Ramblings, ideas, problems, and solutions

Category: Operating systems

  • Deleting protected EFI disk partitions

    A while back, one of my laptops kicked the bucket. The cost to repair it was too high, and I opted to get the laptop back to scavenge the parts. In particular, I wanted to get my hands on the hard drive, a solid state wonder with a capacity of 240 GB. I invested in…

  • How to print booklets from your Mac

    As a voracious reader, I have, from time to time, a need to print long-ish documents. To avoid carrying more pages than I need, I like to print the document in Booklet format, saddle stapling them. Unlike Windows, there is not option to print in booklet format in Mac OS X. Looking around for alternatives,…

  • Fixing “The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship”

    When working in a corporate environment with Active Directory, you may, from time to time, encounter computers that users cannot log on to, as they receive an error message saying:   The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship.   Though there can be several reasons…

  • Overcoming the Unity bug when running Shadowrun Returns on Mac OS X Mountain Lion

    Last Thursday, Shadowrun Returns was released, to an eagerly expectant group of kickstarter backers, myself included. Imagine my disappointment when I had installed it, and it crashed during startup. As it turns out, I was not alone in this. Apparently, it is a known bug in Unity which causes the issue. Here is how to…

  • Set default calendar on iOS

    I have been a very happy user of iPhone for a long time now. It works great, and it syncs my appointments with my Google Calendar. Lately, though, I’ve needed to put appointments into my calendar while on the go. For some reason, they were not showing up in my Google Calendar. It turned out,…

  • What I like about iOS 7

    Last week’s post was dedicated to a look at what I think Apple should have done in iOS 7. Now for a look at what exites me about iOS 7:   Control Center No more fiddling about, opening Settings to turn on or off airplane mode, wireless network, bluetooth and sleep mode. About time they…

  • What Apple should have changed in iOS 7

    With last week’s iteration of Apple’s WWDC, they announced a new version of their mobile device OS, iOS 7, with the focus being on a major redesign, and a move away from skeuomorphism. Now, sure, the redesign looks nifty and all, but you know what? I was pretty happy with the old skeuomorphic design. Changing…

  • How to: Set any picture as your profile picture on Mac OS

    For the longest time, I had been annoyed that I was unable to set a custom image as my profile image in Mac OS X. After all, it’s my machine, and it’s a fairly basic function; I should be able to simply browse to it. As it turns out, you can’t simply browse to it.…

  • Access hidden folders on Mac OS X

    As of Mac OS X Lion, Apple made a number of changes to the visibility of various folders, most notably the /Library folder.   For a number of troubleshooting tasks, you may need to access these folders, and luckily, there is a fairly simple way of achieving this. Simply use the hotkey commbination Cmd+Shift+G, then…

  • Downgrading to a previous version of FotoStation

    As a FotoWare Customer Support Engineer, one of the issues I see on a somewhat regular basis, is that users have installed the most recent version of FotoStation, without having a valid license for that version. Simply put, if so, they will not be able to run FotoStation. On Windows, you simply uninstall the new…

  • iOS 6’s best new feature: Do Not Disturb

    One feature that I have been missing on my iPhone, even though I didn’t realise it, is a way to have the iPhone be quiet when I want it to, but intelligently so. What I mean, is that I want it to be able to let calls from important people (such as my wife and…