How To Upgrade an iMac G5’s Hard Drive – iFixit.com to the Rescue!
A few weeks ago, my daughter's (hand-me-down) 20" iMac G5 started acting up. It was showing the infamous "spinning beachball", was locking up, the fan was running a lot and loud and the machine was having kernel panics. I did a quick S.M.A.R.T. scan on it which is usually a good indication of the health (or lack there of) of a hard drive. The results of that test confirmed my suspicions, the hard drive was dying and needed to be replaced immediately. I made a quick clone of it right away! So I started asking around on Twitter for some recommendations ...
How to Fix Login & Authentication Issues on TweetDeck after Changing your Password on Twitter
Yesterday, I received a very vague email from Twitter saying that they had reset my password because of some sort of a phishing scam or attack that had taken place off of Twitter. Below is the text of the email that I received. (Do note, before clicking through links like this, please be sure to hold your mouse over the link to ensure that it is truly the same site you are going to.) Hey there. Related posts:How to Pre-Populate Twitter Status Updates Via Links How to Fix Apple Mail Not Saving Passwords – Keychain First Aid Transition from DD-WRT to Tomato on Linksys Router
Cast of Dads: Podcast #7 – “We Were ALL Morons!”
We got some great user feedback on some of our previous podcasts that we were geeking out a bit too much. Since we listen to our audience, in this episode, we tried to eliminate most (if not all) of the tech and focus more on being a dad and a parent. Episode #7 of the Cast of Dads podcast is called "We Were ALL Morons!" and we spent a bit of time talking about parenting issues, cyber-bullying, toys, the difference between boys and girls and a lot of other family-related topics. But, for some tech humor related to being a ...
20+ Ways to Harden and Secure Your WordPress Blog
Recently, some high-profile blogs that are running WordPress have been hacked or hijacked by malicious users (e.g., TechCrunch). The worst thing is having to try to recover from such an event, you not only have to repair your site, but also your reputation. So, spending a little bit of time trying to prevent or at least make it a bit more difficult for a hacker to take over your WordPress blog is time worth investing. I have had my fair share of my blogs (both work and personal) getting attacked (denial of service attack, hidden iFrames in my code, SQL injections ...
The Apple iPad – Why It Might NOT be a Winner … Yet!
So earlier today, I fully drank from Apple's vat of Kool-Aid. I wrote about Apple's new iPad and how I think that it will be a game-changer. I still think that it has definitely drawn the line in the sand for the competition to go after, but when you report on any ground-breaking technology, you need to look at it from many different angles. So, did it really move the needle? I still think it did. Read my initial “happy thoughts” here, and below, you can see the “reality-check” come into play. Now I have had a few more hours to ...
How To Upgrade an iMac G5’s Hard Drive – iFixit.com to the Rescue!
A few weeks ago, my daughter’s (hand-me-down) 20″ iMac G5 started acting up. It was showing the infamous “spinning beachball”, was locking up, the fan was running a lot and loud and the machine was having kernel panics. I did a quick S.M.A.R.T. scan on it which is usually a good indication of the health (or lack there of) of a hard drive. The results of that test confirmed my suspicions, the hard drive was dying and needed to be replaced immediately. I made a quick clone of it right away!
So I started asking around on Twitter for some recommendations on good replacement hard drives. I didn’t need much, something that was comparable to the 250GB hard drive that was in there. Well, the people at iFixit.com saw my tweets and suggested a few options. I have used iFixit’s repair guides many, many times and have referenced them in previous how-to posts as well as on Twitter quite a few times. I personally find their guides to be irreplaceable and mandatory for any computer “surgery” that I might perform. One thing lead to another, and it ended up that I received a donated drive from iFixit. So, it is only fair that I acknowledge that fact and thank them as well. THANKS iFixit!
Anyway, I’m not a stranger to replacing hard drives. I have done it quite a few times on my MacBook Pro and my PowerBook G4’s (pretty difficult task on both of those actually) as well as on PCs (which is a bit easier). The first time I really hacked into a Mac was when I put a SuperDrive into an iMac DV SE (that was my first purchased Mac back in the day…I still have it!). Regardless, I wouldn’t attempt any repair without first taking a look at an appropriate iFixit guide.
The guide that I used is this one (having first gone through an identification wizard to ensure that the proper guide for my Mac was being displayed). After that, I started on my hard drive replacement adventure. I’m not going to go through all of the steps of replacing the hard drive because that is what the iFixit guide is for. However, I did document the process in this video:
How to Fix Login & Authentication Issues on TweetDeck after Changing your Password on Twitter
Yesterday, I received a very vague email from Twitter saying that they had reset my password because of some sort of a phishing scam or attack that had taken place off of Twitter.
Below is the text of the email that I received. (Do note, before clicking through links like this, please be sure to hold your mouse over the link to ensure that it is truly the same site you are going to.)
Hey there.
Cast of Dads: Podcast #7 – “We Were ALL Morons!”
