Category: Mac

Image editing can be fun, but it can also be tedious and frustrating, especially if you want to make changes that require either professional apps that cost a lot or skills that only come from years of experience.

Removing unwanted objects from photos – people, power lines, trash, you name it – can be either very easy, depending on the background and general composition of the image, or a huge a pain. Snapheal can make this a breeze for you. The editing app has received a major update and we’ll take a look at what has changed and how it will affect your workflow.

No Degree Required

Since I reviewed Snapheal earlier this year, I won’t go into the same details again, but will focus instead on the new features and usability.

For those who haven’t read that article, here’s Snapheal in a nutshell: the app allows you to (relatively) quickly remove unwanted object from your photos. You simply paint over the areas you want gone and then let Snapheal work its magic.

As someone who works with Photoshop professionally and Pixelmator at home, my expectations were pretty high since I know what can technically be achieved with some effort. To my surprise, Snapheal held up pretty well against the competition.

Within just 20 minutes I had removed the power lines, the power pole, and touched up the entire image with contrast and saturation

The strength of Snapheal compared to Photoshop (Elements) and Pixelmator is that it doesn’t require a great deal of knowledge or skill to achieve pretty good effects. Anyone who has ever opened up PS knows that the sheer magnitude of palettes and buttons is overwhelming at first and that it takes months and years to master the application. Leaving aside the fact that it is much too expensive for the average user.

• Snapheal: $9.99
• Pixelmator: $14.99 (currently reduced)
• Photoshop: $600

While Pixelmator is quite affordable at the moment and is much easier to use (we took a look at the new features of the Cherry upgrade here), it still isn’t really an app that can be used right away without any previous experience in image editing.

The reason for this is that both PS and Pixelmator are full editing application, offering you thousands of options to work with. Snapheal, on the other hand, focuses on exactly one thing: removing objects. That allows for a much simpler user interface and you can actually start using it right away.

Use Snapheal and Work At The Same Time.

When I tried Snapheal for the first time, I was using it on my 2010 iMac 27” i5 Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM. And while the app produced results I was happy with, I wasn’t that much impressed by the way it slowed down my Mac. While Snapheal was rendering all the changes, there wasn’t a lot of anything I could do at the same time. My iMac became too unresponsive.

Now, with the new Snapheal, I’m working on my brand new 2012 MacBook Air 13” with the i5 processor, SSD and 8GB RAM. And it doesn’t hiccup a bit. I have Spotify running, Sparrow, Tweetbot, Byword, Snapheal and some other utilities like Alfred or TextExpander. The fans do about 2500–3000rpm, which in my book is okay for what I’m doing. Depending on the amount of changes you are attributing in one sitting and the level of precision you selected, it can go up to 4000rpm, but the Mac is still completely usable and it won’t lock up anymore.

While it’s rendering your changes, Snapheal will entertain you with some random facts

I’m not a programmer, so I wouldn’t be able to explain what the developer team behind Snapheal changed, but the app is now much more usable.

Polished Up User Interface

The old user interface wasn’t too bad, but as with everything, there’s always room for improvement. First of all, Retina MacBook users rejoice: Snapheal will greet you now in high resolution.

In the new version, Snapheal also sports a drastically reduced set of buttons in the healing tab. The icons are pretty clear on what you can do, removing the need for excessive descriptive texts.

The user interface in the healing tab has beed significantly simplified

There are also two new options, the Lasso and Polygonal Lasso. While the normal brush allows you to paint over an area that you want to remove (especially useful for tiny objects), the lasso tools allow you to outline an area. The benefit? Instead of having to paint over large objects (like buildings or a person in the foreground) you can encircle it and let Snapheal worry about the rest.

With my power lines, I could use the Polygonal Lasso tool, which can do straight lines, and cover up most of the power constructions. Whenever there was an irregular shape, I simply switched to the brush and covered that up. It’s also helpful to zoom in to about 200–300% so you can work precisely.

