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Well it’s been a while since I last posted here.  Though it’d be right that I come back with tales of new desks, screens and computers!

So what’s new?  I’ve left Camberley, worked for the MoD over the summer and am now back in Aber living with Faye (hopefully a film of the flat coming soon).  Since being in Aber I have bought a new desk, a new chair (which is annoyingly not here), a pair of new monitors and a new shiney computer.

Let’s talk about the monitors to start off with, two 22″ things from Samsung (SyncMaster T220 apparently), here they are: Read the rest of this entry »

I pre-ordered my copy on Monday at work, and this morning was greeted by this: Read the rest of this entry »

Well, we’ve been waiting, what, about two years for this now.  Today, Apple released Java 6 as part of it’s Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4.

The support docs (found here) say that in this 158MB update we get:

• Java SE 6 (x64 only)
• J2SE 5.0 (PPC & x64)
• J2SE 1.4.2(PPC & x64)
• 64-bit Java for Intel Macs only

Upgrade today as I’m sure many developers will be wanting to update their code as part of a long awaited refactoring!

After delving into Solaris10 a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would explore the hidden regions of my Mac…It turns out that it has many of the same things as a typical UNIX/Linux system, but doesn’t seem to use them

For example, /etc, is not there! Its a symlink to /private/etc, which is most weird, and even weirder still, I had a look into fstab, but it’s not there! Well, it’s called fstab.hd, and here’s the contents:

IGNORE THIS FILE.
This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in
future releases. Do not depend on this file or its contents.

How weird!

I’ve noticed this about OS X, it still has a lot of UNIX files in, but doesn’t tend to use them…

I found out how you make icons transparent! Make them a tiff image! Simple as!

EDIT: I will update this with a walkthrough someday…

Did you know that you can grab the icons for applications, and then save them as a GIF, a JPEG, PNG or even a PDF?

If you go to the Applications folder and select the application you want, right (ctrl)click and press “Show package contents Read the rest of this entry »

Just over a week agao I found that my Macbook wasn’t charging, but the charger was plugged in and on. I inspected the cable and found that it had melted just outside of the transformer!

I temporarily fixed it with some blue insulation tape, but today, it failed all together

I have already ordered one off of eBay, ordered on Tuesday and dispatched the following day. Should hopefully be here anytime soon.

In the mean time, I have fixed the transformer A fair bodge job, but it seems to work now.
Prior to the work, I spent about an hour trawling the internet for a how-to, couldn’t find one, so here’s my own. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, 11th February, Apple release the second system update to Leopard. So what did we get?

Read the rest of this entry »

A good friend of mine, Aled Hughes, spoke to me today on msn and was talking to me about a feature he found on Leopard. If you press shift+option+volume (option being ‘alt’), then you can increment/decrement the volume by a quarter of a volume block:

Another of those little features Apple like to hide

Have you upgraded to Leopard and decided you really don’t like the new 3D ’shelf’?
Never fear! Apple have given us two options…

Read the rest of this entry »