We got some great user feedback on some of our previous podcasts that we were geeking out a bit too much. Since we listen to our audience, in this episode, we tried to eliminate most (if not all) of the tech and focus more on being a dad and a parent. Episode #7 of the Cast of Dads podcast is called “We Were ALL Morons!” and we spent a bit of time talking about parenting issues, cyber-bullying, toys, the difference between boys and girls and a lot of other family-related topics. But, for some tech humor related to being a Dad, specifically an “iDad,” you should read this Cast of Dads’ post on “the iPad versus the iDad” written by Jeff Sass!
If you have questions or ideas for topics that you would like us to cover (remember, between all of us we have 13 children ranging from newborns to young adults), just send us an email to castofdads@gmail.com or tweet us at @CastofDads!
It’s hard to limit our discussions to only 30 minutes but we did our best. Here are the topics we covered in Episode #7 of Cast of Dads:
- Accents and dialects
- JetBlue, Lego and Atlantis Resort’s JetAdventure (C.C.’s take)
- Kids exchanging e-mails
- Chuck E Cheese
- Zhu Zhu Pets
- Leave Britney Alone toys?
- Pleo
- Nintendo DS Dogz game
- Stand alone Atari 2600 controllers
- Bullying – physical and mental – boys vs. girls
- Martial Arts
- Cyber Bullying
- Being a friend to kids, but being a parent first
- We were all morons
20+ Ways to Harden and Secure Your WordPress Blog
Recently, some high-profile blogs that are running WordPress have been hacked or hijacked by malicious users (e.g., TechCrunch). The worst thing is having to try to recover from such an event, you not only have to repair your site, but also your reputation. So, spending a little bit of time trying to prevent or at least make it a bit more difficult for a hacker to take over your WordPress blog is time worth investing.
I have had my fair share of my blogs (both work and personal) getting attacked (denial of service attack, hidden iFrames in my code, SQL injections and my server repeatedly being hit with brute force SSH login attempts from overseas). I have learned a lot from over 5 years of blogging, however I am by far no expert in the security field. But, what I can do is provide a growing list of tricks and tips as well as plugs that you can use to make your WordPress blog a bit more secure. This is not an exhaustive list nor have I personally implemented everything that is on here. I simply wanted to provide a list of items that you can do that may make your blog a bit more difficult to crack. Some security is better than no security, in my opinion. If a bot or hacker spends too much time trying to get in, they will hopefully move on to find something different and easier.
A Word of Warning: Do note, having many plugins running will degrade the performance of your WordPress blog. Some of the plugins run only on demand while others are present and running all of the time, so your mileage may vary. Also, some of these plugins might not work well together. Lastly, a few of the items below require you to have SSH access to your WordPress environment or server. You may have restrictions in place by your hosting provider as well.
The List of WordPress Blog Security Measures
- Do Regular Backups – back up not only your database regularly but also be sure to take a full copy of your entire WordPress directory. A great WP Database backup plugin is “WP-DBManager“. What I do is run a DB backup and then do a complete file backup since the DB backup is within your WP directory and will be copied when you download.
- Scan Your Files for Oddities – I wrote a post on how you can scan a local copy of your WordPress files to find code injections or iFrame. There are also some plugins that can help with that like “WordPress Exploit Scanner” or “AntiVirus“.
- Change Your Password – make it something difficult to figure out. Don’t use numbers in place of letters because everybody does that. Use special characters.
- Rename Your Admin User – there are a couple of ways to do this. You can do some MySQL commands to do it or you can use a plugin to do it for you. Either go into a MySQL manager like phpMyAdmin and rename the user “admin” to something else, or run a command like:
update tableprefix_users set user_login='newuser' where user_login='admin';
The Apple iPad – Why It Might NOT be a Winner … Yet!
So earlier today, I fully drank from Apple’s vat of Kool-Aid. I wrote about Apple’s new iPad and how I think that it will be a game-changer. I still think that it has definitely drawn the line in the sand for the competition to go after, but when you report on any ground-breaking technology, you need to look at it from many different angles. So, did it really move the needle? I still think it did. Read my initial “happy thoughts” here, and below, you can see the “reality-check” come into play.
Now I have had a few more hours to think about the iPad a bit more and I feel compelled to come back to write about it but from a bit more realistic (pessimistic?) perspective.
Again, the items below are in no particular order, just things that have come to mind as my brain sifts through all of the information I processed today.
- Lacking a Full Video Experience – Let’s face it, the iPad is a bit one-sided. While it has the rich-glory of a larger screen compared to the iPhone/Touch, it is missing some core features to bring it on par with even the most basic (and less expensive) Netbook. There is no Webcam, so you won’t be able to have face-to-face iChat video calls or Skype calls. If there had been a front-facing webcam, suddenly the iPad takes on a new meaning for multimedia, business use, family sharing, you name it. Similarly, the aspect ratio is still a 4:3. While in landscape mode, I’m sure movies and TV shows will look glorious, but to make viewing even more stellar, the ratio should have been 16:9. I wonder if a wide-screen version will be coming. To overcome this limitation, even the inclusion of a mini-HDMI port would have gone a long ways. Of course, with those types of “upgrades” comes a price point and a performance and battery hit. I’m sure they were considered but then dropped to prevent sticker-shock.
