Hierarachy of Characters in Google Spreadhseet Sort function

I did the simple task of typing in every keyboard character (except + and = ) into a spreadsheet and sorting it. This is the hierarchy of ascii character sorting in Google Docs Spreadsheets

Hierarchy Rank Order	Character
1	_
2	-
3	,
4	;
5	:
6	!
7	?
8	.
9	'
10	"
11	(
12	)
13	[
14	]
15	{
16	}
17	@
18	*
19	/
20	\
21	ampersand
22	#
23	%
24	`
25	^
26	greater than (arrow pointing left)
27	less than (mouth to the left)
28	|
29	~
30	$
31	0
32	1
33	2
34	3
35	4
36	5
37	6
38	7
39	8
40	9
41	a
42	A
43	b
44	B
45	c
46	C
47	d
48	D
49	e
50	E
51	f
52	F
53	g
54	G
55	h
56	H
57	i
58	I
59	j
60	J
61	k
62	K
63	l
64	L
65	m
66	M
67	n
68	N
69	o
70	O
71	p
72	P
73	q
74	Q
75	r
76	R
77	s
78	S
79	t
80	T
81	u
82	U
83	v
84	V
85	w
86	W
87	x
88	X
89	y
90	Y
91	z
92	Z

This solution arose from the problem of trying to sort a spreadsheet using a leading character in a document with validation because a big team was using it and I couldn't be the sorting police and I didn't want to have to add a number or "rank" feeling to the words in the cells that we sort by frequently. Sorting can be a big problem if you don't want to see things in a non-alphabetical way.

Elimiate breathing sounds in voiceover audio with this handy filter

When you're cutting clean, well-recorded and professional VOs where the breaths are real loud and clear you can usually use the expander filter to pot out low-volume breath sounds instead of cutting them out manually.

Set the threshold at the level perhaps just above where the breaths are (they were at around -30db) you can use the ratio slider to move them down in the dynamic range so they're essentially inaudible. Then you want to set the release time a little long because otherwise you'll start to lob off the ending consonants like S and F and "Sh"

There is a reason why I qualify this as specifically applying to professionally recorded voiceovers and that is that in non-boothed or poor recordings the signal-to-noise ratio is low, or in other words there's a loud noise floor surrounding your lovely voice, and this filter will give you a different result in that case. You'll hear the noise floor coming in and out, depending on your attack/release times: no good for most uses. In professional recordings done from a sound booth, or with the microphone very close to the subject, your noise floor is reduced and this filter will be more effective.

Cascade windows on a mac, especially mail.app

Reposting from: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050519021838783

"In any program that has a 'Window' menu, you'll find "Bring All To Front." However, if you hold down the Option key after opening the menu, this becomes "Arrange In Front." Select it, and you get a (nasty IMO) Windows-esque cascading arrangement feature."

Very helpful in the case that you have a million mail.app windows open and spread across the desktop and variously sized.

Manually controlling your MacBook Pro fans for better cooling

I do a lot of high powered video editing on my MacBook Pro and I often run compressions in the background while I'm doing other work. Sadly I've found that even when I'm using 150% of my cpu, the computer doesn't manage its fan to run at maximum speed, even when it's clearly and catastrophically overheating.

In comes this handy little utility from Hendrik Holtmann. Control your fan speed with preset preferences right from the menu bar or prefernces pane. Lovely little utility.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23049/smcfancontrol

as I type this I'm running a heavy h.264 compression in quicktime and i've got SMC Fan control running my fans at maximum speed for a total savings of 10 degrees.

Please donate and support his free software.

if you want to UPLOAD a movie to youtube, here's what I recommend:

Link to youtube's official specs page:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

Extracting assets from Keynote 5.0.3 (iWork 09)

Here hopes this saves you some head-desk-banging when trying to extract images and videos from a keynote.

1) in iWork 09 > Preferences> select "Save New Documents as Packages" checkbox

2) save a copy of your project as an iWork 08 (available checkbox/dropdown in save-as dialogue)

3) in finder, find the file you just created, control-click (right click) and select "Show Package Contents"

Voila.

The CMOS Rolling Shutter Problem

I will dedicate a more thorough posting to this issue some time soon, but much of the problem with the DSLRs out there today, as well as any small camera on a phone, flip camera or iPod, is the rolling shutter.

Check out this rainbow picture I took from my car, out the side window, while moving at highway speeds. Can you see the curve of the power lines? Doesn't it look a little unlikely?

It's unfortunate, but CMOS imagers are in use nowadays partly because they use far less power, which is a major consideration for mobile devices. I'll have to wait until we graduate to a better sensor technology than CMOS, that uses less power, or when battery technology advances adequately to the point that we can use less efficient sensors.

This rolling shutter artifact occurs because CMOS sensors read the image one line at a time over the course of the shutter time, and read from top left to bottom right, like a book, hence a rolling shutter, rolling across the image and line to line. You can deduce the orientation of the sensor, and therefore the camera if the image or camera are moving quicly. This is likely an interesting factoid in many forensics debates in courtrooms. You could determine which orientation and in which hand a camera was used because of this artifact!