Mac Tricks And Tips

Disable Ads In Safari

admin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:08:10 +0000

Hey

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last couple of days, University has got really busy and I had no free time at all to do any post. The weekend however has arrived and I have some free time to do some work. Todays post will be about blocking adverts on websites while using Safari. I find that adverts on web pages are getting more an more annoying and some, inevitably, need to be removed from view.

This plugin for Safari is very similar to one for Firefox, called Adblock Plus. They are both designed to block adverts from view. These can include those really annoying half page ones that pop up, or adverts that make no sense and you don’t want to see. Its also very useful if you run on a limited connection and want to save the bandwidth. Some, especially Flash, adverts take up a lot of bandwidth and you may want to remove them.

To install Safar Adblock, head over to this website. Here you can download and install the plugin. You do need Mac OS X 10.5+ and if you are a Snow Leopard user you have to run Safari in 32-bit mode for the plugin to work. Its a useful little plugin which enables your web surfing to be clutter free.

If you have a similar Safari plugin or one you want to share, please leave a comment below.

Want to catch up on the latest Tweets about this site, join the MacTricksAndTips Tweet RSS Feed.

I've launched a new site about Train Pictures, its a daily photo site featuring the best in locomotive transport. Check out DailyTrains

Disable Ads In Safari

Enable Text Substitutions Globally

admin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:49:23 +0000

Hey

This is a quick and dirty Terminal trick which cropped up on my day to to day travels as I surfed the web. If you are familiar with text substitutions at all, you will realise you can replace (c) with the copyright symbol © as you type. This is quite useful for people who know and use the shortcuts on a regular basis. Enabling these feature globally so it runs on every app is very simple and only needs a Terminal command.

To enable this function, open Terminal in Utilities. Copy and paste the following into the Terminal window and press enter.

defaults write -g WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool true; defaults write -g WebAutomaticDashSubstitutionEnabled -bool true; defaults write -g WebContinuousSpellCheckingEnabled -bool true;

This will enable text replace as mentioned in the introduction, change dashes correctly (i.e a double dash –, to an em dash), finally the last option will enable spell checking. Nifty.

The features will take effect as your restart the applications. Its not fully supported by 100% apps on your system, it mostly effects Cocoa apps. To make sure everything is running the latest code, restart your system and notice the subtle changes.

If you want to reverse the process for any reason copy and paste the following into Terminal and press enter.

defaults write -g WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool false; defaults write -g WebAutomaticDashSubstitutionEnabled -bool false; defaults write -g WebContinuousSpellCheckingEnabled -bool false;

The effects should then be reversed. If you have any similar tricks, please leave a comment below.

Enable Text Substitutions Globally

Automatically Play Videos In QuickTime Player

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:29:36 +0000

Hey

Its the weekend again, which gives me a fleeting moment to write a post. Over the last couple of days I have been using the new version of QuickTime Player for playing videos. I really like it and it works a lot better than the older version found in Leopard. This little trick will enable any video to automatically play when you load it in the player. This is similar to VLC and enables you to sit back and relax rather than hitting play. This trick only works in Snow Leopard where the new app is found.

To run this trick open Terminal. This is found in Applications > Utilities. In the app write, or copy and paste, the following.

defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGPlayMovieOnOpen 1
Restart QuickTime Player if it is open. Now when you play a video you should see that it plays straight away. If you want to reverse the process type the following.
defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGPlayMovieOnOpen 0

Original functionality will return. This is a little trick, however I think it is pretty cool and enables you to watch your video straight away.

Automatically Play Videos In QuickTime Player

Change The Colour Of The Exposé Glow

admin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:59:42 +0000

Hey

This is a cool little tip for people on Snow Leopard. In the new update you will notice that when you use Exposé there is a small blue glow around any windows which you select. This is shown in the image below. It is very simple to change the colour of this image. All you need is to find the correct file and then change the Hue or Saturation in your favourite image editor. Since this tip involves accessing system files you will need to be careful not to damage anything which is needed by your system.

The first step is to locate the files which are used by your system. These are located in System > Library > CoreServices in the list, right click on “Dock” and select “Show Package Contents”, then select Contents > Resources. In this list of files there should be two files called “expose-window-selection-big.png” and “expose-window-selection-small.png”. These are the two files associated with the blue glow. Backup these files by either copying them to a different location or duplicating the files in the folder and giving them a different name. You will probably have to enter your admin password to do any changes.

The net step is to change the colour. Open up the images in your favourite image editor (you may need to copy them out first), you can use Photoshop, Pixelmator or any other image editing app. Try and use one which allows transparent images so you can keep the glow. Make sure you keep the same dimensions and file types so you don’t end up breaking the Dock app.

When you have finished copy the new images back into the Resources folder in the Dock folder which you opened previously. You will need to restart for the changes to take effect. You will now have a different coloured Dock glow.

Change The Colour Of The Exposé Glow

Installing Windows Games With CrossOver Games

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:06:53 +0000

Hey

I love my computer games. They are a good way to burn a couple of hours when I have nothing else to do. The problem with the Mac operating system is that it is largely incompatible with Windows games. There is a very simple and easy to use solution to this, CrossOver for Games. There are a variety of different methods to install games on your Mac machine. CrossOver allows you to go straight back into the Mac operating system without the need for a restart as you do with Boot Camp. Using Crossover Games is very simple once you get the hang of it. This post will serve as a guide and a review of the app.

