Tweaking content for IE6

The bane of our lives - corporate users at Thomas Cook and various police authorities still use IE6.
So, we stopped trying to update the lovely popup menus, and created subject homepages for top level access to subpages.
Rather nice, simple,  results at:
http://pwluk.com
- click on 'About Us' rather than a sub option...

Speed Up 2009 MacMini

Soooo, we have a brilliant MacMini that we use as a server and occasional workhorse.

It was in need of a boost, so we put in a Corsair SSDIII 120Gb Hard Drive using the video from OWC:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIiSaunTWWM




The result - fantastic performance and at least another 2 years' work!

Why the World should use 'Time Machine'

So...


Yesterday afternoon, my 2009 MacMini froze and would not reboot.


"Not to worry" I thought. I have a script that shuts down Time Machine at 9am, but turns it on at 9pm - in effect forcing it to do a daily backup without crushing the performance of the Mac during the day.


So I inserted the OS disc (Lion) and restored the drive. I've never had to do this before, but its awesome - took 4.5 hours, but that seems fair given the amount of stuff on it.


Everyone should have Time Machine - or buy a Mac to get it. I've always assumed it would work, but never needed to test it.


The end result is I've lost a few client files I was working on, but nothing major.


The only question that remains is - am I right in thinking that the HDD is on its way out - it kept hanging on boot-up, but did not show errors in Disk Utility? The restored system seems fine, so I can't imagine its a logic board/RAM thing.

Resetting Home Key on iPhone 4

So, the home key on my iPhone was becoming really unresponsive, like pretty much broken. Of course the phone is out of warranty.


BUT never fear - I found this at the Apple community:

Reset Home Button Steps:

(1) Tap Settings App, when open:

(2) Hold Power button until "slide to power off" bar appears.
(3) Don't slide it, release power button.
(4) Gently, continuously press Home button for few seconds until home screen appears.
(5) Done.

If this does not help, further points to Hardware Problem.

Copy an.ISO image to a USB Stick on a Mac

Disk Utility, for whatever reason, is prohibited from writing Joliet (ISO 9660) onto MS-DOS FAT 32 Flash Drives, though it should definitely work.

The best way to accomplish your goal is the following:

Open Terminal

Type 'diskutil list'. You'll see your primary hard drive (probably listed under /dev/disk0) and your Flash Drive, which will be listed as /dev/disk#, with # being any number that isn't zero. REMEMBER THE DISK LOCATION

In the next line, type 'diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk#'. You'll see this message on success:
Unmount of all volumes on disk# was successful

Now type, 'dd if=(DRAG ISO/DMG HERE) of=/dev/disk# bs=1m'

Install iLife from MacBook Air USB Key

Stick the USB stick into another Mac and try the command below in Terminal:

open /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install/Packages/iLife/iLife.pkg

Get the text from a PDF

I needed this at short notice, and it works flawlessly.

I like the use of PDF’s, they work well and (usually) appear the same on ever computer. One of the advantages of PDF’s is the text embedded within the file, and the abilty to manipulate. Although many PDF readers have functions to copy and paste text, whats quicker than creating an Automator script to extract PDF text into a text file.

This process only take a couple of steps so read carefully.

1) Open Automator, found in Applications > Utilities

2) In Automator drag out “Get Selected Finder Items”, then “Extract PDF Text”. I recommend changing the output option to Rich Text.

3) Save the file. Either as an application or a file.

4) Test. Drag a PDF file onto the Automator file and let it do its work, after a short time you will have a text file with the extracted text.