Year: 2018

How to take pictures with Photo Booth on macOS

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In this episode I’ll show you how to take pictures with built-in and external USB cameras using Photo Booth on macOS. Photo Booth is the equivalent of the Camera application in iOS. I will also explain how to export your images, where they are stored on the hard disk, and what you can do if … Read more

How to turn text into an audio file on macOS

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Ever since Lion, Mac OS X 10.7, there has been a great and very underrated feature built-in to every Mac: the ability to highlight some text and have macOS turn it into an audio file.

This is a wonderful way to listen to written text while you’re on the go, or if you want to skim through text you or others have written while you’re occupied with another activity, such as walking or driving. I love this feature!

I’ve seen the option in the context menu many times, but I’ve never dared to use it until today. Perhaps I held off for so long because the option reads “add to iTunes as Spoken Track” – and I’m just not a big fan of iTunes.

Turns out, this text-to-audio option bypasses iTunes altogether. It doesn’t open automatically and we won’t need it to transfer tracks to our iPhones either. What a relief!

Let me show you how to do it in this article.

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How to find the URL for your own YouTube Playlist (2018)

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I’ve seen a lot of web interfaces in my time. YouTube’s has got to be one of the worst ever. Fact! I am frequently shocked how unintuitive the simplest of things are, and how cumbersome and ugly the whole design is.

Take something as simple as sharing your own Playlist. There’s this unbelievably unhelpful Google article that apparently explains how it works.

Which it doesn’t. At least not at the time of writing.

Here’s how to find and share your own YouTube Playlist’s URL (with screenshots, as of August 2018).

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How to transcode an AFIC file with macOS Finder

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Yesterday I had to transcode some audio files recorded with Quicktime on macOS. Quicktime works great for that, but it only stores files in its native AIFC file format. That’s the Audio Interchange File Format, a format developed by Apple in 1988, storing audio data as uncompressed PCM data. Sadly though, AIFC is not commonly … Read more

How to share ebooks with WordPress (EPUB and MOBI files)

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If you’ve ever tried to upload an ebook in .MOBI or .EPUB format with the WordPress Media Uploader, you will have noticed an error message appear. Something along the lines of “Sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons”.

The only way then appears to be to ZIP the file and share it. That’s not a great experience for mobile users, who would simply like to click on a file and open it in an application such as iBooks or Kindle.

The solution to this puzzle lies in adding the required mime types to WordPress, so that these file types are allowed.

Let me show you how to do it in this article.

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How to declare Classes in PHP

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Since PHP 5 we can use object oriented features in PHP. This allows us to not only use functions and variables, but also write classes and create instances of them in our code. Here’s quick rundown on how to do it. Writing and instantiating a Class Creating classes is very similar to writing functions. Here’s … Read more

How to switch off emails from Anacron in Plesk Onyx

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In 2011 I wrote an article about how to avoid emails from Dr. Web. In it I was discussing how to switch off these notifications, which are generated when the Dr. Web service updates itself. Here’s an example: /etc/cron.daily/drweb-update: Dr.Web update details: Update server: http://update.msk5.drweb.com/plesk/700/unix Update has begun at Fri May 18 03:53:47 2018 Update … Read more

Fan Maintenance on my Samsung NC10

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My Samsung NC10 Netbook has been in constant operation since 2013, for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s doing a great job as our internal office server, purring along quietly running CentOS 6.

When I put it in operation 5 years ago, I made sure no mechanical parts we being used anymore to avoid wear and tear: I’ve added an SSD, and once a day valuable data is backed up on a permanently mounted SD card.

The only mechanical thing still in use is the internal fan. I knew the day would come on which the poor thing would either give up and need replacing, or at least require some maintenance to make it go a few extra miles. Well, that day has come at the beginning on this month, when I noticed a bit of rattling noise that started happening behind my big monitor. That’s where I keep the little guy.

Turns out that the fan can be easily whipped back into shape with a drop of bicycle oil. It’s really easy to disassemble too – let me show you how I did it.

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