CrossOver games works on a version of Wine, it allows you to run Windows programs on your Mac. Crossover builds on this app and I think is far more useful, especially for people who are not confident using Wine. CrossOver has a lot of supporting code and structure and works something like this, you have a “bottle” this is basically your Windows install without any of the Windows bits. Its an environment where Windows programs can run in peace. In this bottle you install your games (or other programs), when the install has finished CrossOver will configure the application so it can correctly interface between Mac and the Windows bottle. CrossOver has two versions of it app, a normal one and one for games. The games version is more suited to computer games.

To install a Windows game download and install the app. I can’ fully remember the initial process for setting up a bottle, however it would be something very similar to what is outlined here. In the app go to Configure > Manage Bottles. In the sidebar at the bottom click the plus button to add a new bottle. Select an operating system (Windows XP is recommend) and a name. You can have more than one bottle, how ever one will suffice. Once this bottle has a name and operating system.

You are now ready to install your applications. Go to the Applications tab in the bottles window or select Configure > Install Software. From the option that pops up, you can either install some supported software (especially useful for Steam) or install “Unsupported Software”. Unsupported software is apps that are not on the list. Install your software as you would. When you have finished your game is installed and ready to play. It can be accessed from the “Programs” menu item.

One option I would like to point out, is the ability to open the “C:” drive. This is under the “Advance” tab. It is very useful as you can view the files that the game files runs on, and you can make changes as you see fit, and example being adding Save Files or extra files needed by your game.

Most games run pretty quickly. They are not as fast as a Boot Camp install, however old games are pretty quick and run well. More modern games are a little laggy how ever you can play around the game settings to make it smoother. If you need ultimate performance I would install Boot Camp, for ease and simplicity I would go with CrossOver.

Installing Windows Games With CrossOver Games

Editing Startup Items On Your Mac

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:49:13 +0000

Hey

I find the tip in this post quite useful for sorting out start up problems and finding out while start up takes a long time, however you can also use it to run programs before you log in. This trick is going to show you how you can modify your start up items. When you Mac boots it will first run the Start Up Items folder, then produce the login screen, finally it would log in and run any login items. There is a slight difference in the two folders (Start Up and Login), as a result you can have different effects.

To find your Start Up Items folder, go to Macintosh HD > Library > StartupItems depending on what you have installed there can be any where between zero entries and a whole leap of folders. Here you can dissect what is going on. If you have an application that misbehaves on bootup, it can be a good bet to move it out of the folder. Anything in this folder will run just after boot, so if you have boot problems, the offending code will probably be in this folder.

I haven’t tested this trick, however, if you want applications to run at boot, place them in a folder within the StartupItems, restart you computer and see of the application runs. This can be useful for running your Mac in kiosk mode or making an application run before you have to log in (such as monitoring apps). Have a play around and see what happens. If anything breaks move it out of the folder and try again.

I have a had a look around for various different resources on the StartupItems folder. At the moment it seems to be trial and error if anything works.

Editing Startup Items On Your Mac

Site Update – Some Slight Changes

admin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:29:12 +0000

Hey

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last couple of days, there has been plenty going on. Tomorrow i’m back to Uni which means there will be a couple of changes to the frequency in which post will appear on this site. Over the past couple of weeks and months I have been trying to do a post at least once a day. I’m afraid this format will have to change.

Since University work will take up most of my time, i’m afraid the posting frequency will be when ever I have a free moment. I’ll probably end up doing about three a week, but depending on how much work I will be getting this is subject to change. I do enjoying writing every day, how ever people tell me the second year is going to be a lot harder. Hence the added work load.

For those of you who are interested, i’m studying Materials Science and Engineering and the University of Sheffield. I managed to pass the first year with 68% so I should have a good chance of getting a good grade at the end of it. All I have to do is work.

Thanks, James.

Site Update – Some Slight Changes

Different Bootable Operating Systems On Your Mac

admin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:26:59 +0000

Hey

Today we have a guest post by Chris Wanja. He wanted to do a post on creating different bootable disks which you can use on an external hard drive. For example a Leopard Boot and a Snow Leopard Boot. This means you have two different operating systems which you can use and allows you to try things out in different operating systems. This method is slightly different to the bootable backups I did a couple of days ago. The method is quite complicated so you have to follow the instructions quite carefully. I recommend people who know what they are doing attempt this tutorial as you can easily lose all of your data. If you have any questions please leave a comment below or Twitter or email Chris.

“In the post we cover how to create bootable, clean operating systems as well as bootable installers. Some plus sides to creating a bootable drive is the ability to defragment your own hard-drive. Defragging simply moves broken up sectors on your hard-drive back inline so they are side-by-side. This increases the response of your operating system when you request a file. To read more on defragmentation, check out this Wikipedia article. On a Windows machine, they include the ability to defragment right from inside the operating system. On the Mac, you have to purchase a software CD such as Drive Genius and then boot into that CD. With a bootable operating system, you can load via that and defragment right from there. It is a lot faster over FireWire or USB than a bootable CD. Creating a bootable operating system installer makes things so much faster than installing off a retail copy or grey discs included with your Mac. The latter part of this post will show you how to great a bootable operating system while this next section will show you how to create an installer partition.

