How To Paste Without Formatting, on OSX and Windows

One thing that used to really grind my gears was having to paste into Notepad or Text Wrangler every time I wanted to remove formatting from copied text. It's such a tedious and seemingly unnecessary process.

So... how do I avoid this now?

In Windows

There's a simple and excellent program that one of my work colleagues got me onto named PureText. 

1. Download PureText.
2. Set it to load on startup (or don't, this will simply save you the effort)
3. Copy text as per usual with CTRL + C (or right click etc.)
4. To paste without formatting you simply press Windows Key + V, instead of CTRL + V.

In Mac OS X

OS X has a built-in shortcut, albeit not that short: 

Command + Shift + Option + V

This performs a command called Paste and Match Style which doesn't so much remove formatting as matches the formatting of your destination. 

You can re-map this to a simpler shortcut following the instructions on this Lifehacker post. For your purposes you'll want to select All Applications in the shortcut menu, Menu Title = "Paste and Match Style" (no quotes) and choose whatever shortcut you want.

I hope that helps you save a few seconds, a few hundred times!

Triple Boot Windows 7, Mac OS X Snow Leopard & Ubuntu 10.04

Hey Floppers and welcome back to Big Floppy Donkey Disk!

Today I'm going to share with you all my most recent adventure into the realms of multi-booting operation systems.

Why would I want to triple boot Windows, Mac OS X and Ubuntu?

Well...

Windows
Windows has been my OS of choice for most of my life; it's flexibility, compatibility and gaming capabilities are excellent. Whether you like Microsoft or not, it is the dominant OS so you're probably going to need to use it.

Ubuntu
Ubuntu is the up-and-coming giant-killer of the Linux world. Being Linux, it is free, incredibly fast (loads instantly), secure and open to customization. Ubuntu itself has an incredibly helpful online community (see http://ubuntuforums.org/), dream-like package management (every application on your computer can be upgraded with the click of a button) and a user interface that I personally find easier to navigate than Mac OS X (although I am still at early stages with both OSes). And seriously, compared to other Linux distros I've tried, everything just seems to work in Ubuntu.

OS X
I've never been a Mac fanboy, in fact I've spent a lot of my uni life paying out on them. However, with the arrival of the iPhone/iPad, and the draconian restrictions on the Apple Developer Program, I've realised I'm going to have to suck it up and learn how to code Steve Jobs-style if I want to make some money on the smartphone market. Hence, I'm finally installing Mac OS X and am ready to be blown away by its style, user friendliness, security, Steve Jobs' sexy turtle-neck, etc. etc.

Why not just use wubi?

Two reasons: because wubi loads Ubuntu directly from the Windows partition, instead of its own filesystem, Ubuntu will run slower through wubi than via a side-by-side installation. Furthermore, I was unable to get wubi to install Ubuntu successfully on my dual-booted Windows 7/Snow Leopard machine. I believe it may have been to do with 64-bit Windows 7.

Okay, down to business...