Monday 31 December 2012

Setup a Raspberry Pi for the first time via a Mac

What you'll need;

  1. Raspberry Pi (Rpi)
  2. Mini USB power supply
  3. HDMI cable
  4. USB mouse and keyboard
  5. 4 GB SD Card (flash)
  6. A HDMI enabled monitor or display (or TV)
  7. LAN cable
Plug all the items in - but not the power yet. First you need to setup the SD card with the bootable operating system.

Instructions can be found here; http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup Though they sound more complicated than it is.
  1. Make sure you've given the SD Card a unique name
  2. At the terminal type "df -h" and you'll be able to look up the device name in the format of /dev/diskxsx as you will see the volume name on the right hand side is what you assigned to the SD card in step one.
  3. Download Raspbian "Wheezy" from here http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
  4. Unzip it by double clicking the zip file that you just downloaded
  5. Go into Disk Utility and unmount the partition of the SD Card, if it can't unmount it, eject it and then reconnect and do the un-mounting.
  6. Type the following in the terminal "sudo dd if=path_of_your_image.img of=/dev/diskn bs=1m" the diskn should be consistent with what you got in step 2
  7. It will ask for your password (the cursor won't scroll) press enter
  8. This kicks off the process and it take's 1/2 - 1 hour or so to do the work - a long time, and it does not indicate any progress as it goes a long. You can check that something is happening by inspecting the dd process in active processes in system monitor - to convince yourself it's doing something (you'll see the processor utilisation varying).
  9. Once that's complete then you are all set, just plug that in the Raspberry Pi and plug it into the power and you will be ready
  10. On first boot it will give you a set of options to set, do so at your pleasure




Sunday 23 December 2012

I really like the new iTunes

Things that I really like are;

  1. Browsing and playing albums is much much better now
  2. Can scroll view albums graphically
  3. Then when you play one it opens up and shows the album track list with the background colour the same as the album artwork (very clever and looks really nice)
  4. You can add albums or individual tracks to the next up list - this is brilliant as it resolves the problem of playing multiple albums that the old iTunes used to have.

Saturday 22 December 2012

How to get photos to appear in iMessage?

Photos Not appearing



Edit photos
There seems to be a bug with my iMessage on my Mac that virtually all the avatar / profile pics had disappeared. Discussing with the genius, we thought that getting rid of the contacts in the address book might resolve it - as possibly a reboot. He left me to manually remove all the duplicates whilst he went on to help other people - but he was happy for me to stay and do this. After removing the duplicates and rebooting the photos did not appear. The Genius was busy at this point. So I was playing around, and then I thought I’d try opening the photos in the address book and re-saving them. This was a master stroke, as the photos suddenly appeared in iMessage. So it was just a case of going through and re-saving all the photos in Contacts and this resolved the problem. Well almost; one message thread still didn’t contain photos when I opened the thread. But scrolling up and scrolling back down the pictures reappeared. So that is kind of a workaround for now, until Apple fix this.

How do I get rid of the duplicate contacts in contacts / the address book?

How do I get rid of the duplicate contacts in contacts / the address book?


Merge and Link

Since Mountain Lion’s Facebook contacts integration, lots of my contacts have two entries, one I created, and one created from Facebook, where iCloud did not realise they were the same person. So the resolution to this one was to select both contacts, and under the “Cards” menu item you can “merge” the contacts or “link” the contacts - this resolved all the duplicates.

Sunday 16 December 2012

Putting twitter and blogger on your website

To put Twitter and Blogger on your website use the following two sites;
Then just paste in the HTML into your site, you are going to want to play around with formatting until you get it how you want it.

See an example here; http://www.kevingordon.org.uk

Wednesday 5 December 2012

Fixing a network card on Windows 7

The problem;
- Windows 7 computer - cannot connect to wifi connection
- Cannot connect to internet via ethernet cable
- At this point I strongly suspected a hardware failure

 Diagnosing and fixing the problem;

  1. Tried letting Windows attempt to fix the wifi and the network card - this did not fix it. Tried going to the network card preferences and it was reporting that is was functioning correctly.
  2. Tried disabling the wifi card and the network card and re-enabling the network card - this did not work. To do this right click on my computer and going to hardware/devices.
  3. Tried uninstalling the network card (do not delete driver), then searching for it again. It came back and re-installed it. Plugged in the ethernet cable, the system tray was now saying "connected", internet browser wasn't giving anything. So tried run > cmd > ping www.bbc.co.uk and it could ping successfully. The retried browser and it worked
  4. Tried re-enabling wifi - unplugged ethernet, wifi still did not work, not even pinging.
  5. Tried uninstalling and re-installing the wifi card, after install it said there was a problem, but if quickly fixed itself. Then I was able to connect via the wifi. Note that uninstalling the wifi will mean you will have to re-enter and re-remember your wifi login details. 

Conclusion
So it was a software problem, and re-installing the network card and wifi fixed the problem. Done.

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Watching Video Games

It's long a go since I was able to complete computer games / video games. Through either lack of skill or lack of motivation I usually give us after a week or so, and when I return to the game I've ususally forgotten the controls. Then I discovered game walk-throughs on YouTube, and I've been catching up on some games I could not complete;


Resident Evil 4;



Uncharted Drakes Fortune;



I Am Alive



And I found an amazing game I haven't even played yet; Heavy Rain;


It has been fantastic catching up with old games I haven't completed, and seeing the new game "Heavy Rain".