Go ahead and plug in and turn on your hard-drive. Insert the retail copy of Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard or which OS you would like. Let it mount on your desktop. As soon as it mounts, fire up Disk Utility found in your ~/Applications/Utilities folder. In Disk Utility you are welcomed with a screen that has your local hard-drive and your optical drive. For users on 10.3 or lower, Disk Utility will not mount your optical drive. At this point, you will see your internal hard-drive, CD drive and any external hard-drives connected. Choose the main hard-drive (the brand name) on the left hand side. Across the center, choose the partition tab and create two (2) partitions for every operating system you would like to install; one for the installer and one for the clean boot. Use all of the sizes below to make sure you have enough space partitioned:

Snow Leopard:
- Install: 12GB
- Operating System: 15GB
Leopard
- Install: 15GB
- Operating System: 20GB

You are now ready to move on to imaging the CD to the Installer partition. Read on!

The picture below shows five (5) different partitions. On a small 500GB disk I have my TimeMachine, 10.5.6 Installer, 10.5.6+ OS, 10.6 Installer and the 10.6 OS. Choose the partition you want to send the installer too. Notice the buttons across the middle box change when you select a specific partition. Go to the “Restore” button. Feel free to read the text at the top, but our focus will be on the input spaces in the lower half of the box. The first box is for your source (the install CD) and below that is for the hard-drive partition you want it to install to.

NOTE: obviously, names of partitions will be different so the Destination box will be different from user to user. Click the “Restore” button, input your password and off it will go. Let the Disk Utility do its thing and about forty-five minutes to a you will be done. By default, your partition will be renamed “Mac OS X Install”; go ahead and rename it for reference later on. I choose the OS version – IE: 10.5.6 Install or 10.6 Install.

Next up is installing a clean operating system on an empty partitioned hard-drive. We just created an faster way to install the operating system, so lets go ahead and use that. Make sure there is an empty partition waiting for your OS install. If not, go back into Disk Utility and create a partition (as described above). Shut down your computer (or restart) and as soon as you see the grey screen hold down the option/alt key – ⌥. This should bring you to the screen show you all bootable drives. You will see your internal drive (Macintosh HD or what you have it named as) and then you will see the partition with the installer you just created. There should be only two drives, so you should not be to confused, try doing it with five different bootable OS and installers. Choose the installer partition and you will be booted into it just as if you were doing it off the CD. Follow the prompts just like you would to re-install. The only difference is when you come to the screen that allows you choose the hard-drive, make sure you choose that empty partition. DO NOT CHOOSE YOUR INTERNAL HARD-DRIVE – it should have a yellow triangle on it. Consider that a big red stop sign and choose the other. Finish the installer and it will reboot. When it reboots it is scripted to go to that operating system it just installed. So make sure you hold down the option / alt key to choose your internal hard-drive (unless you want to go into the new operating system you just created).

You have successfully created a FireWire or USB installer and bootable operating system. There is a couple of different ways of access these new jewels of yours.

Easiest: restarting and holding down the option / alt key. Then choose the partition you want to access.
Pain in the neck: Open System Preferences, go to Startup Disk, unlock, and choose the external drive. The reason I call this the pain in the neck method is for two reasons:
- On turn on, the OS will constantly look for that external partition. When it doesn’t find it (because it is not always plugged in) it will default to your internal hard-drive. This adds about ten seconds to the boot time.
- If the drive is plugged in, it will always default to that (until you change it). Making it a pain if you forget”

You should now have more than one different operating system available to you which you can use as necessary. I hope you followed this tutorial and now have two operating systems on your hard drive.

Different Bootable Operating Systems On Your Mac

Backing Up A Windows Boot Camp Partition

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:30:49 +0000

Hey

Today will be the last post in the mini series that has evolved on backing up your data. So far I have covered general backup solutions, and cloning your hard drive. The final post will be on cloning your Windows boot camp partition. Backing up this partition is slightly more problematic due to the fact that your partition can be NTFS or FAT32, and not a partition that is compatible with Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner. This technique will not create a bootable partition but one that has all your data in the form a disk image. You can then use this disk image to restore you data at a later date.

The first step in backing up boot camp is to download and install a tool called WinClone. It designed to do exactly what we want to do. You may have to install some supporting software to get it to work. When its installed and ready to run open the application.

Using this application is very simple. There is really only two functions, image and restore. Within the image tab select your boot camp partition from the drop down menu. Then press image. You will be prompted for a location to save the disk image. I recommend a disk which doesn’t already hold your boot camp partition, I would also suggest putting it on a disk with plenty of space. When you are done, let the process run. It shouldn’t take to long. Unlike using Carbon Copy Cloner in the previous post you can still use you Mac since it isn’t accessing Mac system files and locking up your system.

When the app has finished you will have an ISO file of your Windows partition. You can now continue your day. If you want to restore you files simply use the menu option “Restore” in the application. Before you start have a quick ready through the help on the website.

Restoring Windows is quite simple but not as sophisticated as backing up your Mac disk. This way seems the most useful and easiest to use. I do recommend you have a backup of important files in Windows anyway. This method is to create an image for quickly restoring your system to a certain point.

Backing Up A Windows Boot Camp Partition

Creating Bootable Backups For Your Mac

admin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:32:37 +0000

Hey

It seems a little mini-series has emerged on getting backups sorted. The original post, Backup Solutions For The Mac, mentioned three different methods of backup, Time Machine, Bootable Drives and Online Backup Solutions. I can’t stress enough how important backup’s are. I know many of you do use Time Machine and you should continue using it. Today’s post is going to focus on how you can create a bootable backup for your data. I feel this type of approach is more ballistic. It designed for the worse case scenario, when you hard drive completely fails and you can’t use it any more and you need something to get your Mac running again.

