Category: How-Tos

Articles that show you how to achieve something, be it fixing an Airport Express or modding an iCade cabinet.

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iOS & Mac how-tos

How to change the menubar icons in Radium 3

Purchased Radium 3 and hate the new menu bar icon? Me too. Would you like to change the menubar icon back to the radio from Radium 2? Me too! Welcome 🙂

I was a long-time user of Radium 2 and recently purchased the update to Radium 3 on the Mac App Store. While the functional improvements are worth the upgrade, the new icon feels like a huge step backward. It used to be a lovely radio and it’s now a chocolate heart – apparently because when you think ‘internet radio streaming for Mac’ you think of the sort of gift-box confectionary you buy your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, right? I know I do.

radium-icons

I can put up with the main icon because I’ll never see it (the app launches automatically at startup), but I’d love the radio back in the menu bar because it makes more sense to me. With a tiny bit of effort, and your copy of Radium 2, you can change it yourself, so I did.

Let’s fix Radium 3’s menubar icons

I happen to still have Radium 2 but some may not. I considered putting just the pertinent image files together in a zip and putting it online but I have a feeling somebody would object to that on the grounds of copyright. Technically you could drop any images in there, though.

If you do still have your copy of Radium 2, select it in the Finder, then right-click and select Open Package Contents. If you’ve never done this before, it isn’t dangerous if you follow these instructions. An application icon is just a fancy folder that ‘runs’ its contents instead of showing them to you when you double-click its icon. So long as we only touch the image files we want to change, we’ll be fine.

Open ‘Contents’, then ‘Resources’, then scroll down the list until you come to a bunch of .png files that start with ‘Radium-status’. There should be six of them, highlighted in the picture below.

radium-menubar-icons-1

Keep that window open on your desktop. Now open a new window, navigate to your copy of Radium 3 (the Magical Musical Chocolate For Your Ears) and do the same thing; right-click, Open Package Contents, click on Contents, click on Resources. Again, this isn’t dangerous if you follow these instructions, but if by some chance you do mess something else up, don’t worry! Just delete the entire Radium 3 app from your computer and re-download it from the Mac App Store for free, done!

Okay, so now scroll down the Resources list until you find a series of files that start ‘menubaricon‘, highlighted in the picture below.

radium-menubar-icons-2

What we’re going to do is copy over the relevant image files from Radium 2 and drop them into Radium 3’s Resources folder, replacing the heart icons. This means the replacement files need to be named exactly the same as the existing files.

Go back to the window with the Radium 2 Resource window. Select all six ‘Radium-status’ icons. Hold down Alt and drag those six icons to your desktop; note that a green + symbol appears next to your cursor. That means we’re duplicating the icons onto the Desktop, rather than working with the only copies we have, which will remain in the Radium 2 folder.

Once copied, select all six again, right-click and select ‘New Folder with Selection (6 items)’. Call this folder something like ‘Radium 2 icons’.

All this is just house-keeping, making sure you keep your copy of Radium 2 safe. The important stuff is next.

Now select the Radium 3 Resources window in the Finder and let’s take a look at the icons we’re about to replace. There are two ‘busy’ icons (the heart with the dot that switches sides), a ‘disabled’ version, a ‘regular’ version, a ‘pressed’ version and a ‘success’ icon which is just a checkmark.

So we need to decide which icons from Radium 2 we’re going to use to replace the Radium 3 hearts. First off, we can ignore the checkmark – just leave that as is. Next, the ‘busy’ icons; I selected the ‘Radium-status-c0’ and ‘Radium-status-c1’ icons for this – they show the radio icon with the antenna fully and partially extended.

Rename ‘Radium-status-c0.png‘ to ‘menubar_icon_busy_1.tiff‘, making sure to spell it exactly right, including underscores, and when your Mac asks you if you really want to use the .tiff extension, confirm that you do.

Next, rename ‘Radium-status-c1.png‘ to ‘menubar_icon_busy_2.tiff.’ And that’s the ‘busy’ icons done.

For the ‘disabled’ icon I chose the ‘inv’ version from Radium 2. So rename ‘Radium-status-inv.png‘ to ‘menubar_icon_disabled.tiff‘.

Next we replace the ‘pressed’ version; this is what’s shown when you click on the menubar icon to display the drop-down interface. Radium 2 doesn’t really have an equivalent so I chose to forego the effect (it’s barely noticeable anyway) and just duplicated the standard R2 menubar icon and used that; select ‘Radium-status.png’, duplicate it with Command-D to create ‘Radium-status Copy.png‘, then rename this new file to ‘menubar_icon_pressed.tiff‘.

Now rename the original copy of ‘Radium-status.png‘ to ‘menubar_icon_normal.tiff‘.

You should now have seven icons in your ‘Radium 2 icons’ folder on your desktop, as pictured below; five renamed icons, and two leftovers that we haven’t touched.

radium-menubar-icons-3

Now to insert them into Radium 3! Bring up your Radium 3 Resources window, then select the five icons we renamed in the ‘Radium 2 icons’ folder, and drag them into the Radium 3 Resources window. You’ll be told the operation can’t be completed and asked for your Admin password. Enter that and the files will be copied. Select to ‘Replace’ each one when asked.

Now your Radium 3 Resources window should look like this (I’ve highlighted the bits you should be looking at):

radium-menubar-icons-4

Notice that where there were five variations on a heart, and a checkmark, there are now five variations on a radio, and a checkmark.

Now launch Radium 3 and hope for the best! If you see this:

replace-menubar-icon-radium

… then you’re all done!

N.B.

This is a total hack. It will probably revert back to the heart icons again if you apply a future update from the Mac App Store – that’s if the MAS even recognises it as an official app now that we’ve dropped new resources into the package. But your re-icon’d copy of Radium 3 should function just fine and if you do need to revert back at any point you can simply delete the app manually and re-download for free.

Enjoy your new, old version of Radium 3!

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Featured iOS & Mac how-tos

Nimble Quest Tips & Tricks

Or ‘How to not suck at Nimble Quest’

nimble-quest-tips-tricks-guideNimble Quest (iOS App Store, Free; Mac App Store, Free) is the first freemium game I’ve not deleted the moment I felt the inevitable pinch of its in-app currency model, because it turns out even when you’re grinding for gems it’s still a great game of Snake. You can read my review of Nimble Quest over here (including my thoughts on its not-so-welcome freemium aspects).

Death is not the end!

Well, it is and it isn’t. Nimble Quest is as much a ‘Roguelike’ as it is a ‘Snakelike’ which means you’re expected to die, a lot. Don’t let it get you down – every play earns you Gems, Tokens and EXP so pick a new Leader and head back in.

Pleasingly, there’s some tactical depth you can use to help make your next run that bit longer. Here’s some tips and tricks I’ve picked up that should guide you through your next Nimble Quest, ranging from the best choices for leader to tactical advice on the field.

These are just what works for me, but feel free to contribute your own suggestions in the comments.

