Parallels 4 - Some Upgrading Tips!
Well it's here at last Parallels 4 - hopefully this update will be a big improvement.
November 13, 2008
September 22, 2008
Rebuilding your iTunes 8 Library
Like many people I've been building my iTunes collection over many years, in fact since before iTunes was born, back in the good old days of Sound Jam and other venerable MP3 players.
September 15, 2008
Mail keyboard tips...
Most people will be aware that the venerable TAB-key (⇥ on the top left of your keyboard) lets you move around the standard 3-pane interface of Mail.
June 19, 2008
Elgato EyeTV, Nullriver MediaLink and ports... (oh and Aperture)
Here's a quick tip for you - if you're running a mixed house hold like me - ie. with Apple and Sony gear on the network. (We have a couple of Windows boxes but they're in a comatose state...)
Continue reading "Elgato EyeTV, Nullriver MediaLink and ports... (oh and Aperture)" »
May 12, 2008
More reason's to buy a Mac...
As if you needed another reason to buy a Mac... (I mean apart from being a growing platform, a rapidly growing platform, did I mention the increased market share).
March 16, 2008
AppleTV & PS3 support in a single movie file (level=41:)
Handbrake is a constant favourite of mine and just about any non-US resident AppleTV/iPod owning individual. So, when I landed a free PS3 I immediately turned to Handbrake to extend my DVD's out to the new toy as well as the trusty AppleTV. Interestingly this wonder of software is not so well known in the Windows world or the console world for that matter. Two cases in point, recently I met an IT Manager at a reasonable sized enterprise who had never heard of it and was seriously about to outlay US$99 for a product. The fact that none of his staff of 6 had heard of it either was surprising as well (they're all in the right 20 something demographic)...
Continue reading "AppleTV & PS3 support in a single movie file (level=41:)" »
January 26, 2008
Things you may not know about NetNewsWire 3.1 (part one: browser stuff)
Here's a quick tip, if you use NetNewsWire and like me you've been using it for a few years here's a good read from Brent in response to the resent survey. Appropriately titled "Things you may not know about NetNewsWire 3.1" it could easily have been called "Things you've forgotten about NNW".
I confess to being one of those people that replied to the survey say I'd like it to support Flash Video... it took this nice little article to remind me of a preference I'd turned off some time ago. Admittedly I turned it off because I was having problems, but I'm lead to believe that its much better these days...
[From inessential.com: Weblog: Comments for ‘Things you may not know about NetNewsWire 3.1 (part one: browser stuff)’]
Continue reading "Things you may not know about NetNewsWire 3.1 (part one: browser stuff)" »
December 6, 2007
DSE loves iTunes User More!
Well the other day I thought 25% was a good deal, but not now - until 10 December you can get a 40% discount by dropping into your local Dick Smith Electronics store and buy a $30 iTunes card.
December 4, 2007
Australia Post Hearts iTunes & iPod
OK these folks at Australia Post are just closet Apple fans... I mean where else can you get a 25% discount on your iTunes?
That's right Australia Post are doing it again...
November 28, 2007
2 Useful Quick Look Generators
One of the most talked about and useful aspects of Leopard (Apple's 10.5 version of OS X) is without a doubt it's Quick Look functionality. This feature has been blogged to death because it's just that useful - however there are several glaring problems with Quick Look. If you try and Quick Look at a disk image (dmg, img, cd, Toast...), compressed file (zip, bzip, bz2, Stuffit...) or folder the result is less than useful, to say the least:
Finder Tip
Most Mac users are aware that they can hold down the Option key before clicking a menu to have variations of the menu options displayed. It's a nice way for developers to have a double use for a menu item.
Well, here's an often forgotten and little mentioned fact that option trick can be used with contextual menu's as well, that's right the old Right-Click can also provide different options.
November 6, 2007
Dictionary in Leopard Rocks!
