AirPort Express 802.11g

I currently have an Apple Airport Express (MB321LL/A) sitting in my desk drawer in my office. I was thinking that there must be something that I can use the device for. So I decided to investigate the capabilities of the original Airport Express.

Features of the AirPort Express 802.11g (1st Generation)

• 10/100 Ethernet WAN or LAN port
• Analog/digital audio output jack
• USB Printer Port

Ethernet WAN

By default the AirPort Express Ethernet port acts as a WAN port. This simply means that you plug in a cable from a DSL Router and then you can broadcast a wireless signal. This would be good if you wanted a special wireless for visitors.

You can set the AirPort Express Ethernet port acts as a LAN port. You need to set up the “Extend a Wireless Network.” Then simply connect any Ethernet device to the Airport Express. This would be useful if you have an old computer/Game Console that doesn’t have WiFi access. Simply connect a regular Ethernet Cable to the computer and the Airport Express.

Wireless Music Device

If your wireless can reach outside your house, you can play music using the Airport Express and some cheap outdoor speakers.

Plug in the Airport Express in the opposite wall of the office and make your computer sounds be in stereo mode.

The Operating Temperature is 32 F to 95 F (So there's no chance of putting this outside to play Christmas Music.)

USB Port Ideas

Most modern printers have built-in wireless capabilities. I am guessing it would be useful for an old printer. There's nothing really

Resources

If you have AirPort Express 802.11g (1st Generation) download Apple's Setup Guide to get you up and running.

PhotoScape X

PhotoScape X is a great photo utility to process images. Its really handy to have when you want to make a quick image change.

It also packs a lot of neat graphics enhancements that I haven't seen any place else. Things like 3D Objects, Kaleidoscope, Tiny Planet and Scissors.

I have Affinity Photo and Pixelmator and both are excellent programs. I find that PhotoScape X comes in handy when I need a quick fix, for example if I just want crop or add an effect to an image.

Eight Major Categories

Editor Tools

There are lots of cool tools to the Editor. I recommend loading up an image and spend a few minutes clicking around all the different Effects and Transformations. Along with the standard Resize, Crop, Miniature, Bloom, HDR, and Dehaze there are:

• 32 Adjustment Options
• 26 Effects Option
• 11 Transformations Options

Check out all the different Frames effects too. You don't have as much flexibility as Frame apps like LightFrame and ImageFrame, but it's certainly good enough for a quick touch up. I like the Film and Notebook frames, they add a neat touch up. There are 170+ Frame designs to select from in PhotoScape X.

Lots of tools to inspire your creativity.

Quick Combine Image Trick

I like to combine multiple screenshots into one image. This is super simple to do in PhotoScape X - simply select the images and then the margin and spacing all done in about 5-4 mouse clicks.

Here's a neat trick after you combine the image in PhotoScape X:

Video Tutorials

Check out the 28 videos on PhotoScape X website. You don't need to purchase the software to watch them. It's a great way to learn how to use the tool. In particular pay attention to how quickly things can get done.

Cool Tool for Your Dock

Affinity Photo is still a very powerful image tool, and I use it when I need more control. For basic edits, PhotoScape X seems to be my new go-to tool. I believe that in the long run the $29.99 for the Pro Version is worth the cost.

Currently 105 people have given it 5 Star rating in the App Store.

You can learn a lot about the applications by just spending some time and seeing all the capabilities, perhaps the app will inspire you to do something different with your images.

Photo Size Optimizer

Effect Matrix's Photo Size Optimizer for Mac is a powerful image compression application.

I found about the application because it was one of the applications that I picked in this summer's BundleHunt.

Description from Effect Matrix's site:

Sample Application Screenshot

Nine Things I Learned About Photo Size Optimizer

• There's no documentation or help files with the application, you basically have to play around with the application to understand how to use it. Fortunately, most of it is straight forward.
• You have no control over the compression. Basically you accept the savings that the application suggest.
• There's two functionalities, Resize & Squeezer and Lossless Photo Squeezer.
• Resize & Squeezer - will resize a bunch of images and resize them to a 10 different options. You can also add a custom option. Note: The resize option is for all the images that you dragged and drop, you can't set different demensions per image.
• Lossless Photo Squeezer - Use this when you only want to shrink the file size and not the dimensions.
• I found that Affinity Photo, GraphicConverter OmniGraffle offered better compression.
• OmniGraffle and Graphic Converter offer previews to see how stronger compression may not impact the image. I was able to get better compression using other applications.
• Some people may have problems installing the application because the application isn't registered. When I tried to open it I got a warning: "Photo Size Optimizer.app" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.
• You can't compress animated GIF files with Photo Size Optimizer.

Overall Feeling

It's really hard to justify paying $29.99 for this application. You'll get better compress and more features in other applications. The application is useful when I want to quickly shrink a file and not have to play around with different settings - basically: "Set it and forget it."

In the long run, your better off buying and using GraphicConverter for $10 more.

Try Yourself

Effect Matrix offers a 10 days Free Trial with Full Features if you download it from their website.

The full version is $29.99.

BBEdit 12

Yesterday Bare Bones Software updated BBEdit to Version 12. The feedback from long term customers has been amazing.

Yes, BBEdit has a very strong customer base.

Some Cool Features in Version 12

There are a lot of changes in Version 12, you would expect that with a major release, here are five some of the highlights that I like:

• Paste Using Filter - You can now apply a filter to any text you paste in. For example you can create a filter to add hyperlinks to certain company phrases.
• Columns Edit - Now its easy to remove or rearrange data in CSV files.
• FTP/SFTP Browser - Lots of code cleanup with the FTP/SFTP browser window.
• Canonize - Allows you to perform batch search replace using a reference file. This is great when you need to run the same file clean up command as part of your daily task.
• Color Scheme now carries over to the sidebar

The Editor window difference between version 11 and version 12 of BBEdit.
Click on image for a larger version.

Complete details are listed on theirBBEdit 12.0 Release Notes.

Are You Using Completion Correctly?

One of the Preference changes Bare Bones made was to move the Completion into its own category. I actually had it turned off because I wasn't really using it that much. Big Mistake!

BBEdit text completion makes typing HTML commands so much easier. You don't need to use the HTML Markup Tools palette. Simply type in the first few letter and then select the text completion that works for you.

For example, Typing in the words 'an' will bring up the anchor drop down. Hit Return then type the URL then Tab then the text you wish to link. It's a lot faster than bring up the anchor dialog box.

It might take a few tried to get used to it, but once you have gotten used to it, it will speed up your HTML work.

Create a BootStrap Panel Text Completion

If you do any work with Twitter's Bootstrap your probably creating a lot of panels. Here's a simple step to add a panel to BBEdit Text Completion so that it will be super easy to create panels.

To get you started, copy the following text to a BBEdit file:

<DIV class="panel panel-default"><div class="panel-heading"><h3 class="panel-title"></div>
<div class="panel-body">

</div></div>

Highlight the text, right click and select "Save Selection as Clipping..."

Call it whatever you want, the name is important because that's going to be your Text Completion trigger. Mine is simply: panel.

Create a new set and call it Bootstrap. This will help you organize common Clippings

Test it out! Type in the word 'panel' in any BBEdit document and you should see the drop down.

How awesome is that! Now you can create text completions for all your panel types. Don't forget to add one for Wells and responsive Tables too!

Getting BBEdit

You can download a trial version of BBEdit from their website. You'll have 30 days to try out all the features.

FFMpeg

If your looking for a powerful multimedia framework check out FFmpeg. It's a powerful command line utility that has a strong user base and easy to learn.

ffmepg doesn’t have a fancy user interface, which may turn away some users. I believe It worth learning FFmpeg because you'll learn more about creating multimedia files.

Three Examples

Show MetaData

Find out some MetaData on your multimedia file. Here's what information that Quicktime and Finder shows:

This is what FFmpeg displays when you run the command:

ffmpeg -i

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '/Volumes/MONOCARPOUS/Computers/2003/3.17.03/done/mitt.mov':
  Metadata:
    creation_time   : 2003-03-16T05:31:43.000000Z
    encoder         : Encoded with Cleaner 5
    encoder-eng     : Encoded with Cleaner 5
  Duration: 00:00:30.06, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 491 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: svq1 (SVQ1 / 0x31515653), yuv410p, 320x240, 442 kb/s, 15 fps, 15 tbr, 600 tbn, 600 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2003-03-16T05:31:43.000000Z
      handler_name    : Apple Alias Data Handler
      encoder         : Sorenson Video
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: qdm2 (QDM2 / 0x324D4451), 44100 Hz, mono, s16, 48 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2003-03-16T05:31:43.000000Z
      handler_name    : Apple Alias Data Handler

Convert old .MOV to the latest .MP4 standards

This is a basic functionality of FFmpeg. The core command is:

ffmpeg -i filename.mov filename.mp4

A more advance example would be:

for FILE in *.swf; do ffmpeg -i "$FILE" "${FILE[@]/%swf/mp4}"; done;

That will convert all Flash SWF files in a directory to the industry standard h264 format. This is very useful to view Flash video if you don't have a Flash player.

