I have received a couple of emails the past couple of days regarding usenet newsgroup readers and nzb downloading apps. Its a popular, albeit old method of reading news and finding help. The advantage of it is that the posts are global, so you can communicate with the world.  I read the latest mac news, of which I have found some helpful advice, on the mac newsgroup. Therefore, I give my list of the top newsgroup readers. If you wish to access the latest newsgroups, I get my subscription through giganews.

This list is in no particular order, and there is a mix of paid and free apps. The list also includes apps which you can use to download nzb files for accessing binary files.

1) Unison

Unison is regarded as the best newsgroup reader. It is a well rounded app designed as a simple way to access the latest newsgroups. It is very similar to mail in its interface and function with regard to messages and articles. I have this app and I find it useful to reader a large number of posts and messages.

It also has a comprehensive nzb file downloader so you can download the various files from newsgroups as you please. This is great if someone has posted a collection of images, or videos and you wish to view them.

Unison is a well rounded reader and nzb downloader.

2) NZBVortex

If you have a usenet subscription and you only use it for downloading files (its a good way of finding unique files), NZBVortex is a fully fledged app designed to download files, unpack them and clean up after itself. Many downloads can have a lot of extra, unneeded files that you don’t need and have only been downloaded to support the file download.

NZBVortex has a simple downloader interface and is designed to be uncluttered.

If you only download files, NZBVortex is a good app.

3) SABnzbd

If you don’t want to shell out for a paid app, SABnzbd is the app for you. It is a free app, designed to be low maintenance and get the drop done. It focus is on file download and is designs as a simple way to download files.

4) NZBDrop

NZBDrop is very similar to NZBVortex, it is designed as a focus app for downloading files. Some people have had a few problems with the app, however once it works it is a good way to download nzb files. I have included it for completeness, however I would recommend Unison or NZBVortex.

Another nzb downloader.

5) Mimo

The last app on the list is Mimo is available for free is you get the diamond subscription from giganews. It allows you to view newsgroups and download files, it is continually updated unlikely some of the apps on this list. It does everything you need from an app.

Mimo is used a well rounded app for reading newsgroups and downloading files.

Conclusion

There are many great apps out there for using newsgroups. Various people have contacted me on this subject and this is the definitive list. I recommend Unison as it is a well rounded app. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

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Auto Correct is a great way of ensuring those little spelling mistakes are changed before you send an email or text. However, auto correct can change some words when you don’t want it to resulting in some funny and embarrassing mistakes. Within Mountain Lion you can turn it off globally. If you have excellent spelling and don’t need the assistance, you can turn it off.

Turning Off Auto Correct

Turning off auto correct is as simple as changing a preference setting. Like many of your Mac settings they can be in funny places and not aptly named.

To find the auto correct setting open System Preferences within your Applications folder. Select the Language & Text preference pane.

From the preference pane select the Text tab at the top.

There will be an option called ‘Correct Spelling Automatically’. Uncheck this box to disable auto correct.

Disable auto correct on your Mac with a preference option.

When this box is unchecked auto correct will be disabled and what you type is what will appear on the screen. No changing of words.

It is only a simple setting however it isn’t easy to find if you don’t know its location.

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iCloud is a great way to sync documents and files between iOS and your Mac. There is plenty of stuff you can do with iCloud. One of the features is the ability to sync documents, such as those found in TextEdit and Preview to your iPad or iPhone (you do usually need Pages to open them). If the list is getting pretty full, or you want to remove some of the files to save space you can delete them. This post is going to show you how.

Deleting Files From iCloud

When you open TextEdit, Preview, or any other iCloud enabled app you can select the iCloud option at the top of the open dialog box. This will give you a list of all of the iCloud documents you have.

Deleting files is very easy. Simply right click on the file you want to delete and select Move To Trash.

Deleting files is simple. However, the option to delete is not that simple.

You can also select the file and press Command + Backspace, or the delete key if you keyboard is equipped with such powers.

Managing iCloud Files

You can also manage files in iCloud. Open System Preferences and select the iCloud preference pane. In the bottom right you can select the Manage option. This will give you a list of every file you have within iCloud.

From the list within the sidebar you can select the app that stores the file, e.g. TextEdit, select the file and then delete it.

You can delete files using the manager within System Preferences.

Its a little bit more complicated since a file that you uploaded to TextEdit will be in the TextEdit list only, however it will appear in both Preview and TextEdit when you go to open it. A little bit of a pain, but nothing too complicated.

Conclusion

Deleting files from iCloud is not that simple at first, however once you find the options it can be very quick and simple. I don’t currently use the iCloud options to the fullest extent, those who do may find this useful if they are reaching the limit of the storage space.

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Kernel Panics are a rare thing on your Mac. A Kernel Panic is a problem which is so big and serious they they rattle the core of the system and it needs to shut down to protect itself. The problem is when they happen it can cause your day to be ruined as you know something serious has happened. When they do happen you can do a little bit of investigating to see where the problem is.

Investigating A Kernel Panic

If a Kernel Panic happens once and never appears again you can be confident that it was a blip in the system, computers as with everything else do have troubled days. However, if you get it regularly you can usually pin it down. Not every Kernel Panic can be solved in this way but it is usually a good start.

