All posts by Andrew Bennett

News, Tools

Painful Exercises for better health.

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Embody Herman Miller
Embody Herman Miller Chair

Unfortunately for many of us life has left us sitting…rather quite literally in a chair at work each day. but this leads to poor posture which creates all sorts of physical back and neck problems. Which I’m told in turn effects all sorts of strange and wonderful parts of the body. So the bottom line is: Improve your posture.

It’s one of those things that hurts to do before you see any results, but it worth it in the long run. Today I received an email in my inbox about this short ~10 minute video that provides some basic exercises that you can do practically anywhere.

The Video is titled “Strength and Structure with Pete Egoscue, Back Into Alignment: Taking Charge of Your Core Muscles” and can be found on Tony Robbins site here: Strength and Structure with Pete Egoscue

Be warned that doing something healthy may actually hurt.

Another useful tool that I find helpful when sitting at a computer all day is called WorkRave. It’s a cross platform software that forces you to take breaks…small micro breaks for 30 seconds, and longer extended rest breaks for 10 minutes. The software allows you to customise the timings to suit you. Grab a copy at WorkRave

How do you stay healthy at your chair? Let us know in the comments below.

Quick Links:
Video on Improving your posture
WorkRave – Software that makes you slow down and stop

Photo: HermanMiller  Embody – Reviewed as one of the most comfortable office chairs. Check it out at http://embody.hermanmiller.com/

News

iPhone 4 issues with reception

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Apple iPhone 4Over at the AB Technology Blog facebook page, Nathan has posted a link to article on Neowin.net listing some of the issues with the new iPhone 4s.

The biggest issue it seems is by pressing your finger in the right (wrong?) place you can kill the reception to your phone…maybe that is a handy feature for when your having an argument with someone and you want to quickly drop the call?

The second issue seems far more widespread and appears to be a major glitch. Multiple reports suggest that the new iPhone 4 loses reception when you hold it by the antenna band. Several videos have popped up across the net explaining the issue and it appears that if you hold the device, as soon as you connect the left side with the bottom, that’s when reception starts to drop. The issue appears to be widespread with most early adopters able to reproduce the problem.

Hopefully Apple is able to quickly fix this issue.

Have you been an early adopter? Got issues with an new iPhone 4? Then let us know in the comments.

More information on issues on Neowin.net’s Article

Image from Apple’s iPhone Page

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News, Tools

Legal Uses for BitTorrent…Facebook??

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Server RackIt appears that BitTorrent is useful for Legal uses after all (we all knew that didn’t we). It turns out some of the major Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter use BitTorrent to roll out code changes to their several thousand servers around the globe…in a matter of minutes.

You can find a list of other companies that use BitTorrent  on Wikipedia

[Via DownloadSquad]

[Photo thanks to pleeker]

News

Made official @ 9:35…leaked 10 min earlier via Twitter…

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The announcement for australia’s first female prime minister was first leaked from parliament house via twitter from the user @SamanthaMaiden & it announced unconfirmed on TV.

It wasn’t until 10 minutes later that the labour parties official press conference announced the news.

Also the foreign currency market showed news, before it even hit TV. Both last night during the meeting & press conference & again this morning during the ballot. Although it’s interesting to note that the Australian dollar went down after the announcement.

iPad, News

iBooks for iPad updated now with OS4 devices support (iPhone and iPod Touch)

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Today I noticed on our iPad here that the iBooks application had a pending update. A quick look at the change log revilved the following:

What’s New in Version 1.1

• In addition to iPad, iBooks is now available on any iPhone or iPod with iOS 4.
• Open and read PDF documents from Mail. PDF documents will be added to your library and appear on the PDF bookshelf. You can even search PDFs for words or phrases and bookmark your favorite pages.
• Take advantage of new ways to bookmark. In addition to highlighting a word or a passage, you can now also add notes or bookmark an entire page with the new page ribbon.
• Keep your bookmarks, notes, and your current page wirelessly in sync between iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with the new automatic bookmark syncing feature.
• See your book pages in a new font, called Georgia.
• Read your books on white or sepia colored pages.
• Choose left or fully justified text layout from Settings.
• Read pages with greater ease by increasing to even larger font sizes.
• Enjoy greater stability and better performance. (Source iBooks in the iTunes Store)

We personally hadn’texpereinced any stability issues with the first version, but then again we didn’t use it all that much, since it didn’t appear to have PDF support (For PDFs we have been using Stanza, which has also been updated with OS4 support).