Also new is the Precision slider in the healing tab. It controls how precisely Snapheal with calculate the changes. If you select the highest setting, applying the fixes will take quite a while. Leaving it at the Normal setting produces very good results as well though (and it’s much faster than in the last version of Snapheal).

Set the level of precision Snapheal will use to apply your changes

Using the Proper Erase Mode

When I reviewed Snapheal the first time, some readers criticized that the power lines I was trying to remove were still somewhat visible as shadows on the sky. Granted, I hadn’t really spent too much time on the image, but it irked me because I figured out my initial mistake: I had simply used the wrong Erase mode.

There are three of them and each one is suited for different tasks: Wormhole is best with smallish changes, like my power lines, but I used Shapeshift, which is more suited for larger objects. With the proper mode selected the quality of the healing goes up significantly.

A portion of my edited image before and after. As you can see, you can see … nothing in the edited version. The power cords and pole have been removed cleanly.

Artifacts and shadows will not appear and if you erase in multiple steps, you can fine tune it even more: do a Wormhole for your smaller portions, apply, and then do the larger objects with the Shapeshift effect. Breaking it down can work wonders.

Touching Up the Rest

While Snapheal is primarily meant for removing objects, it will let you improve other areas as well: you can either apply changes like contrast, saturation or brightness to the entire image or work with brushes to target specific areas.

Snapheal also offers a wide range of image improvement options

It’s very easy to use and pretty much self explanatory. I’d say that it’s about the level of iPhoto. If you’ve worked with the Adjust tab there, Snapheal will feel pretty familiar even though it offers more and finer tuning options.

Verdict

The update to Snapheal is significant. Apart from the overhauled user interface the app has become more responsive, gained new healing modes which allow faster editing and it no longer slows down your Mac (well, depending on your configuration, of course).

Do you need it? Well, if you don’t have Photoshop already, if you don’t want to learn the fine art of image editing via the excellent Pixelmator but need something that goes well beyond iPhoto, Snapheal is a great application and I can recommend it to any one for touching up your vacation photos and family pictures. It’s easy to understand and the results will please you if you’re willing to invest a little time into your image.

The latest version of Snapheal will be hitting the App Store soon, if not today, and it’s currently on sell for just $14.99. The day after the update is released, it’ll go back to its normal price of $24.99, so be sure to snag a copy soon!

Developers build all the cool tools we use to stay productive and entertained on our Mac and other devices, but it turns out, they need good tools themselves. One of the reasons Macs make such great development platforms are all the great development apps in the App Store and ready for download directly from around the net.

Here’s 30 of the best tools for developers, some of which you might already be using and others you might have just have heard of in passing. Even if you’re not a developer, be sure to give the roundup a look, as there’s a lot of productivity apps in here that just might appeal to you too!

Conclusion

So there you have it: 30 great apps for developers, and the rest of us alike. If you have other development tools on your Mac that you can’t live without, be sure to share them with use in the comment below!

Half-Life. To this day the series stands as an iconic and fairly revolutionary gaming release that’s legacy commands all the attention of the industry press whenever there’s a whisper of its third iteration. The original Half-Life was released to much critical acclaim and remains a classic in the eyes of gaming history, albeit not one that was ever released for OS X.

While the 1998 game was indeed never introduced on the Mac, the 2004 sequel, Half-Life 2, was released alongside Steam’s debut on the platform. Half-Life 2 and its subsequent episode takes a familiar gameplay setup and key characters while throwing them into a significantly developed storyline and new environment. As we begin to wrap up our coverage of the state of OS X gaming, its time to dedicate some time to one of gaming’s most iconic products and take a history lesson in the Half-Life universe.

Back to Black Mesa?

The original Half-Life introduces the player to the so-called Half-Life universe — used to describe the fictitious world in which the Half-Life and Portal series both take place — specifically the series’ main protagonist, Gordon Freeman, an MIT graduate in Theoretical Physics. The original Half-Life game takes place in Black Mesa, a scientific research facility in New Mexico and leads Gordon Freeman to cause a Resonance Cascade that formed the Black Mesa Incident.

