A friend of mine got a blank DVD stuck in his almost brand new MacBook and he was about to head over to CASE (one of the Apple service providers in HK), then I found this blog post by googling "DVD stuck in MacBook" and the simple trick worked like a charm.

Apple really should put this wonderful tip in their knowledge base.

Moral of the story : whatever your problem might be, whatever it is that you need, Google is your friend

I've been meaning to write something like this, but didn't really get a chance to (yes I'm plain lazy). So when I saw this post over at FreeMacWare yesterday, I thought it would be a good excuse for me to finally stop being lazy and share with y'all my favorite free mac wares.

No. 1 - Cyberduck
Link: http://www.freemacware.com/cyberduck/

A brilliant FTP client. Open source, simple to use yet powerful, has every single feature I need and I love the ducky icon :)

For many years I was happy using Fetch. I didn't mind that it wasn't free as long as it did its job. But lately I've been having problem when uploading with Fetch, it got time-out all the times and I couldn't upload anything larger than 8MB. That's a total pain as I constantly need to upload large files to my clients as well as my many many web sites. So I hopped over to FreeMacWare and found Cyberduck.

From FreeMacWare,

Cyberduck is a free FTP client for Mac OS X. Web designers and programmers can use Cyberduck to upload files to their web server and create web sites. My friend who is a graphic designer also used Cyberduck to upload his Adobe Illustrator files to the printer for publishing. Cyberduck supports FTP and SFTP (secure FTP).

With Cyberduck, it’s super easy to connect to your FTP server and start uploading files. I’ve also noticed that Cyberduck is regularly updated; the developer David Kocher does a good job of fixing bugs and improving the software.

Besides being free, Cyberduck is also open source software, released under the GPL license.

No. 2 - BlogAssist
Link: http://www.freemacware.com/blogassist/

If you're anything like me (writing loads of blog post and codes everyday), you're gonna love this handy app and soon find yourself addicted to it.

I was never a fan of those WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. I wanna be able to control how exactly my codes appear, which attributes (title, alt etc) I use for each image and link etc. I like to hand-code everything. But that also means it'll take me longer as I need to write a lot of codes.

That's where BlogAssist comes in. It's dead easy to use. For example, I wanna include a link in my blog post. Normally I would have to type all these:

a href="http://www.somelink.com" title="Some title" Some content /a

(I took out the "< >" since the "pre" "code" doesn't work on Multiply somehow)

But with BlogAssist, all I have to do is copy an URI, go to the BlogAssist icon in the menu bar, click "Web Link" once, and paste the URI in my blog post, and Viola ! All the HTML codes that I need are there !

I also love the way it's highly customizable. I can add and edit other codes that I use frequently in the BlogAssist menu and whenever I need those codes, all I need to do is copy, click and paste.

From FreeMacWare,

Blogassist is an incredible timesaver for people who use HTML (bloggers, web designers, etc.) When started, Blogassist will put a “B” in the menu bar. From the drop down list you’ll find options for adding HTML to text you have copied.

For instance, to link to an image, copy the image URL to your clipboard (using Edit->Copy or Command-C), then select “Image” from Blogassist’s drop down menu, and then paste the resulting text into your application.

The drop down list is customizable and the application runs without an icon in your dock.

No. 3 - Free Ruler
Link: http://www.freemacware.com/free-ruler/

Whether you're a graphic designer or web designer, you just can't miss this great tool. It does one thing and does it well - a transparent ruler that lets you measure dimensions on the screen. I found it especially useful when designing web sites.

From FreeMacWare:

The name of this freeware says it all. It’s a free ruler for use on your screen.

I find this freeware to be incredibly useful. You can measure items on your screen using pixels, inches, picas and centimeters. This is great when you are setting up a web site, or working with images in any way. So simple, and so useful.

No. 4 - File List
Link: http://www.freemacware.com/file-list/

Have you ever wanna rename a bunch of files just so that you can remember what they actually are? Or wanna rename a bunch of digital photos before you upload them to your web site? This is a very handy tool to help you take care of that.

From FreeMacWare:

We’ve reviewed this talented developer’s stuff before; here’s another excellent utility. The name doesn’t quite say it, but File List can help you rename files. Lots of them. For example, if you have a bunch of digital photos from your camera that are named DSC0001, DSC0002, etc., you can rename all of them to “Mike’s Birthday 001″, etc. I’ve definitely come across times when I wish I would have had something like this. I’m glad to find it now.

No. 5 - iBackup
Link : http://www.freemacware.com/ibackup

I was searching all over the net for a backup solution that was easy to use, cheap and reliable. I didn't wanna mess with any command line stuff and setup cron jobs and such. I just wanted a simple backup solution.

When I found iBackup, the search was over. I've been using it happily for almost 6 months now and have nothing to complain about it.

From the developer,

iBackup is a simple to use backup/restore utility for scheduled backups of files, folders, applications and your system preferences like the dock, deskop picture, time settings, firewall, bluetooth and system applications like AddressBook, Mail, Stickies, iChat, iTunes and more. You can edit these preferences settings and add your own.

iBackup is a great app and in active development. New improved releases are launched almost every week. Don't worry about getting updates though, the developers have made it simple enough - every time you fire up iBackup (I set it to launch at login and auto-backup every night) it will check for available updates, then fire up your browser and take you to their web site where you can download the update with a single click of your mouse.

