Archive for August, 2010

Random Slideshow on iPhoto or iDVD

By
Andy
 – August 31, 2010Posted in: Software

I was asked by Phil to create a DVD slideshow from a load of photos he had to show at his wedding. Thing is because there was a 1000 of them we wanted them in a random order and didn’t want to rename them all or change the order by hand.

Before anyone starts commenting saying “You can’t have a random slideshow on a DVD. Once it’s burned it’s fixed”. I know. What we wanted was to not have them in the order they were taken in but rename the file names so they play in the DVD the same every time but in a apparently random sequence.

After A LOT of Googling I eventually gave in that I wouldn’t be able to do it using either iDVD or iPhoto as for one reason or another, they wouldn’t do it in the current versions. Luckily this forum has a solution using terminal if you’re not squeamish. Since I’m from a programming background it was no problem and works like a charm. Just follow the steps exactly and you’ll be fine.

The first few days of the new job

By
Andy
 – August 25, 2010Posted in: Hardware

So I’m half way through my second day at my new job at Fluid Ideas and I’m starting to get a handle on things now. As I was replacing someone without a proper handover the first half of yesterday involved me trying to find out where stuff is hosted, getting the login details and then trying to change the passwords without cocking everything up. I nearly managed it.

Luckily after fixing the few problems I created yesterday things have been going better. I’ve actually got on and started doing proper work and things are good.

The biggest problem I’ve had has been the change from using a PC to using an iMac (for the first time ever). After getting used to some of the keys being in a different place I’ve been going through and finding out how to do all the things I took for granted on the PC.

The biggest ones are:

Copy, Paste, Select All, etc..
Yes, this I did have to look it up on Google. Macs don’t use the CTRL key as in Windows but instead use the CMD key – it takes a bit of getting used to it but luckily all the shortcuts appear to be the same.

The mouse scroll
The mouse I had wouldn’t scroll up for some reason. Someone else in the office said that her’s wouldn’t scroll up either so I assumed that was the way it was supposed to work. I looked in the settings for the mouse and keyboard but there was nothing in there. After a little Google it turns out that the way to fix it is to turn it upside down and roll the ball on a piece of white paper. Brilliant.

Back to work.