So, today we’re learning about spurious screen-dimming, screen savers and an emergency exit…

Auto-Dim Screen

If you move about a bit with your MacBook, like me you may have been annoyed by the screen randomly dimming and brightening.

Turns out this is because your MacBook buddy is trying to be clever by sensing the ambient light and automatically adjusting the screen brightness. Moving around and variable lighting can confuse the wee soul.

Easily fixed through by switching off the cleverness:  Go to System Preferences > Displays > uncheck “Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes”

Screen Savers

Next up, screensavers. I downloaded one, unzipped it and then went looking for the ‘install my screensaver’ option in the ‘Desktop and Screensaver’ section of System Preferences. But there is none! I spent longer than I really should have looking for one.

Then I realised I had reverted to Windows expectation mode. Installer? Pah! I tried the obvious – just double-clicking the file, et viola, installed and working. D’oh.

Force Force-Quit

Finally, for now, we have an escape route. In the couple of years I’ve since moving to Mac I’ve had occasion where an app (often MS Word) will stall or go into a tailspin.

Symptom: Spinning CD cursor and you can’t get anything to react, not even get the Apple Menu to open to get to Force Quit, which you know holds the key to your frustration.

Previously, I’d have resorted to a force-shutdown (hold down the power button for 5 seconds), but not anymore.

Keyboard shortcut Option(Alt)-Command-esc – brings up the Force Quit menu.

I’ve often sung the praises of WordPress as a blogging platform. Particularly its functionality, flexibility and ease of use.

My blog’s been running for a couple of years without as much as a hitch. Adding themes and plugins, and upgrading to new versions were always a 1-click breeze.

But complacency sets in, and perhaps you don’t back up for a while. And, as everyone knows, that’s generally when disaster strikes.

The upgrade to 3.1.4 reminder popped up and, as usual, I clicked ‘upgrade automatically’. Yes, it reminded me to backup my database. Yes, I knew I hadn’t done that for quite a while. But hey, it’s never gone wrong before. So I clicked ‘proceed’. #fail

I did get the ‘upgraded successfully’ message but on returning to the dashboard, I got nothing but a white screen. “Strange”, I thought and tried a few things but nothing; completely blank, no errors, no spinning icon, nada. I tried the site itself, equally blank. “Now, that’s most definitely not good”, I reckoned.

Google had nothing. So I left it for a couple of days to see if it would heal itself, but surprisingly not. It was well and truly gubbed.

So I had a dig about behind the scenes and backed up the bust instance of the WordPress install. Then I deleted and reinstalled WordPress and went for a trial and error approach to getting it all back up and running.

I seem to have managed to get most of it back, the only missing bit being the categories, tags and view-counts on the individual posts.

I’d always thought my ‘Shame of Shamu‘ and ‘Is Disney Eco-Friendly?‘ posts were doing pretty well, beaten only by older posts. But they’ve been overtaken by one particular, more recent, post…

Well, it looks like it’s the whole branding thing that’s getting the hits and that Pepsi, beats Disney (or SeaWorld) in the search engine stakes.

Out of 76 posts in total, my top 20 (below) make up 50% of my total hits to date.

So, here’s my top 20 posts, by number of hits.

A while ago when I plugged my iPhone into my MacBook all was seamless, syncs downloads etc.

Then I got my ‘proper’ camera and installed the EOS utilities on the Mac. All was working fine, but the next time I plugged the iPhone in, I got a little popup dialogue saying there was no camera found.

Everything else still synced OK, but I couldn’t see any way to get pics off the phone. Tonight I wanted one of the pics off the phone, so decided I’d better have a look about.

Turns out there’s a handy app on the Mac called “Image Capture” you can utilise to do just this.

Just search for it using the spyglass search on the top right of the Mac toolbar. Start this app and you can download the pics from the iPhone. You can create a folder on your drive and download them all to there.

Short and sweet, but there you go!

A pet-hate of mine is that annoying noise that plays when your machine starts up. Whether it’s a PC or a Mac, I have no idea why someone would think it was a good idea to by default play a sound at startup, or shutdown for that matter.

What is the benefit of that? No, I can’t think of it either.

Strange thing is, on the Mac it’s not something you can easily get rid of. So, other than remembering to mute the sound before shutdown, you’re was stuck with it. Grrrr.

However, after a little bit of digging about, I’ve found a method to stop the startup sound on the Mac without the rest of the sound being muted.

Unfortunately it’s an add-in as opposed to a hack, but it does the job.

Just go to the Arcana Research site and download their little add-in – StartupSound.prefPane – and follow the instructions.

Once you install, an extra icon, called “Startup Sound”, appears in your System Preferences app. Just click it and check the ‘mute’ checkbox: Job done. No more annoying startup noise.

(although for some strange reason it also lets you set a specific volume for it should you so wish; more craziness!)

I’ve admired them since the early days, but until relatively recently never owned any of their products. A bit too expensive and not mainstream enough to be in use where I worked.

