Category: Software

A Bigger Time Machine without Changing History

Posted on By rolfje 104 Comments on A Bigger Time Machine without Changing History

I had a 160GB drive holding my Time Machine backups. Because I wanted to backup external disks, and still wanted to be able to travel about a year back in time, I bought a 1TB USB disk. Stephen Foskett wrote a great article about how he migrated his TimeMachine backup to a larger disk, but it’s lengthy and misses one essential step.

I decided to give you the short version, this blog post describes how I migrated Time Machine to the new disk without losing any data in 11 easy steps.

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Apple, Software

OSX: Formatting a 1TB USB Drive

Posted on By rolfje 7 Comments on OSX: Formatting a 1TB USB Drive

I just bought a Maxtor Basics 1TB drive, and found that I could not seem to format it using the Leopard Diskutility. Then, I found this page which contained the golden tip. I’ll save you some reading:

  1. Open Apple’s Disk Utility
  2. Click on the drive (not the partition in it, if there is any), and select “Partitioning”.
  3. Select “1 partition” and then press “Options”.
  4. You’ll see that “MBR” is the default, which is what’s causing the problem. Select the middle option “Apple Partition” and you’re good to go.

Screenshots included. It’s in Dutch, but the location of the buttons are identical for all languages.

Apple, Hardware, Software

Remove formatting from clipboard

Posted on By rolfje 1 Comment on Remove formatting from clipboard

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.

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Apple, Software

Macbook Pro Screen update issues

Posted on By rolfje No Comments on Macbook Pro Screen update issues

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

Turn your iPhone into a Drive

Posted on By rolfje 1 Comment on Turn your iPhone into a Drive

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?

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Apple, Software

Cowbell++;

Posted on By rolfje 2 Comments on Cowbell++;

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:

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

Apple, Fun, Software

Apple I Basic Reconstructed

Posted on By rolfje No Comments on Apple I Basic Reconstructed

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