  • pull a 180 – approach an enemy from the front, or aim to cross it’s path from the side, and quickly turn twice timing it so the U-bend in your chain is in range of them as they pass, walloping them with blows from your heroes. This works to keep your Leader out of trouble and the enemies exposed to the widest range of attacks.
  • don’t stretch out too often – once your chain is filled out, moving in a long straight line too often leaves you open to unexpected attacks from the side that you won’t be able to react to quickly enough; ‘slither’ your snake in a loose pattern to keep them closer together and able to defend each other.
  • do your best Spidey – crossing the center of the map as enemies are swarming can be fatal. By staying closer to the sides of the maps as you move around your team will be able to focus on fewer enemies at once, taking them out quicker. Just don’t get too close to the walls! zThis also leads nicely onto:
  • keep your distance – there’s no need to get too close to enemies once you’ve got a healthy selection of ranged weapons in your lineup – fireballs, arrows, bullets, bombs, magic, and so on. Keep a ‘tank’ like Uther and his long lance in the front in case anyone gets in your face, then let the ranged weapons pick everyone off from a distance in combination with pull a 180 above.
  • cut off the head – if you can manoeuvre into position without taking too much heat yourself, vanquishing the leader of an enemy chain will take out the whole chain. Attack from head-on rather than running up alongside an enemy chain because if they turn across your path unexpectedly it’ll be curtains for your team, but when doing so try to give yourself a good run up so you don’t get close enough for an accidental collision.
  • "it came from… behind!" – enemies like knights can’t attack behind them, so bring your team in from the rear to pick them off. You’ll not have as good access to the enemy chain leader, but you’ll be in a much stronger defensive position.
  • lead with Gizmo or Uther – leading with your bomb expert is risky at the start as he’s a little underpowered to take 100% of the heat, but once you get him levelled up his ranged bomb attacks are very effective at softening up the enemies for the rest of your team to mop up effortlessly; just get used to keeping him away from close combat. Uther makes a great ‘tank’ style Leader with a long lance that’s perfect for leading head-on attacks although bear in mind he’s almost useless attacking anything that’s not in front of him, making him one of the least effective heroes when not in the lead. But just brushing up on your attack and defence manoeuvres can make any hero a fun choice to lead with, really.
  • Gems heal – the only way to heal your chained Heroes is by collecting elixirs, but your Leader can also be healed by collecting Gems so when on their last legs divert them away from head-on action and let the rest of the chain take the heat, then swoop back in to hoover up the booty
  • save Retries for times of need – when you tragically faceplant off a wall it’s tempting to spend a Token on a retry, especially as you retain all your purchased power-ups, but unless you’re more than a dozen levels in or close to unlocking a new Hero consider just starting another run and spending that Token on the Attack Speed power up instead. Remember each subsequent Retry that run will cost you double the Tokens – 1, 2, 4, 8…
  • power up early – at the start of the game and between arenas you can spend Tokens on power-ups. It lasts for the entire run so buy them early to get the most ‘value for money’ from them.
  • pick the right power-up for the job – if Tokens are tight I recommend the Attack Speed as the one to go for, particularly if you’re leading with a strong but slow hero. Works particularly well with ranged heroes, especially if it’s stacked with a dropped Attack Speed. Health makes a strong second purchase if you have the Tokens to spare, but it’s not worth getting for the the early levels once you have an experienced team, just in case you lose to a clumsy mis-turn…
  • level up early – get all of your team up to One Star as soon as possible. The boost applies even if they’re not the Leader, and a chain of half a dozen One Star heroes is considerably more effective than ten Zero Star heroes. But resist the temptation to buy those One Star levels.
  • spend Gems on power-ups first – you can spend Gems to buy Stars for your heroes, or on permanently increasing the effectiveness of power-ups. Spend it on the power-ups first; it’s tempting to spend it on your heroes but you’ll get far more from the improved power-ups in the short and long term.
  • “why are you hitting yourself?” – the longer your chain grows, the more likely you are to accidentally double back on yourself when it gets hectic – unlike traditional Snake games, this won’t result in Instadeath, but it will wipe out every hero you bump into in the process, so be careful out there!
  • enter the Arena – the online Arena competition costs a Token per game to enter, but once you’ve upgraded your team and picked up some skills it’s a good way to earn a few Tokens every couple of days, awarded for placing inside the top few hundred in your guild if your guild places well themselves. Try #TOUCHARCADE to join players from the popular iOS gaming forum.
  • follow the bullets – enemies are often off-screen, but your ranged heroes will fire at them if they come within their range. If you can’t find the next enemy and there’s only a few left (check the bar at the top of the screen which fills as you eliminate enemies), carefully lead your conga-line into the middle of the arena and pay attention to where your team are firing.

Okay, that’s yer lot for now – if you’ve got more tips that deserve to be on the list, drop them in the comments below!

Categories
iOS & Mac how-tos iOS & Mac reviews

How to add text to Instagram photos with Over (and Photolettering)

Instagram text 06Recently I’ve often found myself wanting to add a bit of amusing or descriptive text to a photo I’m tweeting, sending to friends or posting to Instagram. Of course, there’s no option to add text to Instagram photos within the app itself, so you’ll need to look to other apps.

I did a little asking around and two apps came back in recommendations so I gave them both a good go. After a few short bouts there was a conclusive winner, which I will now present to you by employing an over-stretched boxing metaphor:

The Contenders

In the Red Corner, suggested by friends, we have Over ($1.99), a Universal app which includes 30 eyecatching and fun fonts and offers dozens (and dozens!) more ‘standard’ fonts for a single in-app-purchase of 99c. To be fair, you can easily do without these as the ones included are great.

In the Blue Corner, recommended by no less than John Gruber amongst others, we have Photolettering (Free), an iPhone-only app which offers 3 fonts at first, with 20 more fonts available to purchase for 99c each, or $9.99 for all 20. The complete set is comparable in style and diversity to those included in Over.

Round one – value for money

On this basis Over clearly wins. Photolettering might be free but buying its full complement of fonts will run to five times the price of Over’s basic cost, and Over still has more choice. Furthermore, the three basic fonts it comes with are pretty bland.

It could be that for what Photolettering is offering, their ‘buy everything’ price is more realistic and fair to both them and the customer, and I’m all for that. But Over offers considerably more variety for the same price Photolettering charges for just two extra fonts, let alone Over’s vast range of standard fonts included in the single in-app purchase available.

A selection of Over's thirty available fonts The three fonts that come free with Photolettering

Round two – functionality

This is more evenly matched with each app offering some unique features, as well as the usual standards they both share such as social sharing, and a postcard function via Sincerely.

On the ‘unique feature’ front, Photolettering lets you rotate text easily using two fingers, something Over doesn’t offer at all. It also offers several two-tone fonts and control over each colour, background colours (if you don’t want to use a photo), and a choice of three basic filters which amount to Sepia, B&W, and Vivid.

On the other hand, Over offers multiple layers of text, meaning you can place several different text elements on your photo and style each one differently. It also includes a crop tool which only has one shape – square – but is perfect for setting up an image for Instagram, and the ability to darken the background photo to give your text some pop.

Photolettering has a crop tool, but only at the end of the process, and only if you decide to send to Instagram, so if you’re wanting to post it you need to plan for that as you add your text.

If you try to load in a pre-squared image, add lettering and then post to Instagram, Photolettering still forces you to crop a portrait-shaped image out of it, then add the text, then crop a square image out of that. You can avoid this by pinching the square image size to fit into the portrait crop, but the whole process is pretty ridiculous compared to how Over offers the same tool.

The sharing screen in Over A tutorial screen in Photolettering

Round three – experience

Okay, ‘experience’ is a little fancy-sounding, but that’s what we love about apps, right? How fun, easy, intuitive, and satisfying they are to fiddle with?

Photolettering is by far the plainest app, both in presentation and workflow, with one text layer and a simple tab-based navigation. It’s functional, it gets the job done – and you can rotate text, which is cool, but the whole cropping/Instagram process it uses is pretty dumb.

Over is much more stylish with a slick dial-based navigation and semi-transparent menu overlays. The dial can be a little disorienting at first, and they waste ‘More’ on an advert page for other apps, but the overall effect was more compelling.

But Over clearly wins the round with multiple layers that let you give every word its own font, position and colour, or create interesting effects by overlaying – something that works particularly well with the Blackout Sunrise font, and more than makes up for its lack of two-tone fonts.

Instagram text 06

Instagram text 01

The Winner

It wasn’t really a fair fight, was it? Over very clearly takes the crown for me. The only thing I’d nick from Photolettering is rotating text which sounds like a very update-friendly feature to me, hint hint.

So for all your text-on-iPhone-photo fun, my hearty recommendation would be to check out Over ($1.99) on the App Store.

Thanks for reading!

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iOS & Mac how-tos

How I got my old A1088 Airport Express plug to work on Mountain Lion

I have a really old A1088 Airport Express plug, which I believe is one of the first. The latest version of the Airport Utility for Mountain Lion doesn’t work with the A1088, and requires you to install version 5.6 from Apple. I’ve had this version installed since Lion so when I updated to Mountain Lion it was already on my system, but I’ve read that installing it fresh onto ML is problematic.

This article is not about that installation issue, but if you’re having problems with this step I’ve read that this post by Frank Tisellano will solve those problems for you with an Automator script that will extract the utility onto your ML system with the minimum of fuss.

My issue was coaxing the Airport Express back onto my network after I had to get a new router recently. It was much trickier than I’d expected, but then I’ve always found the AE plugs a little bit flakey so perhaps I was expecting it after all, and just hoping it would be easier.

The flashing amber light of mystery

What I had was a blinking amber light and no idea what it meant. Turns out it means there are error messages waiting to be reviewed, and the only way you can review them is to get the Admin page for the plug up in Airport Utility 5.6.

Problem: I couldn’t get Airport Utility 5.6 to see the plug.

Solution: Hard reset the plug.

This is achieved by unplugging it and pushing down on the tiny grey button visible underneath the plug where all the sockets are, using the tip of a pen or paperclip. While still holding that down, plug it back in, and keep that button held down until the AE plug flashes a light at you. I’ve read it should be amber and flash rapidly, but mine was green and flashed more slowly.

Release the button and the AE plug should restart in due course, and eventually become visible in Airport Utility 5.6. It shows a yellow dot on the Summary screen and clicking that reveals any errors. I had two: it couldn’t detect an ethernet cable, and it was running on Default Settings which needed to be changed. I ignored the first as I intended to run on a wireless network, not cabled.

The problem I encountered was this: no matter how many times I reset or hard-reset the plug and entered all the correct information (that I wanted to use it for AirTunes; a custom name for the plug, and a password; and my existing wifi network and password) and Airport Utility updated the device and let it restart, it would not be able to connect to my network and would become inaccessible via the Utility again, requiring another reset. I got really familiar with that flashing amber light.

At least one of the next two steps will probably fix it

In the end, I got it all working after having made two changes at once to the settings I was entering; I know, I know, you’re only supposed to change one thing at a time when troubleshooting, but I was getting bored and lazy at this point.

1) I made absolutely certain the plug was on the correct channel when attempting to connect to my wifi…

2) … and I changed my password mode from WPA+/WPA2 to just WPA2. This required also changing the password settings on the router to match, but having read that some people isolated a WEP issue with the same model of AE, I thought it might be worth a shot.

I only caught the channel issue by accident when I reviewed the Summary page for the AE before confirming the update, and it’s a sneaky one. The plug had stored all the correct details except for the channel. I hadn’t seen an option to change the channel anywhere in either the automatic nor manual setup pages for getting the plug onto my own wifi network, so I dug around in the other options.

In the settings for extending an existing wireless network (as opposed to just joining that network) there is an option to change the channel. I set it to the correct channel then switched the setup mode back to ‘Join a wifi network’ – the option to change the channel disappeared but switching back to the Summary page revealed that the channel change had stuck even though I was set to ‘join’ and not ‘extend’ my network.

And this time when the device restarted it flashed amber for a few seconds and then switched to a much more pleasing solid green. Success!

tl;dr

So in summary, if you’re having these issues with an A1088 Airport Express plug (or a similarly decrepit model) and Airport Utility 5.6:

  • first check the channel it’s searching on
  • and then check the password type (just in case that does make a difference)
  1. first check the channel it’s searching on
  2. and then check the password type (just in case that does make a difference)

A couple of people have got in touch to say it worked for them, so maybe it will for you too. Good luck, and thanks for stopping by!

Update: I first wrote this post in late 2012 – it’s now summer 2013 and my Airport Express is still going strong, even surviving a full house move and new network setup!

Categories
iOS & Mac how-tos

How to backup your Mac

Most computer-minded people will have read all about Mat Honan’s ‘educational’ experience being hacked last week. He posted the full story over at Wired and it’s a must-read whether you’ve got your own backup strategies or not.

If you’re up to speed you’ll know there were a couple of key stages in the process where he could have either thwarted the hack or insured himself against the tragic loss of photos, and you can do these today:

  • turn on two-step authentication on your Gmail account
  • make backups of your data

There’s a few other tips that can make you that bit more secure online which we’ll come to shortly.

Of course, unless you’ve already been touched by the God of Hard Drives Dying Inexplicably (in which case you’ve already seen the errors of your ways and are just looking for new and geekier ways to protect yourself) it’s possible yet another post like this won’t make you take the potential for disaster any more seriously, despite a spate of them cropping up all over the web this week like babies nine months after a power cut.

Your password’s tight; your computer’s only a year old; if you were a movie character the last we’d see of you would be “I’m just going to go wander into the woods at night all alone, I’ll be right back…”

Okay, if you say so! -> INSERT BIG SMILEY FACE OF IMPENDING DOOM HERE <- For the rest of us, let's get stuck in.