- No Flashing Allowed - While I must admit, Safari on the iPhone and now on the iPad is truly a pleasure to use. The rendering of sites is amazing and quick…but every so often, you will see that lovely empty white box with the little blue “plugin-missing” icon, begging to simply say “too bad you can’t see the fancy flash stuff here”. Well, it seems that with this version of the iPhone/Touch OS, Adobe Flash is still not supported. However, with recent implementations of HTML5 on YouTube as well as the new Google Voice HTML5 web application, perhaps Apple is just adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Oh, and the other interpretation of “flashing” (not the one that can land you in jail for indecent exposure), I’m sure that the iPhone jailbreaking community is chomping at the bit to get their hands on this device. While Apple does say that most of the iPhone/Touch apps work on the iPad, I seriously wonder how many 3rd party (non-Apple approved) apps will work. It should be interesting to see what comes out in the next few months.
- No Multitasking – Getting Push Notifications on the iPhone was just the first step to true multi-tasking, or just a way to cut corners and move on to the next thing. Push is NOT multitasking, it is just some small background processes running. The iPad will be no different from the current iPhone/Touch. I do expect in the next major rev of the iPhone OS (e.g., 4.0) that there will be better support TOWARDS getting a full multitasking OS, but I’m still a bit skeptical. Those sorts of things compromise performance and battery life so I am sure that Apple will proceed cautiously with this particular thing. So, while I’m not surprised there is no full multitasking, I do understand why…I guess we will have to deal with plain ol’ Push for now.
- A Secondary Device – I truly don’t see people rushing out to the store to buy this as their primary computer, and it is (obviously) not a cell phone. So what is it? In my opinion, it is a nice-to-have device, something that complements an existing Apple infrastructure (like iPod Touch/iPhone/MacBook/etc.). There is, however, the eBook Reader component, especially to those people who have been on the fence about getting a Kindle. These users might already have an iPhone or an iPod so this would be a logical addition as they are accustomed to the user interface. Also, iPads also might be amazing for Schools to use so there is a huge market opportunity there. But again, just a simple, comparably-priced netbook will give you more flexibility and function than an elegant looking “iPod Touch on steroids.”
- Accessory Compatibility – It looks to me that the only dock connector is on the bottom when the iPad is vertical. Honestly, I would have liked to have had it on both the bottom AND side. This would allow the iPad to be “docked” in both vertical and horizontal modes. It looks like the iPad can only be docked in a vertical position (which is great for document writing and I guess why they did it that way). I’m hoping that the optional dock will allow for other devices to be connected to the iPad. Be prepared for an onslaught of cases and holders from 3rd parties to overwhelm us. I will be more interested to see what type of creative accessories can be created to extend the iPad’s functionality.
- “Assisted” GPS? – For those of you wondering, there is not a true GPS built into the iPad. It simply depends on wifi hotspot locating and 3G cellular triangulation to “approximate” your location. Yeah, having a full-fledged GPS built it would (again) have increased the price-point and decreased performance/battery life, so I’m a bit indifferent about this one.
- Strong enough processors? – Ok, Apple “created” the processor so we know very little about it. Has it gone through extended burn-in tests and load tests? How will it perform over time? You should always think twice before buying a 1st generation product (even though I jumped right in and got the 1st iPhone right when it came out!). There are not too many details on the Apple iPad processor. It’s a “1 GHz Apple A4 chip”. Uh ok. Is that supposed to mean something to me? I might trust something from Intel or AMD but who knows about this A4 chip? But, supposedly it’s made by PS Semi, whom Apple acquired and the US Government used for some chips for military equipment. I don’t think that Apple would choose something that wasn’t good though.
- Not an “Open” Platform – While this is no different than iPhone, will innovation still come? I personally think that Apple should release an iLife-type of app to help create iPhone/iPad apps easily. This would help to grow the ecosystem and may help them move to a bit more open and consumer-oriented and driven marketplace.
- Data Plans Still Too Expensive – Upon further reflection, the data pricing plans are still too expensive. For example, only people who will be using the iPad for extremely light internet and book downloads would benefit from the 250 MB plan. I, for example, download multiple Podcasts (video/audio) which are pretty large in size so I would blow through that 250 MB allotment very quickly. And I’m not sure that I would be willing to pay an additional $30/mo on top of the data-plan that I have for my iPhone. Too bad you can’t tether your iPhone to your iPad and share the data plans that way! Also, I think that Apple should do a “free” data plan for very light usage of book/newspaper downloads only to encourage competition against the Kindle. Oh, and WHY AT&T again? Isn’t their data network super-saturated already? Do we need to strain it even more? Let’s get some other carriers in the mix please!
- External media cards – Nope, none there! I guess Steve didn’t want to mar up the sides with extra ports and holes. Makes sense from a weight and price perspective, but this is STANDARD on Netbooks, for example. But you can get some optional adapters that will let you plug in USB cables and SD cards (called the “Camera Connection Kit”):
- The Name “iPad” – While “iPad” works, it is just a little too close to iPod (you better proofread when you are writing about both). And let’s face it, MadTV already beat Apple to the punch with this one:
