Category: fixing your desktop

OpenOffice is great. It has flaws. One of the most insidious is that the “new document” settings for Word/Letter documents is vile. It has truly awful formatting – ARGH! MY EYES!

Today I was writing a doc to put down some thoughts for colleagues, and I realised that the formating is so unbearable it was actively blocking me from thinking or expressing myself clearly. Every glance at the words in front of me was corrupted.

So, I’m going to do some experiments in replacing it with something … “not s**t”.

Download a template

Not possible. The OpenOffice.org website has never worked – I’ve been using it for 10 years, and the Template Search is still 100% broken. “Sort by rating, Descending” and the top-rating is often … 0/5 stars. Um. No. Guys – can you please learn how to count to 1?

Screencap from today:

Make a template

Here’s the steps, if you want to do one yourself: How can I change the defaults for a new Writer document?

Attempt 1: Verdana, indents

Arial – especially using Arial Bold for every-other-heading – is painful on the eyes when a document has more than about ten words. Let’s dump that and – sticking with a common font everyone has installed, but is similar in look – go with Verdana.

I do not enjoy using Arial, Verdana, Helvetica etc in docs; but I have no idea how funky you can get today and still get 100% coverage of “this font is installed on everyone else’s computer, no download/import/conversion needed”

Looks like this:

DOWNLOAD LINK: Default Text (Verdana)

Aside

There’s a circle of hell set aside for the muppet working at WordPress who decided to block all files that he/she couldn’t be bothered to type into a pointless – BUT NOT UPDATEABLE – whitelist of filetypes.

That’s not what a filename extension is. It’s not what a filetype is for. Great example of “a little knowledge” (or in this case: no knowledge at all, just foolish assumptions) being a dangerous thing…

The old PAYE tools was bad, really bad – I saw it generate the wrong figures once (i.e. actively costing UK small businesses real money for HMRC’s carelessness).

The new one is great – but it hasn’t been tested properly. The install instructions are wrong, it installs illegally on OS X, and it has a major bug in the configuration system. By accident, I discovered it’s all written in Python, which I find very interesting although currently it’s a bad advert for the language :(.

Here’s how I fixed it…
Continue reading “Installing HMRC’s PAYE tools on OS X”

We already had to do this a year or so ago when Firefox developers tried to force a bad UI paradigm on us.

Now they’ve done it again, and added a new way to turn “new tab” from something that does what it says, into something that does stuff you don’t want.

Turn it off by pressing the magic button that exists nowhere else in Firefox and which you’d never guess was related to this broken feature.

What is it with Firefox’s developers these days? Every other release of Firefox seems to overwrite at least one existing setting … with a broken feature.

Firefox version 22.0 disables your PDF viewer and replaces it with a non-working proprietary viewer from Mozilla

Cure is quick:

Note: this works because “always ask” is less annoying than it sounds. It merely means “let me open it or save it”, and it will use whichever viewer you last used. On OS X that – out of the box! – means the system PDF viewer. Which works perfectly on everything except bizarro-interactive-secure-encrypted Adobe docs/em>

Continue reading “Firefox won’t save/open PDF files any more”

Apple’s core networking for OS X (Lion, Mountain Lion, etc) is famously poor. One of the (many) unfixed bugs is this:

“I go to a webpage (e.g. google.com) and my browser displays a message saying ‘Server not Found’. If I keep hitting Refresh, it never works. If I wait a few minutes and try again, it works”

This is entirely Apple’s fault. They aggressively (and incorrectly) cache “failed” lookups. And … because it’s Apple … you can’t turn it off. It’s been broken for at least 5 years now, which suggests they have no intention of fixing it.

But: you can “flush” it. Since it’s a cache (which are designed to auto-flush anyway), there’s no harm in doing this.

Solution: restart Apple’s DNS cache

1. Open a Terminal window
2. type: “sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder”
   • (you’ll need your admin password, annoyingly, because you’re ‘forcing’ Apple’s code to behave itself)
3. Reload your webpage – works immediately

After the first time, you can repeat the command frequently without typing your password. Simply hit the “up” arrow (to re-type previous command) and Return to run it.

Prologue: Apple et al recommend you “install new OS’s from USB, not DVD – USB is faster”, but I’ve never bothered before. However, there appears to be a major defect in most Apple iMacs, where the DVD drives fail after only a dozen or so uses (google it and there’s depressingly-long forum threads of people reporting the same problem). When this hit my iMac, I was forced to explore the USB alternatives…

Windows 8 boots the same way Macs do

With the arrival of Windows 8, much of what we see on the web about “installing windows” or “booting windows” is wrong — including Apple’s own Bootcamp (currently: almost a year out of date, badly broken, and Apple hasn’t announced a fix. Sigh).

Allegedly (confirmed by direct experience, but I’m no expert on this) – Windows 7 (and previous versions) used “MBR” booting. Intel Macs use the more modern “GPT” booting – and Windows 8 has finally dropped backwards compatibility, and uses GPT too.

