If you know me, you know that I’m a huge proponent of Drobo. As of late, the frustration level with Drobo is increasing and it may have edged away at this enthusiasm. My most recent frustration came when I upgraded a drive in my Drobo to increase the usable space to more then 2TB. After the Drobo finished updating all of its partitions, I was left with a partition that was labeled ‘unallocated’ in the Drobo dashboard.

In trying to migrate from Firefox to Safari on all of my Macs, one thing that has bothered me is the inability to do 1-window browsing (i.e. opening all links in new tabs instead of new windows). After scouring the interwebs, I am still unable to accomplish this in Safari v4.0.4 and Mac OS v10.6.2. Even though there are multiple blog posts out there explaining a simple solution, it doesn’t seem to work on any of my machines.

For quite a while I’ve struggled with a ‘strict’ NAT when connecting to XBox Live. I’ve finally fixed this problem. Apparently, BE locks down their Speedtouch routers which creates this problem. The fix is simple: http://www.beusergroup.co.uk/technotes/index.php/Xbox_Live On top of this, you may need to forward some ports on your router: http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Thomson-Alcatel/SpeedTouch585/Xbox_Live_360.htm When I get some time, I will try to confirm the need for mapping ports.

Such an annoying problem, especially for connecting to GMail via IMAP. I constantly get the error: Too many simultaneous connections. The worst part is this has been known ever since Leopard shipped: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5820548 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1207290 Any fix, Apple? UPDATE This problem seems to date much further back then Leopard. I’ve found references to this same issue in late 2003 (v10.3!!), here: https://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031130150826388 Unfortunately, I don’t have access to server configuration as my problem is with GMail.

Recently, I upgraded my iPhone from a 3G to a 3GS and was planning on selling the 3G on Ebay. After listing it then going through the bidding process, a user named “charlesgaulle” had won. Immediately after the auction ended I noticed that this person was from France and my auction explicitly stated that this was to only be sold to someone living in the UK. Also, the person’s name (Branson Jean) doesn’t even match the username, which is when I started getting suspicious.

I know that much has been made of data and connectivity problems on AT&T in the States, but I’ve found O2 to be just as bad, if not worse. About once per day, even though I have full bars and am connected to 3G, my iPhone is unable to receive any data. Loading webpages doesn’t work, refreshing mail doesn’t work, connecting to the App Store doesn’t work, etc. This occurs for about 5 to 10 minutes at a time and can sometimes occur multiple times per day.

Do you have a specific set of webpages that you browse to every day? I do. I used to have all of these sites bookmarked and placed into specific news folders in Firefox or Safari. Right-clicking on a folder would present the option to ‘Open All in Tabs’ and all of my favorites would be right there for me to filter through. This was easy to setup and I had all of my regular pages a couple of clicks away.

It’s been posted all over the internet as of late, but I’d like to remind everyone of the security threat to WordPress blogs: WordPress 2.8.4: Security Release How to Keep WordPress Secure From the above links, the way to keep yourself safe from this attack is by upgrading. Make sure you back your DB beforehand. The easiest way to backup your DB is via this plugin: wp-db-backup The sooner you upgrade, the sooner you are safe from this exploit.

After upgrading my iPhone 3G to OS 3.0, I was really exited to start playing with all of the new features. Some of my favorites include spotlight, cut/copy/paste and push notifications. Unfortunately, immediately after installing the update, my battery life was terrible at best. I use my iPhone for work and receive over a hundred emails per day through our exchange server. Before the 3.0 upgrade, I could easily get through a day on 1 charge.

Apple products have not been kind to me over the past couple of months. For starters, about 2 months ago, the plastic on my iPhone’s back cracked right at the mute switch. This is a common problem that has been documented all over the internet ( link1, link2 ). Here’s a picture of mine: Soon after this happened, I purchased a second battery from the Apple store. Good thing I did, because the very next day, my original battery wouldn’t charge.

One of our favorite foods is hummus. After returning from Israel I was on a mission to find the best hummus recipe. The only tool you need to make hummus is either a food processor or hand blender. You could use a normal blender for this, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Here’s my work in progress: 1 can of chick peas 2 to 3 tbsp liquid from drained chick peas Juice from 1 lemon 1/3 cup tahini 1 to 2 cloves garlic (or 1 to 2 tsp garlic powder) 1/2 to 1 tsp salt 2 tbsp olive oil (optional) Put all ingredients except for the olive oil and tahini in the bowl and blend until fine.

Below is the recipe for a Cornish pasty from Grandma Trumbell that my Mom has been making for years. Because I now live in London and this recipe was created in the US, the recipe is still in the works for all you UK residents. Crust: 1 cup of plain flour 1/3 cup of Trex (or 1/3 cup of Crisco) 1/3 tsp of table salt 1/4 cup of ice cold water Mix flour, shortening and salt, then add water gradually until dough holds together.