It find the source of the panic we are going to look at the logs, a log file is created every time your Mac goes into panic mode. To find the log file open Console in Applications > Utilities.

Within the sidebar you need to select /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and select the latest kernel panic report. Not that this is not located within ~/Library.

Kernel Extensions in Backtrace

The report has a lot of text. There is a little piece of text you need to note. Within the log there is a list named Kernel Extensions In Backtrace. This is usually a short list of the source for the Kernel Panics.

For example if you see com.apple.driver.AppleIntelHD4000Graphics you can be narrow down the problem to the graphics card. Have a look through the list and see if it matches up with something you know. If this appears a lot in multiple panics or you were using the application at the time of the panic, you can be use that there is a link.

This backtrace doesn’t work every time, however it is a good start,

Solving Kernel Panics

You can solve kernel panics with some basic tips for example you can:

1. Update Firmware,
2. Update Software,
3. Run disk check in Disk Utilities,
4. Check RAM with memtest,
5. Check peripherals are behaving, unplug them and see if the error appears.
6. Update to the latest version of Mac OS X, this solves a few problems.

Kernel Panics are a rare thing, however you need to read into them to see what the problem is.

If you have any tips, please leave a comment.

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There are not very many ways to encrypt files on your Mac. However, if a neat Terminal solution you can encrypt any file with a password. We are going to use a Terminal command called OpenSSL. Its a program designed to create the https bits of website through secure certificates. We are going to use it encrypt files instead. There is one caveat to this command in that it will only encrypt text files. However, this is only a minor problem we can work around.

Encrypting Files With A Password

To encrypt a file, in this case a text file, open Terminal located in your applications utilities folder.

Navigate the to directory where the file is located. Since you start in the user drive typing cd desktop will take you to your desktop.

We can now encrypt our file for these type the following (it helps to set up the command within textedit first):

openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -e -in textfile.txt -out encrypted.txt -pass pass:mactricksandtips

Openssl is the command we are using, followed by the encrypt modifier. In this instance we are going to use a secure aes 256 bit encryption.

The next half of the command, -in textfile.txt, is the text file we are going to convert. It will then be converted using the, -out encrypted.txt, option to a second text file.

The password option is supplied with -pass pass:mactricksandtips. You can change the mactricksandtips bit to anything you want.

Once you have hit enter, the file will be encrypted. If you don’t know the password it will be hard to decrypt.

The original file on the left, the encrypted one on the right.

Decrypting Files With A Password

To decrypt the file you run the same command but in reverse.

openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d -in encrypted.txt -out 2.txt -pass pass:mactricksandtips

This is in decryption mode and will decrypt the file using the password.

If you get the password wrong it will be be able to decrypt the file.

Encrypting Zip, Images And Other Files

If you want to encrypt other file such as images, or zip files you can use this trick. However you have to put in one step before you go into Terminal. The openssl command will only accept text files.

Within Finder change the file extension from .zip, .png, .jpg to .txt. Finder will convert the file to a text one (it doesn’t really do anything). Now when you use the command it will run and encrypt the file. You just have to remember when you decrypt the file to change it back to the original format.

Conclusion

This command is a little tricky to use. You have to remember both the encryption method used and the password, however once you have that you can encrypt anything.

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Have you every wondered what error code -22 in Finder means, or error code -49 in iMovie. A lot of these are very simple and not at all helpful. Nothing is worst than an error message that simply says ‘Error!’. You might as well not have bothered telling me (this infuriates me at work). However, help is at hand. You can actually interpret the errors within Terminal. You can find out what the error code means. A way to determine what it means and how to solve it.

Determine Error Codes In Mac OS X

How are we going to determine what an error code means? The trick is simple, tell Terminal your error code and let it give you a response. For this trick we are going to use a Terminal commadn called macerror.

This command takes the error code you have and tells you the answer. For example in iMovie I occasionally get error code -49. If I type into Terminal (located in your Applications > Utilities folder) the following:

macerror -49

It will give the following output.

Mac OS error -49 (opWrErr): file already open with with write permission

This tells me that iMovie is trying to open a file that is already open. If I have the file open in two locations and it wants to write to it, there will be problems.

You can repeat this for any error code you encounter, some are more useful than others. These are general error codes that are system wide. So a specific application error code may not yield a response.

Note that -49 and 49 are two different error codes, therefore you must add a dash if one is present.

List of Error Codes

Below is a list of errors codes. I have not listed every single one as there are duplicates, and some that are not useful.