The Black Mesa Incident lead to the destruction of Black Mesa and gave the ability for extraterrestrials to teleport to Earth. In the original Half-Life, the player explores the facility and eventually fights for their life when its revealed witnesses of the Black Mesa Incident are being “silenced” by the US Government.

The Resonance Cascade, as seen in the original Half-Life game.

The original Half-Life game — unfortunately never released for OS X — takes place primarily in the Black Mesa facility and on the planet Xen, who’s creatures are being able to teleport to Earth. After killing a boss of sorts at the end of the game, the mysterious G-Man (who appears in the distance at varying points in the game, including giving Black Mesa the material that causes the Black Mesa incident) praises Freeman’s work and puts him into stasis to be re-employed in the future.

Welcome to City 17

Half-Life 2 sees the reawakening of Gordon Freeman but not in an environment he’s visited before. Half-Life 2, much like its predecessor, kicks off with a rail journey that promptly introduces the player to City 17, an Eastern-European city under control by an alien species called the Combine.

The Combine control Earth after success in the Seven Hour War, a conflict between the species and Earth that was prompted after the events of Half-Life caught the attention of the former. After a surrender was negotiated, Earth was put under the control of the Combine and Half-Life 2 kicks off after this has been accepted as the norm.

The train lines of City 17.

However, a group, the Resistance, exist to combat the Combine rule. The player allies with this group and navigates a vast environment, fighting enemies and obstacles until they can confront the corrupt administrator of Earth, Dr Breen, and consequentially put events in motion that lead to the destruction of the Combine’s headquarters of the Earth administration.

Half-Life 2 features some of the same characters as in Half-Life — with a few extra thrown in — but the environment is completely different and the storyline, while a consequence of the events in the original game, stands alone so much that it doesn’t feel like an episodic sequel. While I definitely encourage you to play the original Half-Life, you don’t need to in order to enjoy the story of its sequel and playing Half-Life afterwards as a prequel is certainly an option should you know have a copy of Windows to hand.

Scale

Something that becomes evident after you’ve played a few of Valve’s titles is the sheer scale of the environments in which the games take place. Black Mesa was not a small facility and the game even dedicated a fair few minutes to riding an automated subway through the facility to build up a sense of how big the place was, and to encourage the player to really explore the world around them.

Half-Life 2 really take this to another level. City 17 is a big place and you spend a large chunk of the game in the streets of the metropolis. However, the game isn’t confined to just one place (which still has you visiting everywhere from an underground network of tunnels to the rooftop of apartment buildings; you’ll take a boat ride through canals to the outskirts of the city and eventually end up far from main civilisation driving around the coast. In fact, the game really pushes its detailed environment on you by simply turning your experience into a driving simulator sans all but a few infrequent enemies and the requirement to flick a switch every now and then.

Ravenholm, one of the locations seen in Half-Life 2.

But Half-Life 2 is a game made up of a diverse set of enviroments. In addition to exploring the city and the coast, you’ll spend a portion of the game in the horrific, zombie-infested town of Ravenholm and the eerie yet deadly prison that is Nova Prospekt. One minute you’re on foot and fighting a constant supply of Combine with a pistol and the next driving around a somewhat-peaceful coastal route taking time to take in the detailed, dystopian world. And then there’s the random shift to night and introduction of hoards of zombies in a completely unexpected turn of events.

Valve has a knack for creating environments that are an absolute joy to explore and Half-Life 2 stitches together a whole bunch of them into one experience.

A battle inside City 17.

Gameplay

Commenting on the actual gameplay of Half-Life 2 is an interesting task. Its difficult to classify the game into one genre, even though most would jump to call it a first-person shooter.

