#488 Apple Announcement Appearances, AppleTV Fixed, Our Sadomasochistic Relationship with Apple, Deeper, Belgiums National Redoubt

I was on three podcasts this week about the Apple announcements – check them out: the Daily Tech News Show with Scott Johnson and Veronica Belmont , the Mac Roundtable, and the SMR Podcast. I also did a guest Screencast for Don McAllister’s ScreenCasts Online all about Drop Shadow and AppDelete; watch the trailer at screenscastsonline.com. I describe how Apple gave me a fix (workaround) to my AppleTV problem, and I discuss our Sadomasochistic Relationship with Apple. Change the default behavior of a whole bunch of things in OSX using the GUI interface in donation ware Deeper from titanium.free.fr, makers of the awesome utility OnyX. In Chit Chat Across the Pond Bart breaks down the celebrity photo leaks and explains what actually happened and then after Security Lite he gives us a history lesson on World War I and how he used Google Earth to map out the progression over time of the defenses of Belgium, the National Redoubt. Read along and download the Google Earth file to play along as you listen at https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2014/09/14/antwerp-belgiums-national-redoubt


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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 September 14, 2014 and this is show number 488. Well THIS has been a fun week, right? I’m actually not going to talk about the new iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Apple Watch, because I did three, count them THREE podcasts about it on Tuesday! It was grueling but after watching the 2 hour keynote (and enjoying the heck out of the streaming hiccups and the Chinese language translation) from 10-12, then I was on the Daily Tech News Show with Scott Johnson and Veronica Belmont at 1:30, then believe it or not we did a new Mac Roundtable from 3-5, I took a break for dinner, and then jumped back on Skype to do an episode of the SMR Podcast. The boys asked Terrance Gaines and I to come on to do the announcements justice. We finished up around 10pm and then I went outside, laid down on the patio and had some bourbon. I put links in the shownotes to all the shows – they’re equally fun and completely different so go check them all out!

As if that weren’t ENOUGH fun, I did a guest Screencast for Don McAllister’s ScreenCasts Online all about Drop Shadow and AppDelete. You can go watch the trailer to get you excited about it over at the link in the shownotes to screenscastsonline.com show number 469. I’ve been a busy little geek this week!

Blog Posts

AppleTV Problem FIXED

Our Sadomasochistic Relationship with Apple

Deeper Lets You Control OSX Hidden Settings

Clarify

A while ago I mentioned a problem I was having with taking screenshots where when I shrank them up to fit on a web page, the quality degraded dramatically. I also mentioned that when I do the same thing inside Clarify, the screenshots look much better in their web-safe sizes. This week I contacted Trevor over at BlueMango Learning to ask him if he’s using some secret sauce, and all I got out of him was that he’s using a “high-quality resizing algorithm”. I’m not sure what he’s doing but it really does work so much better to use Clarify to take a screenshot, right click on it to resize, and then hold down the option key while you click the arrow and you can save it to disk. Heck, while you’re at it, have I mentioned it’s a great place to add some annotations too? Maybe throw in an arrow, a box, a circle or some text? I use Clarify for things way beyond their original intention because it’s just that good. Go download a free trial at clarify-it.com today!

Chit Chat Across the Pond – Time 27:40

The Celebrity Photo Leaks:

Some Facts:

Poor Responses:

  • the web was awash with victim shaming – it’s not OK to blame the victims in any crime, and it’s not OK to go look up the photos because they exist. Dan Kaminsky lays out the why quite well – http://dankaminsky.com/2014/09/03/not-safe-for-not-working-on/
  • The web was also awash with people giving bad advice – the worst of which was to stop backing up to iCloud. Security is all about balancing risks. Is the risk of your iCloud backup being compromised zero? Nope. Is the risk of catastrophic data loss zero? Nope! You have to balance those risks rationally, and I think the risk of data loss is far greater, so I think it’s dangerous to tell people to stop backing up automatically to iCloud – Gruber puts it well – http://daringfireball.net/2014/09/security_tradeoffs

Lessons to take away:

  • always update to the latest iOS
  • use strong passwords (defends against brute-force attacks)
  • lie in your security questions (makes unauthorised password recovery harder)
  • enable 2FA – our Apple IDs protect a LOT!

Security Light

Important Security Updates:

Important Security News:

Noteable Breaches:

  • Home Depot hit by same malware that did so much damage in Target – http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/09/home-depot-hit-by-same-malware-as-target/
  • Suggested Reading:

    Main Topic – Mapping Belgium’s National Redoubt with Google Earth – Time 51:34

    Intro:

    I’m working in a large project which I hope to have ready at the end of the month in time for the 100th anniversary of the WW1 siege of Antwerp. I’m working on mapping the city’s key infrastructure as it was in 1914. The city has changed a lot, so that means mapping the massive fortifications around the city, the network of navigable rivers and canals, of railways, and city’s docks.

    This project became practical when I discovered two things:

    1) that McMaster university has creative commons copies of the 1911 Ordnance survey 1:100,000 scale maps for all of Belgium

    2) you can overlay images in Google maps

    This allows you to use Google Earth as a time machine!

    While working on this bigger project I got very interested in the history of Belgium’s national redoubt, so I decided to do a separate project on that, and that’s today’s topic.

    Read the post and follow along with Google Earth here while you listen: https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2014/09/14/antwerp-belgiums-national-redoubt

    That’s going to wind this up for this week, many thanks to our sponsor for helping to pay the bills, Blue Mango Learning at bluemangolearning.com makers of Clarify. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter and app.net @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.

    5 thoughts on “#488 Apple Announcement Appearances, AppleTV Fixed, Our Sadomasochistic Relationship with Apple, Deeper, Belgiums National Redoubt

    1. knightwise - September 18, 2014

      A fantastic piece by Bart on the history of the first world war. I enjoyed it a lot ! If Barts cliffhanger made you curious on how ‘The forts’ failed us in the second world war .. you might want to check out our “Audio Tour” of the Fortress of Eben Emael : http://knightwise.com/the-knightcast-kc0036-qthe-fortress-of-eben-emaelq/ The place where world war 2 started and where Belgium lost its most powerful fort … due to a SOCCER GAME…

    2. Menno Borst - September 19, 2014

      Hi there,
      I am a frequent listener to the show and I like it very much. On this show you talked in Chit Chat Across the Pond about WW-I. That is a thing I did some reading about this year because of the 100th “anniversary”.
      If anyone would like to brush up (or get some knowledge) on this highly important period in worldhistory I strongly recommend to listen to Dan Carlins Hardcore History. (https://itunes.apple.com/nl/podcast/dan-carlins-hardcore-history/id173001861?mt=2)
      Dan is podcasting about important events in history and has started a series about WW-I. It is hardcore history so you’ll be getting all the details uncensored…
      The show is free but will be a payed download in time. When it is free Dan ask you to donate “a buck a show” so if you find it usefull please consider making a donation.

      Thanks for the shows and keep up the good work!

      Kind regards,
      Menno Borst

    3. Donald Burr - September 21, 2014

      The reason why your screen freaked out (desktop background blanked out, Dock disappeared, etc.) when you changed the Dock settings in Deeper is because it had to basically kill and restart the process that runs the Dock in order for the changed settings to take effect. This is tied to the desktop somehow, so killing the Dock process also causes the desktop wallpaper to die as well. When the Dock process is restarted, the desktop picture returns back to normal. Just FYI.

    4. Allison Sheridan - September 21, 2014

      It was give for a really long time, though. Maybe the dock takes a lot longer to restart than the Finder?

    5. Charles Gousha - October 3, 2014

      Deeper is likely killing the Dock process (a force-quit), and leaving it to the Finder or OS to restart it. That can take a few minutes.
      In comparison, force-quitting the Finder immediately gets it back because the OS wants that Finder up at all times and immediately re-runs it.

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