• error -50 paramErr: error in user parameter list
• error -49 opWrErr: file already open with with write permission
• error -48 dupFNErr: duplicate filename (rename)
• error -47 fBsyErr: File is busy (delete)
• error -46 vLckdErr: volume is locked
• error -45 fLckdErr: file is locked
• error -44 wPrErr: diskette is write protected.
• error -43 fnfErr: File not found
• error -42 tmfoErr: too many files open
• error -41 mFulErr: memory full (open) or file won’t fit (load)
• error -40 posErr: tried to position to before start of file (rw)
• error -39 eofErr: End of file
• error -38 fnOpnErr: File not open
• error -36 ioErr: IO error (bummers)
• error -35 nsvErr: no such volume
• error -34 dskFulErr: disk full
• error -33 dirFulErr: Directory full
• error -24 closErr: IO System Errors
• error -23 openErr: IO System Errors
• error -22 unitEmptyErr: IO System Errors
• error -21 badUnitErr: IO System Errors
• error -20 writErr: IO System Errors
• error -19 readErr: IO System Errors
• error -18 statusErr: IO System Errors
• error -17 controlErr: IO System Errors
• error -8 seNoDB: no debugger installed to handle debugger command
• error 16 dsFPErr: Floating point error
• error 25 dsMemFullErr: out of memory!
• error 26 dsBadLaunch: can’t launch file
• error 31 dsNotThe1: not the disk I wanted
• error 40 dsGreeting: welcome to Macintosh greeting
• error 41 dsFinderErr: can’t load the Finder error
• error 90 dsNoFPU: an FPU instruction was executed and the machine doesnÕt have one
• error 98 dsNoPatch: Can’t patch for particular Model Mac
• error 99 dsBadPatch: Can’t load patch resource
• error 101 dsParityErr: memory parity error
• error 20002 dsForcedQuit: allow the user to ExitToShell return if Cancel
• error 20003 dsRemoveDisk: request user to remove disk from manual eject drive
• error 20109 dsShutDownOrResume: allow user to return to Finder or ShutDown
• error 32767 dsSysErr: general system error

It takes a little bit of interpretation into why the error has appeared. However, with this little bit of information you might be able to do something about it.

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If you use Quicktime Player or any other screen recorder such as iShowU HD, you will find that when you record an application it will not make a noise. This means in games and other applications that produce sound, it will not be recorded. Sometimes this can be an advantage so you don’t get application sound interrupting your screen recording. However, if you are playing a game you will want to record the applications audio. To do this we need to install some special bits of software.

Record Audio From Apps

Audio from applications, and recording it is a little bit tricky. Sound from applications is treated as an output, thus is played into your speakers. However, we want to record this audio as an input to our recording device, in this example the screen recording feature in Quicktime. This is very difficult to do normally, you can get around it by turning the volume up really high and recording it off the internal microphone, this is less than ideal.

To get around this problem, download and install soundflower. This is the app that will hijack the sound output and convert it to an input.

When you have installed the applications open System Preferences and select the sound preference pane. You will notice that soundflower has been installed as an input device. Select the 2ch option.

The difference between the two options (2ch and 16ch) is the number of audio channels that will be captured. If you have a game that is outputting in surround sound you may want this audio. Most of the time however, you just want the stereo audio.

Use soundflower to capture app audio.

Now, when you open Quicktime and select a new audio recording it will capture all of the pings, dings and noises applications make. This means if you are recording a game, the noise it generates will be recorded.

If you record using Quicktime you can use the small down arrow by the record button to select the audio source.

You can switch between the audio source in Quicktime.

If you want to capture audio from both a microphone (I have a Blue Snowball microphone) and applications, you will need something like iShowU. This records audio from both sources and creates two unique audio tracks. You can also use the app to mix the audio into one track.

Conclusion

Recording application audio is not that difficult. There is not a default way to record the audio within your Mac. You need to use something like soundflow to record the audio.

When you have it installed it is very simple to use, it is just as quick as using an internal microphone.

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Disk space is a premium, although hard drives are getting larger and come in varieties up to 4TB, it is always worth removing unneeded files and folders and cleaning up your Mac, I like to use CleanMyMac on a regular basis. One of the biggest data hogs is videos, they take up many gigabytes of space and can consume of lot of space very quickly. With the advent of video on phones and the digital age this is becoming more common. Today’s post is going to demonstrate how to clean up iMovie so it doesn’t take up as much space.

Review Clips To Delete

The way to clean up iMovie and save disk space is to remove the videos you don’t use. A lot of videos you may take may not live up to the high standards that you expect. These are usually the wobbly videos, or the movies that don’t have a lot in them.

The first step in cleaning up space is to reject the movie clips you don’t want. Within the events library of iMovie go through the clips you have. You can right click on any video and select the reject clip option.

Reject the rubbish clips to save disk space.

Rejected movies will go into rejected clips folder. You can view the rejected clips folder within iMovie by selecting View > Rejected Only. These are all of the sub par videos that you don’t want.

Rejected clips. The blooper reel lives here.

Another way to reject clips is to use the File > Space Saver option. This will run through your library to find and delete all of the video clips you don’t use. If a video hasn’t been used in a movie you can reject it.

Find all of the clips you haven’t used and reject them.

It is also worth going through the events library and removing any events that you don’t use or want. There can be many times when you have created and event, filled it with videos only not to use it. You can right click on any event and move to trash.

Move Rejected Clips To Trash

You don’t want to keep these rejected clips for too long. You can get rid of them by pressing the ‘Move Rejected To Trash’ button within the rejected clips folder view.

You can also trash rejected clips by going to File > Move Rejected Files To Trash. This will move all of these video files to the trash folder.

Delete rejected movies to reclaim disk space.png

Export Movies – Delete Source Videos and Projects

Another tip which takes a little bit of work but is very useful is to delete the project. If you have made your movie and are happy with the content you can delete the project and the source files. Export your movie using the Share > Export Movie option.

Once you have exported your movie right click on the project and select Move Project to Trash. This will delete the project. Depending on how big the project is, this can be a significant gain.