Half-Life 2 kind of does it’s own thing. It certainly has many aspects of a first-person shooter but its a pretty simple way. There’s multiple weapons which are “unlocked” as you play through the game, and even an upgrade to one in particular, the Gravity Gun, later in the game. However, weapons aren’t classified by the same metrics as other first-person shooters and you don’t get any substantial recognition if you kill masses of enemies versus only a few.

Without weapons, Gordon Freeman would probably die before he got out of City 17 so combat is important to progression in the game. However, the focus is away from the combat as it plays only one role in the overall gameplay.

A battle between the Antlions, but one enemy in Half-Life 2.

Half-Life had an annoying ability to let you get “stuck” in situations that left you to either try to pass an obstacle with no little than a bunch of attempts or to load an earlier version of your current campaign. The sparse availability of heath replenishment meant that if you let your health drop to single digits before a significant obstacle, it’d take a frustrating amount of attempts to pass. Fortunately, medical kits and stations are pleasingly frequent in Half-Life 2 to an extent that gameplay remains challenging but not in the least bit frustrating.

Presentation

In comparison to its predecessor, Half-Life 2′s graphical presentation is fantastic. The Source engine does a fine job of portraying Valve’s sprawling environments and with more detail comes more immersion, down to the detail in a zombie’s exposed chest. Even by today’s standards, the game isn’t bad even though a clear, albeit not massively significant, development has been made with the engine in use with modern titles like Portal 2.

Part of the airboat sequence, which sees Gordon Freeman drive through the waters of City 17.

Audio-wise, Half-Life 2 is great and much more detailed than the original Half-Life 2. The game sees more characters appear and a resulting increase in dialogue which is well presented. The OST for the game also has some superb tracks featured.

Episodes

Half-Life 2 was followed by two episodic sequels which continue the story after events are frozen by the mysterious G-Man just as the Combine Citadel in City 17 is about to explode.

Half Life 2: Episode One sees Gordon Freeman and his accomplice, Alyx Vance, try to escape the destabilising City 17 after first trying to slow down the meltdown of the Citadel’s reactor. Episode One expands on the on-foot exploration of City 17 and, even with the impending disaster, the Combine are still out to get you.

Episode One introduces a real sense of urgency to your actions although its less about the developing storyline and more about combat. Its perhaps the less satisfying of all the Half-Life games but is still worth playing if not for mere continuity. (Individual rating: 8/10)

Half-Life 2: Episode One continues the story in the streets of a destroyed City 17.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two, which remains the latest instalment of the series if Portal 2 is considered in its own, sees the player leave City 17 for good and make their way to the White Forest base of the Lambda Resistance. Episode Two continues the story but actually adds a fair chunk of content, including new enemies to battle, specifically more variants of the Combine. (Individual rating: 9/10)

From there, we don’t know what happens. Episode Two introduces the player to a new segment of the story featuring the Borealis — an Aperture Science vessel said to contain significant technology that both the Resistance and the Combine want — but the only transmission to include information about this is cut off. Portal 2 didn’t address the storyline of Half-Life 2 (although they exist in the same universe, Portal and Half-Life haven’t really crossed over aside from the odd mention) but a hidden area of the Aperture Science facility showed the location of the Borealis before it mysteriously disappeared.

Half-Life 2: Episode Three (or, perhaps, Half-Life 3) has become the industry’s most notable case of vapourware. The episodic sequels to the original Half-Life 2 game were planned to exist as a trilogy, but Valve has never discussed the third game, even though its been nearly five years since the release of Episode Two.

We’ll be looking at Half-Life 3 rumours and speculation of the future of the franchise in a future article!

Final Thoughts

The entire Half-Life franchise is something you should not pass up playing, even now, years after even the latest instalment. It received positive reviews when released because it continued Half-Life’s legacy as a revolutionary release. That has perhaps faded slightly with time, but its still a series that you really play. Alongside modern titles, it becomes evident that aspects of Half-Life 2 aren’t fantastically well executed or paced although they are in the minority.

