no place like home (and end keys) on a mac

By Josh Highland in hacks, hardware, mac, software, windows

keyfixer

I never noticed how often I use the “home” and “end” keys when I type until they were taken away from me. I am a programmer by trade, and as a result, I type code all day long. On a PC the end key will take you to the end of a line, and the home key will bring you to the beginning of a line. On a mac, this functionality doesn’t exist. It’s simple missing! It just makes a “ding” at me

Maybe it would be different if I was using a mac keyboard with my mac mini. Right now I am using a KVM switch to share my microsoft mouse and keyboard with my PC and my Mini. As a result, My mind and hands continue to type and work just like I was coding using a PC. “DING DING DING” damn its annoying. I had no idea i hit those keys so often, but the mini does a good job at reminding me 🙁

I tried to live with it but it got old fast. I decided to do a google search for “home end keys mac” to see if there was a fix for this. The first result was a God send. keyfixer is a tiny application for pc-to-mac switchers like me, that remaps your keyboard and adds back the functionality of the home and end keys.

It’s amazing how much more productive I feel just by having those 2 keys back. I guess after 15+ years of typing/programing for a living, the home and end keys are a perminiate part of my arsenal and I will never underestimate their power ever again.

Manually reset your WordPress password

By Josh Highland in hacks, internet, MySQL, software, tutorials, windows, wordpress

lost-wordpress-password

It doesn’t matter what application your working with, losing your password is always a pain in the ass. Luckly if you are working with wordpress (man, I blog a lot about wordpress these days), on your server and you have access to the MySql database, resetting your password manually is a snap.

  • Login to your PhpMyAdmin
  • Select your WordPress database and click on the “SQL” button to open the SQL query window.

wordpress-phpmyadmin

  • Paste the following code in the window textarea. (Don’t forget to modify the password and username before executing it)

UPDATE ‘wp_users’ SET ‘user_pass’ = MD5(‘PASSWORD’) WHERE ‘user_login’ =’admin’;

That’s it! Your password has been reset, and you should be able to login to your wordpress admin area once again.


			



	

		
My Media Center Died, Time For A New One
		
By Josh Highland in hardware, Josh's Rambling, linux, mac, software, windows 
	

		
 
		


I have blogged about it before, I have a HTPC (home theatre pc) running in my living room, hooked to my TV. I started off with MythTV, but settled on Window Media Center 2005.


When I first built the Media Center machine, I had basic cable, with no DVR, so I let the media center handle all of that. Now I have Verizon FIOS with HD, and one of their HD DVR Boxes, and I rarely use my media center pc, but its always nice to be able to flip the input over to it and watch youtube and browse the web. I also like the fact that I can download all sorts of movies and tv from the darkside of the web and watch them on the tv. That was a huge plus.


For a while now, the Media Center has been acting funny. I built it on a shoe string budget with some questionable parts I had laying around, so I didn’t expect it to live forever. The other day it stopped working all together.


Today I took it apart to see what the problem was. After some investigation, I found the cheap power supply was dead, and it took the mother board/processor with it. FAIL!


Well, here I am at a cross roads. Before it was a matter of software, now I need new hardware. What do you think I should build or buy?


The main things I’m looking for in a HTPC


    

  • Ability to browse the web
    • 

  • Watch Videos I download form the internet, mostly divX files
    • 

  • Small form factor
    • 

  • Doesn’t really look like a computer
    • 

  • Blu-ray is a bonus
    • 



Should I build another Window xp MCE machine, Windows Vista Ultimate, mac Mini, apple TV, myth TV? I don’t even know where to start.


I’ll blog my research as I go. Lets see what you think I should do.

			



	

		
Mac IN my PC – LEO4VMWARE
		
By Josh Highland in hacks, mac, semi-legal, software, windows 
	

		
 
		


If you have been following my blog, you an read that my PC died, and for a moment, I installed OS X Leopard on it. Well, my new drive from western digital arrived, and I am back working in Vista now (I’m not sure if that is a good thing or not!).


Parallels makes it easy to run Windows inside of Mac, but I haven’t found a good way to run Mac inside of windows. Previously, I used a project called “LEO4ALL” to install Leopard on my PC. A little bit of Googeling around after I installed Vista, I found “LEO4VMWARE”


LEO4VMWARE is a pre-packaged and running distribution of OS X Leopard for the vmware, a virtual machine software. You can download the vmware payer here http://vmware.com/download/player.


Side Note: I’m going to be honest here, you are going to want to get vmware workstation, so you can tweak the performance settings. If you are looking at virtually putting OS X on your pc, you have enough smarts to download vmware desktop for free, and then find a serial number.


What this all means is all you have to do is download LEO4VMWARE and install vmware and you are off and running!


I have gotten it to work (not well, but it worked) on a pentium 4 3 ghz windows xp computer with 3 gigs of ram. On my intel core 2 duo, 3ghz, 4 gigs of ram running vista to work great! Check out the picture below.




Getting networking can be tricky, so read the posts on how to do it here


Downloads for LEO4VMWARE can be found by going here http://www.mediafire.com/?ggkr1obgrft, downloading the zip and looking at the links inside. I personally suggest buying a month of rapid share and downloading for there. LEO4VMWARE is about 3 gigs, and rapidshare offers amazing download speeds.

			



	

		
The Windows tools that I use
		
By Josh Highland in Josh's Rambling, software, windows 
	

		
 
		
windows_tools.jpg


I am not a huge fan of windows, but it the operating system I have been running for the past 14 years (if you dont count college, or my current laptop… both were/are linux based). I have Windows Vista at home, and I have to use Windows XP at work.


Over the years, I have found programs that have worked for me. They have worked well, and helped me to get things done. I decided to make a list of the applications that I use on a rather regular basis. These are the things that I would for sure reinstall if my computer was to die tonight. Most of the software is free, and open source. As a result, many of the programs I am about to list also are available for Linux and Apple OSX. So here is the list of windows program that I love, in no particular order (expect Firefox, its at the top of the list)


Web Browsing:



File Searching:



File Comparison:



Text Editor:



Sound Editing:



Windows Enhancements:



Instant Messaging:



CD Burning:



Anti-virus:



Spyware:



Image sharing/hosting:





VOIP:




P2P:




Backup:



    

  • 	carbonite (http://www.carbonite.com)
    
$50 a year for unlimited off site backup? you better believe i use this. you should also!
    • 



Blogging:



Programming:



SSH:



RSS Reader:



FTP:



Key Logging: