Tech Geek

I would guess that many of us face the weekly issue of what to do with our youth group. Some weeks are easy to plan because we are gearing up for an event or a fundraiser or a trip and will use our Wednesday Night, or Sunday Night, or whenever, time to work on preparing for that. Other weeks we are well prepared and have something ready to go days ahead of time. Some of you probably are better at keeping things in nice organized files than I am. And there are weeks that I, and I'm guessing some of you, find ourselves scrambling for something with only a few hours, or minutes, to get it ready.

Two of the websites that I find myself going to pretty frequently are our own ELCA Faith Lens site at http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/ and the Youth Culture Lessons archive at http://www.youthworker.com/youth-lessons-bible-study/youth-lessons/archive/

These aren't zero-prep, but they are a good springboard to conversation about a relevant topic. Faith Lens follows the lectionary and ties into current events. My High School Sunday School class is using that right now and, because you don't have to worry about how far the last person got in the curriculum, it works well to rotate different adult teachers through each week.

The YCL are not written from a Lutheran perspective, so there are times they need a little tweaking, but they do tend to raise some interesting cultural issues that many of our young people are probably dealing with.

What about you? Do you have sites that you use for starting conversations? Please share in the comments field.

Last week Pastor Andy did a great job giving some basic but helpful keyboard shortcuts.  This week I have decided to help our Mac using audience with some ways to make your Mac experience quicker, easier, and may even open up some creativity in your publications.

General Shortcuts

Quit: Command-Q

Minimize all Windows (Within a Program): Option-Command-M

Spotlight Search: To open up spotlight to search your computer, the dictionary, or recently viewed webpages, click Command-Space.  Once in the list, Command-Click opens the containing folder in Finder.

Find in a Program: Command-F opens the find function within programs like Safari and Word Processing programs.

Eject: To quickly eject a USB flash drive click on the flash drive in finder and click Command-E.  Or if you know the name of your flash drive type the first letter, then Command-E (I would press j-Command-E, because my flash drive is named Justin's).

Trash an Item: Command-Delete

Empty the Trash: Command-Shift-Delete when in finder.

Force Quit: Option-Command-Esc

Adjust the Volume without Making a Sound: Hold Option (or Shift on some Macs) with adjusting the volume with the Volume keys.  Or you could turn off volume feedback all together in the System Preferences Sound pane.

Save: Command-S

Save As: Shift-Command-S

Screen Shot: Shift-Command-3  (Pic will appear on desktop)

Partial Screen Shot (You Select Area): Shift-Command-4 then select the area you want to copy.  (Pic will appear on desktop)

Dictionary: Hover over a word and hold down Control-Command-D and you will get a dictionary pop-up on that word.

Publication Shortcuts (Work especially well in iWork)

Select Without a Mouse: In text, push Shift-Left/Right/Up/Down Arrows to select the exact text you want without the mouse.

Duplicate: When making postcards or other publications that involve lots of copy & pasting, you can click and hold down the Option key, drag, and you will get an exact duplicate of the item.

Free Rotate: If you want an object to rotate just the angle that looks best to you, Command-click a corner then free rotate away.

Show Colors Menu: Shift-Command-C

Show Inspector Menu: Option-Command-I

Show Fonts Menu: Command-T

Add New Row to a Table: Option-Down Arrow

Add New Column to a Table: Option-Left/Right Arrow

Paste & Match Style: Often I am copying text from BibleGateway.com in to a Keynote Presentation but want to keep the formatting in Keynote, so Shift-Option-Command-V does the trick (or by right clicking in the document and selecting from the menu).

Other Shortcuts

Save a YouTube Video: Note: you must have Safari, and the Perian extension installed (found at perian.org)  If you would like to use a YouTube video offline, open Safari and the YouTube video, open the Window menu, then select Activity.  In this menu you will see a list of all your open, or recently open webpages.  Scroll to the YouTube section, and find the biggest (maybe currently increasing) webpage (usually has "videoplay" in the URL).  Double click that URL, and it will download into your download folder for use in Keynote, or whatever that will play Quicktime or flash video files.

WiFi Details: in Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6), hold down Option with clicking the Wifi icon in the menu, and you will see what wifi network you are connected to, the speed (a,b,g, or n), and the type of security the router is using.

Zoom a Webpage: Sometimes items on a webpage just need to be bigger or smaller.  Command-Shift-+ or - will do the trick.

Trackpad Shortcuts

Note: You can enable or disable any of these features in System Preferences: Trackpad
MacBooks with the Physical Button
Scrolling: Two Fingers Up/Down/Sideways scrolls webpages, documents, any window you are pointed at.
Right Click: Tap two fingers on the trackpad to call up the right click menu.  Control-Click also works for this.

