Map Your Mouse's Back and Forward Buttons on a Mac

I've been using OS X as my main OS for almost five years now. But one thing that's bugged me for a while was the lack of support for Logitech and other mice's forward and back buttons. These are mouse shortcut buttons found on many gaming mice. As much as I enjoy Apple's trackpad, I still like to use the mouse for gaming and other things.

Here's a picture of my mouse with the buttons that under Windows, normally maps to forward and back in the web browser.



By default, OS X does not have such functionality. Interestingly enough, my Ubuntu Linux machines has them working by default, same as Windows.

So I did some googling and came across this article: Logitech Mouse: how can I use additional buttons?

There's a app called BetterTouchTool that lets you customize and map both of these buttons to forward and back.

Just download and install the app and here's what you need to do:

Open BetterTouchTool app and it should prompt you to change a Security & Privacy settings to allow the app to work.

Under System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy, click on Accessibility tab and enable BetterTouchTool.app from the list on the right.



From there, you'll then be able to add the mappings by selecting Normal Mice on the top, then click on Add New Button. On the bottom left, select a mouse button by actually clicking it, then in the Custom Keyboard Shortcut section, press the Command + Left Arrow or Command + Right arrow buttons on the keyboard to add the mappings to the corresponding mouse buttons. It should look like the screenshot below.



And that's it! Now in your web browser you'll have back and forward shortcuts working!

Download at: BetterTouchTool

Converting Your VHS and Betamax Tapes to Digital

I've started a new initiative to help my parents convert all their VHS and Betamax tapes over into the digital world. These tapes are those precious family home videos. These are mostly tapes from the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and even part of the early 2000s.

In today's times we should all be capturing everything in digital format already. From DSLRs, HD camcorders, to even our smartphones. We just need a way to bring the past thirty plus years of our lives into the modern age.

A few years ago, we had a VHS to DVD recorder for the house. But these were and are expensive-- $150-200!! Plus, they save to DVD, which may as well join the VHS/Betamax family as being old and outdated!

The world is digital now and the future isn't in CDs, DVDs, or even Blu-ray discs. The present and future is in local hard drives in many of our devices and PCs, which should be syncing to another backup or cloud solution. All these choices are cheaper and better than ever.

What You Need

• A computer running Windows or Mac OS X.
• A VCR or Betamax player that works still.
• Elgato Video Capture Device (~$80).
• Enough hard disk space on your computer.

Below we have both a VHS and Betamax players.


Uses the standard RCA cables as input/output.


The video capture device. It's USB.

Extras

So here's a quick list of what I recommend as extra if you got the cash or really care about backing up your stuff.

• Drobo 5D (~$575) - For backup and redundancy for your data.
• Seagate Barracuda 3 TB HDD (~$100) - I recommend 3 or more, depending on how much you need. Or...
• WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive (~$125)- Even better, get the NAS optimized hard drives. Just avoid purchasing any green drives as they don't perform well and even Drobo doesn't recommend them.
• Handbrake - Software to convert DVDs, CDs, or other digital formats.

The Drobo 5D.


The three internal hard drives, and two unused bays.

Do It Yourself

So these are my recommendations. I do not recommend you take them to CostCo or some other store to have them convert your tapes to DVDs/online. No! I personally consider the tapes to be too valuable to leave with a store or stranger to convert. You can easily do this yourself with the peace of mind that your valuable memories won't get accidentally lost or destroyed.

How it Works

Here's how the conversion process works for video tapes. You put the tape into the VCR and play them as you would normally. The video/audio feed then connects via the capture card and goes into your computer. Your computer's software will record all this digitally. The space required varies depending on how long the videos are, but I find that it's between 500MB for 30 minutes, and 1.7GB for 2 hours of video. The software allows you to trim the beginning and end in case there's blank or empty space.

A screenshot of the video capture software running on Mac OS X (Mavericks)-- pretty straightforward guide.


If you have some DVDs that you want to convert, there's Handbrake software. What it does is detect the video/audio source files needed to convert into a single video file output.


I recommend naming the files something that makes sense to you. I personally use the following format:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY - DESCRIPTION.mp4

So a video of my Halloween in 1985 would be named: "1985-10-31 - Steven's Halloween.mp4"

If the month or day is unknown, it's okay. Not all our videos are timestamped that well. But year and description are the most important. So something like, "1989 - Steven playing in the backyard.mp4" is still good.

This is similar to how I organize my photos in Lightroom. The date is first so it gives you a sense of when it happened. They also align by date when your file manager like Windows Explorer or Mac's Finder organizes by filename.