You probably all know about the Control-Command-D (or if you prefer ^⌘-D or ^-D)trick thats been around for the last few years on Mac OS X. A quick recap, if you hold down the Control & Command keys then press the "D" while your cursor is over a word and you get a little panel from the built-in dictionary with the definition of the word. Like this:
October 29, 2007
MailTags Leopard Beta
As promised a few days ago by Scott Morrison of Indev, MailTags is now in public beta and you can find out all the details and get your copy from this page.
Having said that please, please read the whole page and realise that this is Beta software. I recommend this paragraph for repeated reading:
"MailTags Leopard (2.2) is beta software. Not all functionality will be in place. There may be issues with stability and reliability. We strongly recommend you maintain backups of your email data or avoid using MailTags in critical situations."
MailTags Leopard Beta
As promised a few days ago by Scott Morrison of Indev, MailTags is now in public beta and you can find out all the details and get your copy from this page.
Having said that please, please read the whole page and realise that this is Beta software. I recommend this paragraph for repeated reading:
"MailTags Leopard (2.2) is beta software. Not all functionality will be in place. There may be issues with stability and reliability. We strongly recommend you maintain backups of your email data or avoid using MailTags in critical situations."
October 27, 2007
Leopard and Mail plug-ins [UPDATED]
As I go further into Leopard the more convinced I become that Apple have spent some serious time on making the transition as easy as possible even for people like myself who like to use plug-in's that use private API's.
This time around it's the third-party extensions I use in Mail - some of which I will really miss until they get updated. The reason I'm convinced Apple have gone to some length to make the transition to Leopard as easy as possible is my previous experience with iSync phone plug-ins and now Mail-plug-in/bundles:
Leopard and Mail plug-ins [UPDATED]
As I go further into Leopard the more convinced I become that Apple have spent some serious time on making the transition as easy as possible even for people like myself who like to use plug-in's that use private API's.
This time around it's the third-party extensions I use in Mail - some of which I will really miss until they get updated. The reason I'm convinced Apple have gone to some length to make the transition to Leopard as easy as possible is my previous experience with iSync phone plug-ins and now Mail-plug-in/bundles:
Leopard does not like Unsanity... but it's fixable.
Ok the Leopard dance has been going well but we hit a snag last night and boy is it a dumb one. I successfully installed Leopard on the Mac Pro which was a clean install to a new hard disk brought expressly for this purpose, however the "Upgrade" of the Mac Mini went fine until the reboot. The Mini rebooted and proceeded through startup but stopped with a blue screen and a single cursor that would disappear and reappear every few seconds - and there it stayed overnight. Being cautious I didn't want to reboot the Mini till I knew more and Apples Discussion forums were off-line. Given that it was well and truly after midnight local time I went to bed.
As you see from this thread on Apple's Support Discussions site it appears that anyone who selected the "Upgrade" option is exposed to a nasty little problem. Specifically it appears that if Unsanity's Application Enhancer is installed you could have a few minutes of panic on your hands... ie. until you find the answers on the web. First of all I refer you to Unsanity's compatibility page, this will probably not help the majority of you if like me you haven't used any of Unsanity's software for a long time...
Continue reading "Leopard does not like Unsanity... but it's fixable." »
Leopard does not like Unsanity... but it's fixable.
Ok the Leopard dance has been going well but we hit a snag last night and boy is it a dumb one. I successfully installed Leopard on the Mac Pro which was a clean install to a new hard disk brought expressly for this purpose, however the "Upgrade" of the Mac Mini went fine until the reboot. The Mini rebooted and proceeded through startup but stopped with a blue screen and a single cursor that would disappear and reappear every few seconds - and there it stayed overnight. Being cautious I didn't want to reboot the Mini till I knew more and Apples Discussion forums were off-line. Given that it was well and truly after midnight local time I went to bed.
As you see from this thread on Apple's Support Discussions site it appears that anyone who selected the "Upgrade" option is exposed to a nasty little problem. Specifically it appears that if Unsanity's Application Enhancer is installed you could have a few minutes of panic on your hands... ie. until you find the answers on the web. First of all I refer you to Unsanity's compatibility page, this will probably not help the majority of you if like me you haven't used any of Unsanity's software for a long time...