After you have deleted the project you can remove the source files. You can either delete the event, if you keep video files in separate events or use the File > Space Saver menu bar option followed by the File > Move Reject Clips To Trash option.

This will save a lot of disk space as you won’t have two versions of the same video on your Mac.

Consolidate Media

If you have been a bit haphazard with where you have put your media you may find it located in more than one place. As a result you can end up with multiple copies of the same video file all over you disk, or you have projects and there media in different places. To tidy this up we can consolidate the media into one place. This may not save you a lot of disk space initially but can help you keep your videos and project tidy.

To consolidate the media, go to File > Consolidate Media. You will be given three options. Copy the Events, Copy The Clips or Move The Events. Select the latter. This will movie the clips and events to the hard drive that you Mac is located on. It will also update the links. You can then select the option to find media that isn’t in a project, as previously discussed.

Move all of the files so they are in one place.

I wouldn’t press the copy buttons as this will create duplicate copies. Increasing disk space usage.

Conclusion

The final step is to empty your Trash. This will remove the video files for good.

Video files do take up a lot of space. It take a little bit of work to ensure that your video files don’t take you every byte on your hard drive.

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Your Mac has a lot of functionality and neat features. One of these is the ability to open your previous files when your open an app. For example in Word, Keynote or any other app, when you close an application your Mac will remember what file it had open. When you then open the application it will remember the previous files you had open. This means you don’t have to find the file when you open an app, it will be present. Some may find this functionality useful, however if you want to turn it off you can. This means you start from a blank slate when you open an app.

Stop Windows and Files Appearing When Starting An App

To close windows when you quit an app, you have to change a setting. This is a simple setting, however if you don’t know where it is, it can be hard to find.

To alter this setting open System Preferences. Select the General tab.

There is a setting half way down the page titled ‘Close Windows When Quitting An Application’. Check this box. Now when you close an app the windows will be closed. This means when an app is open it is blank and doesn’t open your previous files.

Stop previous files from opening when you open an app.

It is open a simple change but very useful.

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If you have setup a sweet home audio system you can play the audio through a set of speakers. Todays post is going to tell you how to set up VLC to play the audio through a HDMI or thunderbolt port, alternatively allow you to quickly switch the audio between your external speakers and the internal speakers. This allows you to play a music or video file on your Mac without it being played on your larger external speakers.

Changing VLC Output Source

VLC is a powerful program and as a result there are many features which you can change and alter. To change the audio track select Audio from the menu bar and select Audio Device. There are a variety of options depending on what types of output you have installed.

To change the audio device from your Mac to your external speakers, select the appropriate output. In my case this is HDMI.

Changing the audio output in VLC is a matter of selecting the right one.

This solves a little problem I have on my Mac. I plug in in the HDMI cable, through a thunderbolt adapter, then I try and play a file within VLC. It only comes out of my Mac’s internal speakers. The solution is to change the audio device.

If you still have problems ensure you have set up the audio correctly within Audio MIDI Setup. This ensures audio is played through you external speakers.

If you have found there are two HDMI options, usually and Encoded Output option, these are used to change how data is sent through HDMI. If you are having problems with surround sound change the output of HDMI. There may be problems with the way your Mac is talking to the HDMI receiver.

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Customising your Mac is very easy to customise, however some of the customisation can be quite difficult to find. One of these is the size Finder sidebar icons. The default size may not be to your taste. Editing the size is a simple case of altering the preference setting, the required size change is within System Preferences and not in Finder. This change will also allow you to change the size of Mail’s sidebar icons.

Changing Finder’s Sidebar Icon Size

To change the size of Finder icons within the sidebar open System Preferences. Select the General preference pane. Within this pane you will see a drop down option which says ‘Sidebar Icon Size’. You have three options; small, medium and large. Typically your Mac will be set to medium.

Finder sidebar icon size is found within System Preferences

Large is quite good at allowing you to see more of the icons. Useful if you find selecting the sidebar options difficult.

Large icons are easy to read.

The small icons make the text smaller as well as the icons themselves. If you have a long list of items, making them smaller will give you more room.

Changing Mail’s Sidebar Icon Size

The sidebar change within System Preferences will also change the size of the icons within Mail. By changing the sidebar icons to small or large, this change will be reflected in Mail.

You can change the size of Mail’s sidebar icons with the same drop down menu.

You only have three options, small, medium and large. You should find one that is suitable. I prefer the default medium.

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When you Mac doesn’t boot it can be the end of the world. Hard drives are fragile and when they fail it can stop your from starting your Mac and booting. Although your Mac has a built in recovery partition it is always worth having a USB version to boot into in case your hard disk drive is toast. Creating a bootable USB drive allows you to repair your hard drive, reinstall the OS and restore from a Time Machine backup.

Create A Bootable USB Drive

The first step is to find yourself a USB flash drive. You only need a drive 1GB in size. If you have a bigger one the space will be wasted unless you play around with partitioning the drive.

The next step is to download the recovery assistant from Apple. This is a free app that we will be using. Install the app into your apps folder (I recommend the Utilities folder). Open the app and plug in your USB drive. Select it within the app. Note that you need to have FileVault disabled for this to work.

Select your USB drive to create a bootable drive.

When you hit OK the app will copy across the various bits and bytes it requires to create the bootable drive. This doesn’t take too long to complete.

