be this thursday, when we’ll have a presentation and discussion about programming tools and how they can speed you up followed by a discussion of GPL and what it means for paid themes, plugins etc. I also told people to bring drinks and food, so it should be a cool party as well. You can read more about it and RSVP on the facebook event listing.

Zemanta, a Firefox extension that automatically suggests related tags, links, photos and articles for your blog posts and e-mails, is running a competition to encourage blogging for worthwhile causes. The five blogs that get the most votes will each win $3,000.

I vote for Global Voices Advocacy, the anti-censorship (and anti-blogger-imprisonment and pro-internet-awesomeness) wing of Global Voices. GV Advocacy is something made of pure good, a blog about bloggers getting shafted in countries where freedom of speech isn’t a cliche, its a dream that people can only hope for. Sami, our editorial lead for the project, is himself the victim of censorship in Tunisia, and his dedication to the project and the cause is astounding.

Obviously I’m biased as far as this contest goes, my paycheck comes from Global Voices and this money would be going into that pool, but I work for GV because I believe in it, so this post is my biased but sincere vote for my employers to get the funding and recognition they deserve (if only my coding/design was as good as the content our authors and editors produce…)

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

I nagged them early enough and got a slot to speak at WordCamp Toronto in May. I’ve had amazing times at the last two WordCamps I attended (San Francisco and New York, I missed the Toronto one last year) talking to people about my favorite web software and shooting the shit about all the little things the rest of the world doesn’t understand.

If you haven’t been and are a blogger/developper in the area you should check it out. If you’re in Montreal there will also be WordCamp Montreal in June but that’s pretty far off and we haven’t come up with many of the details yet. Not sure if I’ll be speaking in Montreal as well but it’s pretty likely ;)

Stumbled on this beautiful set of photos of different monkeys living in domestic situations with humans in the late 80’s. According to the artist’s statement she went out of her way to get to know each of the primates personally before taking the photographs, giving them an intensely personal feel.

See them all here. (via Fannie Laurence)

click image for full size

Ungrateful Biped archives.

Photo taken by Amira

I’m about to leave Sunny Miami Florida to return to frigid Montreal and am feeling particularly blessed to get to work and sometimes hang out with such wonderful people.

The WeMedia conference invited us and kindly sponsored some of our costs, but the real treasure has been sharing a house, food, drinks and stories with my coworkers. I’ve gushed about it in the past but its worth repeating: I couldn’t possibly do better in life than to have these people around me. That I get paid to spend time with them is a little miracle.

Shout outs to Eddie, Lova, Georgia, Solana, Jillian, Lokman, Rebekah, Ivan, Amira and Leonard. I fuckin’ love you guys.

click image for full size

Ungrateful Biped archives.