Earlier today I completely decimated my OS X partition on my MacBook Pro (ironically trying to make a non-destructive USB based linux drive).  The process went hay wire when I tried to get rid of a messed up EFI partition that was created and causing booting issues.  I deleted the messed up partition and then got greedy.  I tried to reallocate the space using the Gparted utility in Linux Mint (linux for the rest of this article, same for Ubuntu and all debian based distros).

Boot into the LiveCD:

The first step is to pop the LiveCD into the drive and hold down the opt key while booting.  Select the disc titled WINDOWS.  I know confusingly weird.

Prepare to see some terminal:

You are not going to listen to me now.  You are going to try to copy data from the recently messed up OS X drive and it is going to deny your permission.  Go ahead, try.  Now that we have that out of our system lets move some files.  You could get all nerdy and us the cp command, and if you knew that you wouldn’t be reading this article.  Fire up a terminal window by going to menu –> accessories –> terminal.  Next you are going to copy/paste or type:

sudo nautilus

This will open a window as the root user.  Next you are going to repeat the above command.  Following that you are going to navigate to the directory you would like to backup.  In the second window you are going to navigate to your backup drive.  Then you should drag and drop what you want to the backup.

Sit back and revel:

Now you look like a pro for having saved your (clients) data, and you can kick back and take a nap while the files transfer

The time has come to finally get your computer away from your desk, or that wireless router that your cousin hooked you up with has finally given up the ghost.  Have no fear, Joey is here.  Below are a few scenarios that should cover most users.

The Hardware.

I want to plug it in and be done.

Hands down, no discussion required, buy an Apple Airport Express.  The only downside is that there is no ethernet switch.  In other words, you can only connect wirelessly as there is only one port on the back.  Another cool ability of the express is to connect a USB printer to the device, which allows for wireless printing.  Another awesome use for the express is turning ethernet hotel/friends house connections into wifi for you and your more connected buddies.

Apple Airport Express

I have more advanced needs than above but want easy.

What the Airport Express lacks in ports and additional features, the Airport Extreme more than makes up for.  The biggest downside to the extreme is its cost and physical size.  However, if you want to be able to share a hard drive easily, and a printer, and plug in a bunch of computers and also have a guest network, well, the Extreme is for you.

Airport Extreme

I have advanced needs and want to save money.

The following two are routers that I have close relationships with (I own them both).  What the apple options lack in low price, these two make up for.  The biggest down to these two is that they are not nearly as user friendly as the apple options.  However, for the average user, with a little bit of learning and a cup of coffee, they are more than viable options.

Linksys WRTG54

D-Link DIR-615

The Settings.

To encrypt or not to encrypt.  This is actually becoming a tougher question, and I have a solution for you.  The original school of thought was whether or not you wanted to share your network with friends who were visiting or neighbors, yeah, who doesn’t?  Well, let me pose a hypothetical to you.  What if your neighbor gets caught downloading some form of illegal content on your connection, who is liable?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to find out.  What if you are paying for a 10mb/sec connection so you and your kids can have really fast internet, and then people start parking their car in front of your house, so they can have free internet?  Oh, and by the way did I mention that they are massively downloading and now your speed has dropped.

The above makes a clear argument for strongly password protecting your network doesn’t it?  Unfortunately nothing in life is black and white.

How about when a friend, or your kids friends come over and want to play PSP, DSi, Wii, or use an ipod/iPhone without using their data connection?  You would need to give them the coveted password.

So are you ready for compromise?

Make the password something reasonable, that you use for NOTHING ELSE.  Then take a sticky note, and write the password on it, and put it in a place that guests can get to, like the refrigerator.  Essentially your are granting permission from those who are allowed into your house.

As usual, if you have more questions/scenarios, hit the comments or the contact button above.

This is a very interesting and complex topic that has been addressed thousands and thousands of times by many people.  Those people have been both right and wrong and most often somewhere in the middle.  There are a few considerations that need to be made when purchasing a new computer, so let’s dive in.  Keep in mind that there really is no particular order to these, but the order I will lead you in will make it the least overwhelming.

Where will I use the computer?

If you have never taken a computer off of its desk or thought about it, odds are a desktop is for you.  As I write this now, I am sitting on a patio behind my house something that could not be done effectively with a desktop computer.  Also, if you frequently travel and work outside the home take that into account when choosing a computer.  If you fall into a specific niche category regarding inside and out usage we will hit that down further.

summary:  if you use the computer exclusively at a desk and are happy with that, buy a desktop; if not buy a notebook.

What do I need to do?