The blocks are being copied across to create the drive.

Once it is complete your have a bootable drive.

Using A Bootable USB Drive

Once it complete you can using your USB drive to boot into recovery mode. Restart (or start) your Mac and hold down the option key. This will allow you to pick the USB drive to boot into.

Once booted you can use the options to restore from a Time Machine backup, use Disk Utility to repair your hard drive, reinstall the OS, and get help online. It is the standard boot page which can be accessible from holding  Command + R on your Mac. Normally you can boot into this drive if you hard drive is working normally.

Get Your USB Drive Back

You will notice that when you plug your bootable USB drive into your Mac that it will not appear in Finder. If you want to get back your USB drive open Disk Utilities in your Application > Utilities folder.

Select the drive from the sidebar. Use the Erase option to erase the drive, this will delete all of the data and get your USB drive as a normal drive.

Erase the USB drive in disk utility to get it back as a normal drive.

Conclusion

It is a simple method to create a USB bootable drive. It is worth making one, sticking a label on it and put it in your draw. You never know when you need to boot into your Mac and you can’t access your hard drive.

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New Mac laptops come with two graphics cards. One is a built in graphic card which runs the majority of the time, it is low power and allows you to save power. The second is usually a more powerful dedicated graphics card that allows you to use its horsepower to play games and graphic intensive applications. You Mac will automatically switch between the two, allowing both good battery life and good graphics. It can be interesting to see which graphics you are using.

Finding Out Which Graphics Card Your Mac Is Using

Determine which graphics card you mac is using is very simple. One the menu bar click the Apple Icon and select About This Mac. From the popup window select the More Info button.

This will bring up a report window. Within the list it will says graphics followed by the graphics card you are using. This information can also be found on the Displays tab.

My Mac is currently running with the integrated graphics card.

Integrated graphics card usually go by the name of Intel. Dedicated graphics are made by ATI and Nvidia. If you want to see the switch, run something graphic intensive (games are usually a good start). Re-open the About This Mac and you should see that graphics has changed to the dedicated graphics card.

Dedicated graphics cards by ATI and Nvidia do a lot of the graphics work.

How To Turn Off Graphics Switching

If you don’t want to have graphics switching you can turn it off. This will force your Mac to always run the dedicated graphics card. It will impact battery life, but stop your Mac from switching graphics chips.

To turn it off open System Preferences. Select Energy Saver and uncheck the option that says ‘Automatic Graphics Switching’. You mac will change the graphics card it uses.

Turning off graphics card switching can be useful.

It is only a simple trick. However, it can be very useful. If you have trouble with your graphics or wondering why it is running slow you can see which card is being used and determine if it  is running the right one.

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The current iMac and Macbook range feature a cool brushed aluminium that is both simple and elegant. The problem with this is that it isn’t very unique. Today’s post is going to list some amazing and interesting accessories such as decals, cases, and little gadgets that make your Mac stand out. This allows you to make your mac that little bit more unique and interesting. This post follows on from one at the beginning of the month where I listed some must have accessories.

These accessories are listed in no particular order. They come from a variety of different sources across the web, however I have tried to find the relevant product on Amazon to aid a simple purchase and provide you with the cheapest price (Amazon are nearly always the cheapest).

BookBook Laptop Cover

TweleveSouth have produced an amazing laptop cover. It is a hard book leather case for your Mac. The cover mimics a classical hard book cover found in law libraries. The interesting, classical, design takes you back to the time when a lot of work and effort was made to produce a book. It is an interesting cover that I don’t see a lot of people using. It is also available for iPhone and iPad, so you can have a complete set.

The classic book design for your Mac. A proper case to protect your laptop.

Gelaskins

Colour is the name of the game. Gelaskins are high quality printed images on a vinyl paper. Using the 3M adhesive (which is very good) you apply this high quality image to your laptop case. You then have a vibrant image to show off your Mac. I had a gelskin for my Mac and many people commented on where I got it from. Makes a boring Mac stand out from the crowd.

Many of the designs are available from Amazon. There is, literally, thousands to choose from.

Apply a bit of colour Mac with an applied skin.

ScreenSavrz iMac Cover

‘ScreenSavers’ are usually your holiday pictures moving across your screen when you leave your Mac. ScreenSavrz are really thin fabric covers for your iMac. Its a simple way to cover your Mac. If you want to physically cover your screen when it is not in use, this is the way to do it.  Available on Amazon in a variety of colours and sizes.

MOS Magnetic Cable Organiser

Cables are the bane of my life, I thought wireless technology should alleviate the problem, however I seem to have ended up with more. To get round this problem MOS have created the magnetic cable organiser. It is a brushed aluminium paper weight with a magnetic inside of it. When you don’t use a cable you attach it to the organiser and it stops the cable from running off behind your desk.

Organise your cables with magnets and keep the ends from disappearing.

Laptop Key Covers

One trend that seems to be taking off is using covers to add a bit of life to the black keyboard of your Mac. Some my favourites are crystal princess on Esty, Family Swede bundle and case star ocean. There are many different designs on Amazon and Etsy to keep you interested.

Add a bit of colour to your keyboards to make them unique.

