Traceroute is an important part of any IT experts toolkit who’s worth his salt.. Traceroute enables you to track down potential routing issues between your Mac/PC/Device to your Router/DNS Servers/Web Host.
If, like me you migrated over to Mac from a PC, you will be used to launching a command prompt and firing off the tracert command. However, in OS X the command is slightly different. Some may say it makes more sense..?
To use OS X Traceroute you need to launch a new terminal session, to do this open Applications > Utilities and click terminal.
When the terminal has launched simply type Traceroute followed by the address you want to trace the route to. So for example, if you wanted to check how your devices browser gets to Google.co.uk you would type:
1 | Traceroute www.google.co.uk |
Your mac will then resolve Google.co.uk to it’s IP address, and then trace each ‘hop’ from your device to the address. This can be very handy when trying to figure out if the routing issue is your equipment, your ISP’s equipment or the web host it’s self.
For those of you who do love it, and think it’s here to stay.. Here’s a quick terminal command to enable a hidden feature. The feature gives you a small notification popup each time the iTunes track changes.
In a new terminal window, enter the following command:
1 2 | defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool YES Killall Dock |
Now, the next time iTunes track details changes you will get a popup like the one seen above! Not sure why this isn’t a built in iTunes feature, I personally think it’s pretty cool.
I’m sure everyone can remember last years release of OS X Lion, I know I was beating down the door of the AppStore to get my copy.. Looking forward to taking advantage of all the features it had to offer.
Now.. Take all of Lion’s fantastic features, and combine them with iOS’s most popular features:
- Reminders
- Notes
- Notification Center
- Game Center
- Air Share
I imagine come summertime when OS X Mountain Lion is released, I will be there – downloading my copy! Luckily for me it generally falls around my birthday, so makes a perfect birthday present from my best friend Carly Bond
After the recent trauma of the last reinstall of OS X Lion, I came across a bit of an issue with the installation of CS 5. No matter what options I chose when doing the trial install, it always ended with the same error.. “Inconsistency in the installer database. Please restart your computer and install again.”
Not even the restart fixed it, which we all know is not very often the case!
Having spent a few frantic hours googling and trying out potential solutions, I finally came across the Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner. A quick run of the tool and finally the install worked!
You can find out more information about the cleanup tool here. Alternatively you can grab the clean up utility using the following link: Direct Download
It’s also worth pointing out, that event though the clean up tool may not be able to find the installation, click the cleanup button anyway. Now restart the trial installer, and you should find it will install as expected.
Have you ever had the need to rename several hundred files, in countless subfolders? Using nothing but Automator you can have it completed in minutes..
Using the method below you can:
- Find & Replace, in either the full name or just the file extension
- Add Date or Time
- Add additional text
- Change the case of the name
- Make Sequential
- Launch ‘Automator’ from the Applications
- Chose Workflow from the menu
- Select ‘Files and Folders’ from the Actions panel on the left hand side
- Then drag a ‘Ask for Finder Items’ to the workflow
- Now, chose a ‘Get Folder Contents’, and tick the box to ‘Repeat for Each Subfolder’
- Then select a ‘Replace Text’ object from the actions menu.
- Change the selections depending on what you are wanting to achieve and then hit the ‘Run’ button.