Modern computers have come a long way, and that is probably the most misunderstood thing about them.  When you go to a chain computer retailer they will often attempt to sell you the biggest, baddest, and fastest machine possible.  That is quite fine if you have a large checkbook, however, for the rest of us, compromises must be made.  Some basics to understand:

Light Usage:  This is the type of person who will write the occasional text document, email, and general web browsing.  Organizing pictures and video files, and watching movies and TV online.  In all honesty, 90% of users meet this criteria.  Just keep this in mind when shopping.

Medium Usage:  This is the trickiest usage level to placate.  This is using enough raw power to realize that your computer might not do what you need.  It is further complicated by a general straddling of price points.  Often this will involve playing back HD video, or massive quantities of multi-tasking.

Heavy Usage:  This is for gamers, photoshop experts, video producers etc, etc.  If you are in this category you probably don’t need/want help choosing.

How big/small of a screen do I want/need?

Screen sizes these days span from 8.9″ to 50+”.  So which one do you need?  The answer varies based on your answers to the above two questions.  If you plan to take the computer on travels and use it for nothing else, a cheap and tiny 10″ netbook is probably fine.  If you want to watch movies in dazzling HD in your living room you are probably better off with a giant TV and a decent desktop machine attached.  Also, keep in mind the vision of those who will be using the computer.  If you are buying a computer for the entire family to use, it can be frustrating to those without perfect vision to need to squint at a tiny screen.

How much do I have to spend?

Let’s face it, money plays a big part in these decisions.  If it didn’t you could just go buy one of each, and give away the ones you don’t use.

Super Limited Budget:  If you are working on a super limited budget it might be worth your time and effort to look into re-utilizing an older computer you already have by cleaning it up.  Another often inexpensive option is to talk to friends/relatives about purchasing their computers from them when they are ready to upgrade.  This gets you a decent machine for less money, and they get cash toward a newer machine.  This approach also lessens the “what’s wrong with it?” factor.

Average Budget:  This is the biggest market currently, and luckily for you the companies want to sell you a machine.

Willing to spend a little:  This is the most future proof to cost effective range and options are still plentiful.  These are normally upgraded machines from the category above.

Hog wild:  If you are in this category decide whether you want a mac or a PC and go to the store, buy the best one they have that meets your needs.

Advice.

If you need a tiny machine that can go anywhere inexpensively buy a netbook.  For 300 bucks you get a competent computer that can hold up to light usage.  Downside is small screen and cramped keyboards, as well as no optical drive (NO DVD SLOT).

If you need an average sized laptop with average performance I would look at Toshiba, Apple, ASUS, HP and Dell.  These are just starting places though.

If you need an average sized laptop with high performance I would look at Apple, ASUS, and Sony.

If you need a low performance desktop I would look into the above average laptop with an external screen and keyboard/mouse.  This gives portability with low cost.

If you want a media center computer look for mac Minis and for Desktop machines that come without any extra peripherals.

Things that you should take into account are also what other devices you have regular access to.  If you have a powerful desktop and a smartphone you probably dont need a mid-sized laptop.  If your work supplies you with a competent computer, but you are not allowed to use it for personal use, then a netbook might be a great travel add-on.

If you have peripherals that you really like, or need to continue using, ensure that they will work with what you are buying and in a way that is feasible for you (POS systems, accessibility devices, mice, joysticks, printers/scanners etc)

As always if you want additional advice hit me up on the contact page, or in the comments below.

This post is going to be dedicated to a group of applications that are all freeware, and absolutely phenomenal at what they do, generally lightweight, and very stable.

Cyberduck [mac]

Cyberduck is an excellent mac only FTP client.  It allows for the editing of files on the server and saving their updates in an external application.  I would also like to mention that development is quite fast paced, and very well maintained.  A final note, this application scores extra points for having an awesome dock icon.

get it from here:  cyberduck.ch

Smultron [mac]

Smultron is an excellent lightweight text editing application.  It is straight forward to use yet quite feature rich.  Imagine an amped up version of your basic notepad/textedit.  If you feel like the text editing application you are currently employing is missing a feature, take a look at smultron.

get it from here: smultron.sourceforge.net

VideoLan Client (VLC) [mac/pc/linux]

Ever get a video or audio from somewhere and receive an error that it could not be opened, or a window prompting you to choose the application.  VLC is able to open pretty much any file you throw at it, and is used as the backend for a lot of other freeware applications.

Get it here:  videolan.org/vlc/

Handbrake [mac/pc/linux]

Handbrake is one of the best applications to use for shifting the format of content.  Have a DVD that you want to put on your iPod/iPhone/iNewDevice, use Handbrake.  Have a video file that you want to transcode to a smaller size/audio quality/container format.  The newest version of Handbrake brings that application an even greater level of stability and ease of use.

Get it here:  handbrake.fr

I am going to go over the basics of both Mac and PC problem solving. Most of these solutions seem simple, and they are, however, it is important to follow them to a “T.” We will start off with the Mac, and move to the PC.