OWC External SSD Drive

One of the coolest gadgets I have found and suddenly want to own. This is the OWC external SSD drive. It sets it self apart from any old external SSD drive in that it looks like it should belong with your Mac. The sleek design, brushed aluminium, small form factor. There are very few external drives that look like this.

Small and powerful an external SSD drive.

Jambox Bluetooth Speakers

People like listening to music, people pass around phones in school with the latest tracks being played. One of the really cool gadgets from Jawbone, is the the ultraportable bluetooth speakers. Its a big speaker in a small box. Powered by bluetooth it projects your sound across the room. Whip out this speaker and you can entertain a group of friends for hours.

Tiny speaker, a big sound.

$1 Dollar Vinyl Stickers

Many of the unique gadgets on this list are expensive. However Amazon has a great list of inexpensive vinyl decals for your laptop. They range from a dollar to a couple of bucks. I had a lego man on my old laptop.

Conclusion

There are many ways to make your Mac unique. You just need to search the internet for something your like. Phases with the keywords of decals, vinyls, covers usually work quite well. You can always find something you like and you can always find something cheap. There are vinyl decals out there for a dollar a piece. Cheap, but sets your Mac aside from the rest.

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I love watching movies and videos on my iPad. Its easy to sit on the Sofa an watch all of the home movies and other videos. The problem is iTunes, thus iPhones and iPads, only accepts mp4 videos with a specific codec. This means common formats such as .avi, .mkv, and many other video formats can’t be played on on your iOS device. There is a solution to this problem, we are going to convert the videos into a format that iTunes accepts, allowing us to play the videos on our favourite iOS device.

Converting Videos

To convert videos download a piece of software called Handbrake. It is free and does what we want. The first part of this app will detail how to convert one video.

Open the video file within Handbrake using the dialog box that opens when the app starts. You can access this from the source button on the menu bar. Once the video file has been opened and read we can now set up the video to the correct format.

Open files to convert with handbrake.

The next step is to convert the video to a suitable size. You can use the presets in the right hand side to pre-select a size (the button is in the menu bar). The maximum any video should be is 1920 x 1080p. This is full hd and you really don’t need to go any bigger. To alter the video size select the picture settings in the top right hand corner. Ensure you select ‘Keep Aspect Ratio’ to ensure the video doesn’t end up a fully size.

You can alter video size to reduce file sizes.

The source file size is listed at the bottom of the floating widget. By reducing the video size you also save on disk space. For example, you really don’t need a 1080p video on an iPhone you can reduce the file size down to 1280 x 720p. For iPads I still recommend 1920 x 1080p.

Once you have selected the video size ensure you have selected file format as MP4 and the codec as H.264 (x264). This is the format that iTunes accepts and plays.

Set to MP4 and you are ready to go.

Audio wise you can usually keep the same format as audio tends to come compressed. You can alter the bit rate to reduce the size of the audio file. Keep it around 160 for good quality.

When you are ready to convert the video file press the start button. It will convert the video file to the destination selecting within the app.

Once this is complete you can then import the video into iTunes.

Batch Converting Videos

If you want to convert more than one video you can. Its just as quick. There are two ways to open files the first is to select each video individually adjust the settings and then press the ‘Add To Queue’ button. This allows you to adjust each video individually.

If you want to add more than one video file using the same format you can easily do this within Handbrake. Using the source button in the tool bar select the folder you want to open. Don’t however open the folder within the dialog box, just select the folder. When you select open, it will import every video into the app.

Change the video settings as previously described then go to File > Add All Items To Queue. It will ask you if you want to apply the settings to all videos, select yes.

You can apply the same video settings to many videos.

These will then be added to the queue. You can view the queue from the toolbar. When you want to convert the videos press start and it will convert each video.

You can queue up videos to batch convert.

Conclusion

Handbrake is a great bit of software. It takes a little bit of work to understand how to operate the app but once you get the hang of it, it is very simple to convert many files into iTunes compatible formats.

The default settings are good enough for the majority of applications. There is no need to increase the size to greater than 1920 x 1080p as this may not play well on your iOS device and will take up plenty of space. The smaller the video size, the smaller the file.

Once you have found the settings you like you can batch up all of your videos to run over night. It does create duplicates of the original, so you can delete the original file on import.

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Stress testing your Mac is a useful way to work out if it is performing to its best and to determine if there are any faults within the various components. Stress testing your Mac is also a useful way to determine if you Mac has a fault if it is using 100% of a CPU, or if there is bad memory. Today’s post is going to describe three ways to stress test the core components of your Mac, CPU, RAM and disk. By testing each one to the ‘max’ you can determine if there is a problem and if you Mac can handle the heat.

Stress Testing The CPU

Stress testing your CPU is probably the simplest of the three core components of your Mac. To test your CPU to the max, open Terminal located in your Applications > Utilities folder.

We are going to use the ‘yes’ command to test the CPU. This command prints out the letter ‘y’ as fast as possible. The result of this means it uses 100% of a CPU core. To use this command type the following and hit enter.

yes > /dev/null

This executes this yes command. It then pipes this data to /dev/null/ . This means we don’t see any output. If you want to see the output of a million ‘y’ characters on screen remove the ‘> /dev/null’ reference.

