Snow Leopard – How To Restore Contacts From Leopard

If you’re like me, don’t make copies of anything, do a clean install for a new operating system, and restore everything from a Time Machine backup, you might or might not have noticed Snow Leopard doesn’t have your Contacts, until you try to type in an email or name and Mail doesn’t autocomplete it for you. Snow Leopard will also not let you open Address Book and use time machine to restore the individual contacts with time machine, so here’s what you do:

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How to be Friends with Geeks/Nerds

Here I am, sitting in my chair, thinking what I could possible write about that would have any reason. Politics? No, to debatable. Music? Nah not my thing. Hmm… How people socially interact? Ah! I got an idea! A lot of people ignore geeks in their schools, simply because they are afraid that they don’t know how to talk to them. Being, a geek myself, I know exactly how to make friends with other geeks, and how normal people can befriend them too. I’m writing this so when school starts people know how to include nerds and geeks as friends, and don’t alienate them. Here’s a simple guide on a fool-proof way to befriend a “g33k” (that’s “geek” for all of you who can speak elite), in 6 easy steps.

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Whale Wars: Fight for The Endangered Whales

Now, you may have heard of the “tuna-dolphin case“, which banned the import of tuna into the United States from countries which did not have a program in place to protect dolphins from being caught in nets and killed with the fish. Now, it is not the dolphins in question, but the whales. Japan, an island country found in eastern asian, east of China has been catching and killing whales, some of them protected species in whale sanctuaries. There are two groups involving the whaling controversy, Japan’s Fisheries Agency, and non-profit environmental organization protection group called the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, featured on the show Whale Wars on the Discovery Networks Animal Planet Channel. These two groups have been fighting it out over who has the law on their side. I’m going to tell you not who is right or wrong, but what you need to know to make that decision, and when you do, post your in the comments. Read more

Introduction to Terminal for Disk Maintenance

If you’re following me on Twitter, you know about my tweets about my hate for Disk Utility. For some reason, even off clean installs, Disk Utility, whenever used to manage partitions, always will have a spaz attack mid-operation and cause a kernel panic. This would not be such a big deal all in itself, but since a kernel panic is an even worse version of a unclean shutdown, file corruption is always a likely outcome. To me, it’s not worth risking data loss, seeing as a I have irreplaceable data on my hard drive, such as the hundreds of photographs I’ve taken. I plan to show you the basic things most people use Disk Utility for and how to do those things much more reliably in Terminal.

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Photo Update

Here are some random photos, I’ve been caught up in schoolwork lately so it’s hard to find time to maintain this site. Check back soon for updates.

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Illustrator Screencast: Glossy Text and Reflections

Click Download Link to download full resolution screencast. This makes it a lot easier to see what I’m doing, and makes the color look better.

Due to my webhost being total pricks, where there used to be an embedded video, is now nothing. I am now in the process of uploading this video to Vimeo as StartLogic doesn’t seem to notice in the contract it said “unlimited bandwidth”.

How To Create Glossy Text In Adobe Illustrator from Josh Crane on Vimeo.

Replacement Background

Another one of my first attempt images. Deleted the background in Photoshop Extended CS4 and applied the gradient and watermark in Pixelmator. Don’t know how to get the edges to look more natural.

*First* Partial Black & White Image

Here is my first ever attempt at a Partial Black & White Image made using Photoshop, and watermarked with Pixelmator. Feel free to comment.

Prank Your Local Mac User(s)

For those of us that are Mac users, you may feel left out of all the pranks there are for Windows because of the Mac OS’s security features. I have a really fun one today. If you know a Mac user(s) who has their desktop icons all clean and organized, this wreaks havoc. You also dont need the password because you don’t need to use sudo. First, open up Terminal.

/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

Type in the following.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

Then…

killall Finder

What you just did is make Finder show you all the hidden files and folders. Now, go to their desktop and delete a file named .DS_Store. This is the file that Desktop Services stores (See why it’s called .DS_store now?) it’s icon information.

DO NOT forget to type in this when you’re done.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

One last command…

killall Finder

Although it will automatically regenerate a clean .DS_Store file at reboot. Rebooting is only optional. I wouldn’t do it, especially if the computer if password-protected, like mine ALWAYS is from certain older and younger, non-geeky family members… So just wait for them to have to reboot, they will login as normal, and all their icons will no longer be all clean and organized. This will immediately trigger a “ZOMGWTF!?” reaction. Cheers!

E-Mail: admin@joshcranephoto.com

Josh Crane Photo Blog Gets A New Look

My blog, as you might have noticed, has not been updated in a while. No, I wasnt in a coma :P , I was looking for a good theme and working on my pictures. I also had some trouble with updating WordPress to 2.6, but thankfully it was resolved. I hope you enjoy the website’s new look and feel as much as I do. If you have any comments of suggestions, please, email me.

E-Mail: admin@joshcranephoto.com