46 Poundshttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/en-GB2010-07-30T09:19:50ZSquarespace Site Server v5.11.5 (http://www.squarespace.com/)The Battle Against The Conficker Wormhttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2010/5/16/the-battle-against-the-conficker-worm.htmlRob Randtoul2010-05-16T12:04:41ZA fantastic yet troubling article that details the battle against Conficker, surely one of the cleverest pieces of malware yet written. A worm that lays dormant on millions of Windows PC's, silently awaiting instructions from its creator years after it was first discovered.

The Enemy Within

]]>Fantastic Interview with Apples Jonathan Ivehttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2009/11/11/fantastic-interview-with-apples-jonathan-ive.htmlRob Randtoul2009-11-11T19:22:06ZThis man really cares about the details...

]]>Ingenious Space Saving UK Plughttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2009/11/11/ingenious-space-saving-uk-plug.htmlRob Randtoul2009-11-11T18:05:45ZFor many years I have suffered at the hands of the standard UK power plug. Bulky and unweildy, it makes a mockery of any attempt to travel light. I have yet to find a notebook case that copes well with the size and shape of it. As laptops become slimmer its design failings only become more obvious. Enter the 'folding plug'; an ingenious space saving concept that us Brits can only hope becomes reality.

]]>O2 Begins Offering iPhone Unlock in UKhttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2009/11/10/o2-begins-offering-iphone-unlock-in-uk.htmlRob Randtoul2009-11-10T17:34:02ZFollowing the end of O2's exclusivity deal with Apple for UK distribution of the iPhone, the company has begun to offer an unlocking service to customers. 

 

  • Customers tied into pay monthly contracts with O2 can unlock at any time free of charge. However, they are still obliged to continue paying the monthly tariff until their contract expires.
  • Customers with pay-as-you-go accounts are able to get their iPhones unlocked after owning the phone for 12 months and upon payment of a GBP £15 unlocking fee. 

 

The unlocking procedure is said to take up to a fortnight. Confirmation that unlock has been successful is sent to the customers phone by SMS message. 

]]>15 Free Tech-related eBookshttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2009/11/9/15-free-tech-related-ebooks.htmlRob Randtoul2009-11-09T16:43:38ZMakeUseOf.com has published 15 free e-books on the following subjects...

  • Twitter: Best Practices & Tips
  • A Computer Geek’s Smart Productivity Guide
  • Building a Media Center for your Home
  • The Big Book of BitTorrent
  • A Newbie’s Getting Started Guide to Linux
  • The Only Easy Guide To Computer Networks
  • Internet Guide for the Movie Addict
  • Internet Guidebook for An Audiophile
  • The Incredible Free Manual for Every Mac User
  • The Underground Guide to the iPhone
  • The Ultimate Guide to your Windows Mobile Phone
  • The Idiot’s Guide To Photoshop
  • The Big Book of iTunes
  • The Idiot’s Guide to Building Your Own PC
  • Laptop Buying Guide for 2009
  • PSP Up- and Downgrading Guide

Enjoy!

(via makeuseof.com)

]]>Add Gestures To Your Multitouch Trackpadhttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2009/11/8/add-gestures-to-your-multitouch-trackpad.htmlRob Randtoul2009-11-08T11:57:19ZA while ago I wrote about 'Multiclutch', an add-on that allowed users to customise and add to the built in multitouch gestures on Apple notebooks. But there were a few limitations. Firstly, it only worked within Cocoa apps. This ruled out commonly used software like iTunes and Photoshop. Secondly, Multiclutch relied on 'input managers' to work its magic. Apple took a disliking to input managers when developing Snow Leopard and locked them out of 64 bit apps (which kills off support for input managers within nearly all applications shipping with 10.6).

Stepping into the gap is a application called Jitouch. Taking a slightly different approach, Jitouch adds a number of new gestures but doesn't allow customisation of existing ones. Its icon sits in the menu bar rather than the dock, allowing for the program to be activated/deactivated and for access to its preference pane. It currently supports seven new gestures of varying complexity.

I have been running the app on my MacBook Pro for the last week or so. Several of the gestures have become second nature (particularly those used to control tabs within the browser). The others I am finding less useful mainly because I find them particularly tricky to pull off. All are demonstrated on the Jitouch page. More gestures are promised in the future. Indeed the Jitouch web site already details a new gesture used to navigate multiple spaces that will be available as part of the next point release.

Lefties take note. Make sure you opt for left handed gestures using the apps preference pane. Not doing so can cause unexpected results!

Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts on Jitouch. I am particularly interested to hear whether others also struggle pulling off some of the gestures.

]]>Restoring Wiki From Time Machine Backuphttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2009/11/7/restoring-wiki-from-time-machine-backup.htmlRob Randtoul2009-11-07T15:18:32ZI have been tinkering with a new Mac Mini Server recently installed at our studio. While I consider myself tech savvy, I don't pretend to be an expert on such subjects as DNS configurations, advanced firewalls, VPN and NAT. So while trying to setup the server as a gateway between the web and our office, it was not entirely unexpected that I would leave myself stranded at the bottom of a very deep hole, dug using my own ignorance. There was no way out so I had little alternative but to roll back to the last Time Machine backup taken before my ill advised networking adventure. 

Apple proudly sings the virtues of using Time Machine as a backup solution for Mac OS X Server 10.6. However, while I had no problem restoring the system, I was left with some unexpected issues once the server was rebooted. Most services worked as advertised but upon launching the company wiki and blogs within Safari, I was presented with a '503 error' page. 

After nearly 4 hours of scouring support forums, knowledge bases and mailing lists I finally got the bottom of the issue. Time Machine automatically skips over caches and log files when creating a backup. Usually this is no problem but it seems that the 'teams' service that powers the wiki and blogs feature in Mac OS X Server requires the presence of its log file to operate correctly. This discovery finally led me to a knowledge base article on Apple.com that gives step by step instructions on recreating the necessary files and restoring the correct permissions to the wiki directory. 

By following the instructions below I was able to restore wiki functionality...

To restore the Web service (server):

  1. Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities).
  2. Execute these commands, each on its own line, followed by Return. Note: When using these commands you will be prompted for an administrator's password.

    sudo mkdir /var/log
    sudo mkdir /var/log/apache2

  3. To restore the Wiki service (server), run the following commands in addition to those above:

    sudo mkdir /Library/Logs/wikid
    sudo chown _teamsserver:_teamsserver /Library/Logs/wikid

After running these commands restart your server.

]]>Banishing RSS Feed Ads From Your Machttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2008/12/29/banishing-rss-feed-ads-from-your-mac.htmlRob Randtoul2008-12-29T17:33:49ZMiscellaneous

]]>Loud Trackpad Button Solution (for the 2008 Unibody MacBook & MacBook Pro)http://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2008/12/27/loud-trackpad-button-solution-for-the-2008-unibody-macbook-a.htmlRob Randtoul2008-12-27T12:19:26ZApple Hardware MacBook Pro

]]>New MacBook Pro Observationshttp://www.46pounds.com/mainjournal/2008/10/21/new-macbook-pro-observations.htmlRob Randtoul2008-10-21T11:31:25ZApple Hardware MacBook Pro

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