It’s easy to accidentally change directories to something you weren’t intending to (say, accidentally hitting cd and returning home and losing your place in a complicated directory structure), but thankfully there’s a command that will immediately take you back to the previous directory:

cd -

It’s that simple, cd – will take you to the directory you were in prior to the PWD, and it will print out the prior directory before you so you will know you’re in the right place. This is very useful if you are working in two different directories and you want to quickly go back and forth between them, just keep typing cd – and you will keep switching between the two directories!

This command line tip works in every variant of Unix I’ve used, so whether you’re in the Mac OS X command line or Linux, you should be covered.

Did you know that you can put your iPhone inside a plastic bag and still use the touchscreen? Yes, that’s right, stick your iPhone in an airtight ziplock bag, and you’ll have an instant and amazingly cheap waterproof case for your iPhone.

The context of this tip is actually in regards to cooking, First & 20 suggests placing your iPhone inside a ziplock bag so you can keep using it in the kitchen with dirty hands, not a bad idea at all, but the uses for this extend far beyond the kitchen… imagine the possibilities with a waterproof iPhone! Paint your house without painting your iPhone! Browse the web from the bath! Update Facebook in the pouring rain! Text your friends from the depths of the seas! Well, maybe not that extreme, but you get the point. This is a rather funny tip, but it’s actually really useful and I’ve already found myself using it a few times around the house. Obviously you should make sure the seal on the ziplock bag is very strong, or else your iPhone will drown.

[ via First & 20 ]

Here’s how to lock down the Mac OS X Dock, all of these commands need to be issued at the command line via the Terminal, so once you’re there enter the appropriate command:

Lock the Dock to Prevent Changes to Contents

defaults write com.apple.Dock contents-immutable -bool yes

Lock the Dock to Prevent Changes in Size

defaults write com.apple.Dock size-immutable -bool yes

Lock the Dock’s Position on the Screen

defaults write com.apple.Dock position-immutable -bool yes

After executing any or all of these commands, you’ll want to relaunch the Dock by killing it:

killall Dock

The Dock will reload itself and the changes will be in effect. Your Dock is now locked!

Why would you want to lock the Mac OS X Dock? If you’re a Systems Administrator or IT Technician, you can make your life a lot easier by having machines stay consistent. One good way to add to consistency across Mac’s is to lock down the Dock to prevent changes in it’s position, keep the contents in place, and to ensure that the size is the same. Now when you’re trying to remotely describe to someone how to open an application, you can be sure it is located exactly where you left it in the Dock.

If you’re a Ghostbusters fan you’ll get a kick out of this creative use of the Genie minimization effect in Mac OS X… Matt Mira arranged a bunch of picture windows and strategically minimized a ghost to recreate a few scenes from the 80′s classic movie Ghostbusters. Totally pointless outside of the high amusement factor.

and of course, the art museum:

[ via Nerdist and @MattMira ]

I often forget to empty my Trash can but this is taking it to a whole new level. 489GB? What on earth is in there? That’s bigger than my main hard drive! Time to empty that huge Trash can!

from Marco.org

You can set Mac OS X to always securely empty the Trash just by adjusting a preference within the Finder. Here’s how:

* Enter the Finder Preferences by either going to the Finder menu and selecting “Preferences” or by hitting Command+, within the Finder.
* Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab icon
* Click the checkbox next to “Empty Trash Securely”

Now your Trash will always be securely emptied! Note this makes data recovery practically impossible.

Changing the iPhone’s root password is a good idea if you have Jailbroken your iPhone, it will prevent unauthorized users and applications from doing things you certainly don’t want them to do since the password is universal on all Jailbroken phones (unless it’s changed by the user). So with that in mind, here’s how to change the root password on your Jailbroken iPhone:

• First you have to have the app called MobileTerminal, it’s available free at the Cydia app store
• Launch MobileTerminal and at the prompt type the following: passwd
• When asked for the old password, type: alpine
• You’ll then be prompted for a new password, so type your new password, it will ask for a confirmation so type it again
• That’s it! The root password on your Jailbroken iPhone is changed and you’ll be sent back to the command prompt.

Change the root user & mobile user password
You will want to change the password for the ‘root’ user as well as the default mobile user, doing this is easy:

• Login to the root account by typing: login root
• Enter this as the password: alpine
• Now type passwd and follow the same instructions as above

Note: this is not necessary for standard iPhone users, only Jailbroken iPhones.

This is a very cool feature I had no idea existed but accidentally stumbled across while on a recent flight. If you have an iPhone, you probably know that the earbuds included with it have a button to adjust volume and what not, well guess what, you can control the volume level in iTunes and QuickTime with the iPhone Earbud buttons as well! This works at least on the Unibody MacBook Pro’s, but I’m not sure if it works on the Unibody MacBook. Just plug in the iPhone earbuds to your Mac and launch QuickTime or iTunes to test it out yourself.

It’s also worth mentioning that the iPhone earbuds microphone works fine with Mac OS X too, and it makes a significantly better microphone than the one that is built in. This is particularly handy for VOIP calls through iChat, Google Voice, and Skype.

I’m a big fan of distraction free writing space, and so far WriteRoom has this market cornered pretty well on Mac OS X. OmmWriter looks like a worthy contender though, it’s got a beautiful unobtrusive interface and is complete with a relaxing background and subtle peaceful sound effects… if that sounds a little cheesy it sort of is, but it’s actually pretty nice to write in! The goal of OmmWriter is ” a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.” and I must say it’s pretty effective at doing this. It’s currently in free beta and well worth checking out if you’re a writer of any sort. Be sure to check out the video below to see it in action.

OmmWriter developer home
Download OmmWriter free beta

.DS_Store files store folder level metadata information (such as icon placement and background pictures) for Mac OS X to understand, this is fine and dandy and you’re likely to never even notice if you’re a bunch of Macs working together. Unfortunately, these .DS_Store files can be really pesky in a multi-platform network environment, they can basically just lead to unnecessary filesystem clutter that Windows & Linux users receive no benefit from.

Thankfully, you can prevent the DS_Store files from being created entirely by executing a simple command in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

This disables the creation of .DS_Store files for the user account the command was executed on. You can make this change to all user accounts manually by executing the same command under their login, or you can copy modified com.apple.desktopservices.plist file to the ~/Library/Preferences folder of each other user account.

Of course it’s not just Mac OS X that create files that are obnoxious for cross-platformers. The Windows equivalent to the DS_Store file is Thumbs.db, and if you’re a Mac in a largely Windows network, you’ll probably be running into these all the time. You can easily delete Thumbs.db files in Mac OS X by using Spotlight.