srm <filename>

This will delete the file, then rewrite random data over the spot on the hard disk where the file was previous stored several times to prevent any file recovery attempts.

A regular delete using rm in the Terminal will only remove any pointers to the file itself, but this information can be recovered using file recovery and undelete tools.  This is similar to erasing an entry in the telephone book for someone’s house and phone number; the house is still standing and telephone number is still valid.  Using srm would send a bulldozer to the house to tear it down and break it into bits so small, it would be difficult to tell that a house ever stood there.

Securely deleting files is useful when you need to destroy a password file.  For example, I keep a file that is pgp encrypted with all my passwords within it.  When I need to add new passwords, I decrypt the file, add the new username/passwords, then re-encrypt the file.  Afterwards, I need to securely destroy the text file that I updated.  For that, I use srm.

Read more about srm at Wikipedia.

Sound familiar?

The problem has to do with Adobe Flash Player.

Symptoms

Common symptoms of the Firefox loading problem:

• web page buttons in Firefox stop working (clicking doesn’t do anything)
• links stop working (clicking links produces no action)
• parts of web pages stop loading in Firefox (or Camino)
• stylesheets stop being rendered or applied, which make pages show up with:
  • a plain white background web page,
  • 1994-style bright blue links,
  • plain times new roman font text,
  • simple bulleted lists,
  • borders on table cells.
• new tabs or windows show up completely blank
• Firefox won’t quit or shutdown

When Firefox stops loading pages properly, the problem begins with subtlety, then the situation degrades quickly until Firefox is completely unusable.  Previously, the only solution was to restart Firefox, killing the Firefox process (using Activity Monitor - Quit Process) if Firefox wouldn’t shutdown properly.

This solution was only a temporary fix with the root Firefox page load problem still there.  Clearing the cache in Firefox, then restarting, also seemed to help reset the loading problem on Firefox, up until it starts again after several hours or days of web surfing.

Fixing “Firefox Stops Loading Pages” Problem

A permanent fix to this Firefox loading problem: upgrade Adobe Flash Player to version 10 from version 9.  Strangely, Mozilla/Firefox nor Mac OS X Leopard never recommended this update, even when Adobe published version 10 of Flash Player, wheres Firefox 3 comes by default with Flash Player 9, and actually, still does.  Perhaps Mozilla considers Flash Player a system component, rather than a browser component and doesn’t notify Firefox users of updates to such pieces of software.  This seems a bit odd to me, considering the only time I use Flash Player… is with web browsers, regardless of whether its Firefox, Safari, or Camino.

Step 1: Check your version of Adobe Shockwave/Flash in Firefox

Open a new Firefox tab or window.

In the address bar type in about:plugins and hit enter.

This will load a special Firefox configuration page showing you all the plugins installed for use with your version of Firefox.

Scroll down to the bottom until you see a heading for Shockwave Flash.

The key piece of information in this section is just above the blue bar where it reads: Shockwave Flash 9.0 r115

This tells me that I’m running Adobe Flash player version 9 and what I need to do is upgrade to Flash version 10.

Update: Another way to check which version of Flash Player you have installed is to visit Adobe Flash - About page, which will tell you your currently installed Shockwave Flash version (bottom right hand corner in the Version Information box.)

Step 2: Download & Install Adobe Flash 10

In Firefox (or any browser) go to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/. You’ll see this page:

Click on the big bright Agree and Install Now button.  Let Adobe install Flash 10 on your computer.

After the install is complete, we can check that Flash 10 has been installed.  Restart Firefox and again visit the about:plugins configuration web page.  You should now see the following:

Congratulations. You’ve upgraded to Flash 10. Firefox should now be able to load web pages continually, without restarting/cache clearing, no matter how long you keep Firefox open and running.

I’ve been running with Firefox 3.0.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard with Adobe Flash 10 for nearly a month now and Firefox hasn’t stopped loading pages once after having upgraded to the new version of Flash Player.  I’m confident this is a permanent fix for those who’ve been running Firefox with Flash 9 and have been troubled by the eventual page load problem.

(I want to thank unsound of the Mozillazine Forums for pointing me in the right direction with this problem.)

Avoiding OS X Problems - Backup Before Problems Start

Before making any chages to your Mac, backup your current system by making a mirror image of your current system.  This places an exact copy of your entire Mac hard drive onto an external drive such as a USB hard disk or a secondary internal hard drive on your desktop Mac.