Sunday 18 November 2012

OS X Finder tips

I was doing a bit of investigation into the Finder options accessible here;



And here's what I found;

The options I found useful (under General) was that you can choose to see Hard drives on the desktop and also Connected servers  - which is very useful. Additionally you can choose to change the default folder that Finder opens up each time you do a new Finder window - this is a great option.


Under "Sidebar" you can choose what appears on the sidebar in Finder, and adding your computer is useful, as you can then expand the computer and expand the network and connected servers, providing a very useful way of navigating.



Under advanced you can turn on to "show all filename extensions" which I find useful.

Saturday 17 November 2012

Zero inbox

A policy I practice at work is having my email completely under control, that means having techniques to make sure I get through the email, and ways of managing the inbox to make sure that emails in the inbox are either (a) unread or (b) not there / filed away.

So techniques for getting through my email are;

  • I get in early and e-mail is my number one priority, and I will get through the whole inbox until it is empty (see below), from there I will move on to the tasks of the day.
  • I usually have another email reading/actioning session after lunch, my lunch break is booked in for 1 1/2 hours so I can have a decent lunch break and then have plenty of time to get through the additional email that has built up - without being interrupted by meetings.
  • I have turned off email notifications - therefore I do not get disturbed during work time
  • Occasionally I check emails outside of these time windows, but prioritise the ones that are looked at.
When reading/actioning email during these time windows I use the following technique
  • Starting from the top read each email
  • I have Outlook 2010 quick steps for moving email to certain folders; 1) Reading list; 2) In progress; 3) Done; 4) Delete; and OneNote setup to accept email.
  • If the email is spam or not of interested click delete
  • If the email is of interest, contains a document or some business acumen information, non project related, then click "reading list" - then take some time out at a later time to read through these emails or delete them.
  • If the email is a simple task that can be done quickly, or something that can be replied to quickly then do the task or reply and click "done" (If it contains information that is of use, before clicking "done" click "one note" and choose the appropriate place to file it away).
  • If the email cannot be actioned quickly, needs a good 10+ minutes of effort or reading then right click and copy to the task list (this allows you to add in attachments). Choose the timings when to action the task, and choose a category for the project. If it contains useful information use "one note" to file the email. Then click "in progress".
  • The key is not to spend more than a few minutes on each email, and if you need to spend more than that it either goes to (i) The reading list; or (ii) The in progress list (with a task created).
  • There are also in progress email, that you don't need to action but you want to keep track of, these can go in the "in progress" list to.


Therefore when you are doing work and processing the tasks of the day, you can prioritise this work, and you have all the related emails in "in progress" and all the related knowledge in "One Note".

Being disciplined about keeping your inbox to zero, gives you a sense of control, and by filtering out just the tasks that you need to progress, with associated tasks you can then categorise these tasks per project and appropriately prioritise and schedule this work. And suddenly you've got a pipeline of work, and an effective way for new work to come in via the inbox, and no feeling of being swamped by your increasing inbox.

Monday 12 November 2012

Add tasks to Things with Siri

You can add reminders to Siri that get transferred to you Things inbox, and the reminder is then removed from reminders. It is fantastic and works perfectly! It describes it here http://support.culturedcode.com/customer/portal/articles/183236-using-siri-with-things on the Cultured Code website but does not describe how to turn it on and use it! Well here is how you can do it;

1) Create a list in Reminders called "Things" or whatever you would prefer
2) In Things on your iPhone, under preferences, go to "Reminders & Siri"
3) Choose to "Show Reminders" and choose the "Things" list from earlier
4) Now word your reminder to Siri as "Add [item] to my [listname] list" which would be something like "Add bake a cake to my Things list"
5) This will add the reminder in Reminders, it will go into the Things inbox and delete it from reminders. You can then go into Things inbox and choose to import the reminder or move it to a project

Fix AppleScript to create new tasks in Things

This fixes the problems highlighted here https://culturedcode.com/forums/read.php?7,59076 on the cultured code forum.

By making a series of changes to the script provided here https://culturedcode.com/things/wiki/index.php/AppleScript:Create_new_tasks_from_Mail_messages,_adding_Growl_notification using the code changes suggested here http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1416945 gives a script which creates a new Task when you receive a message with the title "Add to things" - you need to set a rule that runs the script on receiving a message with that as a title. It then creates a task in things with the task name the same as the description, so make the message body short!


using terms from application "Mail"
on perform mail action with messages newMessages
repeat with newMessage in newMessages
tell application "Mail"
set taskName to content of newMessage
set taskNotes to taskName & " (From " & the sender of newMessage & ")"
tell application "Things"
set newToDo to make new to do with properties {name:taskNamenotes:taskNotes}
end tell
tell application "Growl"
set the allNotificationsList to ¬
{"Task Created"}
set the enabledNotificationsList to ¬
{"Task Created"}
register as application ¬
"Create Task from Multiple Mail (Growl Enabled)" all notifications allNotificationsList ¬
default notifications enabledNotificationsList ¬
icon of application "Things"
notify with name ¬
"Task Created" title ¬
"Task created in Things" description ¬
taskName application name "Create Task from Multiple Mail (Growl Enabled)"
end tell
end tell
end repeat
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from



At the moment the body contains line breaks, and makes the task format strangely in things, if you know how to add some code to remove the line breaks from the subject I would appreciate it!

Note you need to place this in the new place where Mail expects scripts to be, navigable via the rules definition screens under Mail preferences.