Two-step authentication of your Google login

If you have a Google account (for Gmail, Reader, etc) and haven’t turned this on yet, it’s dead easy so do it today.

Now whenever you log in to Google in the browser you will need to enter both your password and a six digit code that Google sends via SMS, and you can choose to permanently trust that computer if it’s your own.

Android, Blackberry and iPhone users can download the Google Authenticator app (available from the iOS App Store here) so that even when you’re unable to receive a text message you can still generate a code. And just in case you lose your phone you can print off a set of one-use codes to keep in your wallet.

If you connect to your Gmail or Google Reader account with third party apps like Apple Mail, Reeder or NetNewsWire, there’s no opportunity to enter this numerical authentication code. Instead, you’ll need to generate new application-specific passwords at Google, and then replace your regular password with the new ones in those apps. This way if you lose your phone, say, allowing a thief to read your email without a login from the mail app, you can cancel specific passwords and remotely lock out compromised apps.

Next, backups!

Backing up is easy

It is incredibly simple to start backing up, despite how dumb you may think you are with computers. There are two principle ways of going about it:

  • local backup (in your house), using an external hard drive
  • off-site backup (not in your house), either using secure online storage or keeping an external hard drive at someone else’s house or your workplace for example.

Yes, you’re going to have to spend some money but neither a backup drive nor a backup service are expensive enough to make it worth the risk of losing everything forever. If you can afford a computer, especially a Mac, you can afford to backup.

If you’re still sitting there thinking, “But I haven’t needed one before and my computer is fine”, trust me when I tell you: hard drives can fail at any time with no warning, even if you bought it yesterday. One morning in 2007 my Powerbook started grinding like a coffee machine; by that afternoon it was unbootable and I had no backups; years and years of photos, all gone; many tears were shed. In the end I managed to recover an incredible 97% of my photos back using Data Rescue but not having a backup is inconceivable now.

Backup case study: me

I backup to a few places just to be sure:

  • Local backups with SuperDuper!: every night my iMac and the external drives I use for media and archived photos are automatically backed up to another external drive using SuperDuper!, a $28 third party app that can create bootable clones of your Mac on an automatic schedule. That means if my computer dies I can connect the backup to my laptop and boot from it (hold down Alt when you power up until you get asked which drive to boot from), essentially putting me back in front of my main machine straight away.
  • Off-site backups with Backblaze: this is the cloud service I chose; others are available (such as Carbonite, and Arq) but BackBlaze works for me. Unlimited storage for one computer and as many connected drives as you have will cost you – wait for it – just $50 a year. That’s £32; you have no excuse! After the initial background backup of your selected data, all subsequent backups will happen throughout the day whenever you change or add data to your system. You turn it on in Settings and then you forget about it until you need to re-download lost data from their site or have them send it to you on a drive (for a fee).
  • Sync across machines with Dropbox: although Dropbox offers a basic service for free, I pay for a 100GB account which stores my entire Documents folder, my iPhoto library, all my website data, whatever I’m working on (such as a recent photoshoot or iMovie project) and anything else I want to sync automatically to my Macbook from my iMac and vice versa. I don’t rely on it like a backup service, but it’s yet another copy of some of my most important data with practically no effort on my part.

This combination gives me instant access to my files via the local backup if a drive fails, and online access to my files should the local backup fail or be lost at the same time.

Time Machine

For Mac users, one service may be notable by it’s absence in the list above: Apple’s own Time Machine, which comes with all new Macs and has been built into OS X since Snow Leopard. Time Machine is a breeze – you plug in a drive, flip a switch in Settings, and you’re done.

It works differently to SuperDuper! in that it copies all your data, including changes and additions, in the background while you’re working. It also keeps older copies of your data rather than overwriting it with new versions, just in case you need to ‘roll back time’ and dig out an earlier version, hence the name.

For this reason if you’re going to use it you should buy a drive with a higher capacity than your computer, so that it has space to store as many older versions as possible. Once it runs out of that space it starts deleting the oldest versions to make room.