Continue reading "Leopard does not like Unsanity... but it's fixable." »
October 26, 2007
Leopard talks to the Motorola MaXX
As you may recall at the begining of the year I had to buy a new phone - so I lashed out and got a Motorola Maxx after doing so research on getting it to work with my Mac. Given what I'd learnt back then I thought I write it up for anyone else going through a similar process.
Well with Leopard upon us and the MaXX still around (only until the 3G iPhone ships in Australia...) here's what I've learnt after this afternoon's upgrade to my Mac Pro.
The first is that the venerable yet buggy RAZRV6.phoneplugin no longer works with Leopard (and you get a nice warning from iSync the first time it runs). Leopard seems to have a focus on helping users because not only was I told that the plug-in wasn't compatible but I was also given some choices to reveal the file and let me throw it in the trash, "before restarting iSync". Unfortunately I didn't get a screenshot of this helpful little dialog.
Leopard talks to the Motorola MaXX
As you may recall at the begining of the year I had to buy a new phone - so I lashed out and got a Motorola Maxx after doing so research on getting it to work with my Mac. Given what I'd learnt back then I thought I write it up for anyone else going through a similar process.
Well with Leopard upon us and the MaXX still around (only until the 3G iPhone ships in Australia...) here's what I've learnt after this afternoon's upgrade to my Mac Pro.
The first is that the venerable yet buggy RAZRV6.phoneplugin no longer works with Leopard (and you get a nice warning from iSync the first time it runs). Leopard seems to have a focus on helping users because not only was I told that the plug-in wasn't compatible but I was also given some choices to reveal the file and let me throw it in the trash, "before restarting iSync". Unfortunately I didn't get a screenshot of this helpful little dialog.
October 20, 2007
AppleTV tips and bugs to be aware of...
As readers will be aware we brought into that AppleTV thing a while ago to complement the EyeTV setup from even further ago.
In the last few days I've had a few snag's with it that are probably worth letting the world know about. There are two items and both of them are bugs in the AppleTV software that are triggered by our setup.
- TV Show's get dumped into a "Various" listing rather than the show name
- AppleTV software crashes with some TV Show names.
Continue reading "AppleTV tips and bugs to be aware of..." »
AppleTV tips and bugs to be aware of...
As readers will be aware we brought into that AppleTV thing a while ago to complement the EyeTV setup from even further ago.
In the last few days I've had a few snag's with it that are probably worth letting the world know about. There are two items and both of them are bugs in the AppleTV software that are triggered by our setup.
- TV Show's get dumped into a "Various" listing rather than the show name
- AppleTV software crashes with some TV Show names.
Continue reading "AppleTV tips and bugs to be aware of..." »
October 17, 2007
It's here, it's here, well nearly...
For those that may have missed it Leopard is on its way and even better the delivery date for Australia is Oct. 26th. That's only next Friday folks...
October 15, 2007
Energy Saver - the overlooked and oft forgotten green service
As you're probably aware by now it's - blog action day! Well here's a tip that will not only help save the earth but save you money as well!
For some reason, people seem to miss the Energy Saver control panel in the Mac OS X System Preferences. For those that don't know what it looks like I present the Energy Saver icon from the System Preferences.
Case in point I recently visited a client who had a very nice Mac Book Pro (17" with all the bells and whistles) and while we where talking his Mac Book went to sleep. To my surprise the client complained about it saying he "didn't know why it kept doing that" - this is when I clicked that he must be a switcher.
So I introduced him to the Energy Saver options...
Continue reading "Energy Saver - the overlooked and oft forgotten green service" »
September 13, 2007
Listening to ABC's Radio streams on your Mac
ABC has some great radio programs available, including 24 hour news, if you don't live in a satellite black-hole.
