Use the Automator to Extract a list of Filenames to a Txt file

The MAC OS Automator is the swiss army knife of tools, just take a look at these “10 Awesome Uses for Automator” and I often wonder how I lived without it. In my line of work, sometimes I need to extract a list of filenames contained on a CD or a directory and dump them into a text file for analysis. Lucky for me the automator makes this task super easy and painless. You too can enjoy this in 6 easy steps. Step 1 Fire up Automator and select File > New > Custom Step 2 Create your Automation by dragging commands, called actions, into the Automator workspace starting with “Ask for Finder Items”. Step 3 Drag over “Get Folder Contents” from the Action list to the automator workspace. For my purposes I usually check the “Repeat for each subfolder found” depending on how deep you need to go, but… Read More »
A Librarian at the H.O.P.E (Hackers on Planet Earth) Conference
So, this weekend I attended my first hacker conference, “The Last H.O.P.E (Hackers on Planet Earth)” sponsored by 2600 Magazine. Featured con speakers were: Steven Levy, Kevin Mitnick, Jello Biafra, Steve Rambam and Adam Savage of MythBusters fame. Some of the sessions I did attend included: “Evil Interfaces: Violating the User”, “A Hacker’s View of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)”, “Hacking Democracy: An In Depth Analysis of the ES&S Voting Systems”, “One Last Time: The Hack/Phreak History Primer”, Wikipedia: You Will Never Find a More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy”, “YouTomb – A Free Culture Hack” and all the featured speakers (except I very sadly missed Steven Levy, I loved that iPod book!). So what’s a librarian to make of all this? Well believe it or not, there is some common ground between the hacker community and us information science professionals. Chief among these are copyright (especially now… Read More »