That all changed with the iPod. Still expensive but luckily I received one as a gift. I liked the simplicity; the controls, the minimalism. Then, more recently and long overdue, I got myself an iPhone; even better. Finally I took the big step and plunged into OSX and a MacBook; rock ‘n roll!

It’s all about the little design things for me. The way it looks, feels. The buttons are just right, the precision machining (the sim drawer on the iPhone for example), nothing is superfluous; all form, fit and function.

You’ll be hard-pushed to persuade me against any of the Apple products I own,  other than with newer, better versions of them.

And therein lies my gripe about Apple…

But back to that gripe in a minute.

General criticism of Apple falls into two areas; price and, well, price.

Apple products are damned expensive by comparison to others vendors in the same sector, and deliberately so. They’ve developed a knack for creating demand from their great product design, courtesy of Johnathan Ive, with an appropriate level of function and then they’re premium-pricing it. An almost arrogant, “If you don’t like the price, don’t buy it”, if you like.

As the oft mis-quoted saying goes, “If you build it, they (sic) will come.”

I think it’s more like, “If you build it beautifully, they will lust after it. And then they will put their hand in their pocket and pay. Handsomely.”

I’ve been following the hype and speculation about the iPad.

I did laugh when I saw Steve Jobs proudly holding one an iPad at the launch; it did look like a mini-Steve holding up an iPhone.

I too want an iPad. Of course I do, it’s gorgeous. I have no idea what I would use it for, that I don’t already have covered by my iPhone and MacBook. But I know it will be great.

Apple have hit the spot again; they have created yet another product that invokes the tech equivalent of lust.

But I’m not going to get one. Not just yet.

The problem with Apple is their penchant for continual evolution and therefore rapid ‘obsolescence’. No sooner have you saved up your hard-earned dosh, rush down to the Apple Store™, or online equivalent, and get your hands on a gorgeous piece of Apple kit, than a new one comes out.

The changes are usually small and subtle. Maybe a slightly glossier finish, or a different trackpad, or more rounded corners. But you’re still left feeling like the shop-staff changed the display the moment you left the store. A feeling compounded by the fact you’ve paid a premium price to start with.

Perhaps obsolescence is a strong word for it. After all, your iPhone, MacBook, etc. are all still great, but there’s a better one out now. So people who pay the same money you did, now have something better than you. We don’t like that.

I got my ‘standard’, white 13 inch MacBook in May last year. And a thing of beauty it was, but there are other posts about that.

However, comparing it to the ‘standard’ 13 inch model available in November, only 6 months later, I see the following differences:

• Glossier: The white finish is indeed glossier, it’s not my imagination.
• Thinner: The lid is thinner, and the corners more rounded.
• Trackpad: My dual touch with button is now multi-touch glass.
• Power: Slim magnetic-plug & the wire is no longer at 90 degrees.

All of these are nice form and/or function improvements, they’re all the right thing to do. The galling part is that at least the latter two of those improvements were available at the time I purchased mine, but only on the MacBook Pro model.

It’s as if Apple are rewarding those who held off buying one with features they could have included first time round but were using as a differentiator between models. That’s good for the late(r)-adopters but, dammit, that’s no good to me.

Bizarrely, and as if to contradict my rant here a little, I found an instance where they seem to have gone the wrong way.

• FireWire: No firewire port on the new MacBook.

Now that is a definite backwards step. I like my firewire drive, it’s quick. It gets its data and power from a single cable. The alternative on the new machine is to use 2x USB ports (one for power, one for data) and obviously lose the circa. 50% speed benefit.

That said, I’d probably swap that for the glass trackpad…

When CDs arrived on the scene, I switched to the new medium and the vinyl was assigned to the loft. I even re-bought some of my old vinyl on CD (you’re welcome guys – double-whammy for you).

When downloads came into play (jeez this makes me sound old) I still continued to buy CDs, because some strange part of me still liked having something solid and tangible in my hand after parting with my cash.

When I finally took the plunge and bought a few individual tracks from iTunes, to fill some gaps on my iPod, all seemed fine. Until I decided to move some of my music onto a little stick MP3 player and I happened upon the problem with Digital Rights Management.

The iTunes-purchased tracks wouldn’t play on my stick drive because it was in iTunes format, not standard MP3…

“Easy!” I think to myself, “I’ll just convert them to MP3″. Except, when you try to do that, good old DRM stops you, “Oh no, you can’t do that, you might be a teenage file-sharer trying to bring down the music industry.”

Well no, actually, I’m not. I paid for the tracks and I want to listen to them on whatever player I sodding well want to. I don’t peer-to-peer share. Never have, never will.

I didn’t fancy the whole DRM stripping software thing because that’s like admitting you’re doing something illicit (did I mention I’d already paid for these tracks?). But, there is another way, without the need for hooky software.

How to remove DRM from iTunes tracks

1. In iTunes, select all the DRM’d tracks and create a playlist
2. Burn the playlist onto a CD
3. Put the CD back in your machine and rip it as MP3
4. Enjoy the music you paid for when and where you want

Anyhoo, I’m going to boycott iTunes for music purchases till they stop putting DRM on their tracks. I’ll stick to Sky Songs or Amazon MP3.

