Quick and Nerdy

Did Lion devour my cursor?

From what I’ve found when searching online, I’m not the only one who has their cursor periodically disappear in OSX Lion. Once in a while I’ll return to my Mac Mini (my iMac and Macbook Pro never have this problem) and my cursor is nowhere to be found. The mouse or trackpad still works; if you go way down on the screen over the dock the hover affect will work but the cursor is still not visible.

One way I found to bring the cursor back is to zoom the screen. If you don’t already know this, you can zoom in the screen at any time by holding down the ctrl key and scrolling up (or down depending on your system preferences). You can then zoom back to normal again by doing the opposite and, voila! Your cursor is back.

I can’t guarantee that this will work for you but it definitely works for me and I’ve heard from many others who say the same. Hopefully this tip will help you end the frustration of the missing Lion cursor.

Image By Manurguez (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

PayPal Issues Solved

Have you been frustrated with trying to download your PayPal transaction history only to have the browser spin it’s wheels forever. Even if your report is small, the download still usually fails. I’ve fought with this many times and have finally found the fix. Apparently this is due to a PayPal timeout issue. You can fix this problem by using a terminal command to “aggressively try and keep the connection to PayPal alive” so the download can finish.

So, to fix this on a Mac,:

• go to your History page on PayPal
• select your date range
• open Terminal or iTerm
• enter the following
• sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.keepidle=10000 net.inet.tcp.keepintvl=5000 net.inet.tcp.always_keepalive=­1
• enter your admin password
• successfully download your transactions!

If your transaction list is huge you may still have to narrow your history search.

Thanks to Mark for posting this solution. I found it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8jPvIGX6aw

Being a nerd I love keyboard shortcuts. Because of this, when using a Mac I use Spotlight extensively. I use Spotlight as a calculator, for word definitions, and most frequently, to launch applications and find files.

One of the many changes in OS X Lion is a change in Spotlight is that it no longer displays the path to a file on your machine when you mouseover a search result. Previously I used this all the time when trying to locate files. How could Apple get ride of this extremely useful feature?

Well, they didn’t. It’s still available but is a bit more hidden. I’m not sure where this is documented or how we were supposed to figure it out but thanks to Richard Cardona and the CapMac Forums I learned how to get file paths again. Now I’ll share it with you.

1. As before, enter your search query in Spotlight.
2. Also as before, either use your arrow keys to move down to the appropriate search result or mouseover the search result
3. When the new preview window pops up to the left of the Spotlight results, hold down the command key

At the bottom of the preview window the name of the file will initially be displayed. Keep holding down the command key and in a second or two the path of the file will be revealed! Now you know where that file is located on your system.

While holding down the Command button

PayPal IPN Email

If you use PayPal for receiving payments online you are likely using PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN) as well. This is very useful as it results in an email being sent to the email address you specify whenever a payment is received via PayPal.

However, the email address that you receive these payment notifications at is not necessarily the email address you have configured within your PayPal account for receiving notifications. To set or change the email address to which these IPNs are sent you need to modify the code in the file you point to in the hidden ‘notify_url’ that you set in the form you use for posting to PayPal.

e.g. if you’re using PHP  the field might look like:

<input type=”hidden” name=”notify_url” value=”http://www.mynerdysite.com/paypal_ipn.php”>

In the above case, paypal_ipn.php is the file that gets called after payment has been made. Within this file is the code that send the actual notification email. To set the email address that will receive the payment notification you change the $from variable.

Note that if you want to change where the actual receipt from PayPal gets sent you need to change your primary business email address and then update this in the hidden ‘business’ field in the form you use to post to PayPal.

Here’s a fun infographic comparing Apple, the company to apples, the fruit.

A few of my favorite points:

• China produces 44% of the world’s apples and 100% of the world’s Apples
• the average apple weighs about the same as an Apple iPhone 4s (5oz. versus 4.9oz.)
• an iphone 4s is 33.6% glass

Thanks to MBA Online for putting this one together.

Apples to Apple: more similar than you might think

Node.js

I recently installed node.js on a Mac running OSX 10.7.2 and these were the steps I followed at the command line.  Git and Xcode were already installed on the machine so this assumes they are already present.

1. git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git
2. cd node
3. ./configure
4. make
5. sudo make install

You can test that node is installed by running a simple program such as:

var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (request, response) {
  response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  response.end('Node.js has arrived.\n');
}).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1");
console.log('Up and running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');

You can run this code by saving it as something like testing-node.js and then entering the command:

node testin-node.js

That’s it. Node.js is now up and running on port 1337 !

PS: stop the server with ctrl + c

Facebook

Update: Since Facebook launched it’s Timeline in 2012 this information is not really relevant. You can no longer create a page that users see by default.

–

Custom Facebook landing pages look much more professional than the default wall that everyone else has. Impress your visitors and fans with a custom one. It’s easy. Just follow these simple steps:

• you need to be logged in to Facebook
• in the main search box at the top type in ‘static html iframe’ (no quotes)
• it will be the one with the star icon
• click on the ‘Add Static HTML to a Page’ button
• next, select the page you want to add the landing page to from the list
• click the ‘Add Static HTML: iframe tabs’ button
• A new item will appear on the far left list (the list with ‘Wall’ at the top)
• the new item will be called ‘Welcome’ (you can change this later if you want)
• click on this new item
• enter html, javascript, css etc. into the text area shown
• if you want something different displayed to people who have already liked the page, put that in the second text area
• Facebook requires any images used here to be grabbed from a secure server
• if you don’t have a secure server you can upload your images to Amazon S3
• Amazon S3 has free tiers so unless your page is very busy you won’t have to pay
• however,  you do have to give your credit card info when you sign up to use Amazon S3
• you can preview your new page by clicking the ‘preview’ button near the top
• once you are happy with the look of the new landing page you can set it to be the default tab displayed
• go back to your ‘Wall’ page
• click on ‘Edit Page’ in the top right
• on the first page of settings (‘Manage Perminssions’) change the ‘Default Landing Tab’ to your new ‘Welcome’ tab
• note that you won’t see this tab as the default landing tab while you are logged in as an administrator; you will have to check from a different Facebook account
• if you want to change the name of your new tab to something other than ‘Welcome’ you can do so by clicking on ‘Apps’ in the list on the left
• then click on ‘Edit Settings’ under the app in the list (‘Static HTML: iframe tabs’)
• then enter ‘Custom Tab Name’ and click ‘Okay’
• Done!

LastPass and Multiple Accounts and Browsers

LastPass is a great tool for managing your passwords. The number of passwords we all have these days makes it incredibly difficult to maintain the security of your accounts with strong passwords and actually remember all of those passwords. With LastPass you only need to remember one strong password; it will do the rest.

LastPass comes in the form of browser plugins/extensions for all major browsers. It will remember your passwords across browsers, wherever you are. The LastPass security model is sound so you don’t have to worry about someone getting access to your important information.

One common problem that people encounter with LastPass is when multiple people use the same computer and have different LastPass accounts. By default, LastPass wants to keep you logged in as the same user in all browsers on a computer. Even if you have the plugin/extension/addon installed on completely different browsers (like Firefox and Chrome, not just different browser windows with the same browser) Lastpass will try to keep the same user.

So, if you are logged in as UserA in Chrome and then log in to the extension on Safari as UserB, your LastPass session on Chrome will automatically change to be UserB, the most recent user account you’ve logged in as on any browser on the computer.

This the default LastPass behavior can be very annoying if you share your computer with a spouse or roommate.  Fortunately there is a way around this.

Click on your LastPass icon and up will come the menu. From there, click on Preferences. On the next screen, click on Advanced and then Advanced again in the next window or dialogue. On this second Advanced window/dialogue is a checkbox near the bottom that reads “Share login state between other browsers.” Uncheck this checkbox in each browser on your computer and the problem is solved.

Place your cursor with the mouse

When entering long commands in the terminal, making changes or fixing mistakes in the middle of the command can slow you down. Moving your cursor over one character at a time to get the to point where the change is needed takes too much time! Fortunately on a Mac you can actually use your mouse to position the cursor wherever you want in the current line.

The trick is to hold down the ‘Option’ key while clicking. Move your mouse pointer where you want the cursor and ‘Option-Click’. When doing this the cursor will actually move to that point in the line. I didn’t believe it until I tried it. It really works! Another command line time saver.

Copy - Paste Relief!

For people like me who work extensively on the web, copying and pasting can be a huge pain. The main pain point is when you copy some text from a web page and don’t want all of the formatting when you paste it somewhere else, like an email or a blog post. Most people end up copying the content into a work processor like Textmate or Notepad and then re-copying and re-pasting. What a hassle!

Well, there is a handy built-in shortcut in Google Chrome (my choice for best browser) that automatically removes formatting when you paste. Yay! If you are on a Mac, the shortcut is ‘Command-Option-Shift-v’ and if you are on Windows it is ‘Control-Shift-v’.

The 4 key shortcut on Mac is a bit of a ‘handful’ but it is well worth it.