After having wireless issues with my old Mac Book Pro (2006) I decided to get an Airport Express to see if that would solve my problems.

My Mac Book pro has had problems connecting to my BTHome-Hub (first gen white one), I then order a new HomeHub 3 the black one to see if that would make any difference. It worked for all of ten minutes about 20 foot away from the wireless router. Even changing the channels again made no difference to the connection and it would always time out.

Airport Express

I plugged in the airport express and after some configuring created a new wireless connection from it. The laptop wireless connection now works, although it’s still upstairs sitting next to the BTHome-hub. Can’t figure out if the laptop is picking up the 2.4ghz or the 5ghz connection but all seems fine and. So to anyone else who might of had issues, and it could be to do with interference from other wireless devices; this seem to have solved my problems.

Will write up a guide to what I did to install it as even though you expect it to be easy some things do require a guide. I haven’t managed to get the Airport Express to work as an extension of the wireless signal, so that I can have the Airport downstairs plugged in to speakers for Air Play to work. I will have a go at that and see if it’s as easy as the setup says it is!

Originally I had renamed my wireless connection and set the channel manually, when it reset itself to the factory settings the macbook pro wouldn’t connected at all, it did try but no usable connection was available. My iPad, iPhone and iMac all connected fine, so I assumed it was the laptop which had the problem, I even tried it on other routers and internet providers; nothing!

I visited the Apple Store in Cambridge today to see if it was indeed an airport problem, after about ten minutes of checking with all the browsers it worked fine. The chap ran a diagnostic on the laptop and again everything fine.

So back home after resetting the hub ans changing the channel, but not the password or name the router comes with and SUCCESS, it now works again. Anyway here is what I had to do just to get access to the hub as those pesky passwords and usernames I had forgotten.

This is for the BT Home Hub 1.0 (the white one)

1. Hold down the “Wireless Association” button on the back for at least 15secs

2. goto bthomehub.com enter the serial number from the back of the router and reset your password

3. Select “Basic Config” at this point you get asked for a username and password (the bit the leave out) enter “admin” for the username and the password you just created

4. Goto the Wireless setting, change the channel to Manual selection and change the number, I used 10 but you might have to try different ones.

With this solutions you not changing the password for the wireless of the hub’s name just access to it and the wireless channel number. I hope this helps anyone who might have these problems

You can find out more about it here and what to do to fix it or prevent it from happening to you.

Download the update to the TimThumb.php it goes in your theme’s root folder, and is sometimes called just thumbs.php

http://www.webrevised.com/130-timthumb-php-vulnerability-thousands-of-templates-affected/

Found this great little app on the Mac app store, if you use stickies then you will find this a great update. You can create, print and email your nootes you can also password protect any of the nootes you create. I have already switched my Stickies to Nootes.

Open Nootes in the Mac app Store

Or visit there site for more apps, although at the time of writing I couldn’t actually find Nootes on there site?

http://bloop.info/

www.moleskineus.com

macsynology.wordpress.com

Last weekend we went to see David Hockneys exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, he had these large prints in one room from work he had created on an iPad, so when we got back found out he had used an app called Brushes. Brushes has much more than paper but it still doesn’t have the water colour brush of Paper’s, which I love for quick mockups and colouring nor does it have a full colour pallete; something I’m sure they will add in coming updates.

You can find links below to other drawing apps for the iPad.

www.fiftythree.com/paper

www.brushesapp.com

www.cocoabox.com

Fantastical is great app for your mac, it’s a calendar app that works out from your menu bar. You can add and edit calendars items straight from the menu bar. It also works out what your trying to add as you type, so typing the day and time and name of event all gets added automatically.

This has for me been a game changer, you can quickly add events using it’s natural language engine,  it’s expressive and intelligent so you can write in your own style. Fantastical also automatically recognizes the location of your event and can even invite people from your Address Book to the event.

It comes with a 14 day free trial which I would try as I bought my license after about two days of using it!

flexibits.com/fantastical