So I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I'm now running that cocktail recipe site. Well, in order to get more traffic, I'm running a contest. If you have a blog or site and are willing to link to the site, or submit a recipe of your own, you can win an iPod Touch! Enter now!

I'm quite happy to be the proud owner of a shiny new iPhone, which may or may not be unlocked and running on Roger's network in Canada.

Now, hypothetically, if someone else were to unlock said iPhone, and want to use it with their current data plan through Roger's, they will find that the standard EDGE settings simply don't work. The iPhone accepts them, and seems to connect, but no data is sent or received, it just hangs on web pages and mail connections.

So I did some searching around the web, and I found EDGE settings that work. Just go to Settings > General > Network > EDGE, and enter:

APN: internet.com
user: guest
pass: guest

And it works! Voila, iPhone data-rich goodness all over Canada!

This is perhaps the coolest thing the Mac/PC world has ever seen! With the latest release of VMWare, there's an app/feature called fusion, which allows you to virtually run the Windows applications right within Mac OS X! You can minimize to the dock, you have the same drop shadow effects, it truly is like running any other Mac application!

I want it! Now!

Oh man, I have to admit that more than ever do I want an iPhone. I've gone through phases of want since it was announced. When Steve Jobs first verified that the rumours are true, I immediately wanted one, and ate up everything I saw and read about them. Then of course came the critics, highlighting all the shortcomings, such as a closed architecture, the price, etc, and my interest wained. However, as of late I'm right back at the "really wanting" state, for three reasons:

1. It was announced today that the iPhone will be available in the US as of June 20th. I guess that means it will follow shortly thereafter for Canada, or at least I hope!
2. My cell phone is crappy, and my PocketPC is only wireless when I can find a strong hotspot. The video is OK, the sound is fine, but Windows Media for mobile is not the greatest program. The contact management and calendaring stink, so I'd love the ease of use and slick interface of the iPhone.
3. Despite the critics' claims, the phone really does have some great functionality, including integrated maps and visual voice mail.

Of course, it's not just a matter of being able to afford the phone itself. At first I thought I should maybe also invest in some sort of screen protection for iPhone, but then I realized that I don't use a stylus, I use my fingers. And seeing as I moisturize so regularly, my fingers are smooth, and shouldn't scratch the screen. However, I will most probably buy an iPhone case. I can't tell you how many times I drop my phone every week. In fact, I once dropped it while riding my bike, and then ran over it. So yes, a case would be a good idea.

So, if any of you regular visitors really like me and/or the valuable content on my site, feel free to buy me one!

My new MacBook kept dropping its Wireless connection, every single time I opened the laptop and would wake it from sleep. Basically, I'd have to manually re-connect 2 or 3 times until the connection stuck, and I kept getting an error message saying "Error connecting to network 'jc'".

I first called support thinking it was my router. But then doing a bit of digging on the internet, I found out that this is a common issue with Macs, and there are the six simple steps to fixing it permanently:

1. Go to Preferences–>Network
2. Add a new location
3. In the Show: menu, go to Network Port Configurations
4. Make sure AirPort is checked (it should be by default)
5. Drag Airport to the top of the list (above Modem)
6. Click Apply and watch your signal meter. In about a second, it'll pop back to life.

(I also disable BlueTooth and FireWire, just because I don't need them at home)

Lately I've been looking for a utility to backup my Mac automatically to a network share – which is actually on a PC. Of course, I don't actually like buying software, so I was hunting for something with the 'free backup utility' phrase associated with it .

I found SilverKeeper, a free Mac backup application. It has a very (almost too) simple, easy to understand interface. You set your source, destination, and schedule when you want it to run. You can set up different backup sets from within the application. A backup set is basically just the source to backup and the preferences to go with it. You can choose to exclude certain directories (I don't backup my music).

I have found it a little slow in backing up to a network share. I'd almost prefer something that backs up to an encrypted, compressed file, which I can then quickly transfer over the network. Though I suppose that would take out some of the automation, now wouldn't it!