Bootable backup’s, I feel, are methods to get into your system with all of your data intact. As the name suggests you can run and use a bootable backup, like it was your original disk. This means you can, hopefully, sort out your system and make sure your original hard drive can work again while retaining your data, so you can still work on that very important project that is due in tomorrow. I also find it a quicker way to solve problems, since I don’t have to run off the install disk, which is inevitably slow, and I have all of my bookmarks in Firefox to find solutions to problems.

Creating a bootable backup needs an external (or internal if you have me than one drive slot) hard disk. Its not wise to create a bootable backup on any disk you currently use regularly, such as your main disk or one you use to store data. Ideally you need a new fresh disk, however one you haven’t used for a while will still work. You just need to make sure the disk you have chosen works and is the same size, if not bigger, than the one you want to clone.

With you new fresh disk attached to your computer, either through a USB or Firewire hub, the best way to start is by formatting the disk so it is blank. Open up Disk Utility in Applications > Utilities. Select your disk from the sidebar. In the main window go to the partition tab and set the Volume Scheme to one partition, and the format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The disk formats need to be the same for a clone to work properly. Finally give you partition a name.

You now have your target disk in the same format as you main disk. Its now time to clone the data. The best tool for the job is Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). There are a variety of tools out there which do a similar job. CCC, is designed to copy everything on your disk, while making sure all of the permissions and links are correct. The last thing you want is to copy every file (including system files) and find it wont boot because the permissions are wrong.

In CCC, on the left hand side, select your main disk. On the right hand side select your target disk which you formatted in Disk Utility. There are a variety of cloning options, if it is your first clone you will want to select “Backup Everything”. If you want to have an up to date backup of your main files you can select “Incremental Backup Of Selected Items”. For more details on the different settings have a browse through the help. For the purposes of this tutorial you need to select the first option.

When you are ready to go, press Clone. Depending on the size of your disk, this process could take a long time. So either sit back and watch the progress bar move or do something else. I did mine over night. I found that the app does lock your computer up every so often, since the program is accessing your disk a lot and reading a lot of files, applications will slow down. Just leave the application to run and it will do its job.

When everything has finished you now have a bootable backup. To test the disk, to make sure it works, restart you computer and hold Option. Before boot you should see two hard disks on screen, your original drive and your backup. Select the backup disk with the arrows keys (I think you may be able to use the mouse as well) and press enter to boot into the disk. The boot process should proceed to run. It may take longer to boot, since you are running off USB which is usually slower than SATA. I suggest you log in into the boot disk and checking out a couple of applications to make sure they work properly and load all of your preference files etc. To be double sure that your Mac is running off the right disk, select the Apple Menu Option > About This Mac. The little window will tell you which disk you are running from.

You now have a bootable disk. You can now restart back into your normal disk and proceed as normal. If you want to recover a cloned drive, just do the process in reverse. Boot into your backup, wipe your new drive which you have installed into your Mac, and then clone your backup drive to your new main drive. Make sure you select “Delete items that don’t exist on the source” to make sure everything works. Once as the clone from your backup has completed you should be good to go. However I recommend you read the help topic on this before your start anything to make sure you don’t waste a lot of time with incorrect copy options. Help can be found within Carbon Copy Cloner.

Overall the process is simple. Wipe, Clone, Relax. You should have at least one bootable backup for when things inevitably go wrong. If you have any tips on this process please leave a comment below.

Creating Bootable Backups For Your Mac

Enable Remote Disc (Drive Sharing) On Any Mac

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:02:14 +0000

Hey

If your Superdrive or disk drive is on the way out (I think mine is) it can be a real pain to change it, especially if its locked inside a MacBook or MacBook Pro. I personally use my disk drive about twice a year. So when the time comes to get something off a CD it can be a major pain to get something off a CD. However there is a solution to this problem. If you take a look at a MacBook Air, Drive Sharing is available, so all the background code is ready to go, we just need to bring it to life. This post is going to cover the entire method of getting drive sharing to work. If you just want the hack, go to the end of the post.

To enable drive sharing, first go to the computer which will host your DVD. If it is a Mac, you can enable DVD sharing. Go to System Preferences > Sharing and check “DVD or CD Sharing”. If you are on a Windows machine (I feel sorry for you), download this package and install it. Under Control Panel open up “DVD and CD Sharing” and check the box which asks if you want to enable Disc Sharing. The host computer is now set up. To save you some time, you can now insert the DVD you want to share.

Here comes the hack. On a MacBook Air this little preference code is already enabled. On other Macs this isn’t the case. Open up Terminal and type the following two lines, press return after each one. There will be no confirmation from Terminal when you have finished. From MacRumors.

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

Restart you Mac, when you open Finder again you should see “Remote Disk” in the sidebar (make sure its enabled in Preferences). You can now navigate to the drive as if it was on your own computer. Loading the files takes slightly longer since it has to run over your network. I remember reading somewhere that this wont work over secured Wi-Fi connections, so you have to use a cable for best results.

The Remote Disc option acts like a folder, each drive that is shared will appear as its own entry under “Remote Disk”. This means that you can set up this feature on other Mac’s and share the drives over the network. I personally think this type of trick will be pretty cool if you are in an office environment and constantly handing disks over to each other. If you are really adventurous and have a Mac with lots of USB ports or internal slots (i.e a MacPro) you could make a CD server with lots of disk drives and share each one of them, so every one over a network can access them. However, if it has come to that it may be worth ripping the disk to a disk image and making a ISO server. Fun idea anyway.