As you learn more about the FFmpeg, you'll understand which compression will work for your multimedia and distribution method.

Create a Looping File

Let's say you have a howling wolf audio clip and you wanted to have a longer version. Here's an example of how you would go about doing that using FFmpeg.

ffmpeg -stream_loop 4 -i howl.mp3 -c copy howl4.mp3

Real Video Files

I thought I might be interesting to see if FFmpeg would convert some old Real Media files to MP4. I tested converting a couple of Real Video and Real Audio files, some that you can see on this site, and they converted from Real Video 10 to H264 successfully.

The video quality was bad. However, it was probably because when I encoded it I went for the smallest file size as possible.

Seamless Images in Affinity Designer

Someone added a comment to a previous blog post asking how I was able to make a background image in Affinity Designer. It's pretty easy to do.

Here are the steps on creating a seamless asset in Affinity Designer. To do this, I'll utilize some functionality in OmniGraffle.

A seamless background image is a pattern that looks the same no matter how big the background is. Think of it as wallpaper pattern.

Steps to create the pattern

• Open up OmniGraffle
• Drag and drop the Seamless Background image

• 

  In the Image Setting, in the Object Panel, select the 'Tile Image to fit Shape' icon.
• Now reshape the shape to a large size, such as 1000 px. It's important to keep the image ratio, this is done by holding the shift key and drag the corners.
• Once done, simply copy the object.

• Open up Affinity Designer
• Create a new document.
• Paste in the file.
• Open up the Style Panel
• Right Click on the Image and select the 'Create Style'

Now you have a style that has the background image.

FontDoc Copy/Paste

Earlier this year I wrote about how FontDoc was a useful application to see what font looks best for a given text. You type in any text and in a few seconds, you see your text using all the fonts on your computer. Simply scroll through to see all your options

This is certainly better than judging a typeface by the name - after all many fonts look different when you mix upper and lowercase characters.

FontDoc Cool Feature

There is a cool benefit that I didn't mention - copy and paste. You can copy the text and paste it into any document and it will paste in the text using the font style you selected. How cool is that!

This makes it really easy to look at header text in different font styles and then paste in the one that you like the most. This will work in any application - Affinity Designer, Photoshop, OmniGraffle, Microsoft Word and more. Any document that supports rich text (RTF) will support this.

This is way better than judging what looks better based on the WYSIWYG menu.

Drag and Drop Works!

You can simply select the text and drag and drop it into your application. In the above screenshot, I dragged and drop the text to Microsoft Word.

One Exception to the rule

The only caveat is that the font has to be installed. So if you're using FontDoc to check Fonts that are not on your computer, the pasted text will be pasted in Helvetica font style.

The fix is easy, simply install the font and try again. Note: You may need to quit and reopen the application in order for the application to recognize the font.

Intensify CK

Intensify CK is an Mac OS Application that makes it easy to touch up images. You don't need to be an expert in understanding how vibrance, Saturation and Luminosity works. There are some cool presets that can help you get the most clarity and intensity from your images.

From Macphun's website:

Main Preset Categories

• Architecture
• Black & White
• Creative
• Detail Enhancement
• Image Tune
• Landscape
• Soft

Making Standard Photos Awesome

I like Intensity because it can help make simple photos taken with the iPhone to look so much better. Check out how using the basic Artistic Preset changes the sky in this Fenway Park picture:

When I load up a file in Intensify CK, I then select one of the Presets, and use the down arrow key to see the change in the image with the different selections.

Lynda.com Class

If you want to get more from Intensify CK, check out the Advance Intensity CK class at Lynda.com. Richard Harrington will help you understand some of the advanced options in Intensify CK. It's a good way to learn to use the software.

Summary

I purchased Intensity CK from a recent Bundle Hunt deal. I don't think that I would use this frequently but think that it's a nice tool to have when I need it.

Check it out for yourself, there is a 15 day trial. Where you can play around with the various presets and see how they can make your photos look different.

For example, there are 9 different Black and White presets. Which is kind of neat to see the difference that each one can do to an image.

Command One

Commander One is a file manager for Mac, a program like Finder to copy, delete, compress/uncompress files, connect to an FTP server, etc. However, Commander One can do much more than Finder, e.g. search for files with specific pattern across all drives and archives, mount MTP and iOS devices, view processes in the system, etc.

Having multiple windows can be complicated to manage. A Dual-pane browser window can make it easy to navigate between folders and services. With Command One Pro, you can connect to the most popular cloud services and manage them all with one familiar interface.

