AB Computer Solutions's Blog

My new favorite program is decrapify which makes it easy to uninstall crap-ware that is pre-installed on new Windows computers. I learned about by listening to Mr Rhone’s Minimal Mac podcast, Enough.

The program attempts to be smart about what it recommends removing. That doesn’t work so well in my opinion. But what I like is that it gives a list of programs that are installed and I can simply check off all the ones I want to uninstall. It saves a lot of mouse clicks.

Standing less than 100 yard from a giant cell tower

~A

I wanted to listen to all the episodes of Jumping Monkeys – twit.tv/jm
So I subscribed to the RSS feed using Podcaster on my iPhone. There are a total of 72 episodes of this podcast but the RSS feed only had the most recent 20 or episodes.

The obvious way to get the first 50 podcasts onto my iPhone would be to download the individual audio files on my Mac, import them into iTunes, and then sync them to my iPhone. But I’ve been spoiled by the convenience of using Podcaster. So I looked for another solution.

And that other solution is http://huffduffer.com/. It’s cool. It allows me to create a custom podcast of audio files that I find on the net. There’s a cool Chrome extension which makes it easy to add an audio file. So to get an episode of Jumping Monkeys on my iPhone, I

1. Go to the page for that episode. The page for the first episode is http://twit.tv/jm1
2. Click the HuffDuffer icon in the address bar.
3. Modify the title so that I’ll be able to recognize the audio file.
4. Since I’ve already subscribed to my Huffduffer RSS feed in Podcaster, I just need to ask Podcaster to update. And the episode is automatically downloaded.

Sweet!

~A

A client emailed me a NY Times article entitled New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users which covers the threat of FireSheep and WEP encryption hacking.

My response was….

I’m familiar with FireSheep although I myself have never used it. The upshot is that you don’t want to take your laptop to public wifi spots like Starbuchs and connect to sites that don’t use SSL all the time. The s in https in the screenshot below indicates that I’m using gmail with SSL encryption turned on and am therefore protected from FireSheep hacking.

This isn’t relevant at all to your home network if you are using WPA2 encryption because no one without the password can access the network.

I think you should be concerned but I don’t think it warrants freaking out. A much bigger concern is why aren’t you using LastPass.com or 1Password.com to remember all your passwords and therefore facilitating your using different, random passwords for each and every site. I use LastPass and love it.

Just discovered http://www.storagereview.com/ for great hard drive reviews.

For ripping DVD on a mac I don’t use mac the ripper. Instead i use

http://www.metakine.com/products/fairmount/

to remove DRM and then

http://handbrake.fr/

to rip to a format for iPhone or iPad

and

http://www.dvd2one.com/

if I want to actually burn a copy of the DVD.

~A

Dropbox.com is a cool service that syncs files that I put in my Dropbox folder. It can’t sync folders other than what is in the Dropbox folder. However, you can use symbolic links on the Mac to hack it into syncing the Documents folder or any other folder for that matter.

You can be a Unix command line expert to make the symbolic links OR you can just download and use MacDropAny. Or if you are using Windows – Dropbox Folder Sync.

It’s really minimal. It prompts for a folder that want to sync and what you want it named and sticks a symbolic link in the Dropbox Folder. So this is what my Dropbox folder looks like. You’ll notice the little arrow on the Documents folder icon. That indicates that it’s a symbolic link and not actually a folder.

The big trick is setting up your second computer. You need to setup and create your Dropbox folder and symbolic links before installing Dropbox. Otherwise the syncing will get really confused. And it’s critical that the symbolic links have the same name on the different computers.

Here is a technical explanation of how to sync other folders using the command line.

2/22/11 – Just implemented this on my iMac and Windows laptop. On iMac, MacDropAny works fine and does what I want. On Windows, though, I didn’t like DropboxFolderSync – it moved the folder to my DropBox folder and then made a junction. So I discovered how to create a folder symbolic link from the command line.

mklink /D “c:\Users\Andrew\My Dropbox\Documents” “c:\Users\Andrew\My Documents”

And that worked beautifully. Here is a DIR of my Dropbox folder.

A client emailed me

I’m trying to use google docs, working on a doc shared with me by a colleague, and I’m trying to copy some text from a word doc into it. I’m getting the message "your browser doesn’t support use of your clipboard". I’m confused–any ideas?

My response…
I’ve had that problem before. the trick is there are multiple ways to copy and paste.

1. One way is to do control c and then control v .
2. another way is to right click and choose copy and then right click and choose paste .
3. And then a third way is to go to the edit menu and choose copy and then go to edit menu and choose paste.

my experience is that if I try all 3 1 of them will work.

I forgot…. there is a fourth way. You can do copy and paste using the menu in the google doc web page.

I love Google Docs myself but it’s integration or connection to the operating system (windows or mac for most) leaves something to be desired.

A client just told me a story about how a friend bought a new Apple computer at the Galleria Apple store and drove home with his family. He pulled into his driveway and someone jumped out of the bushes and held a gun to his wife’s head and demanded he open the trunk and take out the new computer. After this was done a car pulled up out of nowhere and the stranger and the new Apple computer drove away. So word to the wise – watch yourself when you buy expensive stuff at the mall. Yikes!

I was setting up a new Windows 7 computer recently and was asked to get an old DOS program working and to get it to print. The printer they had was a USB printer like most printers are. The problem, of course, is that DOS predates USB and therefore has no concept of USB printers. So the question is how to do this? Well after much googling I discovered the solution

1. Install Windows XP mode which is free virtualization software running Windows XP that Microsoft provides for Windows 7 Professional.
2. In the Windows XP mode install the printer and share it.
3. Then use the DOS command “net use” to map the shared printer to a LPT port.

And bad-a-bing, bad-a-boom, the DOS program running in Windows XP mode can print.