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Lock the 1Password Keychain with a QuickSilver Trigger

Posted at June 4, 2008 12:58 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

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QuickSilver IconEarlier today I was looking for a way to lock the 1Password keychain using a keyboard shortcut. The easiest way I could think of doing this is with QuickSilver (namely, a QuickSilver trigger). I found this forum post that describes a terminal command that can be used to lock keychains. I put together the attached script so that this can easily be setup as a QuickSilver trigger. It’s a really simple script, only one line of code:
security lock-keychain 1Password.keychain (more…)

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My Experience With Time Machine

Posted at May 28, 2008 3:56 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

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Time Machine IconLast night I ended up having to do a full restore of my MacBook Pro using Time Machine. I was trying to uninstall libusb, SANE, and some other utilities that do not have proper uninstallers. I wrote a shell script that got a list of all the files added by the installer (using the lsbom command line utility) and deleted them. Unfortunately it somehow also deleted my entire /Applications folder, and who knows what else. My bad.

Luckily for me, Time Machine had just finished a backup before I started. I didn’t have much confidence / hope that it would do a good job of doing the restore, but it did much better than I expected.

I booted from the OS X Leopard install DVD and chose Restore System from Time Machine Backup from the Utilities menu. It found my My Book hard drive that is attached to my AirPort Extreme (and has my Time Machine backup on it). Logging into the drive and starting the restore was very easy and straight forward.

The restore took about 3 - 4 hours (over 100Mb ethernet). Everything looked good when I started the laptop. I logged in as usual and everything seemed to be OK. I only ran into a couple of issues. (more…)

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SuperDuper! Becomes Leopard Compatible!

Posted at February 5, 2008 10:27 am | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

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The long awaited version 2.5 of Shirt Pocket’s SuperDuper! backup application for OS X has finally released.

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Adobe CS3: ExtendScript Toolkit 2 Error on OS X

Posted at January 7, 2008 8:24 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

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I was reinstalling part of Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 (Web Premium) last night, and after it had reinstalled the shared components it asked me to “Please Insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to Continue Installation.” There isn’t any CD labeled anything like that with CS3.

I found the fix here: elaine montoya » Blog Archive » Workaround: Please Insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to Continue Installation.
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NoScript Provides Additional Security

Posted at December 16, 2007 12:16 am | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

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The popular NoScript addon for Firefox, which used to be primarily used for blocking Javascript (for security reasons) now allows easier blocking of Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime, Sun Java, and Microsoft Silverlight content. This used to be possible using the Flashblock addon, but the catch 22 with that is that it only works on pages which you have javascript enabled for (which obviously defeats the point). (more…)

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Allow Non-admin Users to Update Firefox

Posted at December 15, 2007 12:06 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

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We recently noticed a problem where Firefox would prompt users (who are not administrators on their workstations) to update to the latest version (ie, from 2.0.0.8 to 2.0.0.9). If they tried to complete the update however, it would fail, giving the error “Software Update Failed”.

We decided the best solution was to come up with a way to let users update Firefox themselves, without being made local admins. The reason we wanted them to be able to do this is that IT doesn’t get around to everyone’s workstation often enough to keep up with the latest version of Firefox, and we felt that it was important for them to have that (for security reasons). (more…)

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Apple Updates

Posted at November 14, 2007 5:18 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

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I just got a bunch of updates from Apple.

iPhoto, Pro Apps, and each individual pro app (at least each FCS2) all got updates, I assume to improve compatibility with Leopard.

I hadn’t personally noticed any problems, but I’m sure some users will be happy to see these.

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TubeSock

Posted at February 19, 2007 11:18 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

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Found some really awesome software today called TubeSock.
It’ll take either a URL or a YouTube ID as input, download the movie on that page, and convert it for use with your iPod video.
The developer is really cool, and is working on adding support for additional services (ie Google Video), so if you need some software that can do this, check it out. It’s $15 to register, but there is a trial version that’ll do up to 30 seconds of videos.
There are both Windows and Mac versions. :)

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