My latest screencast is up at Don McAllister’s ScreenCasts Online where I teach how to use Art Text 2 from BeLight Software. Manage your external volumes with Mountain from appgineers.de. I successfully moved one of my domains to Hover, check out the show for 10% off domains this month only. Control your OS X windows with Moom from manytricks.com. Steve reads us his annual tradition, the Night Before Christmas with an Ever So Slight Macintosh Bias. On Chit Chat Across the Pond we’re joined for the first time by Door to Door Geek from the Podnutz network to talk about the state of Android today.
Hi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias. Today is Sunday December 21, 2014 and this is show number 502. Ok, so how many of you heard me say Saturday instead of Sunday last week? The live chat room CLAIMS they hollered at me that I said it but I never saw them hollering. I’ll let you in on a little bit of my process in the background that caused this. I have a TextExpander snippet for the intro to the show. It automatically grabs the day and date and auto-fills it for me. If I wait until Sunday to write the intro, all is well. If I do it early I have to remember to change not just the date, but the day as well…which I forgot to do last week! So get off my back, ok?
Unlike many shows, we will not be skipping a show over the holidays. I’ve asked folks to send in recordings to help me put it together (in essentially one day!) and they’re starting to roll in so I think we’ll be in good shape. If you’ve promised me one, you know who you are!
This week I had another screencast published by Don McAllister on ScreenCasts Online. I teach how to use a program called Art Text 2 from BeLight Software which is an awesome vector art tool. You might be thinking, “Hey Allison, along with your lack of musical talent is your lack of artistic talent” and you’d be right. That’s the beauty of Art Text 2, it allows someone like me to make cool looking art with little to no talent. I actually made the NosillaCast logo using Art Text, and I think it looks pretty good.
Anyway, Don has published a 4 minute trailer version of my tutorial and if you make it through at 4 minutes he tells you how to get a free 14 day trial of ScreenCasts Online. If you do the free trial, you’ll get to see my tutorial along with over 500 back catalog tutorials. I have to warn you though, if you do the free trial, you will buy a subscription. Don’s tutorials (and of course his amazing guest screencasters) give you training you can’t get anywhere else. Good luck resisting, I put a link in the shownotes directly to my Art Text 2 tutorial over at ScreenCasts Online.
Today I’m going to review two really cool utilities, then Steve is going to give us his traditional yearly rendition of The Night Before Christmas with an Ever So Slight Macintosh Bias. On Chit Chat Across the Pond we’re joined for the first time by Door to Door Geek from the Podnutz network to talk about the state of Android today. It’s a really interesting discussion and I learned a lot and made a new friend. Ok, let’s get started!
Blog Posts
Manage Your External Volumes with Mountain
Control Your OS X Windows with Moom
Hover
I have fabulous news – I successfully wrestled the first of my domains from the clutches of Domains by Proxy. I did end up having to send a copy of my drivers license to them to prove that I was me, which really bugged me but I did end up getting a login to their site so I could turn off private browsing, move the domain over to Hover and leave my current domain hosting company. I decided to see how hard it was to do it first by hand not asking them to hand hold me using their concierge service. Since I was terrified, I did my nosillacast.com domain first.
Hover has great instructions with beautiful screenshots showing how to go step by step through your old domain company’s screens. This is a real challenge with mine because they seem to change their menus and screens every time I go in there, but Hover had them all exactly up to date. They must pay someone to check daily to see if they’ve changed!
After going through ads to buy new services, I was able to unlock my domain and transfer it to Hover. I think the total number of clicks on Hover’s site was around 3, and I had to type in my initials to approve the transfer and I was done. I wasn’t offered extra services, there was no half clothed women on the page, the site was as clean and elegant as you could hope. If you’d like to give Hover a try for your domain purchases, new customers can get 10% off by using the coupon code XXXX over at hover.com only through December! Next week stay tuned for a success story told by Allister Jenks about his interactions with Hover.
The Night Before Christmas
with an Ever So Slight Macintosh Bias
(with credit and apologies to Clement Clarke Moore or Henry Livingston)
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a . . . track pad; (ok, work with me here)
The ear-buds were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that all things iMaker soon would be there;
The NosillaCastaways were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of iPads danced in their heads;
And podfeet in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cravat,
Had just settled down for a long winter’s Skype chat,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the keyboard to see what was the matter.
Away to the windoze . . . I flew like a flash drive,
Tore open the shutters and nearly did a nosedive.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of brushed aluminum to objects below,
When, what to my eyes seemed very bizarre,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny cars,
With a little old driver, with whom elves hobnob,
I knew in a moment it must be Honda Bob.
More rapid than 4G his vehicles they came,
And he tweeted, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, Accord! now, Civic! now, Fit and CR-V!
On, Element! on Ridgeline! on, Pilot and Odyssey!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now drive away! drive away! drive away all!”
As dry leaves that before the reality distortion field endowed,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the cloud,
So up to the house-top the vehicles they flew,
With the sleigh full of Apple products, and Honda Bob too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard with a squeal
The skidding and sliding of each little wheel.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Bob came with a bound.
He was dressed in coveralls, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with oil and soot;
A bundle of SSDs he had flung in his Scott-EVest,
And he looked like a geek who was extremely obsessed.
A wink of his eye and a look not too pious,
Soon gave me to know he had a Macintosh bias;
He spoke not a word, but texted his concern,
And filled all the stockings; then hit return,
And laying his finger aside his levitation app,
A command to his iPad, up the chimney, ASAP!;
He sprang to his sleigh, and his autos, did they bristle,
And away they all flew as if shot from a missile.
But I heard him exclaim, as the poem prescribed,
“Happy Christmas to all, and please stay subscribed.”
Clarify
Steve and I and Kyle went to a hotel on Saturday night to visit some family and we had free Wifi at the hotel. Steve reminded me to turn off my CrashPlan backups. I questioned him why I had to do that, I only turn of CrashPlan if it’s wasting MY bandwidth, like when we have to use our Mifi. He reminded me that Cloak, our VPN service will kick in while on the scary free wifi, and we’ll go over our 5GB limit pretty quickly. Steve’s pretty smart, I’d forgotten about that! I went into CrashPlan and stumbled about a bit trying to remember where I had to do that. Once I’d done it, I realized I could save Steve a bunch of time the next morning when he got up and needed to do the same thing. I whipped open Clarify, jumped through the CrashPlan hoops while taking Clarify screenshots. I labeled a couple of buttons and tabs to hit by using a lovely red rounded rectangle and added just a few words around each step. I tapped the Save to Evernote button so I’d have the tutorial saved in my database, exported to PDF and emailed it to Steve. Probably took me 138 seconds door to door, but probably saved him 10 minutes of aggravation! If you don’t have Clarify yet, head on over to clarify-it.com and get the free 14 day trial and give it a whirl, and be sure to tell them Allison sent you when you inevitably buy a license or two…
Chit Chat Across the Pond – Time: 20:46
This week’s guest on Chit Chat Across the Pond is Door to Door Geek, owner of the Podnutz podcast network and host of Android App Addicts. You can find him at http://www.podnutz.com/ and on Twitter at @doortodoorgeek.
In this episode we talked about Android fragmentation (does it matter any more?), the dangers of side loading apps unless you know what you’re doing, the freedoms that come with Android and more. Here’s some links to a few things that Door mentioned on the show:
OnePlus One http://OnePlus.net
Shou.TV (Screen Recorder Pro) – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oxa7.shou
IP – Ingress Protection Ratings – http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ip-ingress-protection-d_452.html
DoggCatcher Podcast Player – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.snoggdoggler.android.applications.doggcatcher.v1_0
Mediatoolkit – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.istudio.mediatoolkitmobile
Google sneaks new “People” section into Play Store, lets you see what apps your friends are sharing – http://phandroid.com/2014/04/04/google-play-store-people-update/
AFTER CCATP:
At the end I was talking about the Pocket show and how the dream team is me and Chris and Paul and someone and I couldn’t remember his name – it’s the venerable James Hart. Even worse I couldn’t remember who was on with Paul and Door and Chris – it was Bart! My apologies to both Bart and James!
That’s going to wind this up for this week, many thanks to our sponsor for helping to pay the bills, the makers of Clarify over at clarify-it.com. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Check out the NosillaCast Google Plus Community too – lots of fun over there! If you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.
Allison, two simplifications (I’d hate to call them “corrections”) to this week’s podcast.
1. Under Yosemite, as you pointed out, the green button in the upper-left corner of a window takes you to full-screen mode (which can be a problem under some circumstances). However, the uber-useul Option key modifies that behavior: Holding down the Option key while hitting the green dot evokes the old, pre-Yosemite behavior of zooming the window (without taking it to full-screen mode). In fact, hovering your mouse over the green dot you’ll see the diagonal arrows, and when you hold the Option key had hover, you’ll see your old friend the plus (+) sign.
2. Not to take the wind out of your Clarify commercial sails, but there’s a much easier way to pause CrashPlan backups than digging through the CrashPlan app. Just mouse down on the house-shaped CrashPlan menubar icon, and there’s a “Pause” submenu. You can pick various intervals form 1 hour to 1 day. When you do that, the little house in the menubar will have a pause icon on it. You can resume any time by selecting “Resume.”
Hopefully these are helpful.
Steve – I love that you called them simplifications! I especially love knowing that my beloved option key comes in handy here, I did not know that. How silly that they have those teeny tiny arrows in this double secret way to change windows. Thanks for sharing!
I know I can pause CrashPlan, but that doesn’t work if we’re say staying in a hotel for a few days or in the same Starbucks every day. By going into the networks section we can say specifically to NOT do backups whenever you see this network. Harder to get to but more fail safe.
I use the pause only on networks where I normally DO want backups, just not right now, like my home network while on a video podcast.
Thanks for both messages.
Hi Allison…
Hope you do see this.. I am behind.
Regarding CrashPlan eating all your VPN data. A very real issue. However, from what I read about CrashPlan, they encrypt your data in flight. Sooooo, it seems to be that you can set up Cloak to exclude CrashPlan from using its VPN.
Another option would be to use an egressing firewall (like Little Snitch) with a custom rules. One rule for home, that allows CrashPlan through. And another for limited internet use that blocks CrashPlan (and other hungry apps, like DropBox). No need then to mess about with CrashPlan. All it will see is not connection.
Just my 2 cents.
Keep it up.
Philip
ah, interesting ideas! I think I’m doing ok with CrashPlan now (telling it not to use my Mifi data at least) and cranking Cloak up to $10 from $4 isn’t too much trouble, but I like both of these ideas!