Hope this trick helps. I find it pretty cool.

Enable Remote Disc (Drive Sharing) On Any Mac

Time Machine Not Backing Up – Solution

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:13:06 +0000

Hey

Yesterday I mentioned about different backing up methods, I talked about Time Machine as a good, first, solution to peoples needs. It turns out that I have been a little lax in keeping my Time Machine backup up to date. I turned it on this afternoon and to my horror nothing would backup. It would run for about ten minutes then produce an error. I then did a little digging and came up with a solution that will probably help a lot of people. This tip may not work for every one but it may send you on your way.

I mentioned in my Noob2Pro series about troubleshooting problems, it was mostly designed for application that are playing up. It did, however give me an idea and search for the exact cause to why Time Machine wasn’t backing up my files. The first step in finding a solution is to open up Console, this is located in your Utilities folder.

In the console open up the system log located in LOG FILES > /var/log/ . It should be named “system.log” and depending on the age of your system other log files named “system.log.x.bz2″ when x is a number. Open this log file and scroll all the way down to the bottom. Quite a lot of the text may not mean anything to you, however we are about to generate some text specifically for Time Machine and hopefully locate your problem.

Now you are at the bottom of the log file, start Time Machine. This quickest way to do this is from the menu bar option. When it starts, the log file should start to populate and you should see text being entered at the bottom. Leave console and Time Machine running. When Time Machine has a problem it will be reported to the console. You can now inspect what the problem is as shown in the image below.

It turns out in my case that a could of files where not being copied across, i’m not sure the full reason behind it but it would cause Time Machine to quit. I simply deleted the files (it was an application) and Time Machine worked.

It may not be as simple in your case, however the Console will report pretty much all errors. Depending on what is written you may need to take a different course of action. However it doesn’t help to look and see what has been written.

Time Machine Not Backing Up – Solution

Backup Solutions For The Mac

admin — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:52:35 +0000

Hey

Backup’s are very important. You should always have more than one backup if you are serious about making sure your data stays in one piece. Its ok backing them up to disk but what happens if you lost that disk or it doesn’t work. This post will hopefully explain some of the different ways in which you can back up your data. I recommend you pick two different options to make sure you don’t lose everything.

1) Time Machine

The first option you should have in place (I think by default) is Time Machine, you are given the option of data backup service installed by default so I recommend you use it. In essence Time Machine will backup files all of your file on your disk. Then as you change files and add files Time Machine will add them to the backup. This way you can go back in time and view how a file has changed as you have worked on it, you can pick a file from a specific period and restore it as necessary.

I think Time Machine is a great consumer backup system. Its simple to use, works and allows me to pick and choose files I want to restore. I have only used it a couple of times when I have wanted to restore a file, but it was a life saver when it was there. You do need a second hard disk for it to work effectively which is an added cost, however hard drives are getting cheaper all of the time. If you want to read more about using Time Machine read the Noob2Pro post I did a while ago.

Time Machine isn’t a proper backup tool, in that it doesn’t backup system files. If you ever do a full system restore it combines it with a fresh install from your installation disk. As a result you can’t make full backups to take a machine to a certain point and use this disk on a second computer. This is where option number two comes in.

2) Disk Cloners

There are a variety of disk cloners out there on the market. In essence they copy the entire contents of you disk and place it on a second drive. This enables you to quickly restore a backup by plugging the hard drive into your Mac or copying the DVD’s contents onto a your Mac. The advantage of this is that you can create a bootable backup, so you can boot directly from the back up. You can’t do this with Time Machine or other similar software.

There are two decent pieces of software out there which you can use for this sort of thing. SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner. They are very similar in the feature set. If you want to look into this type of back up software take a look at the feature set and try the pieces of software out. I prefer the Time Machine backup as it is a lot simpler. I don’t need to have a lot of full backups. I just need to keep my personal files intact.

3) Online Backup

I mentioned in the opening paragraph that you ideally need two types of backup. The second option I prefer is an online backup. The reason for this is that it acts as an off site backup. The best backup systems are ones where the first backup is next to your computer for easy access, then a second off site to protect against fire, theft etc. This is where online backups come into play.

There are a variety of different online backup systems. Most do the same basic thing. You upload the files to there server, you let them sit around, then when you need them you re-download them. There are lots of different options which such as using Amazon file cloud or a dedicated service which works on the same level. One service I have been trying out over the last couple of days is Backblaze. Its cheap, offers a lot of space and works well. If you want a second method which is cheap and reliable the online method would probably work well, there are plenty around so have a quick google and see what you can find.

Conclusion

Hopefully I have opened your eyes to different ways you can backup your files. The automated methods which I have listed are the best, this is because you don’t need to think about backing up every day, it does it automatically. You can of course burn files to disk using a DVD burner and select the files you want. This however needs a lot of disks and it takes a lot of time (plus burnable DVD’s break down and become useless after a while). Using hard drives, I think, is more valuable for money.

If you have any more methods which you use to backup please leave a comment below.

Backup Solutions For The Mac

Noob2Pro Series Round Up – We Have Finished

admin — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:02:28 +0000

Hey

I am afraid we have reached the end of the Noob2Pro series. I have covered all of the topics I wanted to cover and it seemed to reach a good end with out me repeating myself or covering topics no one is interested in. I hope you enjoyed the series and hopefully some new users have learnt a thing or two about the Mac that they didn’t know before. This post will list all of the previous topics and tell you what I have planned.

