a blog about coding & IT

  • Mac Bootcamp 4 Mountain Lion – Installer disc could not be found – Solution

    Update Feb 6, 2013: See Lior’s comment/fix to Bootcamp Assistant not giving the option to make your USB drive into a Windows installation bootable drive. Here’s my solution to the “Installer disc could not be found” problem when installing Windows on a Macbook Pro Retina with Bootcamp using Bootcamp Assistant.  At the Install step, after sizing partitions…

  • Secure Delete Files in Terminal on OS X

    Securely delete files on Mac OS X in the Terminal by using srm: srm <filename> This will delete the file, then rewrite random data over the spot on the hard disk where the file was previous stored several times to prevent any file recovery attempts. A regular delete using rm in the Terminal will only…

  • Firefox Stops Loading Pages – Fix

    Firefox stops loading pages after several hours or days of continuous use.The problem often starts with only some page loading errors: stylesheets not being applied (ugly white pages with no images), buttons not working, forms not submitting, etc., then quickly gets worse until Firefox is completely unusable and often cannot be restarted. Sound familiar? The…

  • OS X Problems

    The two best ways to avoid OS X Problems: backup before problems start and don’t fix what’s not broken. Avoiding OS X Problems – Backup Before Problems Start Before making any chages to your Mac, backup your current system by making a mirror image of your current system.  This places an exact copy of your…

  • Tips on applying iSkin iPod/iPhone screen film

    Here’s how to attach the iPod Touch/iPhone screen film from iSkin without bubbles (and avoiding the seven layers of hell while doing so). Wear polyester based clothing (which doesn’t produce dust). Start the process in a room that is the most dust free in your house.  Perhaps your kitchen. Have the screen film, the anti-static…

  • Delete Windows Files on Mac OS X

    The solution to deleting files on a Windows drive (XP or Vista) from Mac OS X is to use Paragon NTFS.  Upon installing Paragon NTFS you’ll be able to copy/delete/modify files on drives formatted NTFS (all Windows computers since Windows 2000).  This is especially handy for you VMWare Fusion (like me) or Parallels folks who…

  • Turn Off iPod Touch/iPhone Auto-Correct Predictive Text

    The latest release of iPod touch/iPhone software version 2.2 allows one to turn off the often idiotic auto-correction that rears its ugly head when typing in search boxes and elsewhere. You can find this in Settings -> Keyboard Settings. Hoo-ray! (photo courtesy of David Worni)

  • Play avi divx on iPod Touch or iPhone

    To play .avi videos or files on your iPod Touch or iPhone, you must first change the file format from AVI to MP4 (MPEG-4) using programs such as VisualHub or iSquint. VisualHub produces the best quality results and is drag-and-drop easy to use.  One fault with VisualHub is that it doesn’t extract and convert multiple…

  • iPod Touch Wifi Password

    Our brand new iPod Touch 16GB version 2 arrived today.  First problem: can’t connect to wifi router (Wanadoo/Orange). Our wireless password was not accepted.  After entering the wifi password multiple times we discovered that the wireless password on the iPod is case sensitive (capital letters vs. small letters makes a difference). Entering the WEP/WPA wireless…

  • MacBook Longer Battery Life Tip

    Quick Tip for a longer MacBook Pro battery life (with LED backlit screens): Make a Hot Corner for turning off the screen and use it whenever you’re not actually looking at the screen. (System Preferences -> Desktop & Screen Saver -> Hot Corners… [button]) If you’re like me and do multiple things while working with…

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