As you would expect they even have live streams available over the internet. Unfortunately rather than use a popular open standard (say like Internet Radio) they have gone with two proprietary products (namely Windows Media and Real Audio). This sucks! Not only does it suck, the ABC won't even bother to acknowledge email on the subject.
Continue reading "Listening to ABC's Radio streams on your Mac" »
August 24, 2007
EyeTV and the case of the missing iTunes Library
A short while ago we brought into the whole AppleTV thing from the Australian Online Apple Store.
Why you ask ? You live in Australia the ITMS doesn't sell videos or movies? Yes but, we also have an EyeTV unit to record all of those show's that we don't get to watch live - which would be most of them. Slight digression here but have you any idea how much time is consumed with work, school, sports and general survival tasks (like shopping) - the modern society calls out for TV-on-demand - it rarely has time to sit down and watch a show at the same time each week.
Anyway back to the EyeTV AppleTV thing. The EyeTV has been setup to record all those shows on at the wrong time and with the advent of the AppleTV set to dump them out to iTunes automatically (using a Tubo.264). This worked well until we got a bit busy and show's started piling up and the Mac Mini we use as a media server just ran out of room.
This was simple enough to solve, get an external drive. So after a bit of research we got one of those Mini sized hard disk drives and moved the iTunes library over to it. As it was a big enough drive I also pointed the EyeTV to it for storing its Archive folder which holds all the schedules and recordings.
The next day I noticed that the EyeTV software was quitting and after a little investigation I found that the AppleTV and iPod export buttons would cause an immediate crash. The workaround currently is to place an alias of the iTunes Library folder in your Music folder.
Situation:
EyeTV 410 running on a Mac Mini has been running fine for some time, recently an external hard disk was added as the iTunes library has gotten to large for the Mini's internal drive. The iTunes library was subsequently moved to the new external drive and iTunes was launched and pointed correctly to the drive - other iLife applications can find the iTunes media without a problem.
Problem:
After moving the iTunes library to the external drive EyeTV crashes when using iPod or AppleTV buttons to export files. It does not crash using the "Export" menu item from the File menu.
Expected Result:
EyeTV would find the iTunes library in the same way iLife programs do.
Workaround:
Place an alias in the Music folder pointing to the real iTunes library.
Status:
Reported to Elgato.
Continue reading "EyeTV and the case of the missing iTunes Library" »
March 21, 2007
Tip for New Mac User #01
A series of tips for the newish Mac user, mind you some of these tips are now several decades old (as in I was using them with my first Mac back in the late '80s).
Technorati Tags: Mac OS X
March 7, 2007
How to take a screen shot on your Mac (and how to save the sanity of your tech support/family member)...
January 31, 2007
QuickSilver manual in the works...
Technorati Tags: QuickSilver, Software
The joys of MovableType and users...
January 29, 2007
New Phone Tips
Technorati Tags: Australian, Mac OS X, Technology
September 28, 2006
QuickSilver - things I like the most...
Technorati Tags: Geekery, Mac, QuickSilver
Continue reading "QuickSilver - things I like the most..." »
July 7, 2006
May 24, 2006
Recent Posts
- Parallels 4 - Some Upgrading Tips!
- Rebuilding your iTunes 8 Library
- Mail keyboard tips...
- Elgato EyeTV, Nullriver MediaLink and ports... (oh and Aperture)
- More reason's to buy a Mac...
- AppleTV & PS3 support in a single movie file (level=41:)
- Things you may not know about NetNewsWire 3.1 (part one: browser stuff)
- DSE loves iTunes User More!
- Australia Post Hearts iTunes & iPod
- 2 Useful Quick Look Generators
- Finder Tip
- Dictionary in Leopard Rocks!
- MailTags Leopard Beta
- MailTags Leopard Beta
- Leopard and Mail plug-ins [UPDATED]
- Leopard and Mail plug-ins [UPDATED]
- Leopard does not like Unsanity... but it's fixable.
- Leopard does not like Unsanity... but it's fixable.
- Leopard talks to the Motorola MaXX
- Leopard talks to the Motorola MaXX
December 2008
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