So, as of 2013: there is nothing “special” needed to make a Mac boot in Windows 8

In fact, if you try to, Windows 8 install WILL FAIL because it doesn’t support the old MBR booting any more (it even produces a clear, helpful error message explaining why)…

If something ruins your booting, fix from command line

For power-users who know what they’re doing, this stack-exchange answer gives good step-by-step instructions (with explanations!) on how to “un-break” a broken boot setup on Mac. Worth bookmarking (I used it to fix one of my machines).

NB: all the tools they use in that answer are pre-installed with the Mac and have “man” docs – type “man (command name)” in Terminal to read them.

NB: you can run these tools straight away, but they will probably refuse to “save changes” because you’re using the disk they’re trying to change (mentioned in the link above). You’ll need to boot into a special “repair mode” – see below:

NB: if you mis-type the instructions on that page, you probably will wipe your hard disk. Don’t try this while tired/drunk/etc – or at least take a full backup of your computer first!

An OS X “emergency boot USB drive” is only 1GB

The web is plagued with technically unskilled “journalists” who write articles about “make a USB boot disk for OS X”, and all they do is copy/paste Apple’s own instructions on how to INSTALL OS X (and then they claim credit for it).

The OS X installer requires a 4GB – or, if you’re unlucky, an 8GB – USB key. That’s 8x what you actually need.

It is faster, easier, and safer to use Apple’s own “Make an OS X Bootable USB key” app, which works on any USB drive that’s 1 GB or larger.

You can even create the USB key without downloading the special app – although it requires more fiddling (I recommend: download the app. It’s small and trivial to use).

NB: if you own a mac, make one of these now. Do something useful with those crappy 1GB USB keys you have gathering dust on the shelf!

OS X has an Emergency Partition by default – but you can’t use it

Because those USB boot disks are so massively valuable, Apple now includes a hidden one on your hard disk too, so that you can boot into that and “fix” your main OS X even if you don’t have a USB drive.

Here’s more info on the “Recovery Partition” as its called.

HOWEVER: since that’s installed on the same disk you’re partitioning, … most / all of the disk-repair / disk-alteration utilities are still disabled. That’s why you want/need a USB emergency disk!

Apple’s emergency boot disk doesn’t support all USB devices (e.g. some mice)

Even devices that work during the Apple boot-menu are DISABLED BY APPLE in their “emergency repair / boot” setup.

But without a mouse, you cannot get to the OS X menubar.

And Apple designed their “emergency” system so that most of the features can ONLY be reached viw the menubar (hmm. They really didn’t think that one through…)

So, memorize this keyboard shortcut: ctrl-f2 (or, on a wireless keyboard or laptop: fn-ctrl-f2).

That hilights the “apple symbol” menu, and you can then use cursor keys to reach the other menus.

Apple won’t let you create a USB Windows installer unless you have a MacBook Air

Someone at Apple went out of their way to make life miserable for Apple customers. If you own (or can borrow) a MacBook Air, Apple’s Bootcamp enables an extra “magic feature”: it will create the Windows 8 install USB key for you. (NB: requires a 4GB or greater USB key).

…but if you try this on any other physical Mac, Apple blocks that feature. The key you create will work on EVERY Mac – there’s nothing magical about it.

NB: if you have a Windows 8 DVD but don’t own an Air, and you know someone who does, it’s probably worth borrowing theirs now, to make one of those keys, in case you need it later!

NB: alternatively, if you have access to a machine that already has Windows installed, you can use Microsoft’s “create a Windows8 boot disk / installer” app (says win7, but works for win8 too). Unless you have a recent version of Windows, though, you’ll need to download hundreds of megabytes of .NET updates before this will run – which makes this a slow and irritating option.

OfficeTime is one of the more popular/higher rated time-tracking apps for iOS / OS X. On the whole, it’s fine.

But exporting the data – which is half of the app’s purpose – is extremely difficult. There’s no docs I could find either in the app or on the website. You have to google, get lucky, and find some old blog posts by the author with hints. And even then you still have to jump through a 9-step process.

Every time I need to do this, its sufficiently un-obvious that I forget how and have to figure it out again. So, here’s a step by step:

1. You must have a wifi network that both your computer and iphone are on
   • Yes, really :(.
2. Run OfficeTime on the desktop
3. Create a new project you will never use (author requires you to do this – if you don’t create the blank project, the app quits itself!)
   • I prefer names like “Delete this that Officetime created”
4. Run the app on iphone
5. Go to the Settings menu (cog icon from the home screen)
6. Select “Desktop Sync”
7. Select “Sync with”
8. …if everything’s working, your computer name will appear in the list…
9. On the computer, ACCEPT the sync
10. …nothing happens. None of your data appears, but don’t panic, this is “as expected”
11. On the computer, open the Reports menu, and create any report – your data from iPhone will finally appear

…after that, it’s plain sailing. The UX of the desktop app is poor, but it’s trivial from here to get to Excel, and clean up the data.

UPDATE: getting it into Excel…

At first, I thought you should use the “Reports” menu.

