Tip: Hold the ‘apple key‘ and press ‘Space‘ this is really easy as they’re next to each other and can easily be done with your left index finger and thumb. This opens the spotlight searchbox, now start typing the applications name. Within a couple of letters it should have selected the app you’re after, so just hit Enter to open the app.

eg: ‘Apple key‘ ‘Space‘ ‘i‘ ‘t‘ (searches and selects itunes and enter opens it straight away!

This video was made circa 2006 and reminds me of the time I spent living in Cornwall and riding long boards for the Christian Skate clothing label – BelieveClothing.

Particularly happy with capturing my 360 on film (at 17:21 mins)

A video about Skate-boarding in Cornwall. With a focus on long-boarding and downhill sliding.

The video documents a group of Christian Skaters as they reach out to young people of Falmouth Cornwall. I am both in this video as well as helping film for it. This video was edited and produced by David Renyard – davidjdesigns.me.uk

Symptoms: No Power at all, no noise or spinning. The power unit itself will light green when not connected to the drive, but as soon as it’s attached the green light goes out. If connected the power light will stay light for 1 second, then no power.

This seems to be a common fault with this drive and it would seem obvious that the power supply has failed. However following through the problems these guys had, it would seem it’s not the power supply, but the external casing that’s causing the drive to fail.

Solution: Rest assured your data is probably still safe, as the hard-drive itself is likely to be fine. You have a couple of options:

1. Buy a new external hard drive casing/enclosure, this costs around £20-30
2. Fit the drive in you Desktop PC as an internal drive.

Seeing as you can buy a new 500GB for under £50, I didn’t want to spend £30 on a case. So went with the internal drive method. It’s easy to do and if your PC’s not too old it’ll probably have everything you need inside the case!

First take your external drive to peices, just strip off the outer case until you’ve freed the drive. It’s a standard 3.5″ SATA HDD. It has two connectors on the back, the smallest is the SATA DATA connection that connects it to the motherboard, and the longer connector is for power.

In your desktop you’ll probably have a spare power socket on a ribbon cable behind your existing drive, you can also use the small SATA cable to connect it to the motherboard.

Boot up your PC and your away! The drive will be recognised in the My Computer window. If your PC’s a bit older it may only have IDE connectors, but all is not lost, you can pick up an IDE to SATA converter that’ll allow you to connect it up.

I bought a SATA and Power connector from Maplin for just under £4.

Good Luck!

First of all you can add the default text to a input box by declaring a value:

<input type=”text” value=”Enter Name” />

Now we can add an ‘onfocus’ event that will delete this value when the box is clicked, essentially by replacing it with nothing.

<input type=”text” value=”Enter Name” onfocus=”if ( this.value==’Enter Name’ ) { this.value = ”; }”/>

note: where it states the second this.value they’re two single quotes ‘  ‘ and the statement is wrapped in double quotes. The two single quotes with no space between is for the value zero.

So now the text box appears with the tag ‘Enter Name’ inside it but when the user clicks the box the text disappears. This also works really well for search boxes eg- ‘Search my site’.

If a Div contains floating divs it will not resize the height to contain the floating divs. So adding padding to the containg div has no effect. This is how floating divs are supposed to behave. IE ignores this and contains them anyway, but most other modern browsers follow the rules and let the inner divs float ‘uncontained’.

The simple solution to this problem is to include and empty div after the floating divs and within the container. This empty div must not have a floating property and must be set to clear the floating divs. This gives the container div something to wrap around. The code will look something like this:

<div class="container">

<div class="float-left"> </div>

<div class="float-right"> </div>

<div style="clear:both;"> </div>

</div>

So the magic bit is "<div style="clear:both;"> </div>" just insert it just before you close the container div.

Using the command sudo apt-get install sendmail i was getting the following error:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
sendmail: Depends: sendmail-bin (= 8.13.8-3) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

Easy fix, just type:

sudo apt-get install sendmail-bin

press ‘y’ and let that install, then type:

sudo apt-get install sendmail

and it’ll install fine this time! hope this helps someone else out too!

It’s purpose is to create string variables from XML.

It only works properly as long as every xml tag is unique, if a tag is repeated it will overwrite and be useless to you.

here’s an example of what it does,

Sample XML:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?>
<newsignup>
<username>John Smith</username>
<password>p455w0rd</password>
</newsignup>

the code would create two variables $username and $password, each containing the values from the XML, so print $username would display “John Smith”

Here’s the PHP -

$xml = simplexml_load_string($data);

foreach($xml->children() as $child)
{
$Name = $child->getName();
$$Name = $child;
}

this code is presuming you’ve stored the XML data in a variable called $data. If the XML is a file you can replace the first line with this:

$xml = simplexml_load_file(”test.xml”);

to load your external xml file.

They do it in two finishes and lots of colours, the normal case has a very shiny ‘plasticy’ finish to it, where as this model (Satin) has an almost rubbery-like texture, making it feel a lot more durable and resistant to scratches.

It’s a couple of mm’s thick and clips around the aluminum uni-body perfectly, the clips hold it in place and there’s absolutely no gaps, they’ve perfectly shaped it the the macbook’s dimensions. There’s small rubber feet inside the case that hold it in place so it wouldn’t scratch your aluminum finish but it fits ‘like a glove’.

They’ve carefully allowed access to all the side ports, so even awkwardly fitting plugs will still attach without any issues, and the same goes for the cd slot. These were the important factors for me:

1. the Fit - it fits the macbook perfectly and yet can be easily removed.
2. the Feel – a soft grippy finish, almost like a hard rubber finish.
3. Access to ports – all ports are fully accessible, even the test battery button, although the press button built-in to the case looks a bit weak.
4. Heat Dissipation -  the macbook pro expels air out the back slot, the case is in two parts for the screen and body, meaning this vent is completely clear, and the monitor has full flexibility. The downside is it makes the screen a little heavier and tilting the screen backwards too far will cause it to slowly fall open. There’s been no noticable heat build up during normal use and watching video, and if you were goin to do some rendering and were concerned you could always unclip the case for a while. There’s also small vent cut outs in the base, to let out any trapped hot air.

for more info check out the Speck Website and i bought mine from Play.com

I filmed a review of Castle Crashers from the xbox arcade. Backed by the Behemoth, they gave me some DLC codes to give away and the usual Caps4Stix giveaway as well!

Update: The competitions been drawn now im afraid and the prizes sent out, more giveaway’s with the next podcast so check back soon!

I’ve never understood why anyone would pay so much more for a machine that essentially does the same job as a PC, and yet for some reason i caved in and last week went out and bought myself a Macbook Pro.

Why? well, now i’m working as a full-time php developer i spend all day building solutions to problems and so when i get home i just want to use my laptop quickly and easily without having to deal with any issues. My acer laptop had begun to overheat with normal usage and would frequently freeze up, so i decided to take the plunge.

So far i’m extremely impressed! the quality of the build and the functionality builtin to the hardware are exceptional, little things like the light senstive backlit keyboard are just stunning.

Of course i’ll contine to use my Windows Desktop machine, mainly for editing podcasts as it’s geared up to handle my HD video, but for day-to-day usage i’m goin to be using my macbook.

Expect more posts on switching from PC to Mac, and web development!