This is a good method if you have only one or two posts/pages that are affected, but what if you have hundreds of posts and pages. Editing each one and deleting each field is time consuming and laborious. Luckily there is a faster option to do this by directly interacting with the WordPress database and issuing SQL commands to update the relevant tables.

This quick guide shows you just that, but first please make sure you’ve taken a backup of the database, just in case.

Step 1

Login to your hosting account and launch myPHPadmin from the cPanel, or equivalent, to access the WordPress database engine.

Step 2

Enter a select SQL command to list all the meta keys you want to remove. In this example, I want to find and eventually remove the meta key dcssb_short_url.

SELECT * FROM 'wp_postmeta' where 'meta_key' = 'dcssb_short_url'

Step 3

Once you are satisfied you’ve narrowed down the selection, issue a delete SQL command to remove the rogue data

DELETE * FROM 'wp-postmeta' WHERE 'meta_key' = 'dcssb_short_url'

Step 4

Issue the same select SQL command again, to verify all the offending records have been deleted.

SELECT * FROM 'wp_postmeta' where 'meta_key' = 'dcssb_short_url'

If you get no results returned, it means that you successfully deleted the records.

One option is to download the latest Xcode for Mountain Lion from the Mac Apple Store. Once installed go to Xcode > Preferences > Downloads > Command Line Tools > Install.

The Command Line Tools contain the latest SVN system. However, for me downloading Xcode, all 1.5GB of it, was an overkill, especially as I only wanted the SVN element, and not the Xcode IDE as I’m not a OS X / iOS developer.

Luckily there is a way to install SVN without Xcode, simply install the Command Line Tools for Mountain Lion available as a separate 116MB download from the Apple Developer site. You’ll need an Apple Developer ID, but it’s free and easy to create using your existing AppleID.

Once you’ve downloaded the 116MB file and installed the tools, you can verify that SVN is installed and check the version by opening Terminal and enter the following at the command prompt svn --version, you should see something like:

$ svn --version

svn, version 1.6.18 (r1303927)
   compiled Jun 15 2012, 19:07:58

Copyright (C) 2000-2009 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.apache.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

The following repository access (RA) modules are available:

* ra_neon : Module for accessing a repository via WebDAV protocol using Neon.
  - handles 'http' scheme
  - handles 'https' scheme
* ra_svn : Module for accessing a repository using the svn network protocol.
  - handles 'svn' scheme
* ra_local : Module for accessing a repository on local disk.
  - handles 'file' scheme

The hosts file can be edited to block certain hostsnames, like ad-serving/malicious hosts, or used for web development purposes, i.e. to redirect domains to local addresses.

Step 1 – Open the Terminal.app

Either start typing Terminal in the Spotlight search, or goto Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

Step 2 – Open the host file

Open the hosts file by typing the following in the Terminal window:

$ sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

Type your user password when prompted.

Step 3 – Edit the hosts file

The hosts file contains some comments (lines starting with the # symbol), as well as some default hostname mappings (e.g. 127.0.0.1 – local host). Simply append your new mappings underneath the default ones.

Step 4 – Save the hosts file

When done editing the hosts file, press Control+o to save the file.

Press Enter on the filename prompt, and

Control-x to exit the editor.

Step 5 – Flush the DNS cache

You can use a simple Terminal command to flush the DNS cache, and have your host file changes take immediate effect. Using the open Terminal window, then the following command:

$ dscacheutil -flushcache

Your new mappings should now take effect.

Previous Mac OS X operating systems:
How to edit the hosts file in Mac OS X 10.6 – Snow Leopard
How to edit the hosts file in Mac OS X 10.7 – Lion

Generally speaking, you will want to always have the SMS sensor enabled, but if you’re like me and have replaced the stock hard drive with a Solid State Hardrive. then this setting is not-required. Further more, like me, if you’re using an Intel 320 SSD you definitely want to disable this setting, because if activated it could render your disk non-functioning and cause the dreaded 8mb failure.

Disable Sudden Motion Sensor on a Mac Laptop

This works to disable the Sudden Motion Sensor on the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, MacBook, PowerBook, and iBook running Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

1. Launch Terminal
2. Type the following at the command line: sudo pmset -a sms 0
3. Hit return and enter your password

The SMS sensor is now disabled, it’s just as easy to reenable again by changing the zero to a one when you need the protection back:

Enable the Sudden Motion Sensor on a Mac Laptop

This works on the same hardware as disabling the feature, and it’s basically the same commands:

1. Launch Terminal
2. Type the following at the command line: sudo pmset -a sms 1
3. Hit return and enter your password

The SMS sensor is now enabled, you’ll notice the commands are identical except that the -a sms flag now has 1 attached to it rather than 0 (standard computing protocol of 1 for on, 0 for off).

Checking the status of the Sudden Motion Sensor

If you’re not sure whether the motion sensor is enabled or not, you can check quickly with the command line:

1. Launch Terminal
2. At the command line, type: sudo pmset -g
3. Hit return, enter your password
4. In the list of settings look for the sms entry. Seeing a 1 next to sms indicates that the motion sensor is enabled, seeing a 0 next to sms indicates the motion sensor is disabled.