In order or appearance.

The plan was to make the series to last a month, it did sort of, if you count a month as February in length. It wasn’t going to be a series of post where I try and make a minor topic drag out and say i’ve done hundreds of topics when really its the same stuff over and over again. There was some extra topics which I could have covered such as iLife or iWork however I don’t really have much experience in these areas (I never use them).

I’m glad the series has come to an end. I was getting a little tired of it. I do play on releasing a PDF book in a couple of days when I have finished compiling everything. I may also release a long more detailed book covering more topics. However such subjects take a while to write so don’t expect it to arrive any time soon.

In the next couple of days this site will be back to its normal routine of tips and tricks. I have a post already planned, which I will have up a bit later today. If you want to submit some ideas of stuff you want to see please use the contact form. I like to try and solve your problems, I find it more interesting that just a normal tips post.

To conclude I hope you have liked this series. If you enjoyed it please share it with your friends, this post is a good round up of the topics covered.

Noob2Pro Series Round Up – We Have Finished

Troubleshooting Problems – Noob2Pro #27

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:48:58 +0000

Hey

Applications on the Mac crash every so often. Some times this is a one off event that happens at random which you can just ignore. More persistent crashes and hangs can be a bigger problem. Troubleshooting these problems can take a while, however I am going to go through a list which I use to diagnose a problem and hopefully find a solution. This post will refer to application crashes, and not kernel panics. Kernel panics are usually harder to solver and nearly also involve some piece of hardware at fault.

Steps to solving application crashes:

1) Restart the app, probably a simple one to start with. I have apps open for long periods of time, if it starts hanging a lot its usually time to restart it.

2) Log off. This is usually done to clear caches and allow you Mac to reload files. Some times bits of code get overwritten in memory and cause frequent crashes if you have your computer on for a long time.

3) Restart. A more extreme version of number 2. This will clear all code from memory and allow you to start again. This will usually solve problems that are caused by apps running for too long.

4) Delete Preferences. If an app crashes frequently the preferences may have inadvertently be changed. Find the preference file in ~/Library/Preferences. Application name is usually at the end of the file name.

5) Update the app. The crash and bug you may be experiencing could be caused by dodgy code, this code may have been cleaned up in a new version. Head to the developers site and see if there is a new version of the app to download. This is the same as system updates though Software Update.

6) Disable plugins. If an application such as Firefox crashes it might be time to disable plugins and start them up one by one. You can then find what plugin is causing it and see if there is a solution on the plugin developers website.

That is the normal method I will usually take. If an application or system is constantly crashing it may be a deeper problem. The next couple of steps are more complicated yet allow you to nail the problem down more effectively. These methods contain a lot of computer output code which can be quite complicated so may not be suitable solutions for all.

1) Activity Monitor. This app is more than just a monitor for system resources, you can monitor what files and application opens. If you find that an app is crashing, select it from the list and press Inspect from the tool bar. On the window that opens select the “Open Files and Ports” tab and scroll to the bottom. When you Mac uses the program and accesses a file it will be added to the bottom of the list. You can then see which file is causing you the grief. For example Firefox would hang when I opened a new window. The file path to pop up in the window was the path the the Flash players file. I now know that Flash player was causing the problem and rectify it by downing the newest version of flash or searching for more help on this topic.

2) Spin Control. To access this app you need to have installed the developer tools from your install CD. Its located in /Developers/Applications/Performance Tools/. When an app hangs this little app will record the data from the application. Most of the time the data which is returned to you doesn’t make much sense. However you may come across a file name or something else which you can use to see what the problem is. If you haven’t got developer tools installed, it doesn’t matter as the information you receive from Spin Control will probably not help you.

3) Console. You would think the the log reporting application, Console, would be full of information about crashes. However I find the information found within the error logs to be not very specific. However if you do look through the various logs (it takes some searching) you may find a small bit of information which points to the reason why an application is crashing. Its worth having a check, however don’t let your hopes up.

To conclude, the best ways to solve why and app is crashing is to follow steps 1 – 6. For me this solves most of the problems I encounter. Only when applications are persistently crashing would I use the other three steps. If you find that a 3rd party app crashes a lot you may have to switch to a different app. If you find that your system is crashing a lot, it may be worth re-installing the operating system. Some re-occurring system problems may be due to hardware. If you have recently installed a new bit of RAM or a hard drive, you may need to check that out. Guides can easily be found on the web.

Troubleshooting Problems – Noob2Pro #27

Heads Up – Mac OS X Automation

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:26:00 +0000

Hey

This post is going to be a heads up of a site that I found a couple of days ago which I have meant to post. If you haven’t guessed from the title this site is all about Mac OS X Automation. For those people who are new to the Mac or don’t know how to use Automator, Apple Script or Services this site is designed as general round up.

On the face of it the site is rather simple, and I passed it off as a simple website with no real content. For some reason it cropped back up in my daily web surfing so I decided to have a deeper look. The website does have a lot of content available to you, however it does take a little digging. The website is split up into three sections, within each section there is a general features section, a learning section and an explore section.

One of the best sections is the “Learn” section which includes an abundance of videos to help any new user get on there way with learning each area. There isn’t hundreds of video however the ones shown on the site are pretty good. I imagine as the site grows more videos will be added. The “Explore” section on the site is pretty good as well as it offers a lot of ways to find new websites and increase your understanding.

Anyway I hope you have fun with this website. It does have a lot of information and links on the site, you just need to dig through.

