Archive for the 'Hacks' Category

Raising dead pixels on a Canon DSLR

Published on September 15, 2011 in Hacks. 0 Comments

Learned a super awesome trick today for Canon DSLRs that get a hot/dead/stuck pixel on the sensor. It’s not foolproof and might not fix the issue, but it turns out that it has fixed the problem for many people including a friend of mine today, so that’s good enough for me!

  1. Take off your lens, putting the lens cap on to protect it.
  2. Put your body cap on to cover your camera’s sensor.
  3. Turn your camera on, and go to the second “wrench” setting page on the menu.
  4. Scroll down to “Sensor Cleaning”, Select it.
  5. Select “Clean manually”
  6. Click “OK” when it tells you the mirror will open up.
  7. Let the mirror stay open for about 30-60 seconds, and then turn off the camera.
  8. Put the lens back on the camera, turn it back on, and take a few pictures
  9. If you’re lucky, you will have risen your pixel from the dead!

Should we call it an excerpt from the NecronomiCanon? ;)

Redmine (with Subversion) on Dreamhost

Published on June 11, 2011 in Hacks. 0 Comments

I absolutely love Redmine. I’m not sure if it’s a textbook case of Stockholm syndrome, since it took it’s fair share of cursing and bellyaching before I got it running for a company I’m currently contracting for, but since I’ve been using it, it’s got every feature that I’ve needed in small projects to keep myself organized, and my team connected.

It’s got a Wiki, Task Management (to track both Bugs and Tasks), Time Management, Repository Integration, and strong Access Control, all of which are compartmentalized by Project (of which you can have an infinite amount). That’s just scratching the surface of the features, there’s so much more available if the team were to grow larger.

Dreamhost is a pretty good host too, for many reasons, (price, featureset. The speed hit from page loads is a bit frustrating at times, but I’ve yet to find someone on the east coast that can beat them out, feature for feature, so I continue to stay a customer of theirs. (Something like 6 years and counting…)

Now, it’s really best if you start this setup with a brand new account (with SSH enabled), or you’re prepared to move a bunch of files.

Continue reading ‘Redmine (with Subversion) on Dreamhost’

Case insensitive autocomplete in OSX terminal

Published on September 19, 2010 in Hacks. 1 Comment

I’ve been spending a bit more time in the OSX terminal, and one little annoyance is that the autocomplete is case sensitive. Since many folders are capitalized, it’s just not as fast as I’d want it to be when I’m trying to navigate through the folders.

Luckily, there’s an easy fix!

Open up your terminal, and throw in:
echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc

Restart Terminal, and you’re set!

(Credit)

Resetting VMWare Fusion

Published on September 30, 2008 in Hacks. 0 Comments

Long story short, I wiped my XP partition on my MBP and installed Vista. Part of it was because I had created the partition too small to be able to play any games on the Windows side at my leisure, part of it was because I’ve got a friend at Microsoft who says Vista SP1 is much more of a complete product than what everyone seems to be complaining about.

Since I had jumped for a copy of Ultimate way back when, but became too apprehensive when all the reviews started rolling out, I finally installed the beast, and have had it running since.

Only problem was, VMWare Fusion wasn’t booting it because it still had remembered that my Boot Camp was originally Windows XP. Here’s a quick fix:

Turn off VMWare Fusion
Delete /Users/<your username>/Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/Virtual Disks/Boot Camp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk0/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm
Restart VMWare Fusion
Boot your Windows Partition

Enjoy!

Growing Pains: Firefox 3

Published on July 12, 2008 in Hacks. 0 Comments Tags: .

I immediately appreciated the new look of the redesigned FF3 GUI when I installed it on “Download Day“, and after a week or so of having it on my laptop, I decided to take the plunge and fully switch over to FF3 from my previous browser of choice, Camino. (It functioned incredibly fast on my old Powerbook in comparison, and simply became habit.)

Either way, I’ve enjoyed the transition for the most part. Since they’re based off of the same rendering engines, there’s not much to complain about, and when I find an extension or ten that I find useful, I’ll be able to take advantage of the switch more thoroughly.

I have come across two issues which seem to be plaguing a few users, and will describe and document my travels here incase someone else has the issue and stumbles across this article :)

Issue 1: Random crashing at well-known sites (such as GoDaddy.com). I would crash everytime I had tried to get into the account panel. Turns out that Silverlight was the culprit, and installing the upgrade from v2 Beta 1 to v2 Beta 2 did the trick.

Issue 2: Since I move around to anywhere from 3-5 wireless spots on a weekly basis, some of which I administrate, I’ve been getting some frustrating issues with the self-signed certificates, or reused certificates that the routers re-use when sending them out to its users. The error typically at the top of this page is “Secure Connection Failed.” The best bet is to make a temporary or permanent (depending on your situation) exception to the check, and be on your merry way. My problems didn’t end there though, and it was saving a certificate it wasn’t showing in the list of certificates within the preferences page that I was supposed to be deleting, and restarting FF3 wasn’t doing anything for me.

Simply head on over to ~/Library/Firefox/Profiles and delete the cert8.db file, and restart FF3. Annoying, but its a large enough issue (plenty of people are whining about this) where I’m sure the Mozilla team is working on something, and we should see something in the next update or two (hopefully!)

