Life Hacks

Productivity and efficiency of life & work.

CapsLock keyboard layouts switching in Parallels Desktop

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I like Mac OS X very much. But I also have to use MS Windows for some tasks that Mac OS X cannot do, such as full-featured MS Office, MS Project, MS Visio, MindJet/MindManager, stock trading terminals, most games, etc.

And I also like to switch my keyboard layouts with CapsLock instead of default Cmd+Space or Alt+Shift.  You would never believe how convenient it is until you try it for yourself.

But when I use both Parallels Desktop with MS Windows as a guest OS and PCKeyboardHack for CapsLock keyboard layout switching, I find myself limited to only one of these scenarios:

  • Use CapsLock to switch keyboard layouts in Windows as in Mac OS X, but Cmd+Tab goes to Windows and switches between Windows applications instead of Mac OS X applications.
  • Use Cmd+Tab to switch between Mac OS X applications, but Windows keyboard layouts should be switched with native Alt+Shift or Ctrl+Shift, not with CapsLock as in Mac OS X.

Actually, this limitation affects all Mac OS X system shortcuts, not only Cmd+Tab. For example, Cmd+Shift+4 does not work for screenshots, Cmd+Ctrl+N does not work for Evernote, etc.

The perfect scenario — Cmd+Tab for Mac OS X applications and CapsLock for keyboard layouts both in Mac OS X and Windows — is impossible with these tools. Here is a solution how to implement this perfect scenario.

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CapsLock input source switching in Mac OS X

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As a software developer and true introvert, I type a lot. I type for coding, I type for blogging, I type for chatting, I type for sexing ;-) My two most used keyboard layouts are English and Russian; I also use Esperanto sometimes. And as I type, I want to switch the keyboard layouts fast and insensibly.

Mac OS X default installation suggests Cmd+Space keyboard shortcut for selecting the input source, yet it is configurable. Windows suggests Alt+Shift or Ctrl+Shift, and you cannot change it to anything more sophisticated.

Both these options are far from convenient since they require the user to press two keys simultaneously, which is not good when you type fast and focus on the content rather than typing itself. Two-key shortcut in the corner of the keyboard forces you to move your whole palm from its position over the keyboard, and then to reposition it back — this causes a break in text flow for a fraction of second.

There is much better option for Mac OS X: select input sources with CapsLock key, which is almost never used for its direct purpose of locking the capital case mode (two Shifts are more than enough). Besides it is only one single key to press, you can also press it with your left little finger, keeping your other fingers on their positions, thus not causing the break.

I know there are lots of manuals how to do that. Here is yet another one just for further references in this blog, and as a beginning episode of a keyboard tricks series.

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Automatically activate virtualenv on cd (even in mc)

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If you work with Python, you probably work with virtualenv. If you work with virtualenv, you probably work with virtualenvwrapper. Nevertheless, if you work a lot with many virtualenvs at the same time, you may become tired of al these “. bin/activate” or “workon smthng”.

You just want to cd into your project directory, and have everyhting ready to work. Especially if you use two-pane file managers, such as Midnight Commander, for file operations and tree browsing, and prefer not to type shell commands when it is not neccessary.

Here is how I do that:

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Security and Safety of Sensitive Personal Files

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locks with pictograms

In the previous post on categories and priorities of personal files I described how I do classify my files by the ways I handle their safety and security. Now it’s time to describe some of the specific approaches: security of sensitive (private, secret, classified) information.

The difference between security and safety may be non-obvious for some people, so I will describe my vision on this (I may be wrong – correct me then please). “Safety” means the information must not be lost; the loss of information is a fail. “Security” means the information must not be leaked; it is better to be lost or destroyed, but not leaked.

As it is seen now, these goals conflict with each other a bit, but one (me or you or someone else) has to find a balance of security and safety for each category of the files or for some files directly. And here is the essay on how I solve this dilemma and ensure the security.

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Categories and Priorities of Personal Files

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As I’ve written earlier in my story of files losses and methods to prevent this, I’ve tried to keep all possible information throughout the time and space. But soon I understood this information is not homogeneous and different kinds of files differ significantly in the manner they should be handled.

So I decided to make some background classification and prioritizing of files I have and I work with. Well, actually, it was not done strictly before my researches, as science requires, but evaluated during this research. But who cares.

Classes of information are formed on how I do handle it, how I do access or modify it, and how I do share or do not share it. Priorities are subjectively weighted based on the cost of the information loss and leak, and these costs include both money and torments.

Here they are: [Read more…]

The Luggage I Lug

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For the last decade I’ve produced tons of personal information: photos, documents, drafts, notes, ideas, etc. Almost all these files are unique, since they were never published, and probably will never be. In most cases they are private and sensitive either for me or for other people I contact with.

Here is the short story of the ways I handled the information I had, of my mistakes, losses and torments up to the nowadays, and what I’m going to write about in this series of blog posts. [Read more…]