OS X Terminal Command - Recent Items Stack

Having a "Recent Items" area in an operating system can be a real time saver. In Windows you get this functionality be default from the Start Menu. However in OS X (Leopard) you need to get a little more creative to enable it. Thankfully all the hard work has been done for you, all you need to do is open "Terminal" from "Applications > Utilities" and run the following two commands. (Make sure the first command is ran as one line, I recommend copying it to a text editor first).

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'
killall Dock

Once the commands have been executed you will notice a new icon (stack) on your Dock.

By "right clicking" on the "recent applications" stack you will be able to change its behavior to show recent applications, documents, servers etc.

To add another recent items stack to the Dock simply re-run the commands from the Terminal. 

Change OS X Leopard's Login Image

We are all used to the default "Space" desktop image that was unveiled with OS X Leopard in October 2007, which was used to advertise one of the major new features "Time Machine".

Although it is possible to change the default desktop image from "System Preferences" there is no simply way to change the logon screen, meaning that your login screen will not match your chosen desktop background. Although this does not actually matter it is quite annoying.

Thankfully the application "Desktop 2 Login" can change the default login image to match your desktop image in just one click.

If you change your desktop image then simply re-run the application to re-sync the login image.