THE BRITISH TECH NETWORK

For when you can’t type a lower case ‘k’

16 Jul 14

A few months ago, I ran into one of those problems that all IT techies hate the most - an intermittent one, with no pattern or frequency to it at all! Essentially, whenever I tried to press the lower case ‘k’ key on my Macbook Pro keyboard, it wouldn’t register anything. Capital K? Game on, all OK with this, however the lower case didn’t want to know.

Well in true techie style, I rebooted the Mac and all was fine. Until it happened again a few weeks later. Annoying as it was, I’m a very busy man nearly all of the time at the moment so I thought nothing of quickly rebooting the machine while I went off to grab a brew and naturally all was fine.

That is, until this week - when no matter how many times I rebooted the machine, it refused to allow to me to type a lower case ‘k’. There’s only so many times I can have an upper case K in the middle of a word before I start to look decidedly unprofessional. This needed fixing.

Being a logical thinker, which is essential in the IT industry, i tried to think of something I was doing different this week to any other. The only think I could think of was that I had started to use Keyboard Maestro heavily whilst configuring and reviewing for my new book. I thought I’d take a look at my macro’s to see if there was anything erroneous in there - and lo and behold, there it was. A blank macro that was set to be triggered by the lower case ‘k’ key. Now I’ve heard that this macro could have been automatically created when you change the Accessibility settings in System Preferences to allow Keyboard Maestro to control your Mac for you. This is something that Paul Wheatley pointed out to me only yesterday. However, there is just as much chance that somehow my own stupidity caused this blank macro to appear - that’s a very plausible explanation.

Why did it now solve itself after a reboot? Well, unlike when I used Keyboard Maestro previously, this time, in Keyboard Maestro Preferences, I enabled the option to start Keyboard Maestro on login, meaning that every time I rebooted the machine, the macro was enabled and I couldn’t press the lower case ‘k’ to type. Simple really.

Keyboard Maestro is an amazing tool and I am reviewing how I use it day-to-day in an upcoming book. However it is extremely powerful and, by giving it the ability to control your device on your behalf, you should follow the tutorials that are provided within the software before using. A Don McAllister, at www.screencastsonline.com, has just released two fantastic videos which are narrated by Todd Olthoff, a real productivity wizard when it comes to Mac software. I recommend checking these out before you start getting to grips with, what is undoubtedly, a very useful and time-saving application.

Lee Garrett

@Soliamsays

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