This is the first entry in an indefinitely long series on my enjoyment of Mac.

On a side note, I saw Superbad on Sunday with some friends (from which the name McLovin comes). It was enjoyable. I don’t know if I’d watch it again, but it’s good to see Michael Cera (a.k.a. George Michael Bluth) in more than just Arrested Development.

Quicksilver. “A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.” http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

Similar to Apple’s built-in Finder (a big improvement over things like “Find Files Or Folders”), Quicksilver lets you find your files, applications, contacts, etc. Just must faster. The default is to rebuild the index of common items every 10 minutes. For me, this means an index of all my applications, my contacts, bookmarks, and a couple of other things.

I press ctrl + space, and I am prompted with a box. Think of this box as a function. Or if linguistics is your thing, then think of it as SVO (subject - verb - object). The first thing you’re looking for is the subject. For example, I might start typing “Kev…” and by the time I hit the “v,” it is showing me my entry in Address book for Kevin J., a friend of mine. I hit tab, and now it’s time to select a “verb” so to speak.

As an Address Book entry, Kevin has a lot of associated actions. I can email him, edit his contact information, show his vCard, start chatting with him (if he’s online), and others. In this case, I want to e-mail him, so I’ll start typing “comp…”, meaning “Compose Email.” Likewise, I could have typed “email” or any substring of the phrase “compose email.” In fact, “opse” as in “cOmPoSE email” would have also given me this option. (This is great for when you’re typing quickly and make errors or for similarly named applications. I type “Photo…” for “PHOTOshop”, but “Phobo…” for “PHOtoBOoth.”)

A tap of the enter key and I’m writing an e-mail to Kevin in Apple Mail. For someone who hates switching between mouse and keyboard as much as I do, this is a Godsend. At this point, I’ve typed:

• ctrl+space (2)
• “kev” (3)
• tab (1)
• “comp” (4)
• enter (1)

This is for a grand total of 11 (unless I’ve miscounted) keystrokes to send an email to my friend Kevin. Depending on the name of the person you’re emailing, this is pretty standard. Emailing anyone I know is 11 keystrokes away from anything I’m doing on my computer. I’m listening to music, and I remember something I needed to send him. I’m in the middle of editing a photo and decide that I want his input. Eleven (11) keystrokes.

Quicksilver pays attention to how often I use certain things. At this point, I’ve opened my chat client, Adium, so many times from Quicksilver, as soon as I hit “A…” for “Adium,” it has that application selected. A tap of enter to run it. Four (4) keystrokes.

Another plugin that I use a lot for Quicksilver is the Search Engine plugin. How many times a day do you “Google” (to use the parlance of our times)? IMDB? Amazon? YouTube? An average day see ~50 search engine queries for me. The few things I dislike as much as navigating to http://www.google.com (aside from checking internet connectivity) include going to the dentist and vacuuming out my car. I can query any engine from Quicksilver.

With the example of Google, to let Quicksilver know about this search engine, and interface it, I navigate to the search page (cringe), and submit the query “” . That will take me to a URL roughly like “http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=&btnG=Google+Search.” Bookmark this page in Safari or Firefox or your browser of choice. As soon as Quicksilver reindexes your bookmarks (you can tell it to right after you bookmark it, or play the waiting game), you can search Google. Ctrl + Space to open Quicksilver, “Goo…” to bring up “Google” or whatever you bookmarked that page as, Enter, and type your query. It opens the results in a new tab (or window if you prefer) in your default browser.

• ctrl + space (2)
• “Go…” (2)
• enter (1)
• “fubar” (5)
• enter (1)

Quicksilver has myriad other uses ranging from emptying your trash, to turning your computer off after a delay or at a certain time, to controlling iTunes, to performing quick calculations without opening Calculator.