Don’t do that – the export GUI is terrible, it saves files in the wrong format, and … the output format is harder for Excel to use. There’s an easier, better way…

Instead:

1. Open the QuickStart menu
2. …this will silently, magically, have gained a set of new options now that your iPhone is connected. One for each project on the iPhone
3. Select the project you want to export. A window will appear with all the data, nicely formatted, easy to read
4. NB: for me, the desktop app creates a phantom “0 minutes long” additional entry when you do this. Select it and delete it
5. Select all the rows in the window, then CMD-C (copy), switch to Excel/OpenOffice.org and CMD-V (paste)
   • (this uses a better format than the built-in exporter, and you can manually clean it up)

This gives you the exact times, down to the nearest minute. Most people don’t bill their client that way – although it’s good to show the actual numbers, you usually want to do a precise (accurate) total, and then round to the nearest 15 minutes for each billable period.

Here’s the Excel / OOO formula for that:

Create a SUM cell for all your times (use the appropraite column, not C6:C10):
=SUM(C6:C10)

Create a ROUNDING cell for final number (C12 is wherever you put your SUM cell above):
=CEILING(C12; 1/24/60 * 15 )

NB: the “15” in that last formula is the “number of minutes to round to” … replace it with “30” for half-hours, “60” for hours … etc.

At 27″, it’s too big to “simply” take in to the Apple store. In desperation, I followed this support article from Apple that’s for older iMacs and officially no longer supported.

Which is a pity, because in typical Apple fashion, they’ve deprecated an article that’s still accurate and useful. Following the steps in that article (copy/pasted below in case Apple ever deletes the webpage – something they’ve a habit of doing, sadly), my fans roared to life and the iMac REVIVED!

Resetting the SMU can resolve some computer issues such as not starting up, not displaying video, sleep issues, fan noise issues, and so on. If your computer still exhibits these types of issues even after you’ve restarted the computer, try resetting the SMU. To reset the SMU on one of these iMacs:

Turn off the computer by choosing Shut Down from the Apple menu, or by holding the power button until the computer turns off.

[NOTE — in my case, OS X had crashed completely, so there was no “turning off” to do – I had to yank the power cable out, and after that, it wouldn’t switch on]

Unplug all cables from the computer, including the power cord.
Wait 10 seconds.
Plug in the power cord while simultaneously pressing and holding the power button on the back of the computer.
Let go of the power button.
Press the power button once more to start up your iMac.

I then had to repeat the process – but with a *fifteen second* wait, as per the support page that seems to supercede the article above – to get the fans to shut up.

Firefox … ah, how we love watching you make terrible usability decisions, and then force them upon your users!

FF now has this ridiculous page – WHICH YOU CANNOT DISABLE in Firefox settings:

Fixing it

Since it’s not supported as an user-configurable option, you have to open the magic low-level settings page. Type this into your web browser, as if you were visiting a new website:

about:config

You’ll get a list of settings, and a search bar. In the search bar, type:

newtabpage

You’ll get something like this:

…double-click the “browser.newtabpage.enabled” line until it says “false” in the final column. This will probably make it go bold:

…et voila! You’re back to a normal web-browser. Like you’ve been used to, all these years…

Why Firefox was stupid to add this “magic” page, in my opinion

For those that are interested, here’s why I’m scathing about this page:

Most of all … because it actually breaks Firefox’s core feature (searching using Google).

That’s just downright stupid. How come no-one noticed this? Why on earth did they ship something that breaks the core web-browser functionality? I have no idea. Google’s Chrome team must be delighted when stuff like this happens – it just drives more and more people to stop using Firefox.

1. While this page is enabled, Google searches from the Search bar … hang every time for me
   • You have to hit the Search button twice – or wait several seconds before pressing it (the first click is accepted, but Firefox bugs mean it can’t actually load the page)
   • I’m guessing this is because the browser is unable to “load a new page” until the grid page has finished loading? Anything I do before the “grid tiles” have finished appearing gets ignored
2. Random webpages from your history are thrown up on screen
   • Have fun explaining to a new client why you have their competitor’s website open on your browser during a meeting
   • It’s pretty, but it’s not even useful. For most of us, when we open a new tab, chances are we’re about to visit Google. Firefox has spent 10+ years training people to do exactly this!

When you “upgrade” to Lion, be aware that Apple will silently wipe your “auto install / update” settings, and start aggressively downloading every update it can find for every Apple app you use.

In my case, this was gigabytes of data – I really don’t care (and don’t want) “upgrades” to PhotoBooth and other trash that Apple pre-installs. But, because Apple wants to force these on you, they’d already wasted large amounts of bandwidth (on my laptop – on a desktop broadband connection, I wouldn’t care), and reduced my internet browsing for a few days before I found this out.

So … when you upgrade … remember to open “Software Updater”, and change the setting (that Apple has overwritten), back to “don’t check automatically”. Sadly, there’s no setting for “don’t download stuff unless I tell you to” – but at least turning off the auto-check avoids this.