• Command One Pro is part of the Setup Subscription Service. For $9.99 a month you can have access to 60+ applications. It's a good way to try out various apps to see which ones you may like.
• A Command One Pro Personal License only allows you access to one installation of Commander One Pro, if you have multiple Macintosh computers you need a Team License.
• To view folder contents size you have to press the space bar. (There should be a setting so that folder size is always displayed)
• You can connect your DropBox account and manage it without having to install the DropBox app. Very handy if you have limited disk space on your computer.
• One good use I got out of this was the ability to back up certain files to a thumb drive. I did a quick search for brush files (.abr) and moved them to my thumb drive so that I had a backup of brushes. Command One made it easy to find the files and move them to the folder on my thumb drive.
• Really cool that you can open up ZIP and WAR file without extracting. I have quite a few files that have images and text data that I can access whenever I want.
• Just about every functionality is configurable to a hot key. This makes it easy to make certain tasks easy to perform. (For some reason Command-F is assigned to the Connections dialog. I think it should be assigned to search, fortunately, you can change it.)
• I found the search to be very helpful in managing misc files on the computer.
• The Disk List bar makes it easy to switch between connected accounts/drives. Making it very easy to move files between connected USB thumb drives.
• The Pro pack includes DropBox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, OneDrive and WebDAV. Giving you more power than the standard web interface.

Apple External Keyboard Stopped Working

This week my Apple External Keyboard just stopped working for no reason. I have a MacBook Pro connected to a Thunderbolt display. All of a sudden the keyboard just stopped working.

• I removed the USB end from the display and reconnected it, no such luck.
• I plugged the keyboard directly into the computer, restarted - no keyboard was found.
• The Apple Keyboard didn't even show up in the System Information.
• The caps lock key never lit up.

How did I get it to work?

I read various Apple forums from other customers having the same issue. The "easy" solution was to connect the keyboard to a USB hub. I simply connected my USB Mighty Man hub to the computer and then the Keyboard USB to the hub. That worked!

< /p>

Seems like a weird solution. But the advice on Apple.stackexchanged.com worked!

I am wondering if my Optical Gaming Mouse that is connected to the Thunderbolt display is draining out the USB power. Although it doesn't explain why connecting the keyboard directly to the computer didn't work.

The USB Gaming Mouse (Holtek Semiconductor) has a current required 100 (mA), where as the Apple Keyboard has a current required on 20 (mA).

USB Hub Man to the Rescue

In any case, not sure why all of a sudden this started happening. I have been using the Keyboard/Mouse/Thunderbolt connection for about 6 months now with no problems. The system is running macOS Sierra version 10.12.6 with the update installed 17 days ago.

Fluid Mask 3

Fluid Mask is an easy way to remove/replace background images. People use this when they want to extract people or objects out of photograph.

This is a professional graphic tool that is more powerful than mask functionality that you may encounter in Pixelmator or Photoshop. This gives the user more power to strip out unwanted backgrounds. The net-net results is a cleaner cut with no ugly pixelated edges.

Some example uses:

• Change the background from a cloudy day to a nice sunny one.
• Add someone to a photograph to make it appear that they were at the family outing even though they couldn't make it.
• Take the 'Welcome to Boston' sign out of a picture and place it on your website header.
• Remove unwanted objects from your photos.
• An tool in your photography toolbox to create great images for social media.

From their website:

Good Tools have a Learning Curve

It takes a while to understand how to use this tool. Fortunately, there are plenty of video tutorials to watch and understand the fundamental ideas. Every image is different so learning the fundamentals can help tackle the toughest task.

I did find the layout to be a bit hard to understand but watching the videos and playing around with the software help with the learning curve.

Start off slow. I would recommend just doing a basic background replacement and slowly work your way to more complex masking.

Some Examples of Work

Here are a couple of images that I was able to extract using Fluid Mask.

A little touch up with Pixlr to keep the colors about the same.

Getting Fluid Mask

You don't need Photoshop to use Fluid Mask. It works perfectly fine as a stand alone application. The downside of the standalone version is you can't drag and drop images to open - you need to open the image via the File -> Open option within the application.

You can download a trial version from their website. If you find the tool to be a time saver you can purchase a license for $99.

This might seem a bit expensive for the casual photographer and blogger. However, the tool will save you a lot of time which could justify

Smartmockups

Smart Mockup makes it easy to display any image as if it was on a monitor/computer/displays. The application has 458 templates whereas the website only has 157 mockups.

The nice thing about using SmartMockups is that you can present a website in a different view. You simply pick out the design first and then add your image or enter a URL.