This simple bookmarklet is a piece of JavaScript code saved as a bookmark. When you want to see the source of a web page, just click the bookmark and the source of the page is displayed.

javascript:(function(){
    var w = window.open('about:blank'),
        s = w.document;
    s.write('');
    s.close();
    var f = s.body.appendChild(s.createElement('form'));
        f.setAttribute('method','post');
        f.setAttribute('action','http://resource.grapii.com/files/viewsource/?uri='+location.href);
    var i = f.appendChild(s.createElement('input'));
        i.setAttribute('type','hidden');
        i.setAttribute('name','DOM');
        i.setAttribute('value',encodeURIComponent(document.documentElement.innerHTML));
    f.submit();
})();

View Source (click to try)

Step 1.

Visit this page using Safari on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.

Step 2.

Tap the Share button and select Add Bookmark from the popup menu.

Step 3.

In the title field, enter View Source. Leave the address field as is for now, and tap save.

Step 4.

Using your touch selection skills, copy the following JavaScript code to the devices clipboard (this is a condensed version of the code above)

javascript:(function(){var d=window.open("about:blank"),a=d.document;a.write("<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title>Loading Source</title></head><body></body></html>");a.close();var b=a.body.appendChild(a.createElement("form"));b.setAttribute("method","post");b.setAttribute("action","http://resource.grapii.com/files/viewsource/?uri="+location.href);var c=b.appendChild(a.createElement("input"));c.setAttribute("type","hidden");c.setAttribute("name","DOM");c.setAttribute("value",encodeURIComponent(document.documentElement.innerHTML));b.submit()})()

Step 5.

Tap the Bookmarks icon and then edit. Find the View Source bookmark in the list and tap the right arrow to get the bookmark details. Now tap on the address field and hit the X icon to clear the existing entry. Tap and paste the JavaScript code from the clipboard (Step 4).

Step 6.

Tap the Bookmarks navigation item to save the changes.

All Done.

Simply visit any web page, and if you want to see it’s source code, tap on the Bookmarks icon and select the View Source bookmark.

Note that the source shown is the generated DOM, and not the original HTML. These might differ depending on the amount of JavaScript used on the page.

Alternative View Source code

You could use this code for the bookmarklet instead, described by , which is “pure” but doesn’t include the highlighted syntax, clickable links or selectable text.

javascript:(function(){
    var w = window.open('about:blank'),
        s = w.document;
    s.write('<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title>Source of ' + location.href + '</title><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" /></head><body></body></html>');
    s.close();

    var pre = s.body.appendChild(s.createElement("pre"));
    pre.style.overflow = 'auto';
    pre.style.whiteSpace = 'pre-wrap';
    pre.appendChild(s.createTextNode(document.documentElement.innerHTML));
})();

Copy & Paste the following for the alternative View Source code:

javascript:var%20sourceWindow%20%3D%20window.open%28%27about%3Ablank%27%29%3B%20%0Avar%20newDoc%20%3D%20sourceWindow.document%3B%20%0AnewDoc.open%28%29%3B%20%0AnewDoc.write%28%27%3Chtml%3E%3Chead%3E%3Ctitle%3ESource%20of%20%27%20%2B%20document.location.href%20%2B%20%27%3C/title%3E%3C/head%3E%3Cbody%3E%3C/body%3E%3C/html%3E%27%29%3B%20%0AnewDoc.close%28%29%3B%20%0Avar%20pre%20%3D%20newDoc.body.appendChild%28newDoc.createElement%28%22pre%22%29%29%3B%20%0Apre.appendChild%28newDoc.createTextNode%28document.documentElement.innerHTML%29%29%3B

View Source (click to try)

However it is a desktop theme, and in today’s world where more and more people are using mobile devices to browse the Internet, it doesn’t make sense to alienate this potential audience by providing content that they cannot see, navigate or interact with.

I wanted to make sense, and to do so needed to provide viewing public the ability to view, navigate and interact with my site regardless of the device they use.

Two options came to mind, firstly create a new responsive site, the site would adapt based on the users device resolution, so whether they’re using a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop, the contents they would see and interact with would be suited to their device. the second option is to create a site specifically for the mobile devices, whilst leaving the desktop version as is.

The ultimate goal is to create a responsive site, however, that is going to take a long time as I’d like to keep my current theme but make it responsive, so I decided with the second option, which I expected would be a much quicker implementation.

Problem with creating a new layout for mobile usage is that I would’ve ended up with two sets of themes to maintain, one for the desktop and the other for mobile. This didn’t appeal to me, so instead a started looking for existing wordpress mobile themes, or better still wordpress plugins that would take care of the theming without much intervention from me.

I soon discovered a plugin application called WPTouch Pro, which allows you to present a mobile theme to users on mobile devices, whilst displaying the desktop theme to desktop browser users, perfect.