Thursday 8 November 2012

How to restore Mac to factory settings / how to sell on your Mac


I did a google for “How to restore Mac to factory settings” and all the hits back seemed to be talking about deleting everything manually and then restoring the operating system from a disk! There is a much better way; I’m assuming your intention to restore to factory settings is because you want to sell on or pass on your Mac to someone? Follow these simple steps and you will effectively do what the title suggests.

  1. Make sure you have a full back up of all your files, and you have transferred them to a new Mac and it is working and you have verified all your files have been copied.
  2. De-authorise your computer in iTunes on the Mac you are getting rid of
  3. You should have already disabled Time Machine on the Mac you are getting rid of, as part of the transfer to the new Mac.
  4. Now create a user account with admin privileges for the person you are passing the Mac onto, if you don’t know who this is going to be make it something generic like “Administrator” - the most important thing is that you give them full admin privileges that you current account has.
  5. Check that you can log in to the new account, and that it has admin rights. This can be done by unlocking a setting in System Preferences where it will ask you for your admin password.
  6. Make the hard drive appear on the desktop by going to finder > Preferences > and choose “Show hard drives” on desktop.
  7. Change the hard drive name to take our your name; right click on the hard drive > get info > update the name.
  8. Change the name of the computer to take our your name. Go to System Preferences > Sharing > the change the computer name.
  9. Now under System Preferences > User & Groups, unlock for changes and then choose the user account you want to remove and click the minus sign. It may take up to 10-15 minutes to process (giving a bouncing ball and even saying “unresponsive” in system monitor - however it will come back).
  10. Once you get to the next screen you will be able to choose to delete the home folder of this user and its contents and choose “delete securely”, then click ok/apply.
  11. Leave the computer to delete the account - this may take up to 12+ hours depending on the size of the user account (for me it took this long for 200GB+ user account). You can monitor progress by doing a get info on the hard drive and watching the available disk space increase over time.
  12. Once deleted there should now be lots of spare space.
  13. The remaining steps are manual, if you have any files stored outside the home directory then these need to be deleted. Apps do not get deleted, so these too will need to be manually deleted if you don’t want them transferred to the new user.

And that in a nut shell is it - you’ll then be giving the new owner basically a brand new laptop reverted to factory settings.

Sunday 4 November 2012

iPad naming convention

So the iPad is now know as "the iPad 4th generation", and the iPad is now no longer referred to as "the New iPad", rather the "iPad 3rd generation". In stores you can buy the iPad Mini, the iPad 2 and the iPad 4th generation (referred to as the iPad with Retina display).

I did predict some of this, and my explanation was that they wanted to make the iPad launch less of a big event then it had been previously. This is to (a) be realistic that there isn't significant hardware feature changes coming at the moment (and so to reduce expectations); and (b) to allow them to release and refresh the series whenever they want, like the other hardware lines (MacBook Pros, iMacs, Mac Minis, etc). They haven't gone the full distance though as they are still referring them to as "nth generation" like the iPods rather than like other hardware that isn't referred to by generation but rather the year that it was made on. For example my previous MBP is referred to as a "late 2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch", and my new MBP will be referred to as a "late 2012 MacBook Pro 15 inch with Retina Display".

What this means is I don't think the next iPad will be a called an iPad 5 or an iPad 4S; it will be known as the iPad 5th generation, and will probably still be called the iPad with Retina display. Will it be released in March 2013, that is quite interesting, and I'm going to make the prediction that they will indeed refresh early 2013 to give the 5th generation a speed increase, and potentially some additional ports, it's unlikely it will get a higher res screen. It may get thinner, have a slightly different look, and perhaps have an even longer battery life.

The interesting thing is that the iPad 2 still lives on, but the iPad 3rd generation has been killed off; I can see the rationale as now we have 3 iPads at different price points; the iPad mini, the iPad 2 and the iPad with retina display (4th generation). But what happens when the 5th generation comes out next year? Will Apple continue to sell the iPad 2 at a discounted rate? You know I think with the iPad Mini they now have 3 viable products - and so I predict that the iPad 2 could be enhanced (but non-retina), so we will then have an iPad Mini, an iPad and an iPad with Retina display. Alternatively the iPad 2 will be dropped and we will just have the iPad Mini and the iPad. With the iPad having a retina display - this will probably not happen until the MacBook Pros are merged with the MacBook Pros with retina display.

It will be interesting to see what will happen. And now there is an iPad Mini will we see an iPad Mini with retina display? And will the iPad Mini get refreshed early 2013 as well?

Friday 26 October 2012

Interesting question regarding building interfaces to legacy systems

Here is a very interesting question regarding building of interfaces to legacy systems; http://qr.ae/8Q3PT

What are the best ways to construct interfaces to legacy FTP systems to and from an Enterprise Java EE Websphere transactional application? 
The legacy systems only have FTP interfaces, and FTP is the only means of transferring data to and from those applications, the files are column positioned flat files and not in XML format. The FTP part of the interface is set and is not going to be changed for the foreseeable future. What are the best solutions for performing extracts of the input files, cleansing the data applying any required transforming and loading into the Enterprise application’s transactional database? Is the concept ETL in terms of BI systems applicable in this type of domain? What technologies are out there to do this? Can it be done in Java / is that advisable, are there better ways to do this than in Oracle Stored Procedures with staging tables? What mechanisms / patterns perform well and are scalable?