I didn’t play any of the series until recently, after being introduced to Portal 2 by a friend shortly after release, yet I still loved it. I’m really excited for the future of the franchise, especially if a speculated further cross with the world of Portal exists. I’m just now getting round to playing Half-Life, though, but fortunately its storyline allows a player to enjoy it before or after Half-Life 2.

Simply put, if you haven’t played Half-Life, what are you waiting for? Not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job.

There’s a lot of music all over the internet, which is great, except that it’s in a lot of different places. If you want to listen to something on YouTube, something on SoundCloud, and something in your iTunes library, you’re going to need at least two browser tabs open along with iTunes. And if you want to create a playlist, you’re going to have a job of work getting all those tracks in one place.

Enter CloudPlay, a menubar app for streaming music from all over. Currently in beta, CloudPlay lets you search for music from lots of different sources and then pop it all into one playlist. We’ll take a look at how the app works and find out if it’s really that easy.

Playlists in the Cloud

There’s no sign-up or sign-in. To get started using CloudPlay, just start searching for music. By default, CloudPlay searches iTunes, CloudPlay online radio, YouTube, SoundCloud, exfm, and BandSoup. When you find the song you’re looking for, right-click it to add the track to a new or existing playlist. Because this is the internet and you can’t really know what you’re going to get, double-click the song to preview if you want to make sure it’s the right track or that it doesn’t cut off in the middle.

Searching for and previewing and song in CloudPlay

When you add music from an online audio source to a playlist, CloudPlay will stream your music from that source whenever you hit play. Your playlists aren’t limited to one source, either; CloudPlay doesn’t force you to keep your SoundCloud tracks together in one playlist and exfm tracks in a separate playlist. A single playlist can have songs from all the different CloudPlay sources and play without interruption.

Adding YouTube tracks is a little different, because when the song plays, you’ll get the accompanying video. You won’t really notice anything if CloudPlay is running in the background, though. If you choose in the application preferences to keep CloudPlay visible when switching to another app, however, a video player will open above your CloudPlay playlist.

Watching a music video via YouTube

Managing Your Playlists

It’s easy enough to edit playlists. Right-clicking on a song will let you delete it or add it to another playlist. Right-clicking also gives you the option to visit the website streaming the song. Drag songs around if you need to reorder them. Unfortunately, there’s no way to loop a playlist or otherwise set CloudPlay to repeat. You’ll just have to get in there and start everything over whenever a playlist gets to the end.

Viewing all of my playlists and choosing something new to listen to

In addition to streaming music and new playlists, CloudPlay also gives you access to your iTunes library in your menubar. It lists all of your music for you by playlist or album. Sure, there are lots of other apps that will do this for you, but it’s nice to have it together with the CloudPlay features.

Once you’ve played every song you know and have exhausted all of your playlists, you can try some of the Console.fm playlists. Each has between 7 and 11 hours of music, so not too shabby. I’m not sure Console.fm had me in mind when they were creating these playlists, though. There’s a lot of techno, trance, electro, and dubstep, which is great if that’s what I’m in the mood for, but it didn’t provide a lot of variety.

The Console.fm playlists available via CloudPlay

Pros and Cons

CloudPlay doesn’t have a lot of sharing options right now, but it does support Last.fm integration and scrobbling. The Sharing tab in the preferences is pretty bare right now, but it looks like the developers have left room to add some more services down the road. CloudPlay is only in beta at the moment, so we can expect changes before the full release.

If you want to use the F7, F8, and F9 media player control keys for CloudPlay, you’re in luck. There are preset keyboard shortcuts that will make those keys work for you. Unfortunately, you can’t edit the shortcuts; what they’ve given you is what you get. Also, when I did try the shortcuts myself, the response time was incredibly slow, so slow in fact that I thought they hadn’t worked at all. The keyboard shortcuts did eventually switch tracks for me like they should. It just took a while.

Some Streaming Truths

It’s worth noting that like all cloud and music streaming services, you’re using bandwidth here and may see slowing as your browse the internet. If this is an issue for you at all, it will be especially pronounced when playing YouTube videos with CloudPlay. If you’re on a slow connection, you may want to keep the videos to a minimum.