You have the option of exporting the image or simply use the 'Share' link to instantly share the image in Slack or Jira.

Some Notes about the application

• There is no glare reflection effect on the mockup image. (Instructions on how to add it in Photoshop.)
• In order to run the SmartMockups app you need to be connected to the Internet.
• Check out some of the designs and use the 'Favorites' feature on ones you like. This will save you time later.
• After you upload an image, you have the opportunity to resize it so that it fits in the placeholder template.
• There are four image sizes on export. If all the sizes are big, you can always resize the exported image to whatever you want.
• There a Suggestion box where you can add and vote on other ideas. You can also see what ideas that might get implemented soon.
• Keep checking the application once and a while, you never know when new designs come in.
• Smartmockups now support GIFs. However, they don't support GIFs larger that 8 MB.

This is a useful tool to have if you do any type of blogging or social media advertising. It can help make screenshot and photos look better than by themselves.

There is a one-time fee of $49 for the application. The software is available for Windows and Macintosh users. You can download the application from their website. Check around the Internet, you may find discounts from various vendors. I was able to pick up a license for $19.

Transmit 5

Transmit is a communication software that allows you to transfer files. This is a great tool to use for anyone managing websites.

I have been a long time Panic's Transmit customer. My first Transmit license was purchased on September 27, 2006 (Version 3). I upgraded to version 4.0 on March 15, 2013. ( Checkout my earlier blog post)

I have been a very happy customer of Transmit and pretty much every file that has been moved to the cryan.com server was done using Transmit.

Finally an Update

On July 18, 2016 Panic.com announced a major upgrade to Transmit. This is the first major update since 2010. I decided to take a look at what's new with my favorite software.

Panic's press release has highlighted three major changes:

• Connect to More Servers
• Faster Connection
• New UI

Here's a couple of things that caught my attention when I tried out the software for a few days.

More Servers

It's nice that Transmit can now connect to a lot more services. They went from supporting four to ten.

My file transfer needs are a bit basic. Currently, I don't have any account on the other services, but that may change. I basically use Transmit to copy from my own SFTP server.

I am pretty sure that it's only a matter of time before I'll be having accounts on Amazon S3, Blackblaze B2 or Microsoft Azure. Cloud storage is growing and you're better off storing files there than on a DVD.

Places Bar

The Places Bar is very cool. When you open up a connection there's a new bookmark type of bar on the top of the file listing. The bar stores all your favorite locations that you use for that location.

Now I can navigate between folders a lot easier. It's easier to zoom between folders - definitely a huge time saver.

In Transmit 4, I had set up different 'Favorite' locations on the same server. In version 5, I can simplify things and have my website as a favorite and then use the Places Bar to navigate around common folders. I can quickly move between the Template folder and my Includes folder.

Overall View

I am very happy that Transmit has gotten an update - even happier that they didn't go to a yearly subscription plan like other software vendors have done.

Right now I can't justify upgrading. But it's nice to know that when I get onto additional clouds solutions, that Transmit will be a solution that I can use.

If you're moving files between services, I would highly recommend checking out Transmit. The seven-day trial is plenty of time to see how it's a great time saver.

Apple Mail HTML Support

I encountered this paragraph in the Take Control of Apple Mail book By Joe Kissell. Google added the Book to a search I was doing for 'raw HTML apple mail'

It hard to believe that it took several versions of OS X before the default Mail application supported HTML in emails.

Save-As Dialog Boxes

Today’s post is about what makes a great Save dialog. This is going to be short because a good graphic 'Save-As' dialog box should be simple.

This is a comparison of the Save-As dialog box three main graphic applications that I use:

Omnigroup's OmniGraffle

Great Dialog Box, easy to use and very practical tools.

OmniGraffle gets it right with their version of the save dialog. The Omni Group puts in a nice preview and the option to export different sizes of the graphic. They also have the ability to have a margin around the graphic, which is perfect when the graphic border is a bit too close to the edge.

Nice to Have: A zoom feature in the preview area would be very useful.

Graphic Converter

The Before/After Preview feature is really good. I also like the ability to change up on the Codec and Subsampling. Deciding what metadata to include can help make the file size a bit smaller.

Nice to Have: Ability to add the margin around the image.

Photoshop Elements 13

Adobe Photoshop gives you a lot of control on how to setup the final output image. You can easily customize the Width/Height to whatever values that you want. The Preview section gives you additional information about how long a file will take to download, however, this seems to be a bit out of date as there are not many people with 56.6k internet connections.

Nice to Have Features: Ability to add a margin around the image. Ability to save different sizes in the same dialog.