Making a full mirror image backup or clone of your Mac is simple with SuperDuper free backup software from ShirtPocket. This program makes it easy to perform full backups of your entire OS X Leopard Mac without any technical knowledge.  By making a mirror image backup of your system before you make changes, you can always rollback your system to this previous pristine backup version of your Mac.

Understand that there is a major difference between Apple’s Time Machine and mirror image backups using SuperDuper. Apple’s Time Machine makes incremental backups of individual files. SuperDuper backs up your entire hard disk as a mirror image copy.

A SuperDuper backup placed on an external USB drive can be used to boot or start your computer. You cannot do this with Time Machine. Seriously. Try this: install SuperDuper, make a full clone of your current drive onto an external drive (do this before going to sleep or if you have a few hours to do other things), then reboot your Mac and press & hold down the Option key (double up arrow key beside the Apple key).  After a few moments you’ll see two hard disks appear on the Mac bootup screen. Release the Option key.  One disk is the drive inside your Mac and the other is the SuperDuper clone you just made, attached to your Mac via USB.  Using the arrow keys on your keyboard, move the highlighted disk on the screen to the clone backup system on the USB drive and press Enter.  Your Mac will now boot up from this clone on your USB/Secondary drive that you made using SuperDuper.  Once the bootup is finished, you’ll be running your Mac from the mirror backup sitting on your backup drive.

This is the ultimate in security, safety and simplicity in terms of backups! If you happen to drop your Mac off a cliff or it gets stepped on by an elephant and you have a SuperDuper cloned backup, just pop that disk into a new (hopefully insurance covered) Mac and bootup as if nothing had changed.  You can get back to work (or play) immediately. Zero downtime.  Apple’s Time Machine will not be able to do this as it creates incremental file backups, not a mirror of the operating system itself. To restore a system using Time Machine you need to reinstall Mac OS X from scratch and perform a restore from Time Machine.  A lengthy process.

Avoiding OS X Problems - Don’t Fix the Unbroken

I’m loathe to suggest this, but I don’t recommended installing Apple updates to an operating system unless it addresses a specific problem you’re experiencing. I understand that security updates are important, and that stability and other compatibility issues are nice to fix, but if preventing these rare but possible issues comes at the cost of rendering your Mac unusuable then is it really a wise update to perform?

This is akin to injecting a vaccine that prevents disease but is likely to kill the patient. Unless you’re very likely to be exposed to the disease, should you really be taking the risk?  With any medical treatment, a doctor always considers whether the treatment’s possible risks are outweighed by its benefits. If the risks are high and the success of the treatment low, the treatment will be avoided in search of better alternatives. You should think about this too before haphazardly installing Apple Updates only to be rewarded by one of the common OS X problems that can occur.

One Mac OS X problem that generates a lot of frustration and discussion is Airport wireless network connections disconnecting from a router every 15 minutes.  This is an extremely common Mac OS X update problem that is incredibly difficult to diagnose and fix. And, it often starts just after an OS X Update.

When to install a Mac OS X Update:

1. the update closes online security holes that you’re likely to run into because you perform risky Internet behaviour
2. software that you currently use has issues that are fixed with the latest update
3. you’ve just mirror image cloned your system with SuperDuper

You really should never install a Mac OS X update before cloning your current OS X install.  It takes nothing more than a spare drive, some free software and a few hours while you’re asleep.  The cost of an external drive is really reasonable these days.  I just picked up a Western Digital Terabyte USB 2.0 drive for 135€ delivered from Amazon (which you can find it even cheaper in the U.S.).

With respect to Apple OS X upgrades, have a surefire way to return your system to its previous (working) versions: create an image backup of your current Mac OS X system before upgrading by using SuperDuper.

ps. I don’t work for Shirt-Pocket software.  They just make damn good software.