Mac Troubleshooting:

Although Mac computers do tend to break less often than their PC counterparts, they still do, and often in a big way. When things go wrong go by the following steps.

1. make sure that it is plugged into a WORKING outlet, plug in a lamp and see if it works.
2. if the computer is running and acting oddly try a simple restart.
   • after shutting down the machine, allow it to sit for a little, this is part hangover from older technologies, but still a good practice.
3. check for updates to both problem software and the operating system itself (select the apple menu from top left and select software update).
4. if the oddity persists follow this guide to maintenance.
5. if the oddity continues I recommend you try resetting your PRAM. A full guide can be found here. For the ADD in the crowd you hold down command + option + P + R while restarting. The computer will chime once and then start again, and chime then you let go.
6. if 4 does not work then try removing any software that was installed recently with regard to the onset of the problems.
7. find your way to disk utility.app (applications -> utilities -> disk utility) and select the correct hard drive from the panel at left and select first aid. Then select verify disk. If any problems are encountered follow the instructions.
8. If all else fails make sure that you have your stuff backed up well and find the discs that came with your computer, it is time for a reinstall.

PC Troubleshooting:
When PCs go awry it can be slightly more challenging as there are also viruses and spyware to contend with. However the first thing to check is always the steps 0 through 2 above.

1. if you don’t have antivirus software installed find a reputable scanner that you trust. There are many that are free and quite able.
2. if you have not run any anti-malware applications I would do so. (I recommend spybot search and destroy and lavasoft ad-aware)
3. after completing step 1 reboot the machine.

Those are simply the basics, as I am a Mac guy, I am not comfortable enough walking through the steps that will lead to a repaired windows machine, however, articles like this one can be very helpful.

Once your wordpress based site with galleries powered by wp-simpleviewer is setup it is super easy to create galleries and be on your way.

Step 1

1. Launch your FTP client (cyberduck for mac and filezilla for PC)
2. navigate to the following folder
   • yoursite.com –> wp-content –> photos
3. name your folder of JPEGs something appropriate (portrait, dogs, cats, product7, etc)
   • avoid using characters and other funky naming systems
4. drag and drop your folder of JPEGs to the photo directory you found in step 2

Step 2

1. Launch your web browser
2. navigate to yoursite.com/wp-admin
3. select “wp-sv galleries” from under the media heading on the left sidebar
4. select the radio button of the gallery that you would like to generate
5. select create gallery
6. allow the browser to sit and wait undisturbed until a yellow box appears that says “yeah we are done” at the bottom

Step 3

1. Select create new page under Pages on the left sidebar
2. select the first button above the formatting bar
   • the icon looks like a gallery and when hovered over says wp-simpleviewer
3. select the desired gallery
4. select insert into post
   • if you desire a statement below/above the gallery you can input text accordingly either below or above the line of code that is inserted in step 3
5. over on the upper right side of the screen you can select privacy settings
   • private prevents the page from appearing linked on your site
   • password will apply a password that you choose
   • public will appear in the navigation of your site
6. when you are ready select publish.

Enjoy your new site.For visual people there is a screencast of this process available at www.accardophotography.com/upload/client/web/creating_inserting_wpsv_gallery.m4v

NOTE: This is a gross simplification of a very complex matter.

I am going to give a brief run down on common file systems and what they do and why. Hang on, nerdy stuff ahead.

HFS+ Extended (Hierarchal File System +)

This one comes in a few varieties (journaled and non-journaled). Unless you know why to turn off journalling you always want it. HFS+ is used by Macs and certain other *nix based systems. You don’t need to understand that in full, just that if you are using ONLY macs in and are not going to need to use the drive in question on a PC for any reason ever, then use HFS+. It works the best with macs and is the least likely to experience corruption problems.

Bottom line: if you are only using a mac use HFS+.

FAT (File Allocation Table)

FAT is a unique format in several ways. First and foremost you are the most familiar with it but probably didn’t know you were. FAT is what is used by nearly all cell phones, GPS devices, cameras etc. The reason that these device all use FAT is that FAT is compatible with all PCs, macs, and most *nix operating systems. So now you are saying, why use anything else? The reason is a few fold. First and foremost FAT is most likely to corrupt as it is less advanced that the more modern file systems. Another reason is that you cannot store a file larger than 4GB on a FAT formatted device.

Bottom line: if you are using lots of different computers with lots of operating systems use FAT, but always safely remove devices (eject, unmount, safely remove, etc.)

NTFS (NT File System)

NTFS is more or less the windows equivalent to HFS, however it bares some interesting side effects. The drive can only be written to by a PC running some flavor of windows. However, the drive can be read by a mac. In practical application, if you have a PC that you do most of work on, but want to copy files FROM the PC drive to a mac you can do it. However, you cannot put files from the mac onto the PC drive (without file system extensions which I will cover later).

