Learning to use Aperture

Posted by jriordon on January 4th, 2010

Before the holidays I started to use Apple's Aperture photo management software. Mainly because my new camera lets me shoot in Raw, and I also wanted more control over editing and organizing all my photos. The following bugged me for awhile, so I am posting it here as a reminder to myself:

How to bulk remove keywords in Aperture

If you import your library from iPhoto, there is a new keyword on every single photo called 'iPhoto Edited'. Removing this keyword is simple once you know how.

  1. Click on 'Projects' Tab.
  2. Click on 'All Photos'
  3. Under View menu choose 'Browser Only'
  4. Select All the photos - Command A.
  5. Press 'Shift D' to show keyword controls
  6. In the 'Add Keyword' field, enter the keyword you wish to remove
  7. Then press 'Shift Return'

All of the photos you selected will have that keyword removed automatically.

Printer Toner

VMWare Fusion stuck at Shutting Down

Posted by jriordon on December 7th, 2009

This morning when I got to my Apple Mac Pro, I saw that VMWare Fusion, which had been running Window XP, was stuck at Shutting Down Windows. Presumably Windows decided to do an upgrade during the night and got stuck when it tried to reboot.

Going to the menu 'Virtual Machine->Shut Down Guest' didn't do anything. The trick was to hold down the option key, which changes the Shut Down Guest to 'Power Off'. Selecting this worked fine.

Hope this tip helps someone else.

Flash flaw puts most sites and users at risk

Posted by jriordon on November 13th, 2009

Computerworld is running a story on a significant security hole in Flash.

The long and short of it all is that a security hole in Flash is in the wild, and is unpatchable according to Adobe.

Mike Murray, the chief information security officer at Orlando, Fla.-based Foreground Security says "The best mitigation is to not use Flash, but we know that that's impossible for most users, since Flash is so widely used on the Web. Almost everyone using the Internet is vulnerable to a Web site that allows content to be updated inappropriately. That's not hyperbole, it's just fact. This has the potential to affect any social media site, any career site, any dating site, many retail sites and many cloud applications. That's why this attack is so serious. End users would never know they got exploited."

To read all about this, and how it might affect you, please take a moment to get educated and read the story at ComputerWorld.com.

Selling eStudio 810 – fully loaded – fully working

Posted by jriordon on November 12th, 2009

My business is selling its Toshiba eStudio 810

Working in good condition. eStudio 810 digital copier / printer, Black and White.

Included:

  • New toner cartridge.
  • Bulk paper feeder (5000 sheets)
  • 3 paper trays (programmable)
  • Inserter
  • Hole punch
  • Stitching unit
  • Collator
  • Scanning board (scan direct to PDF / email / or local box)
  • GA1120 Adobe postscript board with onboard harddrive

This printer will print 81 pages per minute. Originally purchased for my company and no longer required due to change in business plan.

Printer is in excellent working condition, clean and low page count (721257). Imaging drum was installed at about 600K impressions and leaves no marks. Glass is clean and unmarked.

For more details and photos, please see my ad on Kijiji.ca.

ExpressionEngine Ping Server List

Posted by jriordon on September 30th, 2009

Updated Ping List: October 21st 2009

This is a quick hack and a ping server list. The hack is to allow ping servers that require a port number that has more than 4 digits (i.e. icerocket.com requires port 10800). The list is mostly from this post, and has been edited due to a couple of bad reponses.

Please backup everything before doing these changes! I mean it!

The Hack:
First you need to update the DB table for pings so that you can store ports that are longer than 4 digits. This change will not delete anything from your databases.

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. alter table exp_ping_servers change column port port varchar(5) not null default 80

The next hack is to the core of EE (I hate doing this but don't know of a way to make a plugin for this).

Using your favourite editor, simply alter one line in /system/cp/cp.publish_ad.php. Change line 9154 (or there abouts) from:

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. $DSP->table_qcell($style, $DSP->input_text('server_port_'.$i, $row['port'], '2', '4', 'input', '30px'), '5%').

to:

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. $DSP->table_qcell($style, $DSP->input_text('server_port_'.$i, $row['port'], '2', '5', 'input', '35px'), '5%').

That's it! Now you can enter ports with more than 4 digits in them.

Here is the ping server list as promised formatted in MySQL so that you can easily import it into your ExpressionEngine install. If you already have ping servers installed, this list will not remove them, so you may end up with dupes.

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. insert into exp_ping_servers (site_id,member_id,server_name,server_url,port,ping_protocol,is_default,server_order) values
  2. (1,0,'blogrolling','http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  3. (1,0,'technorati','http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  4. (1,0,'weblogs','http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  5. (1,0,'yahoo','http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  6. (1,0,'newsgator','http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  7. (1,0,'moreover','http://api.moreover.com/RPC2',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  8. (1,0,'blogpeople','http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  9. (1,0,'feedburner','http://ping.feedburner.com/',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  10. (1,0,'syndic8','http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  11. (1,0,'blogsearch.google','http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  12. (1,0,'icerocket','http://rpc.icerocket.com/',10080,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  13. (1,0,'pingomatic','http://rpc.pingomatic.com/',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  14. (1,0,'blog.goo','http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  15. (1,0,'pubsub','http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  16. (1,0,'livedoor','http://rpc.reader.livedoor.com/ping',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  17. (1,0,'wordblog','http://ping.wordblog.de/',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  18. (1,0,'moreover','http://api.moreover.com/RPC2',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  19. (1,0,'blogsearch.google.at','http://blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  20. (1,0,'weblogalot','http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  21. (1,0,'bloggers.jp','http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  22. (1,0,'blogsearch.google.d','http://blogsearch.google.de/ping/RPC2',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  23. (1,0,'namaan.net','http://ping.namaan.net/rpc',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  24. (1,0,'technorati.jp','http://rpc.technorati.jp/rpc/ping',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  25. (1,0,'zhuaxia.com','http://zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  26. (1,0,'bloglines.com','http://www.bloglines.com/ping',80,'xmlrpc','y',5),
  27. (1,0,'bloggerei.de','http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/',80,'xmlrpc','y',5);

If you wish to wipe out clean your list of ping servers, first issue this in MySQL:

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. delete from exp_ping_servers;

From what I see, setting the member_id to zero, will allow for the ping servers to be viewed and used by any member with publishing rights. Otherwise, I presume you would set the member_id to a specific user. site_id = 1 is for single sites. If you have a MSM with more than one site, you will need to adjust as necessary.

Hopefully this helps some folks out.

Previous Articles

Apple Customer service disaster

Posted by jriordon on September 25th, 2009

Code-breaker Turing should be pardoned

Posted by jriordon on September 5th, 2009

Metaweblog ExpressionEngine with Adobe Contribute

Posted by jriordon on August 20th, 2009

Displaying out links in WordPress Posts

Posted by jriordon on August 12th, 2009

WREN’s at Station X

Posted by jriordon on August 7th, 2009