Category Archives: Mac

Cheeky

This is a popup the iOS6 App Store shows me when I try searching for a Google Maps app.

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Scanning your iTunes library for DRM-infested books

Tor, the leading publisher for Science Fiction and Fantasy books, announced they would be doing away with DRM in their eBooks. The product pages for their books on iBooks now mention “At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold … Continue reading

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Fixing Microsoft Office Mac 2011 font woes

This post may be of use to people experiencing the same problem I had. When I opened PowerPoint slides sent by a coworker, I was getting blank slides. Attempting to switch to outline view would crash PowerPoint. A search for … Continue reading

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Solving Mac freezes due to ocspd crashes

A public service announcement for anyone experiencing the same problem and who may google for a solution. A couple of days ago my work iMac started experiencing intermittent freezing, and very slow searches in Mail.app. Rebuilding my Spotlight index overnight … Continue reading

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Clearing custom crop aspect ratios in Lightroom

Lightroom’s crop tool allows you to constrain the aspect ratio to a proportion of your choice, e.g. to 4:3, defaulting to the same aspect ratio as the original. The last 5 or so custom crop aspect ratios are saved, but … Continue reading

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A waiter for a server

I had to monitor a long-running process on a Solaris server tonight, but didn’t want to stay glued at a computer monitor. A neat trick: ssh myserver.example.com “pwait 17601″; say “batch done” You would replace 17601 with the process ID … Continue reading

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Doing my bit for the Internet

My first IPv6 connectivity, courtesy of Hurricane Electric’s Tunnel Broker. It only took me three years…

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Hey Apple…

Some improvements you should consider: Sync iPods, iPhones and iPads over WiFi. Cables are so twentieth century. Palm had bluetooth sync working ten years ago, and 802.11n has the same real-world speed as USB. You could then simply extend this to … Continue reading

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Dear Parallels

Since you keep hitting me with these spammy popups no matter how many times I click on “Do not show again”, you leave me no choice but to switch to VirtualBox (much better software in any case, and less Windows … Continue reading

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Will Adobe ever learn?

In a triumph of hope over experience, I recently “upgraded” from Adobe CS3 Design Standard to CS5 Design Standard. I hardly ever use Photoshop any more since I started using Aperture and Lightroom (originally a Macromedia product, no matter what … Continue reading

Posted in IT, Mac, Soapbox | 2 Comments