Heads Up – Mac OS X Automation

Cheat Sheets, Finding Shortcuts – Noob2Pro #26

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:05:16 +0000

Hey

This post is going to be relatively short however I think it will be quite useful for any new user to the Mac. One of the best ways to become a “Pro” user is to learn shortcuts to a program. Learning shortcuts to a program can be a bit difficult and some may not be that obvious. There are a couple of ways you can learn shortcuts, I am going to feature my favourite two here.

KeyCue

If you really want to find how many shortcuts a program has I recommend KeyCue, i’ve done a review here a while ago. In essence when you press down command KeyCue will pop up after a couple of seconds and show you every single shortcut available to you. I find this a handy way of seeing what you can do in an app. It’s also a great way of discovering new ways to do things which may no be apparent from the men options.

Short Cut Lists

Another way of learning short cuts is to look down a list. I prefer the KeyCue method since its more intuitive, however lists are generally more useful if you are away from your computer or want to browse them at your leisure. There a couple of places you can search for short cut lists however there are a couple of sites out there which I would like to point out. The first is Dan Rodney’s list, the second is Apple’s shortcut list, finally there is my version which I threw together a while ago.

I told you this post was short, however I still think its important. The quickest way to speed up when using a program is to learn the short cut. I always try and find the shortest method to a solution so I can save time. Hence why I get to sit back and surf the web while everyone else in my class is still on the first task.

Cheat Sheets, Finding Shortcuts – Noob2Pro #26

A Review of Daylite – Business Manager

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:18:09 +0000

Hey

I try not to do many application reviews on this site, I would rather post them on iLoveMacApps, however the creators of Daylite have since bought an advert on this site, as a thanks I am going to tell you how wonderful this app is. This isn’t some marketing hype, Daylite is a proper professional application. Its dubbed as an all-in-one productivity suite designed to manage a team of one, to 50 users. It is the sort of tool which you use to make sure every one knows what they are doing in relation to everyone else in your business. It has a lot of features.

At the heart of Daylite is a database, in essence this is a database application which you could build yourself if you were running Filemaker or Access on Windows. Don’t let that scare you off, the only reason it is a database application (with a very nice front end, more on that later) is to enable you to do a lot of referencing and managing of people and tasks and link between them. When your first open this application, after entering a couple of details, you are treated to a choice of databases. You can either pick to start a new database or choose an existing one. The existing ones are designed to show you how the application works and to show you the power of the app, however upon choosing a sample database I immediately found it overwhelming and wondering what I should do. Using a new database straight away is a lot simpler and allows you to have a blank view of the landscape. Its worth pointing out at this point that Daylite is designed as a multi user application, although you can use it on your own, as a result there is a lot of emphasis of adding users and setting up passwords. I only tried it in single user mode however I can easily see how you would use it to interact with other people.

From the blank screen you can now start to create and manage yourself. The interface is essentially split up into three areas. The selector in the top left corner which you can use to select between: Calendars, Contacts, Organisations, Projects, Opportunities, Groups, Tasks, Appointments and Notes. The main area is the “information” area which you use the manage the different sections i’ve just mentioned. The final area which you will end up using a lot is the tool bar, to streamline your working.

Each of the sections (Calendars, Contacts etc) work with each other. At first it is really hard to see how every section works, with a blank database this is even harder. However once as you have read the support manuals and watched the videos the applications becomes clearer and its easy to see how everything interacts with each other. I mentioned that this is a database application, this is where the power of a database comes in. You can link contacts with projects, people with organisations, so on and so forth. After a while you begin to set up a web of details all interacting with each other. This then becomes incredibly useful as re-occurring events and people have a lot of data all ready supplied to them. You can also see who owns what and where they appears in various projects.

Since most businesses are centred around projects you will inevitably have a time line of when things need to be done. This is where the project section comes in. The projects are managed on a time line. You set up a project and then proceed to add people, appointments and calendar events. These events will then appear on your calendar as necessary, people will then be informed of whats happening automatically. Since everything is linked it is clear to see what is happening. You may add a lot of projects and tasks, its worth saying that you can easily organise these in the sidebar by creating whats is essentially smart folders and lists. This is a good way to organise various projects.

Overall this application is massive. There are hundreds of features, the list is about a mile long. I could spend years writing about ever single one. For example it works with Mail, syncs with other contacts using an iPhone or other mobile device. The Preferences Pane (which is huge) allows you to change and adjust ever little detail. There is also the ability to back up the database, make sure everything is secure by working with keychain. As well as this there is also the ability to set up a server so everyone in an office can access the data and work on it. As well as the application itself there is also video and text support, which is very handy to help you get set up. Over all the application is well thought out. You do need to have a large business to get the full power out of this application, however it will probably work in any scenario.

For all of the positives in this application there is a couple of downs sides. At first I was wondering how to work the applications, although things do make sense after you have used them, to begin with I felt a little lost. As mentioned there is support and guides, but I wanted to jump into the application. I would prefer in a future version to have a walk through to tell me what everything did. I would also like to see a way to hide parts of the program and reveal them as you learn them. An analogy of this would be playing a complex computer game, at first you aren’t told or shown everything, but they are slowly shown to you as you develop your skills. If a walk through like this was in the application it would make first opening a lot simpler.