Installation and configuration was fairly simple, all done through its own GUI within the WordPress admin panel. What wasn’t so straightforward was displaying custom template pages and fields. Luckily WPTouch Pro allows you to create a clone of the pre-configured themes, which you can then modify without affecting the default. I downloaded the cloned version of the theme from ../wp-content/plugins/wptouch-pro/themes/classic and using Coda, started to look at their PHP and CSS pages. After making some changes to the ipad/style.css and iphone/style.css pages and creating my own set of template pages ( the same names as those used in the desktop theme) I uploaded the files back to the server ../wp-content/wptouch-data/themes

I now have a dynamic mobile theme for mobile devices and a desktop theme for desktop browsers, and all this took me less than one day!

As I said the ultimate goal is to create a responsive design based on the desktop theme, but that will take a very long time, so in the meantime WPTouch Pro serves it purpose and hopefully helps people read my content using a mobile device.

How to find the MAC address in Mac OS X

In order to find the MAC address of your network card, do the following:

1. From the Apple menu, Open System Preferences
2. Now go to “Network”.
3. From Network, select your active network connection. This would be displayed in the left menu (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, etc).
4. Now select “Advanced” in the lower right corner.
5. You’ll should now see “Wi-Fi Address” at the bottom of the window, next to which is a set of hexadecimal characters. These characters are your Mac OS X’s MAC address for the network connection.

You should note that the MAC address is called “Wi-Fi Address” in OS X 10.7 Lion, whereas it was called “Airport Address” in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and before.

How to list all network hardware MAC addresses in Mac OS X

In order to list the MAC addresses of all the network hardware on a Mac running OS X, run the following command in the Terminal:

 networksetup -listallhardwareports

This would return something as follows. The “Ethernet Address” is the MAC address of each interface.

Hardware Port: Bluetooth DUN
Device: Bluetooth-Modem
Ethernet Address: db:26:cd:41:c3:79

Hardware Port: Ethernet
Device: en0
Ethernet Address: 21:d3:91:bb:11:bd

Hardware Port: FireWire
Device: fw0
Ethernet Address: c6:18:ed:fa:ff:15:db:51

Hardware Port: Wi-Fi
Device: en1
Ethernet Address: f2:8b:fc:ae:bb:f5

The hosts file can be edited to block certain hostsnames, like ad-serving/malicious hosts, or used for web development purposes, i.e. to redirect domains to local addresses.

Step 1 – Open the Terminal.app

Either start typing Terminal in the Spotlight search, or goto Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

Step 2 – Open the host file

Open the hosts file by typing the following in the Terminal window:

$ sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

Type your user password when prompted.

Step 3 – Edit the hosts file

The hosts file contains some comments (lines starting with the # symbol), as well as some default hostname mappings (e.g. 127.0.0.1 – local host). Simply append your new mappings underneath the default ones.

Step 4 – Save the hosts file

When done editing the hosts file, press Control+o to save the file.

Press Enter on the filename prompt, and

Control-x to exit the editor.

Step 5 – Flush the DNS cache

You can use a simple Terminal command to flush the DNS cache, and have your host file changes take immediate effect. Using the open Terminal window, then the following command:

$ dscacheutil -flushcache

Your new mappings should now take effect.

Other Mac OS X operating systems:
How to edit the hosts file in Mac OS X 10.8 – Mountain Lion
How to edit the hosts file in Mac OS X 10.6 – Snow Leopard

Shades of Grey

The Kindle 3 (and Kindle DX) support the following sixteen shades of grey:

The key is try and use only these sixteen shades of grey.

Step 1.

Download the Photoshop colour table below

kindle photoshop colour table

Step 2.

Start Photoshop and create a new blank document.

• For Kindle 3 create a document 600px wide by 800px tall.
• For Kindle DX create a document 824px wide by 1200px tall.

Step 3.

Import a picture or draw your own design into the new document.  High contrast designs look the best on Kindle’s eInk display.

Step 4.

Once you have your design, it needs to be optimised for the Kindle by reducing the colour depth to the 16 supported shades of grey.

From Photoshop menu choose Image > Mode > Indexed Color

Photoshop should prompt if you want to flatten layers, choose OK.

You should now have the Indexed Color window showing.  Click on the Palette menu and choose Custom…

From the Color Table menu, select Load and locate the kindle3colours.act file you downloaded in Step 1.

The Color Table should now display the 16 Kindle supported grey’s only.  Select OK to close the window.

In the Indexed Color window, under the options section select the Dither menu and select None.  If the picture does not look good, select the Dither menu again and choose one of the other options.  Repeat until you find the best representation.

Click OK to close the Indexed Color window.

Step 5.

The design is now ready for export.  From Photoshop menu, choose File > Save for Web & Devices

Make the following changes:

• Set file format to PNG-8
• Deselect Transparency
• Set Colors to 16
• Deselect “Convert to sRGB”

Step 6.

Save the file and transfer the screensaver to your Kindle.

There are two ways to access this folder:

Temporary

To keep the folder hidden and to access it sporadically:

1. In Finder, choose Go > Go To Folder
2. In the Go To Folder dialog, enter ~/Library
3. Click Go

Permanent

To unhide the folder permanently:

1. Open a Terminal session
2. Enter the following command (replace <username> with your actual username

chflags nohidden /Users/<username>/Library

3. Quit Terminal