There are many more great free mac wares on FreeMacWare.com. If you're a Mac user make sure you check it out. They post new apps on a daily basis so I would suggest that you subscribe to their RSS feed.

For y'all Windows users out there, do you see how much great stuff you're missing? I keep hearing people complaining that Mac is expensive, and I know you can get a Windows PC real cheap. But have you consider how much you've gotta pay for all the upgrades, patches, and anti-virus softwares that will *hopefully* keep your computer safe from harm? Can you really trust a company that builds operation system which you can only shut down by clicking on the "Start" button? Does it make any sense at all?

Come and join us on the light side. You'll never look back. I promise. :)

Pax Dickinson has written up a very informative and useful article detailing many of the common PHP programming mistakes that can result in security holes.

PHP is a terrific language for the rapid development of dynamic Websites. It also has many features that are friendly to beginning programmers, such as the fact that it doesn't require variable declarations. However, many of these features can lead a programmer inadvertently to allow security holes to creep into a Web application. The popular security mailing lists teem with notes of flaws identified in PHP applications, but PHP can be as secure as any other language once you understand the basic types of flaws PHP applications tend to exhibit.

In this article, I'll detail many of the common PHP programming mistakes that can result in security holes. By showing you what not to do, and how each particular flaw can be exploited, I hope that you'll understand not just how to avoid these particular mistakes, but also why they result in security vulnerabilities. Understanding each possible flaw will help you avoid making the same mistakes in your PHP applications.

Security is a process, not a product, and adopting a sound approach to security during the process of application development will allow you to produce tighter, more robust code.

Read the full article at SitePoint

bobdewhirst reported that we can simply drag a drop an URI into Keynote to get an inline web view. Handy !

Via macosxhints

I LOVE the Mighty Mouse. So much that I pre-ordered 3 of them when they first came out. I'm so used to the scroll ball I can't stand any other mice.

The problem is, they don't stay "healthy" for long. The scroll ball got stuck a month later and it was really annoying. I searched for articles on Apple's web site but the advice they gave (wiping it using a cloth) just didn't help. So I decided to crack it up and perform a major clean up.

I didn't know if it would work. But honestly, if the scroll ball didn't work anymore I would throw it away anyway, so I had nothing to lose.

So yeah, with the help of 3!66op I torn it apart and here are the pix that I took -

Step 1



Open the mighty mouse using a letter-opener, you're gonna hear some weird clicking noises and it sounds like it's gonna break, but don't worry about it, you mouse is going useless if you can't clean the scroll ball anyway.



Keep pushing the opener between the upper case and the side buttons. You probably won't be able to tear it apart just from pushing on one side, so repeat the process on both side buttons.

Step 2



When the gap between the case and the side buttons become wide enough (the side buttons aren't gonna fall out, so don't push too hard. Just produce a wide gap would do), use the letter-opener to remove the "ring".

Step 3



And there you go... it looks complicated to me....



Open it up carefully. There's is a tiny plug connecting the upper and lower parts of the mouse, just unplug it and you'll be able to open up the mouse completely.



A closer look.

Step 4



Be careful not to lose any screws.



Have fun cleaning it up ! Look how dirty it is !

LifeHacker tells you how to subscribe to FREE del.icio.us video in iTunes in just 4 simple steps.

Read more that the link above.

Handy CSS tips and tricks, enjoy !

1. Rounded Corners


2. Rounded Corners without images


3. Creating a Netflix style star ratings


4. Tableless forms


5. Styling Lists with CSS


6. 2 Column Layout Technique


7. 3 Column Layout with CSS


8. 3 Column Fixed width centered layout


9. Printing with CSS


10. Adding a CSS stylesheet to an RSS feed


11. Footer Stick


12. CSS Element Hover Effect


13. Styling Horizontal Rules


14. Clearing Floats


15. CSS Popups


16. Box Punch


17. CSS Badge


18. Orange RSS Buttons with pure CSS


19. 10 CSS Tricks you may not know


20. 10 More CSS Tricks you may not know

Get Bookmarklets

Handy little script, works perfectly fine on my Safari. Let me know if you encounter any problem using it !

"Bookmarklets let you take the power of Technorati with you wherever you go. Just drag and drop these links onto your bookmarks / favorites bar!"


» Technorati This   See who's linking to the page you're on.


» Technorati This in a New Window   Same thing but in a new window.

Photoshop guru Ben Willmore uses this OS X technique to quickly access files on his Mac while he's teaching his popular Photoshop seminars. It's caught the attention of his students, even though they're supposed to be focusing on Photoshop rather than OS X. If it can distract people from learning Photoshop from Ben, I figure it's worth passing on:

Drag a copy of the hard drive icon from your Mac OS X desktop to the right of the vertical line on the right side of your Dock. (If your Dock is vertical drag the hard drive icon beneath the horizontal line near the bottom of the Dock.) Press and hold the hard drive icon on the Dock to reveal pop-up menus of your file structure. Now you can use the pop-up menus to quickly navigate your hard drive and access your files.

Pause CPU-hungry apps without quitting them.

read more at link above.