Category: Apple

Remove formatting from clipboard

2008-09-05 rolfje 1 Comment

In Windows, there is a great tool called “PureText” which sits in your tray, and can remove formatting from copy/paste actions if you want to. In stead of pasting into notepad, and then copying it again, you now can use the Windows-V combination to paste without formatting. It works in any program, and I’m a fond user of this little gem at work.

In OSX, you can do this with a key combination, Option-Shift-Command-V. Besides being the silliest and most awkward key combination ever to do a simple paste-action, it does not always do the job properly. I found this great tip where a simple applescript removes formatting from the items in your clipboard.

Apple, Software

Macbook Pro Screen update issues

2008-08-18 rolfje No Comments

My wife has this great Macbook Pro 15″, and I “don’t mind” using it every now and then. I noticed that when running on batteries, screen updates are a bit strange:

When scrolling down a webpage, the page get garbled. Scrolling the garbled piece out of the window and in again sometimes fixes it.
When resizing a Finder window, the icons in the window flicker a lot, you can see them being cleared and redrawn.

I noticed more people having these problems on several forums, and I also read that resetting the PRAM could fix it. Well, I just reset the PRAM and it seems to have fixed it, indeed.

I used the method mentioned on Apple’s support page, which tells you to shut the computer down, and boot it up holding the command, option, P and R keys. As soon as you see it shutting down after you’ve started it up, release the keys.

This is all I did, and it seems to have fixed it.

Apple, Hardware, Software

Censorship: here to stay

2008-08-12 rolfje No Comments

For those of you who think that media and information are free and uncontroled, guess again. Lately I have been seeing more and more incidents of large corporations hiding information, and even telling other people to hide it for them. I think this is plain wrong, and the guys involved should have been fired or punished otherwise.

If you have information which is of interest to the public, and somebody is making you sign a paper with which he can force you to shut up, you should think twice (and then not do it). Not because of the money, not because of the information itself, but for the sheer principle. Information should not be controled in that way. By anyone. It is dangerous.

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Apple, Microsoft

Turn your iPhone into a Drive

2008-08-10 rolfje 1 Comment

My Nokia 6300 behaves like a flash or thumb drive when I connect it to a computer using an USB cable. I think this should be standard functionality nowadays. Cellphones are replacing the Filofax and MP3 players. I can read mail on my cellphone, take pictures and movies. It contains an 4GB memory stick, sometimes even more. So why do I need to carry this silly thumbdrive with me?

Apple, Software

Cowbell++;

2008-08-07 rolfje 2 Comments

I just came across this great post about creating captivating content. The punchline: It’s not about getting the scoop, it’s about finding the cowbell and amplifying it.

More funny cowbell references:

Alex Johnson’s version the popular playstation game.
The wikipedia page on the cowbell sketch
The Cowbell project
And… The More Cowbell app for your iPhone (rock on!)

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to “explore the studio space”. No, really. 🙂

Apple, Fun, Software

Apple I Basic Reconstructed

2008-08-05 rolfje No Comments

Feast your eyes on this:

0000000 4c b0 e2 ad 11 d0 10 fb ad 10 d0 60 8a 29 20 f0
0000010 23 a9 a0 85 e4 4c c9 e3 a9 20 c5 24 b0 0c a9 8d
0000020 a0 07 20 c9 e3 a9 a0 88 d0 f8 a0 00 b1 e2 e6 e2
0000030 d0 02 e6 e3 60 20 15 e7 20 76 e5 a5 e2 c5 e6 a5

It is the first 64 bytes of the Apple I Basic, as reconstructed from tape by Michael Steil. You can read all about how he did this on his blog. A nice read for the people out there who can still remember putting tapes with strange sounds on it into the computer.

Apple, Fun, Software

Laptop Stolen? See who did it…

2008-08-04 rolfje No Comments

In this strange world, people can’t seem to leave your stuff alone. All the electronic gadgets of today are too attractive to the lowlife of this world. So what do you do if somebody swipes your laptop? You take a few pictures of him, and trace his IP address!

Apple, Hardware, Microsoft, Software

Migrate from Windows to OSX

2008-06-18 rolfje 1 Comment

My wife got tired of her Windows/Compaq laptop. So 2 weeks ago, she decides to go out and buy a 15″ macbook pro (an excelent choice I might add). She was a bit worried about getting used to the new machine, but decided to take the risk. After no more than 3 days, with surprisingly little help, she figured out how to do everything she did on the Windows machine, and even installed her own software.

The last thing to do was to migrate all the stuff from her old Windows machine to her new “lappie” (yes, she actually gave this one a nickname 🙂 ). Although Microsoft tries hard to keep Outlook Express users locked in, I did find a tool that solved the problem completely for me.

Apple, Microsoft, Software

WWDC 2008 Keynote video

2008-06-10 rolfje No Comments

I was watching the WWDC2008 text feeds yesterday (like the one from Engadget), and today the WWDC2008 video is online. It’s always better to watch this than to read an interpreted twitter feed. Today it was a bit of a challenge to view it because a lot of people are probably with me. I always set Quicktime to use the HTTP protocol over port 80, because that forces all the network packets to arrive in the correct order, and does not allow dropped packets.

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Apple, Hardware, Uncategorized

Clone Windows HD on Apple OSX machine

2008-06-06 rolfje 21 Comments

Last week, lightning struck at my parents apartment building (literaly). Other damages aside, my dad’s PC also died.

The guy at the PC repair shop warned my dad that “we may need to wipe the HD, do you have a backup”? Ofcourse, all data was backed up daily and “off-site” at my house so all important data was safe. But just in case, we wanted to make an exact disk image of the drive, so that we could easily restore it when the PC returns from the store

Apple, Microsoft, Software