“Downgrading” iMovie ’08

Published on June 18, 2008 in Hacks. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Supposedly, iMovie ’08 was conceptualized at the project manager’s scuba diving trip with his family, brought back to Apple, and used to redesign one of their major iLife applications from the ground up. The change was so different, that Apple decided to change the time-tested icon of the program, but keep the same name.

Having made the majority of my media projects with iMovie HD and previous, I was very comfortable with the older program, and was very weary of the upgrade after having played with it in the Apple Store. Needless to say, I got Leopard with my new MBP and quickly forgot about it, not having anything on my media-plate that I needed to worry about.

More recently, I had two family events recently where I was asked to make some slideshow-esque movies with one of them having video intermingled. I used an iMac with Tiger and a previous version of iLife for the first one that required some movie clips, and went to the new iMovie ’08 for the photo/music-only project, leaving my room for error small, and allowing me to stick my toe in the “water”.

The water was freezing cold.

The new iMovie may make things easy for newcomers, and may be something that is intuitive and wonderful and a dream come true for aspiring computer owners, moving along from a typewriter, but it is no where near a comparable succession down the product line of iMovie. Joked one unhappy user “I wish the [project manager] had just stayed on vacation.” Overall, from an experienced user of the previous iMovie versions, the new program is frustrating, feature-less, and unintuitive. No timeline, no seemingly advanced features, no “side bar” to store unused clips. Selecting multiple clips is annoying and tedious(either I’m a fool or shift-clicking doesn’t work.) Transitions and effects feel like their lacking. Did I mention there wasn’t a true timeline, and the visual aspects of the program don’t let you move them to your liking? (Which you would almost expect that they’d provide a switch to hit and give you the old iMovie “feel” with the new iMovie backend

However, (and much to my delight), Apple has heard the groans and responded to the unhappy community. For those who own iLife ’08, you may download – for free – iMovie HD ’06. It’ll be interesting to see if we get to see another refresh of this program go back to its older iterations at MacWorld ’09. (Although – some say Apple’s redesign of iMovie to a more basic platform was to promote the purchase of Final Cut Express. While I would hope this isn’t the case, its not an entirely baseless accusation.)

Dynamic Bluetooth Tattoo

Published on June 10, 2008 in Hacks. 0 Comments Tags: .

I’ve always thought the concept of a tattoo was neat, but the health implications and remorse factor has always been the deciding factor in stopping me from getting one. This piece of theoretical technology takes the cake.

Her cell phone is ringing, but the display is turned off. She lightly pushes a small dot on the skin on her left forearm to suddenly reveal a two by four inch tattoo with the image of the cell phone’s digital display, directly in the skin of her arm. She answers the call by pushing a tattooed button on her arm. While she’s talking, the tattoo comes to life as a digital video of the caller. When she finishes, the tattoo disappears.

Not only is it a bluetooth device, which could serve as interfaces to your Personal Area Network devices like a laptop, phone, or other personal device, but the thing would monitor health stats and alert you of any important information. If this concept were ever to become a reality, I’d be one of the first to sign up.

Cheap (or Free) Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter

Published on May 16, 2008 in Hacks. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Having just bought my Xbox 360 for doing some XNA development (and a little Halo3/COD4 on the side…), I wanted to get it online as soon as possible. However, with my current setup and the setup I’ll be having in my apartment in July, I can’t really promise myself that I’m going to have the ability to lay down some cat5 to keep the thing online. In fact, I’d prefer that I didn’t have to.

So with a bit of research, I was able to find out how to stick it to Microsoft, and avoid using their overpriced $100 wireless adapter for the Xbox 360.

It’s pretty simple, all you need is an extra wireless router or wireless access point lying around. If you don’t have one lying around, you can get a cheap Linksys WRT54G at Newegg for $40. In my case, I had a spare Netgear WG602(v3) that no one was using.

Be sure to reset the router to factory settings so that you can access it through the default web setup with the given username/password combination associated with the router. Once you’ve done this, upgrading your router’s firmware might be the only thing you need to do. Grab the most recent firmware from the manufacturer’s website and upload the firmware while connected to the router (don’t do it over wireless – the risk of bricking the router is much higher).

Once this is done, look through your settings for a AP Client or Wireless Client option in the router’s settings. Hook the router up with all the proper information so it could connect to the wireless just as it was a new computer going on the network. (Note: You’ll need to add the router to the ‘allow’ list if you’re doing MAC Address filtering – I wasted about 30 minutes until I figured why my router wasn’t connecting.) Once you’ve done that, I would suggest giving the router/AP a static IP on the network, in case you ever need to access the web control panel in the future.

After this is setup, simply unplug the router from your computer, and set it aside your Xbox 360, plugging the Xbox into one of the main LAN ports on the router. After it boots up, your Xbox should connect to Live without any issues. :)

If you weren’t lucky enough to have a router that supports the Client mode out of its firmware, consider installing DDWRT or OpenWRT – two open source solutions to turning your router into a powerful router with much more features than a standard consumer router could offer. You can find a tutorial on how to do Client Mode with DDWRT and OpenWRT.

Or you could shell out the $100.