Category: Operating systems

  • Deleting protected EFI disk partitions

    A while back, one of my laptops kicked the bucket. The cost to repair it was too high, and I opted to get the laptop back to scavenge the parts. In particular, I wanted to get my hands on the hard drive, a solid state wonder with a capacity of 240 GB. I invested in a cabinet for it, and plugged it in. That should have been where the story ended, right?

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  • How to print booklets from your Mac

    As a voracious reader, I have, from time to time, a need to print long-ish documents. To avoid carrying more pages than I need, I like to print the document in Booklet format, saddle stapling them. Unlike Windows, there is not option to print in booklet format in Mac OS X.

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  • Fixing “The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship”

    When working in a corporate environment with Active Directory, you may, from time to time, encounter computers that users cannot log on to, as they receive an error message saying:
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  • Overcoming the Unity bug when running Shadowrun Returns on Mac OS X Mountain Lion

    Last Thursday, Shadowrun Returns was released, to an eagerly expectant group of kickstarter backers, myself included. Imagine my disappointment when I had installed it, and it crashed during startup. As it turns out, I was not alone in this. Apparently, it is a known bug in Unity which causes the issue. Here is how to fix it: (more…)

  • Set default calendar on iOS

    I have been a very happy user of iPhone for a long time now. It works great, and it syncs my appointments with my Google Calendar. Lately, though, I’ve needed to put appointments into my calendar while on the go. For some reason, they were not showing up in my Google Calendar. It turned out, that my iPhone was set up to create appointments in the iCloud calendar, not the Google Calendar. Luckily, that is easily remedied. Here’s how:
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  • What I like about iOS 7

    Last week’s post was dedicated to a look at what I think Apple should have done in iOS 7. Now for a look at what exites me about iOS 7:
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  • What Apple should have changed in iOS 7

    With last week’s iteration of Apple’s WWDC, they announced a new version of their mobile device OS, iOS 7, with the focus being on a major redesign, and a move away from skeuomorphism. Now, sure, the redesign looks nifty and all, but you know what? I was pretty happy with the old skeuomorphic design. Changing it, well, I could take it or leave it, really. There are other, more nuts and bolts things that need to change if iOS is to stand a chance in the future. Here’s what I want, in order of priority:
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  • How to: Set any picture as your profile picture on Mac OS

    For the longest time, I had been annoyed that I was unable to set a custom image as my profile image in Mac OS X. After all, it’s my machine, and it’s a fairly basic function; I should be able to simply browse to it. As it turns out, you can’t simply browse to it. You are left with two choices: Use one of the default images, or drag and drop an image into the image box in Users & Groups. Here’s how:
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  • Access hidden folders on Mac OS X

    As of Mac OS X Lion, Apple made a number of changes to the visibility of various folders, most notably the /Library folder.
     
    For a number of troubleshooting tasks, you may need to access these folders, and luckily, there is a fairly simple way of achieving this. Simply use the hotkey commbination Cmd+Shift+G, then enter the path you want, e.g. /var/db/receipts:
     

  • Downgrading to a previous version of FotoStation

    As a FotoWare Customer Support Engineer, one of the issues I see on a somewhat regular basis, is that users have installed the most recent version of FotoStation, without having a valid license for that version. Simply put, if so, they will not be able to run FotoStation. On Windows, you simply uninstall the new version, install the version for which you have a license, and, as they say, Bob’s your uncle. On a Mac, however, you need to also remove the .bom and .plist files before you can install the version. Here’s how:
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  • iOS 6’s best new feature: Do Not Disturb

    One feature that I have been missing on my iPhone, even though I didn’t realise it, is a way to have the iPhone be quiet when I want it to, but intelligently so. What I mean, is that I want it to be able to let calls from important people (such as my wife and parents) come through the shield, while others are kept quiet. In iOS 6, Apple have introduced the very functionality I wanted.
     
    Called “Do Not Disturb”, the feature is located two places in the Settings-menu. The first place, is a simple on/off switch, in the main area of Settings. If you want to configure your settings, though, you need to go into “Notifications”, then “Do Not Disturb”. You can turn on and off Do Not Disturb on a daily schedule (though I’d like to be able to schedule it differently for weekday and weekend), set who to allow calls from, and whether to allow repeated calls to come through.
     
    One important thing to note, is that even if you have Do Not Disturbed on, if you are interacting with the screen (i.e. if you have the phone unlocked), notifications will come through.