Telephone and Remote Support for OS X Server in Somerset

Posted on October 9, 2010

We solved an OS X Server problem that no one else seemed able to – using our Mac Telephone Support and Remote Mac Support services.

A Mac using design agency in Ilminster, Somerset gave me a call yesterday about a problem they were having with their OS X Server installation, that was stopping them using Traffic, their Wordflow Management Software. They couldn’t login using their normal local user details. They’d phoned around a number of places, including Western Computer in Bristol, who’d had managed to get them as far as enabling the root user account, but didn’t progress things any further.

I quickly got a remote support session setup using iChat and surprisingly easily solved it. For whatever reason the local user’s password seemed to have got corrupted. Quickly adding a new user confirmed that the local Users database was not corrupt, so we simply backed up the user data, recreated the account, did a quick bit of Terminal.app magic and problem solved. All rather basic.

There was a message appearing in the system.log that seemed to suggest that the LDAP server was repeatedly crashing – (org.openldap.slapd995): Exited with exit code: 1 – but that will have to stay for another day as they weren’t using any of the authentication services that would require it, such as File Sharing.

Need help with configuring OS X Server? Then why not give us a call?

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OS X Security vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Flash

Posted on October 6, 2010

New vulnerabilities that leave your Mac open to potentially getting infected with “malware’ have been patched by Adobe.

If you follow the Mac or PC security landscape, you’ll know that a very large number of exploits are targetted againt 2 products. Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Flash Player. Why? Simply put, because they have plugins for your web browser, and hence you can have a 95+% certainty that any hack aimed at them will be able to execute. You visit a web page that has an “infected” PDF or .swf file, when this file opens it tries to “infect” your Mac or PC by exploiting programming mistakes that Adobe or Apple have made.

Adobe keep releasing updates to both Acrobat, Acrobat Reader and Flash Player. You would be wise to constantly update all 3 pieces of software to unsure that your computer is at less risk of getting infected with “malware”, regardless of whether you use a Mac or PC.

Update Flash Player:
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Update Acrobat Reader:
http://get.adobe.com/reader/

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WordPress site developed for Bath publisher

Posted on October 5, 2010

We’ve recently been working for Spaced, a design and publishing agency near Bath, doing the web development for their latest project. They’re publishing a graphic novel, Yuri’s Day : The Road to the Stars to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight, and needed to publicise it via the web.

They  needed an easy to use Content Management System that could create content that was as Search Engine Optimised as possible, but on a lean budget. So that meant WordPress. Sweet-Apple was commissioned to create a custom WordPress skin from the designs Spaced provided, find suitable plugins to enable updating Twitter and FaceBook from within the blog and integrating Mailchimp into the mix.

It’s a fairly radical departure from the average WordPress site and makes use of Custom Post Types, Social Networking integration, email marketing, advanced search engine optimisation and a whole lot more.

The graphic novel will be released in late November and looks absolutely fabulous. Over the coming weeks they’ll be adding more content to the site.

I’ve got my copy ordered already. It’s a fascinating story about one of the epoch making events of the last 20th Century…

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What to do when you you spill liquid on your MacBook

Posted on October 4, 2010

Sometimes it’s best not to do things in a hurry. Like absent-mindedly picking a glass up and pouring a pint of water all over your MacBook. Now obviously I’d never be so stupid as to do that, would I? Errrr, well yes, sadly it appears I am.

If you do have the misfortune of pouring liquids into your MacBook, you need to act very very quickly. Immediately pull out the power cable and take the battery out. And I mean immediately. Don’t bother with the niceties of trying to shut it down properly, as during that time water is creeping towards the really expensive stuff in your laptop.

Then immediately turn the computer over and try to dab the worse of the liquid with tissue paper. If it’s just water, things aren’t looking so bad. If it’s wine, coffee, or coke life will get messy. Take the top cover off the laptop and make sure no liquid has penetrated inside the case. If it has, you need to remove the excess with tissue paper, then try to wash it with a cotton bud dipped in some rubbing alcohol or distilled water. Then put the laptop in an airing cupboard or strong direct light for a long while to evaporate any excess liquid.

Most of the liquid will have entered into the keyboard, so you need to make sure it’s all evaporated before trying to reattach it. Leave it on a radiator for a few hours or days.

When you’re confident all the liquid has been removed, reattach and see all the keys still function. You can use Keyboard Viewer to check each and every key. If you’re really lucky they’ll all work fine. If your not, you’ll have to replace the keyboard.

Sadly I wasn’t lucky, so I’ll be be repairing my damaged MacBook keyboard using Sweet-Apple’s Mac hardware repair service later on this week…

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5 free credits for BigStockPhoto.com

Posted on October 3, 2010

Everyone knows about iStockPhoto, and everyone knows how the price of credits keeps rising. But have you tried BigStockPhoto? Currently they are running a promotional coupon that lets new or existing customers claim 5 free credits. Just use code 5FGM10 when you purchase new credits. Work fine for me as of 02/10/2010.

This was very timely, as I needed to buy an image for an marketing email I will shortly be sending out to Bath based  design agencies, advertising my services as a freelance web developer. So if you get my “Freelance code monkey for hire” email, you’ll know where the monkey picture came from!

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