Backup disk not available - Apple Time machine


After migrating from one Apple MacBook Pro to the next, Time Machine / Time Machine then complained that "Backup disk not available". What follows is details of how I was able to resolve the issue;

1) Turned off Time Machine on and off again to no avail
2) Can access time capsule via finder
3) In time machine options/preferences chose "select disk" and from the available disk I selected my computer "data"
4) It then said "inherit backup history" previous computer will no longer be able to backup - say yes
5) Then there is a long wait whilst time machine is "looking for backup disk"
6) Then it said "the backup disk ***sparsebundle is already in use and cannot backup
7) So I logged on previous MBP and went to Finder and opened the time capsule folder and clicked "Disconnect" at the top
8) I then tried selecting the disk again, error again that it is in use
Checked the log/console by filtering on "backupd" and it showed the sparse bundle was already mounted and it couldn't unmount it
9) So I went to finder on my new MBP and clicked the circular eject button next to it (The Time capsule drive)
10) I retried selecting the disk in time machine preferences and it asked me if I wanted to inherit again
11) This time the log looked better, and the time capsule went into "preparing mode"
Warning, it remained in "preparing mode" for a very long time before it started generating any further logs and doing anything
12) It disconnected part way through over night, I started it again, and it failed without an error message, I kicked it off again this time it started but it wanted to back up 200+GB, so I cancelled it, then I read that it will delete old backups when it runs out of space - so I have restarted the backup again, fingers crossed.
13) The backup is now working and it is logging its progress (occasionally) as it writes the backups

Sunday 21 October 2012

Safari iPad bookmarks disappeared

On iOS 6 Safari iPad 2, the bookmarks suddenly disappeared. All it took was a reboot and they came back! Phew. Source here https://discussions.apple.com/message/20080755#20080755


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Maps Fail

Search for "South America" in Apple maps;



And searching for "South America" in Google maps!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Saturday 22 September 2012

iOS 6 review

iOS 6 review

Lots of new features and enhancements, here are my highlights;

Mail improvements. This is my number one most awesome thing; I really love this; you now have a VIP inbox (which syncs with what you set as VIP on your Mac), you can then go into notification centre and change the notifications for all the accounts and VIP separately. So I've now turned off all notifications (a part from badges) for all accounts apart from VIP. And I've turned on the full notifications for VIP messages. This way I now only get notified when I've got important e-mail, and all spam and other email goes through without notification. But I still get the badge indicating I have new email, and I check them as and when I want to. Also mail now has a cool pull down to refresh facility - and the way Apple has implemented this is partially cool. Another fabulous feature is that you can press to insert video or images - which right from inside the message you can add lots of images or videos. Another nice feature is that holding down the new mail / compose message button will allow you to choose a draft message to continue writing.

iOS 6 Maps / Apple Maps. This has come under a major bit of criticism for mistakes and issues and to generally not being as good as Google Maps. I actually prefer the way that Apple Maps looks and the app in general works a lot better. There is integration in Siri with maps now which is great, and also the turn by turn directions is fantastic, I've only tried it out for some short journeys but it works really really well. Also the 3D flight over is absolutely beautiful and much more fun than street view as you can go wherever you want at any angle and it renders in real time, rather than the slow loading / delay of Google Street view. Not having Google street view is a shame though. 3D flyover is absolutely stunning (where it is available) - I've only found it in Vegas and London at the moment… You can get GoogleMaps back by doing a web click and adding it to your home page, but unfortunately it does not have street view.

Do not disturb (DnD) functionality is great - the phone will continue to be connected to the internet, accept you can put it on DnD to stop notifications, phone calls, and message. You can set it so favourite/starred contacts can still make calls to you, and best of all you can schedule DnD to come on each day between say 23.00 and 7.00 which is excellent.

The new Clock app for iPad. This is just absolutely awesome, it's beautiful. There is a world clock, alarm clock and timer. How the alarm clock is implemented is really great, and you can schedule in the alarm to come on everyday or every weekday. And because this allows you to schedule and repeat the alarms I discovered you can do this on the iPhone too! (I don't know whether this was possible before, but I'm glad I know about it now at least!)

Enhanced Facebook and Twitter integration. Now you can tweet and Facebook post from the notification centre, brilliant! There is also a much better share / action button littered everywhere around iOS, where you can create a Tweet or Facebook Post from the content, and within that little share box you can choose the Twitter account to post on, and who to send it to within Facebook. I wonder if we'll get a Google+ share option ;-)

YouTube app has gone… It's okay because Google have released their own YouTube app for the iPhone, but they haven't yet released the iPad version yet, this is a we bit disappointing!

New apps and app enhancements including FindMyPhone (new), Podcasts (new), iTunes U (new), PassBook (new), App Store, iTunes, iPod, FindMyPhone is just like the iCloud facility - solid. Podcasts is a great little app, the animated tape player when you are listening to audio podcasts is stunning. I haven't really used iTunes U, but its got a cool catalog. I haven't used PassBook yet. The App Store has been enhanced, and is much better - now you remain in the app when you request them to be installed, and new apps now get a "new" label on them when you haven't used them yet. It looks like iTunes and iPod have been improved too, though I haven't used them much yet to give an opinion.

Siri enhancements. It now has movie reviews and information, local business information (finally), Restaurant information and booking, it can also open applications now (about time!) and has maps integration (about time). I've had mixed results in accuracy around the new information so I am reserving judgement at the moment. But the new features are appreciated. It can also post to Twitter and Facebook, though I haven't tested that yet.

iMessage and FaceTime phone number integration across all devices. So now you can add your phone number to your iPad and Mac as well as to your iPhone in both iMessage and FaceTime. This means all messages appear in the same stream (as your phone number) and you can place and receive FaceTime calls on all your devices via your mobile number, brilliant!

