If you have ever bought a cheap (or Chinese) UPS for your Mac’s battery backup, you may find that the UPS either has no USB connection, no software or your Mac just does not recognize the device. The purpose of having a UPS is to have backup power in case of power failure but if you don’t have software to tell the Mac to shut down when your running on battery power than your Mac may still shut down unexpectedly when the battery runs out. 

To Fix this, I have created an AppleScript that will monitor your your connection to another device on your network and when needed shut down. Let me explain; Not everything needs to have battery backup. I dont have my ADSL modem on battery backup so if the power goes out, I lose my internet and my connection to the modem. My AppleScript pings the modem every minute and if there is no response for 3 minutes from the modem, the computer shuts down preventing bad things from happening. 

Copy the code below, paste into AppleScript and save as an Application. Then set this to startup when you log into your computer. 

The Only change that needs changed is the password for shutting down the computer and the IP address of a device on your network that also loses power during an outage. 

set t to 0
repeat until t = 3
delay 60
if (do shell script "ping -c1 172.16.10.66 2>&1; exit 0") contains "1 packets received" then
set t to 0
else
set t to t + 1
end if
end repeat
do shell script "date > $HOME/Desktop/LastPowerOutage.txt"
do shell script "shutdown -h now" password "******" with administrator privileges

Normally when you reply to a message in Gmail your signature is placed all the way at the bottom below both your response and the original message. I like my signature right under my response. Luckily you can turn on this feature in labs. 

From ithemes.com:

1. Go to your Settings.
2. Click the Labs link on the far right.
3. Scroll down to “Signature Tweaks” and select “Enable.”
4. Voila! It refreshes Gmail so you lose any open chat windows, and you’re good to go.

I created this AppleScript because I wanted to store my iTunes Media from a shared Windows box but run iTunes on my Mac becuase iTunes is so GD awful on Windows. What this script does is the following:

1. Ping the IP address of the Windows Box (172.168.10.5)
   1. If the computer is Un-reachable you get a pop-up asking to Retry or Cancel. 
   2. If the computer is online the process continues. 
2. Mount the shared volume. (I have 2; Storage and Storage2)
3. Check that the shared folder(s) acutally mounted to the Finder.
   1. If one or both disks do not mount than an error tells you which one is not there and gives you the option to Cancel or Retry.
   2. If all disks are mounted to the Finder, iTunes is launched. 

You are welcome to download this AppleScript from the link below and change as you need or copy and paste below code into AppleScript, make changes and save as Application. 

You will need to change the following information:

• IP address of the computer you share files from. (Mine is 172.16.10.5)
• Name of the computer you store media on.  (Mine is WHS)
• Change network drive from SMB to AFP or NFS if needed.
• Change the name of the shared folder(s).  (Mine are Storage and Storage2)

Downlaod from HERE.

set x to 0
set t to 0
set s to 0
repeat until t = 1
try
set t to 1
do shell script "ping -c1 172.16.10.5"
on error number 2
set decision to display dialog ("Unable to start iTunes because the server 'WHS' can not be found. Please check that the server is turned on and connected to the network then press 'Retry'.") buttons {"Retry", "Cancel"} default button 1 with icon note
if button returned of decision is "Retry" then
set t to 0
end if
end try
end repeat
repeat until x = 1
try
mount volume "smb://172.16.10.5/Storage"
mount volume "smb://172.16.10.5/Storage2"
end try
#delay 5
tell application "Finder"
if exists disk "Storage" then
set s to s + 1
end if
if exists disk "Storage2" then
set s to s + 2
end if
if s = 3 then
tell (launch application "iTunes")
tell application "iTunes"
activate
end tell
end tell
set x to 1
else if s = 2 then
set decision to display dialog ("Unable to start iTunes, cannot connect to drive 'Storage'.") buttons {"Retry", "Cancel"} default button 1 with icon note
if button returned of decision is "Retry" then
set s to 0
end if
else if s = 1 then
set decision to display dialog ("Unable to start iTunes, cannot connect to drive 'Storage2'.") buttons {"Retry", "Cancel"} default button 1 with icon note
if button returned of decision is "Retry" then
set s to 0
end if
else if s = 0 then
set decision to display dialog ("Unable to start iTunes, cannot connect to network drives.") buttons {"Retry", "Cancel"} default button 1 with icon note
if button returned of decision is "Retry" then
end if
end if
end tell
end repeat

Searching the web I found a great little write up on how to increase your mouse speed beyond the limit of the Mouse Control Panel in System Preferences. For some strange reason, Apple limits the maximum speed and the mouse on OS X just feels sluggish. Using the Terminal application, found in the Applications/Utilities folder, you can adjust the mouse speed.

1st, enter this command to see what the current setting is:

defaults read -g com.apple.mouse.scaling

this will return a 3 if you currently have the settings at maximum in System Preferences.

To Change it to something a little faster, type this and hit Enter:

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling  5.0

Be careful not to go overboard as it will be hard to control and undo if you do. Start with 5 and if you want faster, try 6.

You will need to Log Out and back in or restart your computer for the changes to take affect.