I absolutely love VisualHub – it works beautifully, and is a key part of my work toolset, especially as more and more clients are demanding video on their websites. I can have most movie formats in FLV format in no time.

Whatever the reasons, I just want to say thanks VisualHub – all the best to the developers in future ventures.

Recently I’ve noticed iTunes freezing up plus the Finder becoming completely inaccessible, even after a forced relaunch. It didn’t take long to figure out that simply unplugging the Firewire cable to the hard drive solved the issue (albeit with scary warnings about unplugging the drive without ejecting properly first).

So, something amiss with the My Book drive. At first, I presumed the thing was dying (as all hard drives eventually do) but a cursory Google search uncovered lots and lots of folks experiencing the same problem.

Long story short: it’s down to the Button Manager software that’s installed with the drive. Apparently it’s buggy and causes this very issue, but as I hadn’t until now even realised there was a Button Manager it was probably safe to uninstall.

So uninstall I did, and I’m pleased to report that all the problems are over (and in fact my whole machine, from bootup and beyond) is now zippier than ever! Yipee!!

Open up the Terminal and type:

sudo /usr/bin/uninstall-WDButtonManager

Put in your admin password, and the job is indeed a good ‘un.

Oddly, the 500GB model I have attached to the Mac Mini in the living room is fine.

Matt Damon expresses real concern over Republican presidential running mate Sarah Palin. I concur wholeheartedly.

Don’t know what Applejack is? Basically, it’s a utility you can run without a Mac OS X installation DVD, particularly useful if your Mac won’t boot and you can’t use (or don’t have) the DVD.

Simply restart whilst holding Command+S, then type applejack auto at the prompt. Applejack then goes to work repairing permissions, deleting corrupted caches, and basically giving things a good spring clean. It’s saved my bacon more than a few times in the past, but was rendered useless by OS X 10.5 Leopard until this week . Not any more!

Seriously, do yourself a huge favour and download and install Applejack now… You’ll thank me one day.

And don’t forget to donate a little to help fund future development…

Absolute quality and highly recommended techno/house from the main man from Larne.

Stick her out : )

Sub-editor replies.

Special prize for who can point out which one of them needs to get a little perspective on things.

So I was really, really deep-down chuffed to receive a hand-written, personally addressed card through the post from the Wufoo team today. In it they thank me for continuing to use the service after all this time and for contributing a little bit to their success.

It’s a cliche, but in a time when it’s so easy for a company to fire off an anonymous email (or maybe an automatically personalised one, at best), it makes all the difference to know that someone has personally thought about, prepared, written and posted a proper old-fashioned note, especially considering it’s all the way from Florida to the UK.

So to Wufoo – thanks : )