The purpose of the Drobo 5D is so you can backup your files and have redundancy. Imagine if you only had an external hard drive to backup your work-- and if that failed and you didn't have another copy anywhere. You might be devastated! Hard drives do fail. It's not a matter of it, but when.

So with Drobo, if you have two or more hard drives attached, one of the drives could fail and your data would still be safe. Or if there's a red light, it'll be warning sign that something is wrong and to replace that hard drive as soon as possible!

Yes, you pay a lot for the Drobo enclosure and proprietary software, but the internal disks are getting cheaper and bigger every year. You can easily add more drives to it and it will reconfigure itself automatically-- little to no work on your part!

I hope you found this post useful. As a final note, I'm teaching my parents how to do this-- and it's a bit of a struggle for them since they are computer illiterate. But it should be very doable for you if you born after 1970-- i.e you know how to open a program, copy&paste, rename files, etc... then you should be good to go.

Related

• My Cloud Storage Services Review (Google Drive, Copy, Dropbox...)

Removing a HDD from a Western Digital Elements USB Drive

I have an old Western Digital Elements External USB HDD (3TB) that that mostly sits on my shelf since I've moved my data onto a formal network area storage (NAS). After doing some research, it turns out that these external USB hard drives actually have full 3.5" SATA hard drive inside! All you need to do is pry open the back with a knife or flathead screwdriver and remove the hard drive, and remove the USB adapter. Simple!

My hard drive in it's original case.


After removing the back, you can see there's a 3.5" drive inside.


Unfortunately it's a green drive, which isn't ideal for NAS. As to why, check out this video by GeekBeat TV: The Best Drives for Your NAS.


I put it inside my Drobo 5D, at the very bottom, and Drobo takes care of the rest!


Here is the video I viewed on how to remove the drive:



Hope this helps you repurpose/remove hard drives from your external USB drives. Sometimes these external hard drives are even cheaper than buying the drive of the same size itself!

Fixing an Android Error Message - Error retrieving information from server

I have a Galaxy Nexus that recently got an over the air (OTA) update to Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). Coming from 4.1.2 I was thrilled to see the new changes, particularly with their new panorama feature. But after the update I had issues with updating apps on the Google Play Store.

The Problem

I got the following error message:

Update for "Foursquare" could not be downloaded due to an error. (Error retrieving information from server. [RPC:AEC:0])



This would apply to any app, but for my case both Foursquare and Google Music.

I tried a lot of different things from clearing the cache of each of these apps as well as the Google Play app, to even uninstalling the Foursquare app and re-downloading it. None of which worked.

Solution

In the end, I found this link which pointed me in the right direction.

The workaround is to simply to go to Settings->Accounts&Sync->Google and removing my Google account. Afterwards, just add it back again. Then the error message disappeared and I could update/install apps once again.

Setting up Windows Phone 8 Emulator on a Virtual Machine

Not long ago I blogged about Installing Windows 8 Pro on Parallels Desktop 8. That of course worked for me, but when it came time to having Visual Studio 2012 (VS2012) and running an emulator for Windows Phone 8, it simply doesn't work. I searched the Internet as to why, and came up with the following links:

• StackOverflow: Unable to create the virtual machine
• MSDN: Having problems running the Windows Phone 8 Emulator?
• Running the Windows Phone 8 emulator in a virtual machine (I followed this guide)

As a lot of people pointed out, it's not really possible in Parallels Desktop 8 (PD8), but is possible through VMware Fusion 5 (VMF5) with a small workaround.

I recommend following this guide, but will supplement some more information as it pertains to VMF5, as it's not exactly the same as VMware Workstation 9.

First off, I recommend installing from scratch. I tried to import my existing virtual machine created through PD8, and failed many, many, many times. I ended up with a blue screen screen and countless reboots that try to fix something that didn't get fixed. Save yourself time and just do a clean install of Windows 8 on VMF5.

Even if you have or haven't installed VS2012 with Windows Phone 8 SDK, you should uninstall Hyper-V.

You can get to this in Windows 8 through Control Panel and search for "windows features". Then click on "Turn Windows features on or off".

Make sure these boxes are unchecked, as in off. You'll check these back on later.


Next in the virtual machine's settings, in Processors & Memory, uncheck "Enable hypervisor applications in this virtual machine". You'll check this back on later.




Next you have the Virtual Machine Library window open, and then right click + hold alt (option) key to get the option to "Open Config File in Editor".


Here add the following settings, as they shouldn't exist.

hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE" 
mce.enable = "TRUE"



Finally, check back on everything you unchecked from before. A restart is probably needed for the Windows Hyper-V install again.

Now you'll be able to run a Windows Phone Emulator within VMware Fusion 5, on a Mac!


