Andrew's Blog

Earlier today I needed to grab a couple of shots from a DVD for work, from a presentation we were sent by a client, although there are some software packages for this, you can also easily do this from the terminal. Open the terminal and type:- screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.png You should have some crosshairs, now press the spacebar and they change to a camera. Position the camera over the DVD window and click and you should have a file on your desktop called DVD.png which is a grab of whatever was currently running in the DVD player. If you plan on making multiple grabs, dont forget to rename the files as you save them or change the name in the terminal prompt to something else each time, e.g. dvd1, dvd2 etc. Source for this and credit goes to Random Tech and this article http://highschoolblows.blogspot.com/2005/11/take-screenshot-of-dvd-player-in-os-x.html

(icons and link courtesy of MacUpdate) I got hold of a WD My book yesterday, basically for making backups of my MB Pro and my wifes machine. So far my first impressions of the drive are good, its quite compact and fairly elegant looking when compared to my other external drive cases and although there is some fan noise when switching on, afterwards it is quiet and runs quite well. The fans in my MB Pro were louder than the My Book when they came on, just to provide some perspective. When I received the drive it was formatted for Windows, so I connected it to my mac via firewire , split it into two partitions, one to make a clone of my macs hard drive that I could boot from, the other to store a backup of the bootcamp partition and an image of my wifes notebook. I then realised that in formatting I had of course erased the software that came with the drive (backup program and the button manager) - a quick trip to support.wdc.com fixed that error on my part (but have the serial number of...

Cool - I got a slight mention on Technorati. because of this post :)

I found a nice program the other night but it seems Im late to the party based on some of the comments over at places like TUAW . As you may have guess from the title, the program is called Remote Buddy , its a fantastic program that enhances the functionality of the Apple Remote. When you install it, it will ask to install a kernal extension to enable full functionality but there is an option to undo this in the program itself if you chose to go back or youre nervous. After installation the functionality of the remote is improved a thousandfold at least, you're suddenly able to open pretty much any application on your mac or access any file. For example I can navigate to my movies folder, select a file, choose whether to open it in VLC or Quicktime and then switch to fullscreen to play it. While there I can also do things like adjust the brightness if I need to (if watching at night), volume as well as the usual controls such as pause, play, fast forward. The program also includes...

Sorry for the update drought yesterday but when we went to town my wife bought me the latest Harry Potter book as a surprise present so I spent yesterday reading it. I dont think that it was a bad close to the series but Rowling left doors open at the end... One question I have though - and this is a slight spoiler, if the goblin ran of with the sword in the bank vault, then how could Neville put it out of the sorting hat to kill Nagini?

I installed a few games onto the Vista partition the other night, in particular, Splinter Cell Double Agent, Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes. Both Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes worked right out of the box without any trouble, I loaded both of them and tried the tutorial missions and they were both working out ok. I didnt play around too much with the graphics settings yet - I'll mess with those on the weekend. In COH I did try turning everything up to full just to see and the game was still quite playable, a bit sluggish now and then but playable. Splinter Cell was a bit more interesting in terms of installation and setup. The initial install went fine but took a while, once complete though it asked me to install directx9c which being on Vista I refused. IT them promptly popped up the hardware detection utility and informed me that I didnt have the correct version of directx, graphics drivers and something else which unfortunately my tired brain can't remember...

Lots of places on the net deal with methods on how to back up your main OS X partition using a variety of utilities such as Superduper and Carboncopycloner. Not to knock any of these articles but when I want to back up my computer, I'd typically like to back up everything, which means if youre using bootcamp even the windows partition. I searched high and low for a while and the only option that I found to do it was this CopyCatX. While this looks like an excellent option at the time it was beyond my finances, so I found other ways around the problem. A couple of weeks ago though I came across this - Winclone which is purpose built utility to backup and restore your bootcamp partition from OS X, for free . So far it has been working for me flawlessly, Ive had no issues backing up and restoring Windows partitions on my Macbook Pro. I found out though, purely by chance how flexible this utility is, as an example let me share a story with you, I had a user come into my office with...

I was playing around with the installation of Vista on my Macbook a little yesterday and decided to try installing some anti-virus and firewall software. For the anti-virus I installed AVGFree, primarily because its free :) and also because Ive been using it for years now without any issues. Thankfully it held true to its reputation and is working quite happily under vista. Zonealarm unfortunately didnt... I downloaded and installed the latest free version from their site, which states that it supports Vista. I had no problems downloading it but halfway through the install it froze and then after a couple of minutes the whole computer locked up and became totally unresponsive. I left it alone for around 20 minutes to see if it would sort itself out but unfortunately no joy, so I performed a hard reset by holding down the power button. After rebooting, Vista obviously complained and grumbled about being shutdown so rudely and went through a disk check, got to the logon screen and then b...

I installed Vista onto the bootcamp partition as mentioned in an earlier post and the Macbook seems to get quite hot as soon as you start doing anything with it. To be honest Im mainly using it to keep my windows knowledge current (for work) and to play games, so its not really that big a deal as Im using it on a desk in those situations but it still worries me a little bit. From the research I've done though it seems that we are stuck until either Apple or Microsoft release appropriate drivers for the power management. Or do any of you out there know otherwise and have any tips that you wouldnt mind sharing? In the meantime I'm using these... Cool Feet... They actually work quite well, Ive been using them for around 5 months now, the only problem I have with them is that sometimes the suction isn't as strong as it could be, so if you pick your laptop up to move it, they fall off. Its not all the time though and in general for just providing airflow beneath the computer th...

Ive finally finished the last (for now) of the upgrades to my first gen core duo Macbook Pro and I have to admit that I'm quite happy at the moment. The first upgrade was a few weeks ago, when I exchanged the superdrive that came with the laptop for another one, specifically an 8x speed, dual-layer burner (a step up from the 4x burner that came with the Macbook). The model is a HL-DT-ST DVD +- RW GWA4080M, which I found on eBay and is supposedly an authentic Apple replacement part (the sticker on the drive has the Apple logo on it). So far the drive has been working fine, Im playing with the idea of upgrading the firmware on it but on the other hand I'm thinking, if its not broken... I guess I need to do some more research first. My second upgrade was a new hard drive - I installed the Western Digital Scorpio 250GB WD2500BEVS-11UST0, it formats to around 232GB which is still a big jump from the standard 100GB drive that came pre-installed. I performed both upgrades following th...

This is my first ever blog and first ever post - so will be just playing for a while to get the feel of things