Zooming: Pinch to zoom in and out.

Newer MacBooks with the integrated glass trackpad/button (All above gestures also work with this MacBook)

Three Finger Swiping: In programs like iPhoto and iCal, a three finger swipe left or right will advance the pictures (iPhoto) or dates (iCal).

Four Finger Gestures: Left or Right: Opens the Application Switcher (Then you may choose one.) Up: Shows the Desktop  Down: Shows All Open Applications (Then you may choose one)

Make Your Own Keyboard Shortcut in Any Application!

In Pages I often Merge Cells in my tables, but involves two menus or a right click option to do it.  So I made my own keyboard shortcut to do it much more quickly.  First remember the Menu Title you want to create a short cut for, and make sure this command is not be used already (Like I wouldn't use Command-M because that is the command for minimizing the window).  Then go into System Preferences, Keyboard, then Keyboard Shortcuts.  In the middle of the menu, you will find a + button.  Click the + and assign what application or all applications this shortcut this will apply to (I clicked Other, then Pages).  Next type in the exact menu title as it appears in the application (I did Merge Cells).  In the final field type your command and click add (I did Control-Option-M).  Exit out of the Preference menus and try it out!

Hope these shortcuts speed up your productivity and creativity!

Justin Snider

AIM & Director of Youth & Young Adult Ministry

Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Olympia, WA

Recently I was helping my Office Manager with a project that she was working on. We needed to move some information around between different windows and she was using the mouse and menu items at every step. As a keyboard user, this was about driving me nuts! So I thought maybe reviewing a few common keyboard shortcuts that I take for granted might save some of you a few moments in your day.

The most common keyboard shortcut that I use repeatedly throughout the day is [ALT-TAB]. To get this shortcut, press and hold the ALT key and then tap on the TAB key. On a Mac, this is achieved by pressing [COMMAND-TAB] in the same way. This will cycle through the open program windows that you have on your system. Depending on the specific version of Windows that you have it will show a small icon or live mini-screen indicating what programs you have open. This is much faster than reaching over for the mouse and clicking the program in the task-bar at the bottom of the screen.

Related to the above command is [CTRL-TAB] on PC or [COMMAND-~] (~ is the tilde, at the top left of your keyboard) on a Mac which will cycle through multiple windows in the same application. For example, I use it to go between tabs in Firefox, my Internet browser. Some applications open multiple instances, so you need to use [ALT-TAB] to cycle between windows.

The next set of keys that I use on a very regular basis are the ones for cutting, copying, and pasting text or other items. I'm going to talk about text, but you can use these same keys to operate on files, pictures, or other objects. First, you have to highlight the text or item, often by using the mouse. You can also highlight text by pressing SHIFT and either one of the arrow keys or the HOME or END keys to go to the beginning or end of a line.

Once you've gotten the text highlighted, you can use [CTRL-X] or [COMMAND-X] to cut the text. Cutting removes it from its current place and places it on the clipboard. Pressing [CTRL-C] or [COMMAND-C] places a copy of the highlighted text on the clipboard and also leaves it in its original location. Then you move the cursor to the new location by using the arrow keys or mouse and press [CTRL-V] or [COMMAND-V] to paste the text there. You can also copy text in one window or application, use [ALT-TAB] or [COMMAND-TAB] to get to another application, and then paste the text there. Sometimes the formatting gets all funky, so I'll open up Notepad and paste the text into Notepad to remove the formatting.

Sometimes you're working on a document and you paste something into it in the wrong location. Or you just type the wrong thing. This is where my favorite keyboard shortcut comes in, [CTRL-Z] or [COMMAND-Z], the undo key. It would really be nice to have an undo key in other parts of life sometimes! This will undo the last action that you did. Some programs even support multiple undos, up to ten or even more of the last actions you performed can be undone.

Then, if you undo something that you find you really liked after all, you can redo it by pressing [CTRL-Y] or [SHIFT-COMMAND-Z] and it will be back where it was before you undid it!

When you're done working and want to close windows and applications there are some keyboard shortcuts for that as well. To close the current window that you're working in, press [CTRL-W] or [COMMAND-W] and it will be gone. It may pop up a window asking if you want to save your work. If you've closed all the windows and the application is still running, press [ALT-F4] or [COMMAND-Q] to shut down the application.

The one Windows only shortcut that I find myself using often is [WINDOWSKEY-E] which pops up a new Windows Explorer window so I can find a file.

What are your favorite keyboard shortcuts that you couldn't imagine living without? Leave a note in the comments below!