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	<title>Martello</title>
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	<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog</link>
	<description>Bits and Blogs by James Mernin</description>
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		<title>Capturing Screen Shots on Mac OS X</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2012/02/capturing-screen-shots-on-mac-os-x/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2012/02/capturing-screen-shots-on-mac-os-x/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:42:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HOWTO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MacOS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=680</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve had reason to capture rather a lot of screen shots in recent weeks and find the following Mac keyboard shortcuts very useful: Shortcut Description Command-Shift-3 Captures entire desktop (saved as PNG file on desktop) Command-Ctrl-Shift-3 Copies entire desktop (saved to your paste buffer) Command-Shift-4 Captures portion of desktop (saved as PNG file on desktop) [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve had reason to capture rather a lot of screen shots in recent weeks and find the following Mac keyboard shortcuts very useful:</p>
<table border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>Shortcut</strong></td>
<td><strong>Description</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Command-Shift-3</em></td>
<td>Captures entire desktop (saved as PNG file on desktop)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Command-Ctrl-Shift-3</em></td>
<td>Copies entire desktop (saved to your paste buffer)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Command-Shift-4</em></td>
<td>Captures portion of desktop (saved as PNG file on desktop)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Command-Shift-4 + Spacebar</em></td>
<td>Captures current window (saved as PNG file on desktop</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>There are lots of other variations on the above, which are described nicely  <a href="http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/screencapturemac/ht/macscreenshot.htm">here</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>How to reduce the size of a PDF file on a Mac</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2012/01/reducing-pdf-file-size-on-a-mac/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2012/01/reducing-pdf-file-size-on-a-mac/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:07:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HOWTO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MacOS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PDF]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=677</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This one&#8217;s been bugging me for several weeks so finally got around to finding a proper solution. Basically, if someone sends you a PDF file with some photos in it, the chances are they didn&#8217;t think of reducing the picture quality (in the original document) before creating the PDF. As a result, the PDF file [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This one&#8217;s been bugging me for several weeks so finally got around to finding a proper solution. Basically, if someone sends you a PDF file with some photos in it, the chances are they didn&#8217;t think of reducing the picture quality (in the original document) before creating the PDF. As a result, the PDF file can end up being enormous, for no obvious reason to the reader.</p>
<p>While I managed to find out how to tackle the problem from inside the likes of Microsoft Word (better options in Office 2011), I am often without the original document, so what to do there (on a Mac)?</p>
<p>Well, as it happens, Mac Preview does have a way of doing this which I found out about <a href="http://beyondteck.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-to-reduce-pdf-file-sizes-on-mac.html">here</a>, and while it worked well for me (PDF files were mostly text with 2-3 pictures anyway), I have seen comments on the above article questioning the quality of the resulting file. Still, it may work for you too.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Food &amp; Wine Tasting Evening</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/12/food-wine-tasting-evening/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/12/food-wine-tasting-evening/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:05:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Waterford]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=672</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;re around the Waterford area on Wednesday, 14 December 2011, why not come along to the annual Food &#38; Wine Tasting Evening at the Grand Hotel and sample a wide variety of beers, wine and local food &#8211; all for just €8. This is a fundraiser in aid of two local schools (Gaelscoil Philib [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If you&#8217;re around the Waterford area on Wednesday, 14 December 2011, why not come along to the annual Food &amp; Wine Tasting Evening at the Grand Hotel and sample a wide variety of beers, wine and local food &#8211; all for just €8.</p>
<p>This is a fundraiser in aid of two local schools (<a href="http://www.pilibbarun.com">Gaelscoil Philib Barún</a> and Holy Cross National School) and is sponsored by Hickson&#8217;s Centra, Tramore.</p>
<p>Remember: Grand Hotel, Tramore &#8211; Wednesday, 14 December 2011 &#8211; 7:30pm &#8211; 10pm &#8211; €8 per person</p>
<p>Hope to see you there.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Oracle and Sun&#8217;s third generation ZFS-based storage appliance</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/10/oracle-and-suns-third-generation-zfs-based-storage-appliance/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/10/oracle-and-suns-third-generation-zfs-based-storage-appliance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:13:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=669</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My first job in the IT sector was as Technical Support Engineer at Eurologic Systems, an Irish-owned data storage company, back in 1992. I can still recall working with a SEAGATE ST512N (a 5.25&#8243; hard disk with a whopping 12MB capacity) and later on taking delivery of our very first 3.5&#8243; 1GB hard disk (the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>My first job in the IT sector was as Technical Support Engineer at Eurologic Systems, an Irish-owned data storage company, back in 1992. I can still recall working with a SEAGATE ST512N (a 5.25&#8243; hard disk with a whopping 12MB capacity) and later on taking delivery of our very first 3.5&#8243; 1GB hard disk (the now famous SEAGATE Barracuda).</p>
<p>However, I also recall some of the former Mentec/DEC guys lamenting about how they used to clean some 300MB DEC drives (one platter at a time) that took up most of the room (way before my time of course).</p>
<p>And so earlier this week, almost 20 years later, I read with interest about Oracle and Sun&#8217;s new third-generation storage appliance (based on their 128-bit ZFS file system) which once again takes the form of a huge cabinet-like disk drive that looks like it would easily take up an entire room (ok, the rooms are much bigger now too but you get the point).</p>
<p>Of course the 20-year time gap isn&#8217;t the only difference as the new <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/nas/zfs7420/overview/index.html">Sun ZFS Storage 7420 Appliance</a> boasts a staggering raw capacity of 1.15PB (that&#8217;s 1,234,799,616 MB) along with a host of other equally impressive numbers.</p>
<p>This enormous growth in storage capacity easily trumps <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law">Moore&#8217;s Law</a> (CPU capacity doubles every 18 months) and is more like a three-fold increase every 12 months. Nice &#8230;.. very nice!</p>
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		<item>
		<title>FeedHenry is hiring, again &#8230;</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/08/feedhenry-is-hiring-again/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/08/feedhenry-is-hiring-again/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:49:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FeedHenry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=666</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[FeedHenry is hiring again, with 5 open positions still available. The type of stuff we&#8217;re into includes Cloud Computing, AWS, Node.js, Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Chef, and all sorts of scripting languages and other exciting stuff. Have a look at our Careers page for more details and why not drop us a copy of your [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.feedhenry.com">FeedHenry</a> is hiring again, with 5 open positions still available.</p>
<p>The type of stuff we&#8217;re into includes Cloud Computing, AWS, Node.js, Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Chef, and all sorts of scripting languages and other exciting stuff.</p>
<p>Have a look at our <a href="http://feedhenry.com/careers">Careers</a> page for more details and why not drop us a copy of your CV.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Over 915 million ways to combine just 6 LEGO bricks</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/08/combining-6-lego-bricks/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/08/combining-6-lego-bricks/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:09:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[LEGO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=662</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s been a while since I&#8217;ve posted anything about my favourite toy, LEGO, so I thought I&#8217;d correct that with a crazy LEGO fact that stuck in my mind this weekend while watching National Geographic&#8217;s special MegaFactories: LEGO. So here it is: The number of unique ways you can combine 6 classic (2&#215;4 stud) LEGO [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s been a while since I&#8217;ve posted anything about my favourite toy, <a href="http://www.lego.com">LEGO</a>, so I thought I&#8217;d correct that with a crazy LEGO fact that stuck in my mind this weekend while watching National Geographic&#8217;s special <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxqhi-EWYEk"><em>MegaFactories: LEGO</em></a>. So here it is:<em></em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The number of unique ways you can combine 6 classic (2&#215;4 stud) LEGO bricks of the same colour is an incredible 915,103,765</em></p>
<p>That&#8217;s over 915 million different ways! So, if like me, you had to find out how they came up with this number, there&#8217;s a great story behind it <a href="http://www.math.ku.dk/~eilers/lego.html">here</a>, along with some great numbers regarding combining of larger numbers of bricks.</p>
<p>Other great facts from this same programme were:</p>
<ul>
<li>Over 50% of LEGO&#8217;s entire annual sales take place in the 2 months before Christmas each year</li>
<li>The LEGO factory in Billund, Denmark is technically the largest manufacturer of tyres in the world (great table quiz question!)</li>
<li>Worldwide, 7 LEGO products are sold every second</li>
</ul>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Calling all Web Developers, check out FeedHenry</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/07/calling-all-web-developers/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/07/calling-all-web-developers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:15:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FeedHenry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=656</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;re a web developer and would like to get on board the mobile app train, then you should check out FeedHenry. Our cloud-based developer studio allows you to develop apps using familiar web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript and then build versions of those apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If you&#8217;re a web developer and would like to get on board the mobile app train, then you should check out <a href="http://developer.feedhenry.com">FeedHenry</a>.</p>
<p>Our cloud-based developer studio allows you to develop apps using familiar web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript and then build versions of those apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 and Nokia WRT, all from the same code base. Registration is completely free.</p>
<p>Each app can also execute part of its business logic in our cloud. This  allows you can change the key functionality of the app without having to push (time consuming and costly) updates to  the app stores. It also means that you don&#8217;t need to provision any extra infrastructure to scale your apps to millions of users.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s a whole bunch of other stuff it does too so if you&#8217;d like to know more, head on over to <a href="http://www.feedhenry.com">http://www.feedhenry.com</a></p>
<p>You might also like to take a peek at <a href="http://www.aerlingus.com/help/aerlingusmobile">http://www.aerlingus.com/help/aerlingusmobile</a> &#8211; all built on the FeedHenry platform!</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Twitter co-founder raises US$100m in funding for mobile payments</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/07/twitter-co-founder-raises-us100m-in-funding-for-mobile-payments/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/07/twitter-co-founder-raises-us100m-in-funding-for-mobile-payments/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:41:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=653</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who appeared on Ireland&#8217;s The Late Late Show earlier this year with his e-payments solution (Square), has raised US$100m in Series C funding, valuing the company at more than US$1bn. Source: Silicon Republic]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who appeared on Ireland&#8217;s The Late Late Show earlier this year with his e-payments solution (Square), has raised US$100m in Series C funding,  valuing the company at more than US$1bn.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/item/22426-jack-dorseya-s-square-rais">Silicon Republic</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Vodafone Roaming Price Cut for July-August 2011</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/07/vodafone-roaming-price-cut-for-july-august-2011/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/07/vodafone-roaming-price-cut-for-july-august-2011/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:21:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Travel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=650</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I missed this one last week, but Vodafone have reduced their data roaming charges for the months of July and August 2011 to the same rates as you would pay in your home country. All we need now is for them to extend the offer indefinitely. Source: Silicon Republic]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I missed this one last week, but Vodafone have reduced their data roaming charges for the months of July and August 2011 to the same rates as you would pay in your home country. All we need now is for them to extend the offer indefinitely.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/22463-vodafone-reveals-free-pan-e">Silicon Republic</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>HOWTO: Flush DNS cache on Mac OS X</title>
		<link>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/07/dns-flush-on-mac-os-x/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mernin.com/blog/2011/07/dns-flush-on-mac-os-x/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:18:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Mernin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DNS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HOWTO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MacOS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mernin.com/blog/?p=646</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Had some strange behaviour with DNS on Mac OS X earlier today. Made a change inside DNS and waited the required amount of time for the TTLs to expire. Then verified that the new IP address was resolving (using both dig and nslookup). However, my system was still trying to use the old IP address [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Had some strange behaviour with DNS on Mac OS X earlier today. Made a change inside DNS and waited the required amount of time for the TTLs to expire. Then verified that the new IP address was resolving (using both dig and nslookup).</p>
<p>However, my system was still trying to use the old IP address when I tried a simple ssh or telnet command.</p>
<p>In the end, I discovered how to flush my local DNS cache, which fixed the problem. You can do this as follows:</p>
<blockquote><p>$ dscacheutil -flushcache</p></blockquote>
]]></content:encoded>
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