New emoticons on Emoji, yes!

Safari iCloud tabs is a nice feature where you can view the tabs you are viewing on any other iOS or OSX devices

Overall I'm very happy with the new iOS 6, it's a major step forward and overall much slicker, some great new features, and some cool new apps, yes I like it. And actually I quite like the new Apple Maps now - thank you to Sarah, Jon and Dave for encouragement that it might actually be quite good.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thursday 20 September 2012

How to get iMessage to use your mobile number

It's the old turn it on and off again that makes it work (after upgrading to iOS6 and latest OSX it did not automatically pick up my mobile, it was only giving my email as a recipient).

On the iPhone under iMessage settings, unselect your email/appleId, then add your AppleId. On entering settings on OSX my mobile suddenly appeared as a possible recipient.

Still not appearing on the iPad, so in settings I toggled iMessage off and then back on to re-activate it. Lowe and behold my number then appeared as a possible recipient. I think doing this also updated FaceTime to use my mobile on the iPad too, I still need to check if OSX FaceTime has updated too...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Friday 14 September 2012

How did my iPhone predictions go?

- All your standard enhancements; faster processor, more memory, better rear facing camera (higher megapixel, faster shutter response, enhanced flash), better front facing camera -> Pretty much all this happened 1/1
- New look and redesign, judging by leaks back will be metallic and coloured black or white. Sleek unibody design? -> Yep, got that one right 2/2
- larger screen, rumours are it will be the same width but longer and have a 4-4.5 inch diagonal, I would be pleased for the size increase but if its larger and keeps the same number of pixels it won't be as good a retina display, if extra pixels are added with the increased height, then how will existing apps work, will they all have to be re-written for the new screen resolution, I guess we will here about this soon in order for us to update our apps -> Yep this happened 3/3
- Smaller dock connector, I've said this for a while, and leaked photos suggest this might be included. -> Yep my prediction finally came true... 4/4
- Movement of the earplugs port to the bottom, according to rumours -> Oh dear I predicted this right... 5/5
- NFC payments enabled (want) -> Unsurprisingly this didn't happen :-( 5/6
- 4G data connectivity -> Yep 4G/LTE happened 6/7
- 128 GB space is unlikely as the iPad hasn't got that size yet -> Nope this didn't happen either 6/8
- There are rumours it'll be called the "new iPhone", noooo! -> Thankfully they kept the numeric nomenclature, phew! 6/9

So how did I do; 6/9 correct or 67% not bad :-)

iPhone 5 iWant

So what is new on the iPhone 5?

  1. Larger screen - not sure how existing apps are going to render on the new aspect ratio? We'll see. So viewing of widescreen videos without a black bar, and an extra row of apps on the home screen.
  2. New processor - New A6 chip is meant to make the iPhone twice as fast, and for an already quick phone, this is great!
  3. 4G/LTE - Great ... but not so much as the UK doesn't have a 4G network yet, but when it does this will be great.
  4. Thinner and lighter - Always good - though I read the lightness makes it feel less solid ... 
  5. Better camera - Camera optics are enhanced, higher resolution, increased facial recognition (so better focus?) and new panoramic view which is great
  6. Better iSight camera (front facing camera) - can now take 720p FaceTime chats
  7. Larger battery - so battery life improved (but still not as good as 4 apparently, but can't be worse than 4S?)
  8. New dock connector (Lightening) - new dock connector, though it's not clear what the advantage is other than being able to plug in either way round. Unfortunately you'll now need to buy new connectors and accessories ...
  9. Moved earphone port - I think this may be a disadvantage - e.g. when you've got it rested in the cup holder in the car, we'll see...
  10. New look design - Not only is the screen bigger, but the look has been re-designed - not revolutionary, but now has a cool aluminium back panel.
  11. iOS 6 - Further Twitter & Facebook integration, new maps, new 3D fly over, new turn-by-turn directions, PassBook and enhancements to Siri (Open apps, post to Facebook, integration with Movie reviews, restaurant booking and sports scores - though these are probably US only...)
  12. New earphones (EarPods) - New redesigned earphones called "EarPods".
Though not revolutionary, and all this information had been pretty much leaked, I was not disappointed. The larger screen and increased speed are major pulls. However I am probably going to wait for the iPhone 5S, maybe I'll save my money for the new new iPad (iPad 4).

Saturday 11 August 2012

Turning on find my Mac on Mountain Lion

I got the following error with Find My Mac;


The error was "This Mac can't be located because it does not have Wi-Fi". I found how to resolve this with the advice from here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4137458?start=0&tstart=0 Basically go into system preferences and under security & privacy, and then the privacy tab, turn off location services then turn them back on. For me this fixed it and Find My Mac now works.

Saturday 4 August 2012

Viewing the full hard drive space usage OS X

Something that has been a pain for a long time is that the hard drive icon, on the desktop, says how big it is and how much space is available, but it obscures it; e.g. "319.14 G...7 GB free" rather than "319.14 GB, 47 GB free". E.g.


Thankfully I found the instructions here; http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-786367.html and the problem is quickly resolved by increasing the grid spacing of the icons until all the text is shown and you get the following;


Brill! So to do that; right click on the hard drive icon (two finger click) and click "Show View Options" and then increase the "Grid Spacing" until the text can be fully seen as above.

