The hosts file can be edited to block certain hostsnames, like ad-serving/malicious hosts, or used for web development purposes, i.e. to redirect domains to local addresses.

Step 1 – Open the Terminal.app

Either start typing Terminal in the Spotlight search, or goto Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

Step 2 – Open the host file

Open the hosts file by typing the following in the Terminal window:

$ sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

Type your user password when prompted.

Step 3 – Edit the hosts file

The hosts file contains some comments (lines starting with the # symbol), as well as some default hostname mappings (e.g. 127.0.0.1 – local host). Simply append your new mappings underneath the default ones.

Step 4 – Save the hosts file

When done editing the hosts file, press Control+o to save the file.

Press Enter on the filename prompt, and

Control-x to exit the editor.

Step 5 – Flush the DNS cache

You can use a simple Terminal command to flush the DNS cache, and have your host file changes take immediate effect. Using the open Terminal window, then the following command:

$ dscacheutil -flushcache

Your new mappings should now take effect.

Shades of Grey

The Kindle 3 (and Kindle DX) support the following sixteen shades of grey:

The key is try and use only these sixteen shades of grey.

Step 1.

Download the Photoshop colour table below

kindle photoshop colour table

Step 2.

Start Photoshop and create a new blank document.

• For Kindle 3 create a document 600px wide by 800px tall.
• For Kindle DX create a document 824px wide by 1200px tall.

Step 3.

Import a picture or draw your own design into the new document.  High contrast designs look the best on Kindle’s eInk display.

Step 4.

Once you have your design, it needs to be optimised for the Kindle by reducing the colour depth to the 16 supported shades of grey.

From Photoshop menu choose Image > Mode > Indexed Color

Photoshop should prompt if you want to flatten layers, choose OK.

You should now have the Indexed Color window showing.  Click on the Palette menu and choose Custom…

From the Color Table menu, select Load and locate the kindle3colours.act file you downloaded in Step 1.

The Color Table should now display the 16 Kindle supported grey’s only.  Select OK to close the window.

In the Indexed Color window, under the options section select the Dither menu and select None.  If the picture does not look good, select the Dither menu again and choose one of the other options.  Repeat until you find the best representation.

Click OK to close the Indexed Color window.

Step 5.

The design is now ready for export.  From Photoshop menu, choose File > Save for Web & Devices

Make the following changes:

• Set file format to PNG-8
• Deselect Transparency
• Set Colors to 16
• Deselect “Convert to sRGB”

Step 6.

Save the file and transfer the screensaver to your Kindle.

There are two ways to access this folder:

Temporary

To keep the folder hidden and to access it sporadically:

1. In Finder, choose Go > Go To Folder
2. In the Go To Folder dialog, enter ~/Library
3. Click Go

Permanent

To unhide the folder permanently:

1. Open a Terminal session
2. Enter the following command (replace <username> with your actual username

chflags nohidden /Users/<username>/Library

3. Quit Terminal

Simply change the spotlight preferences to not index the bootcamp partition by making it private.  Here’s how to do just that:

System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy then either click the '+' sign and add your Bootcamp partition, or, if your Bootcamp Partition is visible on your desktop, just drag it into the Privacy section.

To completely switch over to Mac, I need to find a similar application, alas, none can be found. Yes I can use VMFusion or Parallels and run WLW, but it seems an overkill to have a Windows virtual machine running just for one application.

I’ve just downloaded and installed the trial version of Blogo, and will see how that goes. First impressions seems good, it has a very clean and simple interface, and you can preview your post locally – similar to WLW, Blogo downloads your theme.

One aspect lacking that I’ve just noticed is the inability to format image thumbnails. In WLW, can you manipulate the thumbnail images and add framing effects to them, so I can place a black border around the image, or select a drop shadow effect, even so far as selecting a reflection image and make it look really smart. Also if you have your own image styling in your theme, you can select the inherit from blog option, which as it says, inherits the style conditions as set in your style.css file. In Blogo, unfortunately, the only manipulation you can do is to crop the image, make it black and white or sepia, as you can see from the example below.