You will notice in your activity monitor that one CPU will shoot up to 100%. Putting load onto your system. If you have more than one core, open a new terminal window and type the command again. Repeat for as many cores that you have on your Mac. Not that due to the use of hyper-threading you may need to use more than the number of physical cores on your Mac to fully load the system . To find out how many physical cores your Mac has got to the hardware report section of System Information / About this mac.

Using the ‘yes’ command can load a CPU. Add more commands to use up every resource.

To stop the test use Control + C to kill the command. Alternatively you can close the Terminal window. This will load your system and is a good representation of a fully loaded system.

Stress Testing Your RAM

RAM is a little bit harder to test. Instead of pure speed we need to look to see if there is any problems with the chips. To stress test your RAM we are going to use memtest (direct link to the package here). Install the package and open up Terminal.

With Terminal open type the following to test your RAM.

memtest all 1

This will test every byte of RAM your Mac has access to once. If you want to continue testing your RAM indefinitely use the following command:

memtest all

If you want to test a small portion of your RAM you can use the command:

memtest 100 1

This will test 100mb of RAM once.

The test will loop through your Mac testing it for a variety of problems.

Stress test your Mac with memtest.

You will notice that memtest will only test a small subset of free memory available to you. You could close every program on your Mac, but this still won’t test every byte of RAM. To test it all you will have to boot into single user mode. Restart your Mac and as it reboots hold Command + S. Once it has finished booting you will see a black screen with white text. Type memtest all 2 to test every bit of available RAM. Restart to get back to norma.

Stress Testing Your Hard Disk Drive

The final core component of your Mac is the hard disk drive. The crucial component that holds all of your data. Over time these degrade and slow down. To stress test your hard disk drive for speed and performance we can use a tool called Blackmagic Disk Speed Test free from the app store. When you load the app select the disk drive you want to test. Then select the size of file you want to write. I recommend the largest of 5GB.

Hit the start button and it will test the read and write performance your your disk drive. It will keep doing this until you tell it to stop. Note, if you get an error saying it cannot write to the disk, select your user folder or something similar. Sometimes selecting the root of a drive causes an unwritable error message.

Write and read as fast as possible to test your disk speed.

You can save the result of the disk speed for later use. My SSD drive has only slowed by a couple of tenths of a megabyte over the last year. Its a good way to see if your Mac can handle the disk speed read/write load.

Bench Marking App

All of these separate tests are useful, as well as free. However, if you want some more concrete numbers and a more repeatable test I recommend you download and buy Geekbench from the App Store.

This app tests your CPU and RAM in a more controlled way. At the end it gives you a score which you can save and compare later. I recommend you close down every app since the final score can be heavily influenced by what apps are running.

Bench mark your Mac and see its true performance.

Conclusion

There are many ways to stress test your Mac. Most of the methods are free and give you good results. It is always interesting to see how your Mac shapes up over time.

Stress testing can also be a good insight into any possible failures. Especially with testing using memtest, if there is a fault on your RAM chips, it will find it.

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I love playing video games, wether they are on an XBox, Playstation or your Mac. They take you into a world that is fun and allows you to experience worlds that you could only dream of. Today’s post is all about fun games that you should play. I have featured games that are more than simple iPad games that you play while you are waiting for your train. Each has a story, levels and some difficult bits to make it a challenge. All of these posts are digitals downloads, from various sources including the MacGameStore, Steam or the App Store. Many can be found on a variety of different sources. If you would like a hard copy, most can be found on Amazon, however it is sometimes difficult to find the Mac version.

The list is in no particular order. However, each game is on I have played and enjoyed. I recommend you download them or some great gaming time.

Borderlands 2

An epic mix of graphics and gameplay. Borderlands 2 available at the MacStore, AppleStore or on Steam and features a mix of first person shooting and role playing. Complete the quests and kill stuff to earn experience points to build your character. I love the humor, the graphical design and the story line. The array of weapons and enemies whom you can kill make it a fun game to play. The addition of downloadable content means you can keep going back.

Great graphics, great gameplay a great game.

Borderlands 2 gets a fair bit of press, but isn’t as popular as it should. The game is getting pretty cheap now so I recommend you download and play for hours or entertainment.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Turn based action games were popular many years ago when computer were not powerful enough to simulate a live environment. Now they are, they have become awesome. The turn based game XCOM Enemy Unknown takes places on Earth where aliens have invaded. You move your characters around the map, exploring the environment. You fight enemies and build the skill trees to fight bigger and badder enemies. You use the environment to cover yourself and explore new areas.

It is a slower paced game, being turn based, but has some intense action. It is available from the app store and the MacGameStore.

Portal 2

No game is on computer games list is ever complete without the mention of Portal. Portal 2 is the successor which is one of the best games out on the market. You take control of chell, whom is stuck in a testing lab with only a portal gun. Fire a portal on one wall, and second portal on a different wall and you can walk, jump or run through them. Allowing you to transverse great distances. The problem comes with the complex levels which you have to navigate. Coupled with an intriguing story line and amazing level design you will find yourself lost in the portal world.

This game is found on Steam, and is one you should be playing. You should also play Half Life 2. Which is the definition of a good game.

Playing Portal should be a rite of passage. Fun and interesting.

