One of the new features of iOS4 is custom wallpaper on the home screens. This idea came from the iPad, which on the iPad looks amazing. This is because there is more screen real estate. On the iPhone however, the icons are much closer together and it starts to look a bit cluttered.

I’ve found that reverting back to black is actually quite visually appealing.

Also, I’ve made a custom logon type lock screen. It can show your avatar, your name and “if found” details.

Download the PSD package
Download the classic black wallpaper

Cluttered home screen:

Classic home screen:

Custom logon screen:

Just found this awesome menu bar tool which lets you quickly swap the graphics card on your Macbook Pro. It lets you swap say from onboard Intel graphics to dedicated nVidia, or vice versa.

It should work with most Macbook Pro.

http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/

Futurama is an amazing TV cartoon. However, it’s more than silly jokes. They actually use precise maths and science in their shows, right down to the minute details.

A recent episode was broadcast which is the same idea i have about how the universe works. How the big bang happens, then forms galaxies, then planets, then life. Life dies, planets die, suns die, galaxies implode, universe implodes. Then suddenly, BANG. Another big bang happens. And the same sequence of events follows.

I like this.

When you plug in a mouse to a Macbook/Pro/Air sometimes you want to ignore the trackpad because, well, you have an external mouse and don’t want to flick around with the trackpad.

Apple have changed this from being in either Mouse/Trackpad under System Preferences, to being in Universal Access > Mouse & Trackpad.

Great stuff, Apple.

Stupid SanDisk make it so difficult to remove their on board software which comes preloaded on the Cruzer range.

I bought a 16gb Cruzer and have had big issues trying to format the disk in NTFS/FAT32. Each time Windows would only allow me 200mb.

Download the removal software (Windows only) to get rid of this nasty software, once and for all!

My previous post about Lovefilms ongoing efforts to advertise as much as they can at the expensive of their customers has just led me to an extension for Safari. For you Firefox users, been running extensions for a while now, i’m sure you’re aware of Adblock. Also for Chrome (Windows) users extensions are available – not sure about Adblock but wouldn’t put it past them.

Check out Michael’s port of Adblock for Safari. It has known bugs (which is more of a Safari issue i think). Don’t be shy to drop him a donation.

I pay a service to Lovefilm. £13 per month for 2 rental movies at a time. I can usually get about a maximum of 10 DVDs per month. This is good value. However, their website is increasing with the amount of stupid adverts.

i’m not just talking about the small Google adverts. I’m am talking about the huge Flash overlays which prevent you from viewing your content. This following screenshot prevented me from seeing what movies i had at home. The close button also didn’t work, then crashed Safari:

So I’ve created some sort of hack (specifically from Lovefilm.com) which can be used in most browsers. It’s a custom stylesheet which forces the adverts not to display.

Updated: Download it here: custom-stylesheet-lovefilm.com.css

I’ve just received my first Blu-Ray disc (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) and straight away, OS X reads it. I thought OS X couldn’t read Blu-Ray?

Was it that OS X can’t play back the files? If so, I don’t mind. I have MakeMKV (currently ripping the disc) which seems okay so far. Disc was read fine, titles and chapters have been scanned and now it’s decrypting.

It says it will take roughly 50mins to extract the main title which is just over 30gb.

MakeMKV is touted as some kind of freeware or opensource (at least that’s what I thought) until the Blu-Ray disc was read, it popped up a message saying that in 30 days my trail time will end.

Nevertheless, if it succeeds then I’ll buy it.

Update: Yeah, this works sweet. It outputs the file as MKV but it’s transcoded, so quality isn’t lost, picture isn’t cropped etc. Then i drop that into Handbrake and re-compress to suit 4.2gb (single layer DVD) or 8.4gb (dual layer)! Great quality Just a shame the app is expensive at £50 as all it does is dump the decrypted info. Surely there will be an open source decrypt somewhere?

The only graphics card upgrade I can buy with a warranty is through the Apple store, an ATI Radeon HD 4870 on sale for a pricey £286.00

In the PC world you can pick up a similar card for more than half that.

In fact, you can buy an ATI Radeon HD 4890 for about £180 or a newer ATI Radeon HD 5770 for £136!

All you need is a different type of graphics card power plug and Zeus software to flash the card.

Apparently it works for most ATI graphics cards – uncertain about the 5770 though.

Every once in a while i get this message in Windows XP VM “Network connection has limited or no connection”. Some people suggest to turn your VM settings to NAT. However, this was already set to NAT. To fix the problem, quit VMware, delete the plist files in your ~/Library/Preferences/

com.vmware.fusion.plist
com.vmware.fusionDaemon.plist

This should restore your network connection.