Another feature of WLW lacking in Blogo is the ability to create excepts using the "more" tag. This lets you break the post and show only the except in the main post. If a use wants to read more they can click on the link and will be presented with the full post. This is a very useful tool in WordPress as you may have a large post entry, but only want to show an except of it on you main blog, something I do all the time. In WLW there was an option to place the "more" tag, unfortunately in Blogo there is no such feature.

Nevertheless I will press on and evaluate this little application and see if it meets my needs.

UPDATE

20th April 2011

Having used Blogo for a few weeks now, I find it a poor substitute for WLW, which is still the simplest, elegant and feature-full client application for blogging.  So unfortunately I can’t completely switch over from Windows, which was my original intent.  I now have Windows 7 installed on a bootcamp partition, allowing me to run Windows natively on my MacBook Pro.  I also have VMware Fusion, which can also load the bootcamp partition, eradicating the need to have a separate VM image from the bootcamp partition. 

This setup now provides me with the best of two worlds.  If I want to run some intense Windows applications, such as games, I can boot the MBP into Windows 7, however if I want to use standard applications, like WLW, then I boot into Mac OS X as normal and use VMware Fusion to run WLW in “unity” mode.

I will still endeavour to try out other client based WordPress editors for the Mac, but there aren’t many around, and those that do exist have very limited features, or require high experience in HTML coding and formatting.

• Arvo = Afternoon
• Bludger = Lazy person
• Crook = Sick
• Cuppa = Cup of tea
• Cut lunch = Sandwiches
• Dinkum = Fair, honest
• Good on ya! = Expression of approval
• London to a brick = Absolutely certain
• Spit the dummy = Lose your temper
• Ta = Thanks
• Throw a wobbly = Lose control

On some of the posts I published, I included images, and although my uploads folder had been moved from the root to the subdomain, the content for the images still pointed to the root address. Image links inside the post content were like <img src="http://www.grapii.com/wp-contents/uploads/... />

This caused the problem when displaying the post on the new subdomain as the images were linked to the old domain, resulting in a broken image icon.

To fix this I needed to change all <img src=.. /> links from the old to the new. I could manually edit each post via the admin panel one by one, but that would take way too long, cumbersome, error-prone and most of all annoying.

Luckily all post content is held in WordPress database table called wp-posts, and from there you could query the content using simple SQL statements. I had to take that a step further though, as I need to basically execute a find and replace on a large scale, and using an update SQL statement, I could do just that.

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE ( post_content, 'http://www.grapii.com', 'http://blog.grapii.com' );

This SQL statement updates the post_content field, where the content is held, obviously, then replaces that content with itself, and if it finds http://www.grapii.com within then replace with http://blog.grapii.com.

What would have manually taken me days/weeks todo, this little SQL code did it all for me in seconds.

The power of SQL.

Save to File:

CMD+SHIFT+3

Take a screenshot of the entire screen and save it as a file on the desktop

CMD+SHIFT+4

Select an area and take a screenshot of that area, save as file on the desktop

CMD+SHIFT+4 followed by SPACE

Click on a window and take a screenshot of that window, save as file on the desktop

Save to Clipboard

CMD+CTRL+SHIFT+3

Take a screenshot of the entire screen and save it to the clipboard

CMD+CTRL+SHIFT+4

Select an area and take a screenshot of that area, save it to the clipboard

CMD+SHIFT+4 followed by SPACE

Click on a window and take a screenshot of that window, save it to the clipboard

The discussion of Aperture versus Shuttler Speed versus ISO are the fundamental basics for understanding photography. A thorough understanding of the relationship of all three are necessary to understanding exposure in digital SLR cameras.

This guide provides a simplified explanation of these terms and their effect on each other.

What is aperture?

Aperture is the relative size of how wide the lens opens when the shutter is released. It is one of the factors that determines how much light enters the camera. The other factor is shutter speed, which determines how long the shutter stays open.

Here is the f-stop scale

f/1
f/1.4
f/2
f/2.8
f/4
f/5.6
f/8
f/11
f/16
f/22
f/32
f/45
f/64

Each step on the scale lets in half as much light as the previous step. So f/1.4 lets in half as much light as f/1, f/2 lets in half as much light as f/1.4 and so on.

You can remember the f-stop scale by remembering that the first two numbers are 1 and 1.4. All the others are doubling of those two numbers.

How does aperture relate to shutter speed?

Well, suppose you have a correct exposure at f/4 and 1/100 sec. If you decreased your aperture to f/5.6 what shutter speed would you need to get the same exposure? f/5.6 lets in half as much light as f/4. That means you have to leave the shutter open twice as long to get the same exposure. So at f/5.6 you would need to set the shutter speed to 1/50 sec to get the same exposure.

Suppose on the other hand you want to go from f/4, 1/100s to 1/200 sec. What f-stop would you need? 1/200 sec is half the exposure of 1/100 sec. That means you have to let in twice as much light to get the same exposure. So at 1/200sec you have to increase your aperture to f/2.8

Why would you choose one shutter speed over another, or one f/stop over another?

Suppose you’re shooting a moving subject. If you want to freeze the action you’d choose a fast shutter speed, but you’d have to open up the aperture to let in more light. However, a wider aperture also leads to a shallower depth of field. You’ve probably seen sports photos of athletes frozen in mid air with the the background out of focus. Fast shutter speed and wide aperture will do that.

If you want to increase your depth of field you’d choose a smaller aperture and a slower shutter speed.

How do you know when you have the right combination of aperture and shutter speed?

1. You could take a test shot, review and adjust. Look at the histogram:
   1. if the histogram is too far to the left it means your exposure is too dark. Open up the aperture or use a slower shutter speed.
   2. if the histogram is too far to the right it means you exposure is too bright. Close down the aperture or use a faster shutter speed.
2. You could use the camera’s built-in light meter. Your camera will tell you when it thinks you have the right exposure. See your camera’s user manual for instructions on how to use the light meter.

How does ISO relate to all this?

ISO sets your camera’s sensitivity to light. ISO 200 is twice as sensitive to light as ISO 100; ISO 400 is twice as sensitive to light as ISO 200 and so on.

Suppose you have a proper exposure at ISO 100, f/4.0 and 1/100sec. If you set the camera to ISO 200 you can set the camera to f/5.6 & 1/100 sec, or f/4.0 and 1/200 sec an get the same exposure.

Why would you change the ISO setting?

Suppose you’re in a low light situation. You’ve got the lens at it’s widest setting and the shutter speed as slow as you’d dare take it (any slower and the picture will turn out blury because of movement, etc), but your exposure is still too dark. You can boost the ISO to get a better exposure.

Be warned, higher ISO means lower saturation and more noise.

The hosts file can be edited to block certain hostsnames, like ad-serving/malicious hosts, or used for web development purposes, i.e. to redirect domains to local addresses.

Step 1 – Open the Terminal.app

Either start typing Terminal in the Spotlight search, or goto Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

Step 2 – Open the host file

Open the hosts file by typing the following in the Terminal window:

$ sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

Type your user password when prompted.

Step 3 – Edit the hosts file

The hosts file contains some comments (lines starting with the # symbol), as well as some default hostname mappings (e.g. 127.0.0.1 – local host).  Simply append your new mappings underneath the default ones.

Step 4 – Save the hosts file

When done editing the hosts file, press Control+s (cmd+s) to save the file.

Step 5 – Flush the DNS cache

You can use a simple Terminal command to flush the DNS cache, and have your host file changes take immediate effect.  Using the open Terminal window, then the following command:

$ dscacheutil -flushcache

Your new mappings should now take effect.