Happy coding!

Note: I haven't purchased my copy of VMware Fusion 5 yet. I'll likely buy it before the 30-day trial is up.

Installing Windows 8 Pro on Parallels Desktop 8

Last week I went to a Microsoft launch event, New Era of Work, and got a free copy of Windows 8 Pro. I had already tried Windows 8 Preview as well as have Windows 7 Ultimate running as a virtual machines (VMs) through Parallels Desktop on my Macbook Pro (MBP). I didn't like the preview edition that much, so I uninstalled it after a few days. But after attending the event, I thought I'd give it another look.

Please note that the latest PC I own is a Lenovo Thinkpad T60 from 2006, which the wireless card just broke the other day. So my MBP from 2010 is the latest hardware I own.

The problems is that the current Parallels (version 8) does not support upgrading from any Windows OS to Windows 8. Here is the screenshot of what Parallels sent to me via email:



I learned this the hard way when I installed a preview edition of Win8 and upgraded to Win8 Pro, and things were just wacky. The following was screwed up:

1. Screen resolution was not fully supported. I have a 2560x1440 native res that wasn't supported-- instead I had to run it at 1920x1400, which was pretty sub-optimal.
2. The path to the shared home folders was not supported. I couldn't access my Mac's home folder of \\psf\Home, which is an inconvenience.

The preview edition of Win8 ran better than the upgraded Win8 on Parallels Desktop through the upgrade! There's no way I was going to try upgrading my Win7 Ultimate that already runs just fine!

But there's a workaround. If you do a full install, it should run just fine. Here's how:

Through Parallels 8, I'm not sure about previous versions, you have an option to install other virtual machines to whatever you already have. From the virtual machines list, click on new.

The window that opens up should allow you to download and install a preview edition of Windows 8 for free. Do that and pick whatever architecture you want (32 or 64 bit). I chose 64 bit and highly recommend that.



Let it download and install fully. From here, as per the instruction given to me from my copy of Windows 8 Pro, go to: http://www.windows.com/nfrdownload. Follow the instructions there to begin the download process of Win8 Pro. Once that finishes the download, there should be a screen that comes up that asks where to proceed with some options.

Choose to save the Win8 Pro as an ISO on your local computer to install later. Do not choose to install immediately!

Once you have the ISO saved, you can do a full install of Win8 Pro from that. At this point you can go ahead and delete the Win8  preview VM you just installed on your Mac.

Now you can install Win8 Pro from the newly downloaded ISO. The product key I had worked. If the product key you were given was for an upgrade only, there are workarounds for that even-- via some registry edit. See: Probable Fix: Problem in Activating Windows 8 After Clean Install

Note, this is all because Parallels 8 currently doesn't have a clean upgrade path for current Windows OSes. Once that fix is made, then this is probably the only way to get Windows 8 Pro to run on Parallels on your Mac OS X.

Upgrading my 2010 Macbook Pro to SSD

I recently upgraded my 15" 2010 Macbook Pro's 500GB HDD to a 512GB SSD. The directions you find in this blog post, you should easily be able to find using a search engine. I just want to document what I did, hoping to help fill the Internet with something useful, maybe.

The didn't have a problem with the CPU or even memory. Well, I do constantly run out of HDD space every two-three months, but I do regular backups to an external USB 3.0 1 TB hard drive. But this is due mainly to the large image files from my photography. I don't keep many applications open nor do I install apps left and right.

The problem I was having was with the speed of my hard drives. My apps were taking too long to open up and to read/write files. So I took it upon myself to invest about $400 to breathe some new life into my two year old hardware.

Here's what I bought:

1. Crucial 512 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT512M4SSD2 (~$384)
2. Maxtech 16521MX 32-Piece Precision Bit Set (~$10)
3. 2.5 inch SATA Hard Drive to USB 2.0 Adapter Cable with Silicon Protective Case (~$10)

The SATA to USB 2.0 adapter and cable with the SSD attached.


Next, I cloned my current hard drive over to the SSD. I used a free cloning app: Super Duper. Install it and just choose to backup all files. This may take a while, depending on how much data you're transferring over. Interestingly enough, the USB adapter used two USB connections.

Transferring my files over to the SSD via USB, aka cloning the hard drive.


Next, I needed to remove the screws. As shown in the picture, the three screws on the top right are longer than the others. A Phillips Head #00 is required (in the screw set I recommended above).

Preparing the take the screws out.


With the bottom lid removed, the hardware is exposed. The hard drive is on the bottom left. To remove that, you'll need the Torx T6 screwdriver (also found in screw set I recommended).

