nutMac

You cannot begin to understand my frustration with Rogers and there recent tactics for hijacking “Server not found or DNS error” response pages (see here and here). I got so furious that I called Rogers and demanded a workaround to their little “solution”. And to my surprise, the technical representative JUMPED at the opportunity to show me how! So here’s to you Rogers and all that you mean to me:

• find the Internet Settings on your computer or router (there are plenty of web article to help you for Windows or Mac)
• Change the “DNS server(s)” to something public, like, for instance, 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.1 (a US based public DNS server, not likely to ever go down)
• Boom! Buh-bye Rogers/Yahoo! search page

You see, by default, Rogers (or any other ISP) has you using their DNS server (your computer will automatically use your ISP’s DNS server unless told to do otherwise) and therefor they can track what you are doing or see what’s being served to you. So in the event that you call for a site that doesn’t exist, they can cheerily offer up a Rogers/Yahoo! search page laden with advertising and paid-for links instead of actually telling you that that server or site you actually requested might not exist or might have an error.

Here is where Rogers FAILS! Umm Rogers? People who actually know how to use a computer and who aren’t using Internet Explorer 6 actually use the address bar as a search field and not strictly a place to resolve URL and DNS calls. For instance, my local Mac reseller is Carbon Computing and I wanted to call them today. I thought I would get their phone number from their web site so into my address bar I entered “carbonation” and pressed enter, which, prior to Rogers meddling, would normally resolve to “http://www.carbonation.com“. If the search term were something unresolvable, like “jingle butt pants on fire” then my browser would inform me that “http://jingle%20butt%20pants%20on%20fire/” cannot be found and probably ask me if I wanted to search for the term “jingle butt pants on fire” in Google (or which ever search engine I have set as a default).

Rogers figures they are doing you a solid by removing this extra step, they’ll just perform the search for you. But in a case like mine I don’t want to SEARCH for “carbonation”, I want to RESOLVE it by slapping a .com on the end of it. And by circumventing the default server error message, don’t you think they are causing more mayhem than good?

To the bonehead at Rogers that thought this was all a good idea… you are the biggest boob of all the boobs at Rogers. And that is a fair feat my friend.

Just a quick note (from my iPhone), noting the irony of the fact that Apples own website will crash iPhone’s Safari.

Is it an AJAX thing? I have noticed a lot of AJAX heavy sites will effectively kill Safari, but you think Apple would have made sure all their ducks were in order in their own backyard before launching a product designed to flaunt their own OS prowess.

Ahhh… what I wouldn’t give for horizontal typing in the WordPress iPhone app. All else considered that is my only gripe with it.

Is it a productivity tool worthy of presious space on a blog about productivity and increased workflow on a Mac? Mmmm… Yes and no. Is it fast to blog on a phone? No. But what if you blog for a living?

That, in my opinion, is what makes then WordPress iPhone app a little gold nugget. Say you are a paid contributor to a well known blog and for whatever reason you find yourself in front of a killer story without a laptop in sight. Just whip out your iPhone and post your breaking news.

Or say you just made your draft deadline and you’re off to Grandmas’s for Sunday dinner when you suddenly realize you’ve made a terrible mistake. Whip out your iPhone and correct it on route.

The app includes all of the WordPress 2.6 goodness and is extremely intuitive to use. If you’re like me and you contribute to a number of WordPress blogs you’ll apreciate the ability to write to each one, all from a single app.

Ok, you KNOW I am a total QuickSilver freak and that there is no way around a computer that is faster for me then QuickSilver. And you also I’ve gone on about making web search triggers for QuickSilver and on and on… Trouble has been that you have to have a Mac and you have to have the patience to put up with Quicksilver’s idiosyncrasies long enough to recognize it’s pure God-like power over your operating system… ok, a bit over zealous but you get the point.

So imagine QuickSilver as a web app, to do all the things that online like you would offline with QuickSilver. Well I just got wind that Julius Eckert and friends have done just that; put QuickSilver functionality on the web.

It’s called chosr and it functions like QuickSilver, uses the same commands as QuickSilver and turns your online life into a productivity whirlwind just like QuickSilver would… if it could… which it can… sort of… anyway, go check out chosr!

Sometimes the best thing you can do to speed up your workflow on a Mac is to get OFF your Mac. SOunds crazy doesn’t it? Well recently I was lucky enough to join the ranks of millions as an iPhone 3G users (tried three times to get one at my Kitchener Rogers store on Fischer-Hallman and Ottawa), not because I thought I needed one, but because I do so much work developing sites, icons and artwork for those who develop iPhone apps (which is why I have been so neglectful of this blog).

Instantly I started looking at ways to work the iPhone into my productivity regime… without much success until I really thought about what the little jewel of hardware is really good at; reading things. Reading email, reading RSS feeds, reading tweets… all things that general detract from productivity while sitting in front of a project with a looming deadline.

So I have started to resist the urge to stay current WHILE working and decide to take my iPhone with my on whatever daily breaks I might have, coffee, lunch, erm… rest room… and do all my catching up then.

Brilliant! Several things have happened; I know take regular breaks (something I am famous for not doing), and I am now more productive during actual working time.

While I am not expressly endorsing the iPhone, I am endorsing getting away from the computer from time to time to mentally recharge. While sitting on an e-reader of sorts is hardly disconnecting from the cyber world, the change of pace will help keep you on track in your daily grind.

