Mac

How To: Change Mac Icons

Posted by Rick on in Apple, Technology How To's 0 Comment

How To: Change Mac Icons

Nothing says “Hands off! This is MY Mac” like a highly customized desktop.

http://www.pixelgirlpresents.com/icons.php?page=4&cat=mac

http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/

Once you’ve chosen a Icon Set (or six,) unpack them to a folder on the desktop.

Right click then Get Info on the new Icon. At the top will be a picture of the Icon, highlight this then use to copy the Icon to your clipboard.

Go back to the folder you’d like to change, IE, your hard drive’s Icon. Right click on it, the go to Get Info. Highlight the Icon at the top, but use this time.

Close the Get Info window, and the Icon should change!

How To: Use Equation editor in Office 2008 (for Mac)

Posted by Rick on in Microsoft, OSX, Technology How To's 2 Comments

How To: Use Equation editor in Office 2008 (for Mac)

Equation Editor in Office 2008 should be installed by a default install of Office. If for some reason it is not, you’ll need to find your Office Disc and reinstall Office 2008 for Macintosh.

To check if Equation Editor is already installed, look in /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office. The Application, Equation Editor, should located there. But you don’t need to launch it from here or you’ll get error messages saying fonts are missing. Equation Editor is meant to be used inside of Word, and other Office applications.

To use Equation Editor, first step is to launch “Word” from your toolbar, or from Applications.

In Word, click on “Insert” in the menu bar, then at the bottom choose “Object.”

Choose “Equation Editor” from the list of Object Types.

Type in the required equation using the buttons at the top of the Equation Editor to get the Mathematical Operations needed.

Once you have your equation, click the red button in the upper left hand corner to close the Equation Editor. This will automatically insert the equation you just entered into the Word document at the cursor location.

Keep in mind this is for MS Office 2008 for Mac only. If you know how to do this in Office 2011 for Mac, please comment below!

Thunderbird RSS Feed Fix

Posted by Rick on in Technology How To's 1 Comment

Thunderbird RSS Feed Fix

I love Thunderbird for reading emails, and keeping track of my RSS feeds.

But for some reason RSS tends to become corrupted. I don’t believe it’s necessarily Thunderbird’s fault, although it seems a bit pickier about feeds that are correctly crafted then other RSS readers.

A clue that there is a problem is RSS feeds simply stop receiving any new messages. When looking at the feed it appears that it is no longer subscribed. Deleting the feed and resubscribing fails with a message stating that the feed is already subscribed.

In cases like this the only fix seems to be to manually delete the feed.

In Windows do this by going to: C:Documents and SettingsUserNameApplication DataThunderbirdProfileswsfdfsgb.defaultMailFeeds

The part after profiles, in this case wsgjbxgb.default, will be different on each machine. In some cases there might even be two files that both have .default in them. If so, the newest one is usually correct.

On Macintosh, these files are located in /Users/username/Library/Thunderbird/profiles/wsfdfsgb.default/Mail/News & Blogs/

Once in the correct folder, simply delete all files with the name of the site that you’re pulling feeds from. Note that this will also delete any saved articles you might have kept, so be sure to back those up within Thunderbird.

After deleting the files, restart Thunderbird and re-add the feeds. Everything should be working now!

 

Willamette Week Back Cover

Posted by Rick on in Lists, Misc 0 Comment

Willamette Week’s Back Cover is a cross section of Portland at it’s best and worst.

This weeks ads:

  • Missing a Limb? (Prosthetic Specialist visiting Portland)
  • Mac Repair (two ads, no PC repair ads)
  • Yoga (two ads)
  • Professional Dominatrix (two ads)
  • Credit Card Debt Reduction
  • Home buying classes
  • Medical Marijuana (three ads)
  • Open Adoption services
  • “Help getting Pregnant”
  • Hypnosis (two ads)
  • Models needed for Adult Website
  • Adult Website
  • Adult Photo taking workshop
  • Belly, Ballroom, and Bossanova Dance Lessons
  • Hair Stylist Classes
  • Tattoo and Piercing (two ads)
  • Wood Floor Refinishing
  • Video Duplication Services
  • Family, Divorce and Bankruptcy Lawyers
  • Nail fungus laser treatment
  • Guitar Lessons (two ads)
  • Wetsuits, Pizza Delivery, Kite powered carts, Antique Jewelry and Garden Center

    • Years from now anthropologists and sociologists will be able to pin point Portland easily. Kinky freaks who recorded themselves while giving guitar lessons on refinished wood floors that were also used for yoga and dancing while eating tatooed pizza, and working on a Mac.

    How To: Disable ._ Files and .DS_Store on Network Shares

    Posted by Rick on in Apple, Technology How To's 3 Comments

    How To: Disable ._ Files and .DS_Store on Network Shares

    In heterogeneous networks of Macs and Window users, few things tick off Windows users then the “droppings” Macs leave behind in the form of files with . or ._ in front of them. These files are known as resource forks on the Mac side and store all kinds of really nifty information that makes OS X interact with files quicker and more efficiently. Among their uses they store metadata about files such as keywords, file size, and preview information.

    None the less for various reason Windows (and to a lesser extent, Linux) is not able to always ignore these files and automatically sorts them to the top of the file view list. These files tend to be confusing if one is not aware of what they are. Or worse yet cause problems in directories with thousands of files present.

    If on a small network with only a few Macs there is a program that takes care of this automatically. For $13 BlueHarvest works just perfectly.

    Of course there is a simple trick to disable .DS_Store files. In Terminal run the command:

    defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

    If the network is Leopard only, then editing nsmb.conf is a good trick too. In /etc/nsmb.conf look for the following line: streams=no and change to streams=yes .

    If the file does not exist, then it can be created via TextEdit or VI.

    These files are only viewable under very certain circumstances but they can cause a lot of coworker friction, and worse yet even cause management to question the usability of OS X in the work place. These simple tricks will go a long ways to resolving those issues and making work much more friendly.