I was having some issues ripping some DVD’s for my AppleTV, namely kids films by a very well known film company. My children love these films and because they keep getting the DVD’s out and scratching them I wasn’t going to purchase them for the third time. I usually use handbrake for this task but for some reason this disc would copy it in the wrong order, only a few of the chapters would be back to front. If you have this problem then read on to find out how this handy little program has helped.

I use ripit to rip the entire disc  which creates the usual video and audio ts folders, which are in the right order but the file size is to large for what I want. You could burn it to DVD from there but I only want it on my AppleTV or other IOS device. I then use HandBrake to convert these files for my AppleTV, I also have the added bonus now that I can run it back through handbrake again setting the size of the file I want so that I can put more than a few films on my iPad or iPhone for the children to watch.

Ripit also seems to work very fast even ripping the movie at full size, although it has an option to compress the movie for iTunes and your AppleTV much like what you get just using handbrake. It’s a great value liitle app for the mac from the people at the LittleAppFactory.

www.littleappfactory.com

I have used the Microsoft remote desktop app for a while, that was until it started having problems seeing my local drive making impossible to upload work to our windows server. I started to search the internet to find something else that would work for me, I found a application called Cord which is much easy to use and remembers a number of servers that I use. As with Microsoft’s remote desktop it would frequently forget which server I used and even if I saved the small file with the details for each server I still had to manually input the details each time I needed to log on.

Cord is so simple to use, I just set up the servers put in the details and when I need that server I just click connect. In the preferences you can save what to open and what resolution you want to view the external server. I have noticed it looks a little fuzzy compared to MS remote desktop, but I can live with that if it mean it remembers my local drives, and more importantly remembers my drives right down to a particular folder!

You can download Cord here.

Cord say this on there website -

“Macs interact well with Windows, and with CoRD the experience is a bit smoother. Great for working on the office terminal server, administrating servers or any other time you’d like your PC to be a bit closer without leaving your Mac. CoRD allows you to view each session in its own window, or save space with all sessions in one window. Scale session windows to whatever size fits you—the screen is resized automatically. Enter full screen mode and feel like you’re actually at the computer. The clipboard is automatically synchronized between CoRD and the server. For system administrators, CoRD creates a simpler workflow by allowing you to save server information, then quickly connect to that server by using HotKeys or the server drawer. This makes quickly connecting to a specific server easy, even when managing many servers.”

Flare for mac from the mac app store is a great image application for editing images.

I noticed the small app in the mac app store, although I use photoshop daily I was intrigued with this program. I downloaded it and started using it for quick edits to photos, it has a number of presets a bit like instagram for the iPhone. It’s a simple drag-and-drop process then you can apply the presets to your images, you can then tweak these individual presets to your liking, then save and export the image.

You can also export directly to Flickr which is very handy for the quick uploads – it maybe me but I couldn’t find a way in which to batch process images.

Choosing the image -

Choose a preset for your image

Editing the presets

Flare is available from the Mac app store or you can get it online from here.

Or visit the Flare website

“Flare is a fast, easy, and beautiful darkroom for your Mac.

With Flare, you can apply photographic effects to your photos, then save them to your Mac, upload them to Flickr, or send them in an email. Flare comes with over twenty presets that create different kinds of effects, but if the preset you’re looking for doesn’t exist yet, you can tinker with the presets or even build your own from scratch.”

Not anymore, came across the open source free application that can take the hassle out of those permission problems.

Propedit

My main reason were it’s Christmas coming up and we as a family do lots of calendars, something missing from the new iPhoto and something that Apple forgot to mention about the new iPhoto. I see now that they have last night issued another update that adds calendars back into iPhoto – more on that from TUAW.

You can also read a review of iPhoto11 on TUAW.

Still no reason to go back now, for one iPhoto new interface is a step backwards it awkward to use and very clunky. When you edit your photos in the original iPhoto you had this option to copy the last settings of say levels to the next photo, so you could go through lots of them changing them as you went. Not anymore, that feature has gone. Emailing photos is pretty bad and I can’t think why they did it this way when it just worked before. Producing books and cards is also much harder than it was before, I found it slow and cumbersome to get a book going. All this for just a few new layouts and cards. Read all the issues other users are having on the Apple support site…

And another thing, I have had a mac since 2004 and not once in the UK have I ever had a coupon code for buying books, cards and photos NOT ONCE. I have a mobile me account which I renew each year and still no coupon code or offer, sure this isn’t the case in the USA!!

Here is a quick guide to downgrading iPhoto this helped me and only works if you have a backup of your previous iPhoto – http://appletoolbox.com/tag/iphoto-09/

To upgrade Leopard on a partitioned drive it has to be partitioned as GUID, you can select this using the Disk Utility which comes with your mac. Rather than upgrade my drive and do a new installation I decided to buy another 2TB drive I would then have the original one to use as the new backup drive.

I used a USB esata drive adapter and formated the new drive correctly, then using carbon copy cloner I cloned my two partitions to the new drive. Then it was just a case of opening the iMac again and putting in the new drive and it’s ready to go as if I never switched drives. (note: this time I did find I had to manually go through the fonts folder as I seemed to have numerous duplicates which did cause some problems at first)

Then I was able to upgrade to Snow Leopard, the reason for the upgrade in the first place is iLife 11 only works on Snow Leopard and I wanted all the new features – something I’m sure Apple were thinking when they released it. Make sure you download the updates before you try iLife 11 as some users have lost all there photos!

I now have the previous 2TB drive which I can set to backup all my data!

Drive Adapter from Maplins
Hard Drive from Dabs – Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green SATA300 64MB

http://osx.iusethis.com/app/clone2gofreeyoutubedownloaderformac

With Today you can keep track of what’s on your plate for any given day without keeping iCal open all the time. Today syncs with iCal and your life’s agenda so daily events & tasks are always available via one, convenient little interface.

Looks handy check it out here – www.secondgearsoftware.com/today

Project Bubble is a simple and easy-to-use tool for managing your projects, clients, and invoices. Best of all, it’s completely free!

Have been using Project Bubble for a few days now and I must say I like it a lot. It’s simple and easy to use, and free, and just what I was looking for; for managing simple projects.

Why not give it a try - www.projectbubble.com

www.thebigpic.org