I also recommend getting a dust remover to help clean the inside of the Macbook Pro. It's amazing how much dust got into mine!

Removing the hard drive




Then I simply attached my SSD, and screwed everything back in, and ta-da, done! Well, I also recommend to enable Trim with Trim Enabler.

My Macbook Pro runs considerably better-- it boots faster, the larger apps like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom open up lighting fast. Smaller apps I don't notice anything faster. When I work with RAW files, it's also nicer than before.

I should note that I opted to clone because I just had the hard drive replaced and did a clean install just a year ago. It's pretty much better to do a clean install if you have everything in place and are willing to. I'm still using OS X Lion (10.7.5).


I recommend the following youTube video: Crucial M4 SSD 2010 MacBook Pro Install for detailed instructions. It's what I used as a reference to upgrade my MBP.

My HTPC Setup

A few months ago I blogged about my new purchase of the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player. I still enjoy it immensely, and a few people have inquired about what is needed.

So here's a list of what's in my setup:

1. WD TV Live Streaming Media Player
This is the heart of the Home Theatre PC (HTPC).

2. WD Elements 3 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
I don't recommend attaching more than one external hard drive via a USB hub. It's just too slow and cumbersome. So instead I recommend a nice big external USB HDD.

3. HDMI Cables
Assuming you have a nice and modern TV, you should really be using HDMI to carry the video/audio. Also applicable if you are using a receiver. Do not, I repeat, do not purchase HDMI cables at your local Best Buy-- they are ripping you off! These should cost no more than a few dollars ($4-6) each.

4. Belkin 7-Foot RJ45 CAT 5e Snagless Molded Patch Cable (Gray)
There are nice services such as youTube and social network plugins available with the media player, so I highly recommend you attach the device to your home network's router.

5. Belkin Pivot-Plug Surge Protectors
This is my favorite surge protector. The swiveling heads is a godsend if you have a variety of devices to plug in.


I will also add that the media player plays most movie files you may have. I've only come across a few files that it won't play correctly. Also, if you should come across some general problems with  any video file stopped working, just restart the device.

Hope this helps.

How to have multiple remotes for you Git project

When I found out that BitBucket added support for Git, I got pretty excited.

Just this past year I started to use Git as my DVCS for all my projects. More importantly, my older projects didn't have any version control whatsoever. They were projects spread across multiple computers that only merged into a single external USB hard drive when I started to retire some computers because they were just too old (six plus years!).

Anyway, when this external drive began to make noises (clicking sounds), I decided I wanted to have my old projects stored in the cloud in case the the hard drive should ever fail.

Github was my goto host as it was immensely popular. At first I was on the free plan (unlimited public repos), but I decided my ugly legacy code shouldn't be public, and went with their micro plan ($7 per month for 5 private repos). These projects are retired and there is no plan for future development. I just want them hosted with my other active personal projects.

I signed up for BitBucket not too long ago just because I wanted to play with Mercurial. That didn't last very long. But with the new additional support for Git, and with the free unlimited private and personal projects, I knew I wanted to add this as a remote to also host all my projects.

But how was I to add another remote since I was already using Github? I wanted to add BitBucket as a remote along with Github. With a simple search on StackOverflow, I came across pull/push from multiple remote locations (answer).

Here is an example .git/config setting, with the bolded text the example text to add a remote:

[core]
        repositoryformatversion = 0
        filemode = true
        bare = false
        logallrefupdates = true
        ignorecase = true
[branch "master"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/master
[remote "origin"]
        url = git@github.com:sunpech/project_foo.git
        url = git@bitbucket.org:sunpech/project_foo.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[remote "heroku"]
        url = git@heroku.com:project_foo.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/heroku/*

Now when I push changes, it pushes it to both Github and BitBucket. Simple, and it works. Hope this helps.

Of course you'll still need to set up the project on each respective host, in which case I'll point you to this Github setup tutorial (also see Using SSH to Access your Bitbucket Repository).

I have this setup because I may choose to abandon my Github pay account, and just host my public repos there, and all my private repos on BitBucket-- saving me $7/month. Plus, I think it's great for Github to have competition.

Installing Thai fonts onto an Android device

I've received numerous requests asking for help on how to install Thai fonts onto an Android device after my initial post on Rooting my Nexus One and installing Thai fonts.  Since I do update my Android phone with the CyanogenMod ROM quite often (which wipes the Thai fonts on each install), I thought I'd share a simple shell script to help get Thai fonts onto Android.

This post does not cover how to root an Android device.  I will leave that to you to figure out.  But if you happen to have a Nexus One like me, check out the following link: Video: How to unlock and root a Nexus One.