Once as you get the hang of this application (it took me a day, hence why the post is today and not yesterday) there is a lot to offer. Another (sort-of) downside is the amount of investment you have to make in this program. If you are in a business you need to be really serious that you are going to use this application. You can’t just play around with it for a couple of hours, you need to really sit down and see how it works. The reason you need to think about investing in this application is the cost, for 5 users it costs £839 which is quite a bit (this does include premium support, plus a plugin). The single user version is £129. However if it helps you business it may well be worth it.

Over all this application is great. It works well on its own in single user mode, and I imagine it works really well with multiple users. It has plenty of integration methods so you can use it on your phone, sync with other people, and have plugins to extend the application into Mail as well as Billings (to bill people, made by the same developers). If you think this application is for you, download it and try it out. There is a 30 day no limitations free trial.

A Review of Daylite – Business Manager

Getting To Grips With Printing – Noob2Pro #25

admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:22:30 +0000

Hey

Making sure you can print a document properly is a major concern. Nothing is worse than having a printer that doesn’t work. This post will hopefully enable you to set up your printer and allow you to use it. At the moment I don’t currently have a working printer, it broke, however this is the method I employed when I set up my printer the first time. If you have any problems please leave a comment.

Mac’s are smart enough to realise when you plug a printer in. Most of the time it will come up with a message saying you have plugged a printer in and it is ready for use. If that happens, you are ready to go and you don’t really need to do anything. The method I am going to show you is what you can do if you printer isn’t automatically recognised or you want to add a printer over a network.

The print settings are done from System Preferences, within this open up Print & Fax. If you don’t have any printers add the window should be blank. To add a new printer click the plus button in the bottom left hand corner below the sidebar section. This will open a dialog box which allows you to find your printer. Since there is a wide range of ways to add a printer to your network or Mac, there is a wide range of options. Each method just determines where it looks for a printer, everything after that is the same.

In window which you use to add a printer you are given a wide variety of choices. Default is used for printers connected to your Mac, most of the time your printer will be found in there, IP is used for printers with an IP address, Windows for printers connected to a windows computer, Bluetooth is self explanatory, Apple Talk printers are ones which are found over the Apple Talk system, finally More Printers is to find and set up printers which don’t belong under any of the other headings.

Once as you have determined where you printer belongs, it is time to add it to the system. First select your printer from the list. Most of the time it is obvious which one it is. In the bottom half of the window you now have to set up the name, location and drivers. The name and location are obvious. Theses are the ones you see when you select a printer. The printer driver is a bit more tricky. Some times you are supplied with a driver with your hard ware vendor, I recommend you use that since it is designed to work with your printer. Most of the time you have two choices. Use a default driver or a more specific driver. Under “Please Select A Driver or Printer Model” you have two choices either the generic post script driver, which will work most of the time, or you can use one specific to your printer model. I suggest the latter. In the window that appears, find the one related to your model. When you have press “Add” and your printer will be added. You are now ready to print.

To test out your printer, print a test page or photo. If everything works the page should come out. If not you need to troubleshoot. Most of the time it will be due to the fact the printer is not connected properly. Another tip is to make sure the printer has the correct drivers. One specific to your model will enable it to work correctly and allow you to have more advanced features. If you are really struggling (such with a network printer connected to a Windows machine), either Google your problem, or try and see what the vendor has to say. Most of the time printer manufactures will have solutions on there website.

Overall, actually adding a printer and getting it to work is very simple. You just have to make sure you select the right options. Printers connected straight to your machine will tend to work straight away. Printers connected over a network and on Windows machines may have trouble. If you printer came with drivers for Mac I would suggest you install them. This makes sure everything works correctly.

I hope this post helps. Printers can be fickle. Adding them with the method I have suggested is the best way. As I mentioned if a printer is connected straight to your computer it will usually be picked up straight away and can be used. If you have any problems please leave a comment.

Getting To Grips With Printing – Noob2Pro #25

Network Tips For Your Mac – Noob2Pro #24

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:23:25 +0000

Hey

We are continuing with the Noob2Pro series. Today’s post will focus on a variety of tips and tricks to increase your skills with the network portion of your Mac system. Some tips will include making sure you get the best up time, the fast speed available and other tips and tricks. At this point I assume you know how to work your network (you just have to plug it in) so I am going to skip over some of the basics. All these tips will use the System Preferences pane.

The first step is to open System Preferences > Network. This is where all of the tips will take place. The first tips I would like to point out is the ability to set different network options depending on your location. If you notice at the top of the system preferences pane there is a drop down list. Here you can add and remove locations (using the Edit Locations options). If you use a laptop at home and at work, you can set up various different rules. Any changes you make will only effect the locations you have selected. This is very useful if you need to have different settings at different places.

The next two tips will allow you to make sure your network is more reliable. In the Network preference pane select Advance, in the new window select the TCP/IP tab. This screen shows how your Mac connects to the network. Under Configure IPv4 I would recommend you select “Using DHCP with manual address”, in the address box add an address that isn’t used. I prefer this option as you can select your own address, but if there is a conflict (such as a game console joining the network) you will still be able to connect. This gives you the most reliability.

The second tip in the “Advance” settings it the DNS options. Under the DNS tab add the following IP addresses to the list (click on the plus button to add an IP address). The IP’s are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. These are the IP addresses for the OpenDNS server and allows a fall back if your ISP servers ever fail.

These three tips will allows you to use your network in the most efficient way. You can play around with the size of the packets travelling over your network, you can also set up proxies, but for the majority of people you really don’t need to do any of that. If you personally have an uber cool tip or trick you would like to share, please leave a comment.

Network Tips For Your Mac – Noob2Pro #24