Friday 3 August 2012

Fixing sleeping has fixed waking up too!

Now I have fixed sleeping on my MacBookPro, waking up has now been fixed as well - yeh! What was happening is that when I lifted the lid it would remain black, sometimes pressing space would bring up lock screen sometimes it wouldn't. Opening and closing the lid and pressing the space repeatedly would eventually get the lock screen. Then when the lock screen appeared and I begun to type in my password the screen would go black and not respond, closing the lid and opening and pressing the space would bring the lock screen back. Sometimes a little after unlocking, the screen would go black too! And sometimes you'd get the beach ball in the middle of this too.

Anyway, by getting the MBP to sleep again, all these problems are now fixed, excellent!


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MacBookPro not sleeping

I was getting frustrated that my MacBookPro didn't seem to be sleeping any more - the lovely snoring LED wasn't doing that any more :-( - One of my favourite Mac features. A quick Google and I found this https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3190738?start=45&tstart=0

You need to open terminal and type the following "pmset -g", this will give an output that will include a line saying "sleep 0 (imposed by 18)", 18 being the Process Id (pid) of the programme stopping the sleep happening. On the terminal type "ps -ef | grep -e 18" replacing 18 with the Process Id above - note I had multiple pid's stopping my MBP sleeping.

You can also go to System Monitor and choose to view all processes, order the processes by Pid and you will be able to find the programme that is stopping the sleep. For me it was "cupsd" and another programme. According to the link below this is related to printer network sharing. So go to System Preferences, Printer and Scan and for me I had a print job still hanging around on the print queue for my printer - so I deleted this job. I also unchecked network sharing for my printer. Taking these two actions running "pmset -g" again, there was no longer anything stopping my MBP sleeping.

Problem solved - awesome!!

Website inception

I accidentally typed Google into Google; website inception, I thought the internet was going to break!

Then I thought I'd be a smart arse and do SharePoint inception by putting an iFrame on my SharePoint site, only I thought it would be clever to put my SharePoint site in this iFrame; website exception, but major fail - this basically set up a recursive call to my site, which blew the memory, and wouldn't let me edit it; so I couldn't remove it!!! Argh. But then I remembered I have SharePoint Designer, and a quick search for "iFrame" and replacement with a different site fixed the problem.

Lesson learned; don't try website inception.... (website within a website within a website...)


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Monday 16 July 2012

OS X Activity monitor

Just been having a play with activity monitor, one thing that I like about the Windows Task Manager is that it has a separate tab for Open Application vs Processes.

Well I just discovered that there is a drop down which you can select which processes to view; one of them being "Windowed Processes" which then just lists the Applications that are open, brilliant!

Wednesday 11 July 2012

Things email integration

Wonderful things are a foot; I have discovered email integration with Things. There are two scripts;

1) Send email to Things https://culturedcode.com/things/wiki/index.php/MailToThings - This allows you to send an email to yourself with subject line "Add to things" and a task will be created in your Things inbox on your Mac with the message body added as the task in Things. Brilliant! This is going to be very useful when I want to set myself a task at work or forward an email that I want as a task; I can change the subject to "Add to things" and it will be waiting for me in my Things inbox when I get home, brilliant! It just requires downloading an AppleScript and adding a rule to to Mail; follow the link it's all explained.

2) Add email to Things https://culturedcode.com/things/wiki/index.php/AppleScript:Create_new_tasks_from_Mail_messages%2C_adding_Growl_notification Similar to the first one, but this is for when you receive an email that you want to make a task out of (which is a regular thing), instead of manually adding to Things you can now select the message(s) and run an AppleScript and each of the messages will be added to the Things inbox as a new Task, with the subject as the task, and message body as the notes of the task. Brilliant! It even gives you a notification message when it creates the task - you just need to install Growl (notification app) you can download that from the App Store here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/growl/id467939042?mt=12&ign-mpt=uo%3D4.

Loving Things, and love this email integration, brilliant! :-)

Tuesday 10 July 2012

Where are my sent email

1. Sent items from yahoo were not appearing under sent items in mail.app or via mail.yahoo.co.uk. By setting the preferences on the yahoo account to "save drafts on server" the emails then appeared under sent items on mac and yahoo.

2. Sent items on the mac not appearing on the iPhone and iPad under sent. I found the mail.app on os x is storing the mail in "sent messages" rather than "sent". On the mac these two folders are merged under sent. On the iPhone and iPad you can find these other sent items under "sent messages" under the folders, so they are there and accessible, phew!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:UK

Monday 9 July 2012

How to change email address on Flickr

I just spent several frustrating minutes on flickr trying to change my email address, as somehow it had my work email address as my registered email address... Its very un-obvious, but a quick google gave me this gem;

http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/email/

You can add and remove email addresses, and change which one is the primary email address, done!

Monday 18 June 2012

iOS 6 feature compatibility per device

The iOS 6 feature compatibility per device shows that 3GS, iPad 1 users and below pretty much lose out :-( Thankfully I've got a 4S iPhone, so I get flyover and tur-by-turn nav, and Facetime over cellualar network, yeh! But my iPad 2 isn't getting Siri; not happy :-(






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Basildon, Essex, UK

Monday 11 June 2012

Stop new emails vibrating iPhone

I keep my iPhone on silent, and don't want new emails appearing on the lock screen, but they still vibrated my phone. Now I've found out how to stop this.

Under settings > sounds, leave the vibrate setting to on.



But turn the sound off for new email by setting it to none.