Let us know in the comments how your find iBooks and if you are trying it out on an OS4 device.

News

A new age of Mac Mini’s

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Underside of the new Mac MiniI can remember when the first Mac Mini came out a few years ago (Jan 2005 according to the MacRumors:Guides site) with the humble PowerPC processor. It was a rather extraordinary piece of hardware for it’s time. I’m sure that there were other mini computers around, just none as good looking or as mass marketed as the Mac Mini.

Now in its 7th revision the humble Mac Mini is in a new age and has just had a refurbish.

The specs are as follows:

  • 2.4GHz or 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
  • 2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 8GB
  • 320GB or 500GB Serial ATA hard disk drive
  • 8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
  • Mini DisplayPort with support for up to 2560-by-1600 resolution
  • HDMI port with support for up to 1920-by-1200 resolution
  • Audio line in/out/headphone minijacks (digital/analog)
  • HDMI port supports multichannel audio output
  • One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
  • Four USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)

The specs look rather nice, although as always you could build something similar cheaper, but lose the convenience factor along the way.

The NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics card with only 256MB of memory seems a little low though for my liking, especially when using it with a full HD Display. I guess time and user reviews will tell whether or not this is enough, although Apple are saying that this was 2x the spec of the last model.

For those more techincally inclined there is the Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server, it has a similar configuration just without the optical super drive and in its place another hard drive. This makes for a great option as a central server in a home or small business.

Prices are starting at $999

For more information check out the Official Apple Mac Mini site.

Tech Specs from: Apple Mac Mini Tech Specs
Photo: Apple Mac Mini Site

Tutorials, Web

Taking the Plunge – WordPress 3.0 Upgrade with Cpanel Backup.

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There is always a risk involved in any upgrades, any of the following possibilities could happen:

1)      WordPress doesn’t successfully complete the upgrade of the new files (maybe because of file permission issues) and corrupts your current Word Press install.

2)      WordPress doesn’t successfully complete the upgrade any database changes and corrupts your Word Press install.

3)      Upgrade to the new version of WordPress was successful, but due to plug-in conflicts your WordPress install is broken.

But there is also a risk involved when you walk outside of your house. So how do we manage the risk? The answer is simple, do a backup.

Before installing any update, WordPress recommends that you go read and apply tips from the Article “WordPress Backups”[http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups] from the Codex, which gives a great list of resources of how to backup using multiple tools. But one of the methods that they left out was using the Cpanel backup that is built into most shared hosting services these days. This tutorial is going to cover how to do it.

The main reason for using the Cpanel Backup wizard is that it quickly allows you to restore the backup without needing to know anything technical. Just a simple follow the steps in the Backup Restore wizard.

Backing up your WordPress install with Cpanel:

Time to complete: About 20 minutes (depending on how quick your internet connection is/size of your blog).

Skill Level: Easy.

1). Login to your webhosts Cpanel and find the “Backup Wizard” Icon.

Step 1 - Cpanel Backup

2). Select Backup under Backup and Restore.

Step 2 - Cpanel Backup Wizard

3). As tempting as it may be to click on full backup for our purposes today we need to click on “Home Directory” under the Partial Backup (this allows the backup to be restored under Cpanel if required).

Step 3 - Cpanel Partial Backup - Not a full backup!

4) Click on the Home Directory button to download the backup. – The size of this will depend on how big your blog is/how much storage that you are using with your hosting account.

Step 4 - Cpanel Home Directory Backup

5) Once the download is complete, click on Go Back, so you are presented with the screen from step 3, then click on MySQL Databases.

6) Download the Database that corresponds to your WordPress install. This screen shot shows that I have 2 databases. One is for a Joomla install and one is for WordPress, since they were automatically installed in the Cpanel they have generic names such as “sample_wrdp1” which makes it easy to do this.

Step 5 - Cpanel Database

7) Once you have everything downloaded, log into your WordPress Admin. Along the top there should be an alert that WordPress 3.x.x is available! Please update now. Click to update.

Step 7 - WordPress Admin with an Update Alert

8) WordPress then asks if you want to update automatically (easy option) or download the update to upload later (harder, but works on more hosts). I chose to update automatically.

9) WordPress will then perform the update and let you know when it’s finished.

Step 9 - The Upgrade Process

10) The first thing I noticed after the update was a new fresh Admin Theme.

Step 10 WPAdmin Fresh Upgrade Screen with new Admin Theme

11) Now check out your blog to make sure things are still working, also check to see if your plugins are working or if any need updates.

Photo: Thanks to zephyrance via Flickr