The only reason I don’t use Time Machine is because you can’t boot from a TM backup or attach it to another computer and work with the files it contains from the drive; you can only use it to copy data back onto a Mac. That’s no good for me because if my iMac goes down I don’t want to have to wait to get a new one before copying everything back; I want to plug my Macbook Pro in, boot from the backup of my recently perished computer and be back in action immediately.

But that’s me and my quirks. If you’ve got a Mac with Time Machine built in and you don’t have any other backup system, buy a drive today and get going.

What external drives should you get?

A lot of my digital stuff is irreplaceable original creations (photos, movies, music, writing, that sort of thing) and much of that is also work related, so I wanted the best drives I could afford. I used a cheap Western Digital MyBook for a while but didn’t like the plasticky build quality or the occasional errors I was getting, so I asked some professionals what they used and was recommended Lacie Quadra drives. They are not cheap, but they are built like tanks and I trust them.

I now have three under my desk – two are used for archived data I don’t want to keep on the iMac itself and the third is partitioned to hold backups of the other two and the iMac. You can buy some at Amazon USA, and Amazon UK.

As a creative professional I know I should be looking at larger capacity RAID-type backup systems but at the moment I don’t have the volume of work or data that necessitates the dive into that seething quagmire of options; I’m kind of grateful for that!

Other best practices for online security

With two-step Google authentication and a backup system in place you’re in much better shape, but you can always do more:

  • use different passwords for everything and use an app like 1Password to remember them (available on the Mac App Store, and the iOS App Store); other such apps are available but 1Password is the one I use and I highly recommend it.
  • for goodness sake, do not use ‘1234’ or ‘password’ or ‘opensesame’ or your date of birth or your surname or anything else that easy to guess or research for any of your passwords, ever. Seriously consider getting 1Password to remember harder, unique passwords
  • if you use Facebook, they also have a two-step authentication process you can activate
  • don’t use a publicly visible or guessable email address to send ‘password recovery’ mails for your main account. Instead, create a secret account with a hard-to-guess name and use that as the recovery address for your email and as many other sites as you can – if your main account is compromised you don’t want passwords to be reset on all the other services you use
  • don’t link accounts together using a common login – hackers were able to access both Mat’s and Gizmodo’s Twitter because Mat had linked his own Twitter login to the Gizmodo Twitter login when he worked there. Once his own account was accessed, Gizmodo’s was too.
  • you’ve probably given your Twitter and Facebook logins to a lot of apps and sites over the years. Use the Twitter and Facebook security pages to review them and cut off any you don’t use any more
  • set up a passcode on your iPhone, and use Restrictions (under Settings – General) to lock down Location, Accounts and Find My Friends, using a different passcode to the one you set to unlock the phone itself. This way even if someone gets past the Unlock code they won’t be able to change any of your location-tracking settings; they can just turn the phone off or go into Airplane mode of course but until Apple requires a passcode for that too there’s nothing you can do about that.

Useful links collected

That’s everything I can suggest for now. You probably, hopefully, won’t ever be hacked, but a small amount of time and money spent today will be worth it in spades for the peace of mind alone.

Here’s all the relevant links from above:

Google Two Step Authentication – ensures it’s really you logging in to Google

Google Authenticator for iPhone – for when you don’t have network coverage (Android and Blackberry versions also available)

Backblaze – effortless, unlimited cloud backup for your computer and drives (for Mac and PC)

SuperDuper! – set up scheduled, bootable backups for your Mac

Dropbox – sync your most important files online (for Mac, PC and Linux)

Time Machine – learn about Apple’s backup application built right in to OS X.

Data Rescue 3 – incredible software that can recover almost any data, even from unbootable hard drives (for Mac and PC; incidentally the best $99 I ever spent back in 2007)

1Password – generate and store complex passwords and other sensitive data, available on the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store

Lacie Quadra Drives – sturdy, reliable external hard drives, available on Amazon UK, and Amazon USA (cheaper alternatives will do fine for most people)

NB: some of the above links are via affiliate schemes that earn me a few pennies per paid transaction or in the case of Dropbox some extra capacity per sign-up; however, I personally use everything I’ve linked to on a daily basis and I highly recommend each regardless of any such rewards, and you can take that to the bank.

(whatever that means. That’s good, right?)