Also, you will need to have the Android SDK on your system (hopefully Mac or Linux-- which is what the script is written for, although for Windows it won't be hard to figure out what commands need to be run-- hint: use .\adb.exe instead of ./adb in DOS or whatever command prompt and skip the shell script).

Those are the two prerequisites to installing Thai fonts: a rooted device and the Android SDK on your system.  Oh, and I guess how to run some basic knowledge of the command line in a shell (Terminal).

Let's begin.

1. Attach your Android device to your computer via USB and mount it.

2. Download: InstallThaiFontsOntoAndroid.zip.

3. Unzip it and you will see a folder.

The contents of the folder should be placed in the tools folder of the Android SDK where adb is.

4. Open up a Terminal (Applications->Utilities->Terminal.app) and go into the directory where your android SDK and go into the folder: tools.

5. You can test to make sure that your device is connected by the following command in the terminal:

./adb devices

6. And to mount it:

./adb remount

7. Make sure that the script, install_thai_fonts.sh, is executeable by running:

chmod +x install_thai_fonts.sh

8.

[Recommended] Now you are ready to run the shell script to install the six fonts onto the device.

./install_thai_fonts.sh

Or, if you don't wish to run the shell script...


[Alternate] Run the following line by line (you can copy & paste them line by line into Terminal):

./adb push ./fonts/DroidSans.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf


./adb push ./fonts/DroidSans-Bold.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSans-Bold.ttf


./adb push ./fonts/DroidSerif-Bold.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSerif-Bold.ttf


./adb push ./fonts/DroidSerif-BoldItalic.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSerif-BoldItalic.ttf


./adb push ./fonts/DroidSerif-Italic.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSerif-Italic.ttf


./adb push ./fonts/DroidSerif-Regular.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSerif-Regular.ttf

If there were no error messages, then you should now have the Thai fonts on the Android device.

9.  Reboot and you will see Thai on webpages, SMS, and files names that are in Thai.

Android SDK issue on Windows 7 x64

I recently installed the Android SDK and Eclipse (32-bit) onto my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit machine.  First thing I wanted to do was go through the Android Hello World Tutorial.

Well, I ran into the following error message:

'java' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file.  SWT folder '' does not exist.  Please set ANDROID_SWT to point to the folder containing swt.jar for your platform.

I read somewhere that I should install the x64 Java version.  However, when I went to Java download page, it didn't even have the x64 version available to download.  Turns out that the problem was that I was using Google Chrome to browse there.  I had to use Internet Explorer (x64 bit version) to get the x64 Java link to even show up!

This worked for me, but you can check out the following link at StackOverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1919340/android-sdk-setup-under-windows-7-pro-64-bit

Rooting my Nexus One and installing Thai fonts

I just finished rooting my Nexus One and installed Thai fonts onto it. I had to use several websites to complete this task, but I wanted to collect them all into once nice place for any stumblers. The purpose of installing Thai fonts onto my Nexus One was to have the ability to read Thai on my Facebook app as well as some Thai websites.

Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Root your phone. You can read about that and watch a video: Video: How to unlock and root a Nexus One.

Step 2: Watch the Thai video of how this guy did it. Thai font for Nexus One. I also downloaded the Thai fonts here (source: Droidsans.com). You can read and see pics of the steps too at: Android Review: แกะกล่อง Nexus One ฉบับย่อ พร้อม Root ลงไทย By PDAMobiz.



Awesome.

Setting up WRT54G as a wireless bridge with DD-WRT

My parents have a Thai TV ethernet box of some kind so they can tune in to their Thai stations, shows, and even radio on their HDTV. However, I had to run a 50 foot CAT5 cable from the upstairs to the first floor great room, which is quite messy. So for Christmas this year, I bought them a Linksys-Cisco WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router.

The setup I wanted was to have the Thai TV box, which uses an ethernet port for all data, connect to the wireless router, and have the wireless router connect to the wireless router upstairs. This setup required a wireless bridge, which the router did not come configured with. So after some googling, I found the proper links to set it all up with:

First thing to do, is to figure out what to do with your particular router: Linksys WRT54G/GL/GS/GX. For me, I had to Flash the WRT54Gv8.

Unfortunately for me, I messed up the installation, and "bricked" my router. But after more googling, I found out how to "unbrick" it: UnBrick your Linksys router - WRT54GS v7. Apparently my problem was that the tftp program was just incredibly slow in uploading the firmware, and I closed the DOS window too quickly due to what appeared to be inactivity.

The last thing I had to do was set up the wireless bridge, which was the easy part. So there you have it, how to set up a wireless bridge using DD-WRT.