As a parting comment on the subject – you want one reason against DRM and the whole “killing music” thing?

1. MTV Cribs

Bought m’self a book on iPhone development, joined the Apple Developer Connection and downloaded the iPhone SDK. So, the big question is, “Will this be the start of something interesting, or another project that comes to nothing?” Only time will tell.

Well, the book arrived today and the whole iPhone development environment looks pretty cool. Trouble is it’s Objective C, which I’ve not done any of before but really, how hard can it be?

So, where do we go from here? What to develop…

An obvious candidate is bimbogami, that well known puzzle site I may have mentioned here occasionally.

There are a few approaches I could take on that particular theme; rejig the existing puzzle series, create a new iPhone only series, go for daily/weekly questions or even something completely different.

I also have a few other, non-bimbogami ideas I could go with too. So feel free to comment against this post on what you think I should focus on.

As mentioned before, only time will tell whether this was a worthwhile purchase or the book will end up consigned to my tech bookshelf.

I’ve not had the Mac long in the big scheme of things, but up till now, pretty much everything ‘just worked’ which was a welcome relief from Microsoft-land that I know and love.

That was until today, and it was a kinda strange one.

The much hyped Snow Leopard OS came out recently and I decided in my nice shiny world of Mac-iness I’d give it a go to try and keep up with the trends. So I got my nice shrink wrapped package with the nice picture of a… Snow Leopard on it at the weekend.

The documentation that comes with it is the usual simple Mac stuff I’d come to expect; stick it in and double click it. So, in full expectation of an easy ride, slapped the disc into the drive.

It was indeed really easy to install. It took about an hour, which I suppose is not bad for an OS re-install. The ‘time remaining’ dialogue throughout the install was even pretty accurate (compared to Windows, but then a random number generator is closer to reality than the Windows progress bar). It rebooted at the end and then automatically pulled a couple of updates down. All looked to have worked fine…

Until I started up Firefox. Some webpages were rendered using some sort of scripty handwriting style font. Particularly noticeable in, but not limited to, the Google search page. Not an unpleasant font, but not the kind of thins you want entire pages rendered in. On checking, the same problem existed in Safari, so not solely a Firefox problem.

Time for my first proper Inspector Clouseau-style Mac problem hunt.

I searched for the problem, but there wasn’t much out there on it yet, maybe too new, or unusual? But there were a couple of clues around, suggesting font problems. Looking in the ‘Font Book’ app, turns out there were a number of duplicated fonts, indicated with a little yellow triangle. Don’t know if they were duplicated before the Snow Leopard install as I’d not looked for that before. Anyhoo, there’s an item in the Font Book menu called ‘Resolve Duplicates’ which did what it said on the tin; all my little yellow triangles disappeared from the font list. But it didn’t resolve the problem.

I dug around a little more and concluded it was the Arial font that was the problem here. So I tried the ‘Validate Font’ from the Font Book menu for Arial. it showed me I had a font in the Arial family called “Laurent_HW_by_oOo_n3o_oOo.ttf”. Hmmm, something purporting to be in the Arial family that wasn’t called Arial? Gotcha. The HW was a bit of a giveaway too. Viewing it, I could see it was indeed the offending scripty font appearing in Firefox and Safari (and I suspect any other app using Arial).

A quick delete of the offending font and restart to be on the safe side and bingo, all sorted.

No idea how it got there but it wasn’t there before the install…

So, as if you needed any more reasons to buy yourself a MacBook, or other Mac model for that matter, here’s another couple for free…

Thing 1: Printing

I typed up a letter last night and it was pretty late when I finished and realised I hadn’t ever printed anything from the Mac since I got it. So with heavy heart, I took it out to the Bothy where my printer resides, previously attached to my PC but now standing alone.

I switched the printer on and gingerly plugged the USB into the Mac. Nothing.

I was half expecting a printer dialogue to come up saying it had detected a printer and wanted a driver disk or somesuch. You know the kind of thing Windows looks for. But no, nothing. Had a look in Finder, then Settings and finally Applications; no mention of printers or anything.

A quick search on the Apple site told me the Mac will likely know about the printer, so just press ‘Print’ in the application.

Guess what? It just works.

Thing 2: Backups

Like probably 99% of the PC using community, I am at best sporadic in my backup regime. I do copy docs and sheets and stuff onto my pen-drive, for security and transfer between machines. I know I have a recovery disk somewhere, I think, from a while ago and I’m sure I have the installer disks and drivers and stuff I’ve put on since then, probably, maybe.

I just bought FreeAgent 320Gb drive, on offer. It’s nice and small, and silver. It has both FireWire and USB connection, which is nice.

Plugged it in to the Mac, using the FireWire connection for speed and the Mac pops up a dialogue saying it’s spotted a drive it can use as a Time Machine backup disk and do I want to use it. Well, I think I do, so “Yes”.

It then scheduled the first backup for 30 minutes time and also sets up a backup regime. The first backup took a while; just over an hour in fact, but that was to be expected.

Not bad for one click.