I wanted to write a quick post to tell the world of what has been one of the best purchases I've made in a very long time. In fact, as far as technology goes, I'd say this gadget is second only to my Macbook in terms of how useful it has been!

Basically, I was looking for a good wireless 3-button mouse for my Macbook. Making the switch to a Mac was fairly easy, but I still need my 3 buttons! Also, I wanted something that was portable, but not as small and hard to use as many laptop mice.

I was shopping for some cheap Macbook RAM at NCIX, and I though that I may as well grab a cheap mouse while I was at it. I stumbled across the black BenQ M310+ Wireless Rechargable Optical Scroll Mouse. Here's a photo:

Anyhow, the mouse has been just awesome, I'm very glad I bought it. The little USB dongle tucks into the mouse itself when it's being stored. The batteries are rechargeable, and they're actually recharged by a USB cable that comes with the mouse! That means that you can still use the mouse while it's recharging. The batteries last for a very long time, it's quite surprising just how seldom I need to get out the USB cable.

Also, the mouse itself has a nice sturdy feel, it's doesn't feel at all like a cheap laptop mouse. It's just the right size, in that it's small enough to transport easily and tuck away in the laptop bag, but not so small that it's uncomfortable to use.

If ever this mouse breaks or dies, I will be buying exactly the same one again!

One of Mac's slogans is "it just works". Well, this week I've found an exception to that. It was all running just fine, then I decided to upgrade to Macromedia/Adobe Flash 9 on my new(ish) MacBook. The installation appears to have worked just fine. but when I tun on my browser, it's obvious that it failed, as the 'missing plugin' notification appears – both in FireFox and in Safari.

I tried down-grading to Flash 8, that didn't work. I tried the fixes on various forums, they were no good. Finally I stumbled across a fix in VersionTracker. It turns out that the Flash installer is not using super user privileges, therefore it can't write to the /Library/Internet Plugins directory. I also found this hack to make it work (you should know a little about unix shell commands):

This is what i did:

1. Open Terminal.app

2. Type:

cd "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/"
3. Look at the owner of the Internet Plug-Ins directory by typing:

ls -la | grep " .$"
4. In the command result is the owner name, remember it

drwxr-xr-x 31 OWNERNAME admin 1054 Feb 25 10:54 .
5. Change the owner temporarily to your user name:

sudo chown MYUSERNAME .
6. Remove old flash installation files:

rm -rf flashplayer.xpt
rm -rf "Flash Player.plugin"
rm -rf "Flash Player Enabler.plugin"
7. Launch the Macromedia installer (yet again)

8. Change back the owner of the directory:

sudo chown OWNERNAME .
Just as the original poster, I take NO RESPONSIBILITY if you made mistakes and something screws up.

So I've been looking around for ways to automate a regular backup on my Macbook to my server, which is a PC. I found some free software (which I'll blog about later), mounted the network path as a drive, and ran the backup.

But if I realized that if I want to automate it, I'll have to have the drive mounted automatically as well, otherwise the backup will fail. So I did some digging online, and found out that's it's incredibly easy to auto-mount a network share when you logon to your Mac.

All you need to do is just mount the drive once, make a link (by dragging the drive icon into an empty folder) and then dragging the link into the login items. Alternately, within login items, you can just select the share/drive, and add it to the list.

I recently downloaded a Spanish movie with English subtitles. When I opened the movie .avi file, the subtitles didn't appear. It turns out that they are loaded from a separate .srt file.

I did some digging, and found the information I needed in a forum. To view .srt files on a Mac, you need to use a video playing app called VLC. It's free, and can be downloaded here.

Once you're running VLC, go to preferences and deselect 'automatically detect subtitle files'. Then choose the subtitle file to be played with the movie using the 'browse' button (select both files). It’s not automatic but it works!

I imagine you could do exactly the same thing to view .srt files in Windows, but I haven't verified that.