Now new emails won't vibrate, yeh!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Canvey Island, Essex, UK

Wednesday 6 June 2012

The Lancaster

The Lancaster is a cafe/bar in Southend on Sea, by London Southend Airport. I had it described to me that there was a cafe by the Lancaster plane in Southend airport, and I never knew of it, and I needed to discover it.

So on some very rough instructions I embarked on a mini adventure and found the place. Its a pleasant cafe/bar located overlooking the airport and runway, and they do a cheap breaky for £0.80 per item until midday, and sometimes they do an all-day breakfast. The staff that were there on my visit were very friendly. Oh and they do a lovely cafe latte!!

To get there head straight ahead at the round about that going right would take you to Pets At Home, follow the road past the train station, and before you get to the end of the road (which has barriers) there is a right turning that also has a barrier, but between the barrier and left-hand carpark there is a road, which once followed takes you to the Lancaster, there is parking here which is free.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Canvey Island, Essex, UK

Tuesday 5 June 2012

iPhone 5 and iOS 6

Here are some things I think may be included in the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 and things I'd like;

iPhone 5
- All your standard enhancements; faster processor, more memory, better rear facing camera (higher megapixel, faster shutter response, enhanced flash), better front facing camera
- New look and redesign, judging by leaks back will be metallic and coloured black or white. Sleek unibody design?
- larger screen, rumours are it will be the same width but longer and have a 4-4.5 inch diagonal, I would be pleased for the size increase but if its larger and keeps the same number of pixels it won't be as good a retina display, if extra pixels are added with the increased height, then how will existing apps work, will they all have to be re-written for the new screen resolution, I guess we will here about this soon in order for us to update our apps
- Smaller dock connector, I've said this for a while, and leaked photos suggest this might be included.
- Movement of the earplugs port to the bottom, according to rumours
- NFC payments enabled (want)
- 4G data connectivity
- 128 GB space is unlikely as the iPad hasn't got that size yet
- There are rumours it'll be called the "new iPhone", noooo!

iOS 6
- Siri improvements, business search outside the US, use on the iPad (apparently designing the UI for the large screen has been a challenge)
- New beautiful mapping solution replacing Google Maps with photo realistic 3D view
- Turn by turn directions like a sat nav
- App enhancements, possibly to Track Friends, Cards, and maybe pretty up Photos (want), iTunes, iBooks, App Store
- New apps
- New widgets for notification centre, and developers able to create their own widgets
- Facebook integration - lots of rumours on this
- Do not disturb feature - allowing you to turn off notifications, alerts and sounds, different to airport mode as all network access would continue to work
- Sync Safari tabs across multiple devices
- VIP mail - allows you to prioritise mail from important contacts and will show up / be highlighted
- Improved multitasking interface (want), maybe fullscreen

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Essex, UK

Backup Strategy


I've sadly run out of disk space, and so my back up strategy is no longer working, and so I need to make changes in order to free up space and get my back ups happening again. Below are details of my current strategy, and my requirements for the backups, over the next few months I intend to sort this out, and will post the results either here on kevingordon.org.uk.

Backup strategy

1) Time capsule to backup MacBook Pro, 1 Terrabyte, 340 Gig available.
2) iCloud to backup iPhone and iPad, 25 Gig total, 9.7 Gig available.
3) Media backed up manually to two external 1 Terrabyte hard drives.
4) Photo stream backing up photos to MBP and iCloud

It worked but now have a few problems

1) MBP has only 7.3 Gig free from 320 Gig
2) Videos on iPhone and iPad currently not being backed up
3) iPhone has 14.2 Gig of photos and videos that I can’t transfer to MBP as there is not enough space, and I’m running out of space on the iPhone
4) No automated backup of media to the two external hard drives, I manually copy new media to each of the hard drives

Requirements

1) Free up 100+ Gig on the MBP
2) Have the photo and video library accessible via iPhoto on the MBP
3) Have an automated way of adding new media to both external hard drives
4) Possibly use DropBox to backup remotely (I have a free DropBox account)
5) Have an external backup solution to mirror personal documents and media located maybe at my parents house

Usage of the MBP hard drive and iPhone

1) iPhone 32 Gig, 567 MB available 5.5 GB Music, 1.1 GB Video App, 14.2 GB
2) 251 Gig - My user account; 55.7 Gig Music; 66.7 Gig library (56.2 Gig iPhone and iPad backups), 96.1 Gig Photos/Videos

Tuesday 27 March 2012

iPad less significant announcements?

"Apple has shown that it can take its best current product (say, an iPhone 3GS), disassemble it, and put it back together as something golden and incredible and worthy of spectacle. Say, an iPhone 4. The step between those two phones was radical. The way the 4 was built, the way it felt, the screen, the camera that was like nothing else—it was dramatic. A fundamental change. After a few more years of institutional incrementalism, these iPad press conferences are going to stop justifying themselves. With enough cautious updates, the iPad will just turn into another thing you can buy. There’s no magic future there. But the magic future is what we all want."
- Gizmodo here; http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/03/what-would-it-take-for-apple-to-make-a-new-ipad-truly-exciting-again/


Yeah my point exactly regarding the recent iPad press conference; to me announcing it as the "new iPad" and not the "iPad 3" means they are moving away from versioning the iPad, and firmly placing it in the same territory as the MBPs and MacBookAirs where they don't have version numbers and their releases come without the spectacle associated with the iPhone, and currently the iPad. It will be a shame if this is the case, but it does seem to be the way they are going with it.