Browsing through my iTunes library while I watch a music video

Because none of these files belong to you, you don’t have any control over them. A track could be there one day and gone the next. If you stick to official YouTube channels, you’re probably less likely to run into this issue, but it can happen. While you may unexpectedly lose your favorite song on your favorite playlist, that’s not really something that can be blamed on CloudPlay; CloudPlay’s just letting you get at the music more easily where it’s available. However, if you’re really attached to a song, you might want to think about purchasing it. Not only can you keep listening to it indefinitely, but you’ll also be supporting the artist or band.

Conclusion

While there were some obvious problems with streaming music from pretty much wherever on the internet, none of that’s on CloudPlay’s shoulders. At its core, CloudPlay is an app that makes it easier to listen to all the great music on the internet. No longer do you have to keep three browser tabs open, with multiple sites loaded, just to get the music you’re looking for. And with CloudPlay in a menubar app, you also don’t have to worry about accidentally closing a browser tab and cutting off a track in the middle, or worse, losing that day’s playlist.

CloudPlay makes it really simple to add lots of music from lots of different places to a single playlist. On top of that, you get videos, too, which was so cool, I had to turn CloudPlay off to get any work done. CloudPlay is currently in beta, and I hope to see more sources and more sharing services added with the full release. Even without those extras, CloudPlay stands up as a great streaming music player.

In the summer of 2009 I began working on my Master’s degree part time. In addition to my degree I also work full time and keep up with other activities (such as writing for this site) all while trying to have some semblance of a life. In December I should complete my Capstone project and graduate.

It’s taken a lot of careful management of time and more importantly energy to keep moving to this point. When I moved to a MacBook as my primary computer last summer, I had to redo my workflow and evaluate the best tools to keep up with my courses. Here I’m going to look at a few of the tools that I’ve used to keep my notes, organize my assignments, complete assignment, and work on my thesis project.

Calendar

My most important tool for managing my schoolwork is a reliable calendar.

The calendar is my most important tool. I’ve used Exchange for my email for years and my main calendar still rests there. I can access the calendar from my laptop through Outlook, through my phone, and on the web. I use this setup for the simple reason that I trust it. I’ve used it for several years and if I put a due date for a paper, project, or assignment into my calendar I feel confident that it will be there when I need the reminder. The calendar reminds me of deadlines and keeps me from getting behind.

With a busy schedule it’s very hard to catch back up. The calendar gives me confidence that my system won’t be why something isn’t done. At the start of each semester I put the important assignments dates off the syllabus into my calendar and block out lecture times. For weekly homework or a quizzes I can add a reminder the day before the assignment is due. For longer assignments, such as semester projects, I’ll create separate events for each step, meetings, and other activities along the way of completing the project.

There’s many great calendar apps you can use on your Mac. The built-in Calendar app is great for many, as are menubar calendar apps like Fantastical. If you need more features, Outlook (my pick) or BusyCal might be better options.

Evernote

I use Evernote for notes because of two features: tagging and the ubiquity of the client. I can tag every note with the course, the subject of lecture, and the topics covered in the lecture. Tagging makes it easy to find my notes when it comes time to study for a test, reference the notes during a test, or working on a bigger project. I might label the notes from a lecture with the date, but what really matters is what topics were covered in that lecture. Tagging lets me add a one work reminder for each topic. For a lecture that includes employment law I might have tags for ADA. For a lecture that covers marketing a new product I can tag marketing. When I need to find those marketing lecture notes again, I just search for the tag.

Evernote works well for gathering notes where they can be more easily found later.

In addition every device I own has an Evernote client available letting me take notes anywhere. I might come up with an idea for an assignment while waiting in line. I can bring up Evernote on my phone and make update or create the note then instead of waiting until I get back to the office or back home that evening.