• Wear polyester based clothing (which doesn’t produce dust).
• Start the process in a room that is the most dust free in your house.  Perhaps your kitchen.
• Have the screen film, the anti-static alcohol wipe, and a small bit of saran wrap handy.
• Wipe down the screen well with the alcohol wipe and hold the iPod touch screen up to the light to check for remaining dust.  If there’s any you can see, keep wiping.
• When the screen is dust free, hold your iPod vertically, either on its side or standing up.  This prevents new dust from falling on the screen while you get ready with the screen film.
• Peel away layer A of the screen film and quickly start to apply the bottom edge of the film, holding the film like a playing card, touching only the edges (the film is quite stiff, allowing you to hold it like a card).
• The film will quickly start sticking or tacking onto the super clean iPod touch screen and will turn dark as it does, allowing you to easily see where the film has stuck or is still free or heaven forbid, has trapped some dust which will create a bubble.  Don’t try to apply the film all in one go.  Start from one corner and slowly work your way to the opposite corner.
• Rub the film with your thumb from one side to the other along the “tack front” as you slowly move up the screen.  I recommend doing it not in a straight line but slighly diagonally like a guillotine blade.
• Before reaching to the final upper corner, place the saran wrap in the corner where the film will finish.  This allows you to easily lift the film up to repeat if you messed up the alignment or if dust has gotten between the film & screen.
• If you’ve managed to trap dust between the film and the screen, air bubbles will be glaringly obvious.  Don’t bother typing to wipe the dust off the film with your fingers or to squeeze out the air bubble with a credit card… it’s futile.  Remove the entire film and go to the sink.  Using a slow smooth stream of warm water, rinse the tacky side of the film.  Don’t worry, there’s no glue to be washed away so this is safe.  Shake the excess water off when finished.  Use the alcohol wipe (which is likely dry by now) to soak up any remaining water droplets since it is lint & dust free.
• Repeat until you apply the film without dust and without bubbles.

(photo courtesy of iSkin)

Apple, which hasn’t licensed the use of NTFS technology from Microsoft, has only supported reading from Windows drives from OS X Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard.

There is also a free NTFS program for Mac called NTFS-3G which may do the trick for you, albeit with a little less polish (and perhaps stability) than the commercial solution above.

You can find this in Settings -> Keyboard Settings.

Hoo-ray!

(photo courtesy of David Worni)

VisualHub produces the best quality results and is drag-and-drop easy to use.  One fault with VisualHub is that it doesn’t extract and convert multiple TV episodes (or “titles”) from a single DVD or ISO file; It converts only the last “title” from a multi-episode disk or image file.  For multi-title conversion use Handbrake or MacTheRipper.

iSquint produces lower quality results, but is even simpler to use than VisualHub, with less output possibilities and adjustments.  For basic conversion of video files to various iPod formats or iPhone, this will work.

Entering the WEP/WPA wireless key into the iPod touch in all upper case letters solved the wireless password problem.  And I’ve heard to not use the Caps Lock key to do this, rather, just use the Shift key (requires it to be pressed each time while tapping a letter or number).  This doesn’t make logical sense to me (Shift key vs.Caps Lock for upper case letters), so feel free to give Caps Lock a try first.

If you’re like me and do multiple things while working with your MacBook, there are times when you’re not actually looking at the screen.  Quickly swipe your mouse to the Hot Corner you’ve setup for Sleep Display and you’ll reap instant power savings with very little cost in terms of downtime/wake time.

Fluorescent tube backlit screens unfortunately have a warm-up/cool-down time that causes the screen to appear dark when first lit and slowly increase in brightness as the backlighting tube warms up.  LED backlit screens brighten instantly to their preset level, so take advantage of it.

Here’s how:

Download VLC for Mac OS X here. Install and Launch VLC Player.

A Windows Media stream that cannot be played in Firefox will only show a lego brick and a blank area.

To find the media stream in Firefox, go to Tools -> Page Info (Cmd + I).

On the Page Info pop-up window, click on the Media tab.

One of media items in the list will use a different protocol than http, in this case, mms with the Type as Embed.  In the Location information just below the list you’ll see the mms media stream Internet address. In this case mms://live.france24.com/election-en.wsx.  Highlight this address with your mouse and Cmd + C to copy it.

Now it’s time to open that Windows Media stream in VLC Player. Click on File and Open Network.

Paste the Windows Media stream that you copied earlier into Media Resource Locator field. Then click on HTTP/FTP/MMS/RTSP radio button on the left hand side of the Open Source window.

Click OK. VLC will begin loading the stream and will play the WMV stream shortly.

Enjoy your coverage of Obama defeating John McCain on France 24 live media stream.