Super Meat Boy

Super Meat Boy is synonymous with shouting at your computer, throwing things across the room in a fit of range and generally being annoyed. However, it is a good bit of fun in the end. You play as a block of meat who bounces of walls, avoiding razor sharp saws, needles, crumbling bits of the world trying to save his girlfriend. It seems very simple, jump, avoid the pointy thing, and land the other side. However, it is difficult as you have to jump off many different objects to ensure you don’t die. It doesn’t have a story line as such, however you will be addicted.

At the end of every level you get to see your past performances. If you are bad at a level and die alot (which is often) you will see many attempts at your failure. This game can be download off Steam.

Cities In Motion 2

The engineer in me loves this game. Since Sim City failed so miserably I was looking for a city building game. Cities in Motion 2, although not a city building game, takes place in the city. You are the engineer of the cities public network. You have to link areas of the city with bueses, trams, trains, boats and trolley buses to ensure the public can get around the city. It is all about constructing routes, junctions and allows you a great amount of flexibility in transport routes and transport timetables. It is not for everyone, but if you like building networks or routes, this game is for you. It is a little hard to master, but has a lot of replay value. It is available at the MacGameStore.

BioShock 2

BioShock broke ground with its gameplay and graphics. Bioshock 2 is even better. It takes place in rapture, the perfect city that didn’t work out so well. You are a Big Daddy, a human encased in a tomb of metal to protect Little Sisters to harvest ADAM for use in changing your genetic code to have super powers. The array of weapons and the design of the maps allow for an immersive game play. The good story line and background story allow for a good amount of character development. At the end of the day it is fun to play and worth your time. Available on the App store, GameStore and Steam.

The broken city of rapture had many enemies which need to be overcome.

Braid

Braid was developed by one person and is a homage to good game design. You play as a character who can manipulate time. Each world gives you a different manipulation. You have to solve the puzzles, sometimes thinking backward,  in order to complete the goal and rescue the princess. The intriguing thing about this game is that you have to revisit levels in order to complete levels further on in the game. Some puzzles are complicated and usually need the help of youtube to solve them. However, each level is fun and taxes the brain. Plus the soundtrack is amazing.

Conclusion

These are some of my favourite games. I could go on and on, however there is plenty of game play time here. These are classic games that have been around a while, but that means they have stood the test of time and are worth your hard earned dollars. Mac’s don’t tend to get the latest games straight away, but the older games provide a lot more enjoyment.

If you have a game you enjoy for the Mac, drop a comment.

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Every time you change a files extension, for example from .jpg to .png, or .avi to .mp4 your Mac will give you are warning. This is so you don’t cause anything untoward from happening. If you have changed a file extension, the program will try and open that file extension. For instance if you change a .avi to .jpg Preview will try and open it and fail. This can cause you a bit bother since you have to force it to open in your video app. It stop this from happening your Mac gives you a warning. However, I find it annoying since it is an extra click to change a file extension. Most of the time I know that I am changing a files extension.

This warning pops up every time you change a file extension

Removing The Warning

Removing the warning is very simple. It is a built in preference within Finder.

Open Finder and go to Finder > Preferences. From the options select the advance tab. The magic option ‘Show Warning Before Changing An Extension’ needs to be unchecked. When you uncheck this option the warning will never appear again.

This simple check box option allows you to remove the warning.

It is obvious when you find it. I can never find it, these options are either in some preferences or system preferences. I always pick the wrong one.

Terminal Method

You can us a terminal command to do the same thing. It is longer, more complicated and does exactly the same thing as the method just posted. To use a Terminal command, open up Terminal in Applications > Utilities.

Type the following command and hit enter.

defaults write com.apple.finder FXEnableExtensionChangeWarning -bool false;
killall Finder

To revert the command use the following

defaults write com.apple.finder FXEnableExtensionChangeWarning -bool true;
killall Finder

I prefer the check box method.

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Data backups are very important. I always have Time Machine plugged in. If you don’t have any backup system installed I recommend you buy an external hard drive or a Time Capsule to keep your data secure. There is nothing worse than losing all of your data and then spending hours trying to recover it. To represent some of the biggest data lost the aptly named “Data Backup Battalion” have created an info-graphic. This was created by OnlineBackupGeeks.com

Backup your data. An infographic on data loss.

Pixar nearly lost one of the best movies in the world. Don’t let it happen to your data.

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A lot of dock apps, such as Mail, Reminders and many more have small icons in there dock icons indicating how many unread messages you have to deal with. If there are only a couple of reminders this isn’t too bad. However, after a while these numbers can balloon and become quite annoying. Turning off the number is very simple, it is a simple preference change within System Preferences. Within one click you can remove the number and have a simple dock icon instead.

I have 28 mail messages to read. This annoying number can be turned off.

Removing The Dock Numbers

To remove the numbers from dock icons open System Preferences. Navigate to the Notifications preference pane. From the right hand column select the app you want to remove the numbers from.

Within the options there will be an option entitled ‘Badge app icon’, uncheck this option to remove the dock icon numbers.

This simple option removes the number from dock icons.

Simply go down the list on the right hand side to remove the numbers. Calendar, Face Time, Game Centre, Mail, Messages, Reminders, Safari, Google Chrome, Photo Stream and any other apps that appear in the list will probably have an option. If it isn’t in the list, but has a dock icon the preference within the app will probably have a check box option.

It is only a simple check box option. However, it does take a little bit of finding, and isn’t the best named command.

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