Evernote also lets me attach files to my notes. In a course, I may have a fully worked out sample problem as an Excel file. I can simply attach that to my other lecture notes to reference later. Many files worked best for me when directly attached with the notes supporting the file. This also is handy for the common practice of posting PowerPoint slides before class. I can simply attach the PowerPoint file to Evernote and then make my notes on top of that.

Dropbox

There are other files that don’t really tie into notes. Case studies, assignments that are in progress, or semester long projects often stand alone. Projects also often involve multiple individual files that need to be combined into a single final paper. It’s also not uncommon for a semester project to be part of a group activity meaning I and other students need to share and exchange files. Dropbox works wonderfully for these files. I created a top level folder in Dropbox for my coursework. For each course I then create a folder to hold everything for that course. I create a folder within the course folder for anything specific such as homework or semester projects and files related to that project go there.

Having a folder for each course makes it easier to find my notes when I need to refer to them to complete homework. I can keep material from completed courses for later reference since course content often overlaps or references concepts in a previous course. The organization makes studying for tests easier since I have my notes already collected. Having a single folder for each assignment makes keeping the notes and drafts for that assignment together simpler and less frustrating. The ability of Dropbox to share files also comes in handy when working on group projects as we can share a common work area and refer to older drafts when needed.

Scrivener

I really like Scrivener. It’s a complex product and has a learning curve, but the time you invest in it is more than paid back in productive gains while writing. Since discovering it last year in the early Windows beta I’ve gradually moved to where all much of my writing begins in Scrivener. It focuses on just the text which helps you get the words down on first and then come back and worry about formatting and the other details of the final paper.

Scrivener includes several templates for non-fiction and academic writing.

Scrivener makes it easy to rearrange and rework a paper without cutting and pasting. You can structure your document using folders, sections, and subsections based on your content. If I decide that one section better fits earlier or later in the draft, then I simply drag that section to the new destination and the document takes on the new ordering. If I want to split a section it can be done with one keystroke.

Scrivener’s weakness comes in formatting. If your paper consists of just text, Scrivener may be all you need. When I need more complex formatting or the inclusion of graphs, charts, or figures, I find I have to go to Word or a similar tool. In those cases I write in Scrivener and then compile it into a Word document which as much of the final formatting as I can where I complete the formatting.

Conclusion

Completing my degree required balancing many aspects of life. A key to complete this is the efficient management of my time. I take advantage of what might otherwise seem to be downtime. I’ve completed assignments while sitting in a restaurant waiting for a friend or at lunch. I can’t have my work tied to a single computer and the tools I’ve discussed all help make my work accessible from wherever I am.

Anyone pursuing a degree has to juggle much whether a full time or part-time student. Anything to ease tracking of course material, notes, and assignment make this easier. These tools I’ve found help me to complete my studies as efficiently as possible. They let me learn and apply the material more efficiently and get back to the other things in my life more rapidly. What have you found to help you in your education?

Like many other people in these busy, modern times, I find myself constantly making lists. Things to do, places to go, people to see … And it just never stops! The lists go on forever and I can’t reach the end. Quite frankly, it causes me a great deal of stress and sometimes I just need to stop thinking about the lists. When I reach that point, I often need some help to successfully relax.

Luckily for me, there are a ton of apps out there for the Mac that can really help you to relax. In this roundup, I’ve included some of my favorites. I have selected some apps with instructions for relaxation and meditation, apps to remind you to relax and even a few games that can be quite relaxing. Stick with me after the jump to learn about some of the many relaxation apps that I’ve chosen to include.

Conclusion

There are tons of ways to modify your computer with apps to help you learn to relax and calm down. You can try apps to help you master real world relaxation methods like meditation, opt for an app which forces you to take a break and step away from the screen, play a relaxing game or even see some inspirational quotes about relaxation and idea generation. The apps on this list are a few I’ve tried and really like – many are great for beginners, so if you’ve found yourself stressed behind the screen and don’t always know what to do, try out one of the many apps on this list for some great benefits to your sanity.