OS X Leopard – Losing WiFi Settings

OS X Leopard

We just had a PowerPC G4 Macbook Pro in with Leopard running on it. A bit long in the tooth (especially with 512MB RAM) but working fine nonetheless. Well fine except the WiFi settings seemed to be getting lost each time the machine slept or was rebooted. You’d have to click on the list of available wireless networks to connect to the access point and re-enter the WPA Key every single time.

After much poking about and updating everything we could, we decided to tackle another issue – DVD Player was launching every time the user logged in so we wanted to remove it from Login Items. Off we went to System Preferences > Accounts > “Your Account” > Login Items and deleted DVD Player from the list. We left iTunes Helper and MobileConnect in the list.

This simple act of removing DVD Player from the Login or Startup Items FIXED THE WIFI PROBLEM! Go figure.

Analyze Windows 7 System Resources

How To Quickly View And Analyze System Resources When Using Windows 7

While using Windows, it may become necessary to find out CPU usage, memory usage , disk as well as network usage especially when trying to troubleshoot performance issues.

Windows comes with a handy dashboard that shows all of the above information at a glance. Continue reading »

Windows 7 Taskbar Icons

2 Ways To Enable Or Disable System Icons on Windows 7 Taskbar

The default Windows 7 settings for taskbar includes all the system icons like clock, volume, network, power and action center as being active and displayed.

In order for any of these system icons to prevent from being displayed in Windows 7 taskbar: Continue reading »

Laptop Disassembly Tips

Precision Screwdriver Set

Here are a few tips that may help you strip down and reassemble laptops:

• Use a digital camera or camera phone to take a shot of each stage of the disassembly for reference when you are ready to reassemble it. Zoom in and take separate shots for areas where you have various plugs and connectors or wires running in a specifc way so you know exactly how they were before you took them apart. (unless you have a really good memory!)
• Use scrap sheets of A4 paper to map out screw positions. Sketch a point (or points) of reference like a battery compartment or RAM module cover on the paper so you know what way up it goes and stick each screw to the paper with clear tape so when you’re finished taking all the screws out of the bottom of the laptop they will all be stuck in their corresponding positions on the piece of paper. Depending on the laptop I may have 2 or 3 sheets of paper with screws on – bottom of unit, under the keyboard and motherboard screws. Doing this will be a great help if you have to leave the laptop disassembled for some time (e.g. to order parts etc) as you will have no doubt as to which screws go where. Some makes and models will use the same length screws for most of the base assembly but others have all different lengths which makes it all the more important to remember where they go back. A ‘too-long’ screw in the wrong place could cause major damage! Continue reading »

Cutting out the Background

Cutting out the Background

Photoshop is a powerful tool and a bit like my human brain;  I know how to use only about 10% of it.

Much of this is because there are lots of tools and techniques that I don’t use often enough to remember all the steps required to achieve a certain result.

Clicking the Magic Wand and pressing delete is easy. Some images lend themselves well to the Magnetic Lasso Tool. But there are some images that end up looking like you cut them out with pinking shears no matter how good your Lasso and Magic Wand skills are.

Particularly troublesome are images where you need to cut around animal fur and human hair. The following is a dual tutorial that I found and bookmarked. Rather than using a layer mask, the author uses a colour channel and the burn tool to create a selection that really works well with the right images. Lets go!

http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/handy-techniques-for-cutting-out-hair-in-photoshop