Given that it has been a month and a half since I’ve written to this blog, I feel compelled to tell you why it has been so long. I, Adam Merrifield, mild mannered web designer by day, and… er… mild manned web designer by night, have been so swamped with work that contributing to this little blog has been all but impossible. I could have jumped all over a dozen new apps that I had been given for beta testing, but sadly I had no time to test them.

There are two however, that are worth mentioning, as I really do want to try and work them into my daily flow. The one is Dropbox, which is a remote syncing type app that will “push” all updates and changes made from one computer to all other computers linked to the same account. Now from what I can tell the intent is that it be more of a storage/portal device that takes what you are working on here and sends it there so you can keep working on it when there become here… er.. or there… anyhow, you get the point. You’re working on a project at work and the boss tells you it need to be done by tomorrow so you send it through the pipes to home, work on it there, send it through the pipes back to work in time for the big presentation the next day, landing your company the BIG account and your boss loves you and gives you a raise and the keys to his Cadillac and owe it all to drop box…

But that’s not what intrigues me about Dropbox, no, what really has me interested in Dropbox is to see if it can be used as a remote backup device and what capacity is available to the user. As soon as I get the chance I will put this one to the test to see whether it’s worth getting my clients excited about a beta.

The other app for which I have been waiting to get my hands on for more than a year is Versions, a subversion client for the Mac. If you don’t know what subversion “Subversion (software) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”), I am not going to explain it here, but in short it eliminates the problem of multiple developers working on a single project at the same time. You don’t need an app to take advantage of the power of subversion (command-line in Terminal or TextMate will do just fine), but it does make it a tad sexier when you put a GUI to the process.

I did try Versions.app just briefly, signing up with a free beanstalk account for testing purposes, but I failed to get the connection. I will have to come back to this one in a few days.

So if you have any experience with either of these apps, feel free to leave your comments and let me know what you think.

My homeboys, Realmac Software in Brighton got some big props from ars technica today for an upcoming 4.0 release to their popular web design application, RapidWeaver. If you are itching to have a sneak peek at all that’s new with RapidWeaver 4.0 then go give the article a read.

A few points that have me excited are the hinting of a more robust api that could possible allow plugin developers greater access to the OS and other apps. This is, of course, just me reading between the lines. Greater plugin freedom ovens up a whole lot of possibilities for RapidWeaver.

Something else that has me excited is the news ticker which should make it a lot easier to keep users updated with theme patches and updates.

Path Finder (my all time favorite OS file system) has had a long awaited point release, bringing the version to 4.8.4. This update brings some needed bug fixes for both Tiger and Leopard versions that are apparently rooted deep within the Mac OS itself (due to be fixed in OS X 10.5.3 I suspect). For a complete list of updates and bug fixes see the Path Finder Changelog.

How much happier could a geek like me get? Well for the first time since I started putting down my Mac thought patterns down on digital paper (this blog) I can say that I am proud of the keywords used to find nutMac. My top 25 keyword are predominantly TextMate, QuickSilver, MAMP, HTML, CSS, SQL, websearch and various combinations therein. If that is not THE most geekified set of words, I don’t know what is. The only word missing from the list is Unix!

So what does this mean? I guess I could use it as some sort of metric that what I write is important particular demographic. I mean, these keywords are an exact reflection of what I write about. These are things I have searched for myself wishing to find an article that answered my needs. Maybe my articles are answering the needs of geeks like me. That would be pretty cool if you ask me.

So if you read this blog, you must be a geek. But not any geek; you are a Mac geek and probably one that knows a little more than the average geek about OS’s, hardware, software or some form of programming. You are hardcore (if not just work with me here). So if you like what goes on here, but crave something more of an audio nature, please check out the podcast from MacBreak Tech. I have raved about them in the past and I am going to do it again now. This show is for geeks. Real geeks. Crack the case open, pull on the wires, hack it with a bash command kind of geeks.

The first time I wrote about the show, there would be only 5 or 6 comments per episode. Now they get 15 to 25 per show, and the geekier the show, the more comments! Take, for instance, the show where they turned an old G4 Power Mac into a NAS drive (a long standing request of mine). How geeky is that? It got 25 comments! You have to be a hardcore geek to understand WHY anyone would want to do this (the correct answer is “because you can”, by the way).

The number of outlets for this kind of geekery are few and far between (outside of flame bait, forum arenas where the main topics are Kirk vs. Picard ) so when a show as well put together as this one comes along, one that doesn’t cater to the ADHD, Digg skimming, tech trend surfer, it is a refreshing and very welcome change.

Thank you John, Kenji, Ben and Craig for making MacBreak Tech.

So it’s been a bit. Many mac stories have come and gone and had I not been overwhelmed with work at those moments I would most certainty add my two cents to the stream of consciousness. The same can be said right now too but I just had to free my brain from the coding and scripting matrix that has become my life. So today I bring you a quick and dirty little tip, another one of those little known or long forgotten OS tricks that will save you a ton of misery.

I would like to believe that this one is long forgotten versus little known since the latter would imply that Apple is not the best at getting word of it’s most basic features out there (FYI: Apple is doing a bang up job of teaching you little tips at http://www.apple.com/business/theater/). Everyone like the drag-n-dropiness of Mac OS X right? It’s great for moving things right? Well it’s also great for copying things too! You can copy items from one place to another by simply holding the option key while you move your item. This will leave a copy in it’s original place while making a new copy to add to the location you finally decide on.

This isn’t just for moving items from folder to folder, the same is true when working within documents. Highlight a word or phrase, click and hold on it then press and hold the option key to make a copy of that word or phrase, ready to be positioned wherever your heart desires.