Wednesday 21 March 2012

How avoid youtube app popup on iOS

Want to view a video on youtube via the desktop web interface so you can get the embed code, whilst avoiding loading the youtube app or mobile version? Well here you go;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0FVm_H_D18&nomobile=1

Just take the youtube url and add "&nomobile=1" to the end, and volia you're all set!


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Interesting use for an iPad

This is a very funny video of a grandad having been bought an iPad as a present is asked how he likes it and the apps, and he says what apps, and then you see how he's using it!!



Or click here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0FVm_H_D18

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thursday 15 March 2012

Foursquare

I have just won back the mayorship of The Festival Leisure Park in Basildon and I am very happy.

Also I discovered an app called Fixsquare that allows you to cheat on Foursquare on the iPhone, whoo!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad 3 news

The Apple iPad 3 sounds good and I'm looking forward to seeing the amazing screen. From the reviews I read today it looks like the battery gives the same life, however it takes a lot longer to charge, which considering how long the iPad 2 takes, must be a long time :-(

Additionally it apparently gets quite warm in one corner after prolonged use, presumably related to the battery?

Also with the increase in resolution artwork and video will now take a lot more space, so memory utilisation may begin to become a problem :-(

Also with the screen being much higher res than HD it's a question how good the video will look on the screen. Though I expect I'm worried about nothing.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Sunday 11 March 2012

iPad 3 prediction review

1. Retina display i.e. double the screen resolution - yep, but this was a sure thing wasn't it?

2. Siri - it's got the dictation part, so half marks

3. More tapered edge - not confirmed, nil pointe

4. Slightly different footprint; wider or thinner - correct it's slightly thicker

5. Much higher res front and back camera - half right, rear camera is better, but front camera isn't :-(

6. Faster processor and graphics - yep, but not a great deal of fanfare on this and the actual graphics specs weren't given

7. Better smart cover that sticks to the back when you're using the iPad - nope :-(

8. New dock connector - it was a punt, and there was no dock connector

9. New iOS incremental release with some cool new features - yep, 5.1 was launched, so only new camera app seems to be new

10. Additional gestures / smart bevel - I'm still wishing for this

So overall I got 5/10 so 50%, darn it, not as good as my iPhone prediction. And I'm glad I did not predict the nomenclature. My theory is that Apple are trying to tune down the hype machine like the lack of nomenclature of the MBPs and iMacs, in order to allow the specs to be upgraded yearly without such a fanfare. Still it's a shame it was not called the "iPad 3" and it's going to be a bit confusing that the existing iPad will continue to be sold. Another disappointment in a way and a shame they haven't given it it's own identity.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Wednesday 29 February 2012

iPad 3 prediction

1. Retina display i.e. double the screen resolution
2. Siri
3. More tapered edge
4. Slightly different footprint; wider or thinner
5. Much higher res front and back camera
6. Faster processor and graphics
7. Better smart cover that sticks to the back when you're using the iPad
8. New doc connector
9. New iOS incremental release with some cool new features
10. Additional gestures / smart bevel


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Saturday 14 January 2012

Transferring from iPhone 3GS to 4 via Windows Guide

The last step in the puzzle was to transfer the contents of the iPhone 3GS across onto the iPhone 4S. I'll talk you through the process we went through as it may be of use to know some of the querks in the process.

Firstly get the iPhone 4 into the correct state, by going into settings and resetting back to the factory settings and deleting the content. This then puts the phone back into factory settings.

This guide assumes you are on O2 and did the sim swap. So make sure you have a full backup of the iPhone 3GS, and then put it into Airplane mode and transfer the sim from the 3GS into the 4.

Pre migration I recommended that the iTunes was updated to the latest version, which is the step that was taken, and the backup done within the new version.

Next we plugged the iPhone 4 into the laptop and requested it to be restored from the backup that we had done of the 3GS. Here is where it should have gone through fine, here is where it went a little wrong.

The progress bar was making little progress and the estimated time until completion went up from 3 hours to 15 hours to 30 hours to 48 hours, so clearly something was not correct.

Under these circumstances look at task manager and check out the memory utilisation and the processor utilisation. It was clear there was a process that was taking up nearly 100% of the cpu utilisation. We tried adjusting the priority up of this process, and the % utilisation increased, and the estimated time of completion came down. But then the iPhone reported that the install couldn't be completed as it failed to communicate with iTunes.

So something was wrong. A google for the problem, showed it was an issue with the latest iTunes utilisation of iCloud, so I was feeling terrible that I had forced the iTunes upgrade. However the worry was short, for google also listed a partial solution which on further thought gave the answer.

To resolve this, just kill the push notifications daemon process that is hogging 100% and you will fix the issue.

However we were now in a state that was a distance away from the initial conditions, and for us to restart we needed to return to that place. This was achieved by resetting the iPhone 4 back to factor settings again, restarting iTunes and the computer, and stopping the offending process.

This time round the restoring of the 4 with the contents of the 3GS began to proceed appropriately. In fact the time for completion of the initial step was reasonably quickly, under an hour. The syncing of media automatically kicked off, and this took a further couple of hours.

Once complete the phone was fantastic, some tips that were required to get the phone ready to use.

1) Setup Email, as was no longer working
2) Put in wifi key
3) Put in passwords to important apps such as facebook and twitter
4) Reorganise some of the apps with the new apps that have come in
5) Demonstration of the notifications centre
6) Demonstration of the reminders
7) Guided tour of the iPhone 4's new features was given.