Bottom line: If you use only PCs and might read the data on a mac, use NTFS.

In lieu of the article about backing up your data I figured that we would go over how to “build” a hard drive from pieces that one can buy on newegg.com or any other online/local computer parts retailer. In this article I will cover the following topics:

1. choosing the parts
2. assembling the drive
3. formatting for your usage patter

Choosing the Parts:
There are a huge variety of options and parts that can be used to assemble an at home hard drive. There are a few terms that need to be understood before you can begin shopping and ordering.

The first thing to understand is the drive interfaces. External interfaces are easy to understand. The most common, and the most useful for the broadest range of users is USB. For mac users firewire is awesome, it has a sustained transfer rate instead of fluctuating like USB. The final interface that you will regularly see is eSATA, while eSATA is fast and reliable (think super fast), there are only a handful of devices capable of connecting to it. The majority of drives these days will have USB regardless of the primary interface.

Bottom Line on External Interface: if you have a mac with a firewire port, and money is not a huge issue buy this drive enclosure (it is for 2.5“ drives). If you are a PC user who really doesn’t care about eSATA speed, then buy the cheapest USB enclosure that has good reviews on newegg. If you are reading this thinking that I missed something then you understand more than I will cover here, and should go back to shopping.

Internal interfaces are a little more straight forward. Unless you have a reason not to, buy one that says SATA 3.0 Gb/s. If you have a reason not to then you know more than I will cover here.

Bottom Line on Internal Interface: Buy SATA 3.0 Gb/s.

The biggest factor that causes the majority of stress in choosing is undoubtedly which size of drive to get. I am going to break down pros and cons for each of the popular sizes below.

2.5” drives

Pros:

• portable
• light
• no power cable (powered by the computer)
• can be installed in a laptop or desktop

Cons:

• limited storage space
• increased cost / GB
• slower seek speeds / dollar

3.5“ drives

Pros

• cheaper / GB
• larger capacity options
• increased speeds / dollar

Cons

• requires power cord
• less portable
• cannot be installed in notebook as a replacement

Assembling the Drive:

[flagallery gid=13 name=”Gallery”]

1. make sure that your workspace is clean and clear
2. ensure that you have the correct tools (generally a screwdriver)
3. carefully insert the drive into the PCB board (most often a tray)
4. carefully place the screws that mount the drive to the board. This prevents the drive from vibrating making noize and potentially damaging the drive over time.
5. after the drive has been mounted to the tray, gently slide it into the outer enclosure.
6. attach the rear plate.
7. admire your nerdy handy work.

Formatting the Drive:

In OS X.

1. attach the drive to the computer, and if the drive has a power switch turn it on.
2. if presented with a prompt to ”initialize“ click initialize now and skip to step 3
3. locate and launch disk utility (applications -> utilities -> disk utility) or (search in spotlight)
4. locate the drive on the left column make sure that it is the same size and not one of your other drives.
5. select the ”Partition“ tab.
6. under ”Volume Scheme“ choose ”1 Partition“.
7. select options at the bottom.
   • follow the directions under the options for the one that suits what you will be using the drive for. For most modern mac users GUID will work the best.
8. under ”Volume Information“ select the file system that best suits what you need. If you are not sure see this article.
9. name the drive under volume information.
10. choose apply.
11. sit back and relax while the partitioning and formatting takes place.

In XP

1. attach the drive to the computer, and if the drive has a power switch turn it on.
2. right click on the drive that appears under ”Hard Disk Drives“
3. select ”Format…“
4. choose a file system
5. name the drive under volume label
6. DO NOT choose quick format
7. click start
8. kick back and wait

If you have any questions just post up in the comments.

Although we all think that our macs are perfect, truth be told, they aren’t. Here are some basic tips to make sure that your computer is running as well as it can.

1. make sure that your desktop is not covered with items. OS X is based on Unix and there is some really complicated stuff behind why this slows down your computer, but long story short it does. Keep your desktop clean.
2. ensure that there is at least 10% of your hard drive free. How do you check this?
   • ctrl + click on the hard drive on the desktop (most likely named Macintosh HD)
   • select get info
   • do some basic math and check the used vs capacity numbers to make sure they are within spec
3. install any and all updates that are applicable. Select  –> Software Updates
4. repair disk permissions by opening harddrive –> Applications –> Utilities –> Disk Utility
   • select your hard drive from the list at left and then select repair disk permissions under the first aid tab
5. if things are really bad then you can select verify disk next to it and if it returns errors find your install disk and follow the instructions that are required to repair the hard drive from the disk.

Those are the first things that should always be checked in order to get a mac back in action. Anything beyond that will be addressed in a future post.