Category: Free Stuff

Wordpress Templates, Wallpapers, and other fun Freebies

Quick and Easy way to Clean Up and Speed up your Mac with ONYX

The Webernets0 comment

Onyx For Mac IconIn my opinion, the best first step to speeding up your Mac is to repair your permissions and run disk repair as outlined in my article Speed Up Your Mac Article HERE.

The next step is to clean your caches, rebuild your indexes, and run your macs daily, weekly and monthly maintenance scripts. This can all be done easily with the FREE and very powerful ONYX.

FREE Download Onyx from Titanium’s Software.

Once you have ONYX downloaded and installed, its a good idea to make sure that you have backed up ALL of your stuff. Like using any cleaning program, things can get moved or lost, so make sure you don’t get caught!

When you are satisfied your files are safe, go ahead and open ONYX. The first thing you will see is a alert box that asks if you want ONYX to check the S.M.A.R.T status of your hard drive. S.M.A.R.T stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. Most hard drives these days monitor their own performance and try to anticipate if a failure is imminent, and if their is something wrong with your drive, you will be notified after this test. It is well worth doing.

Onyx SMART screenOnce this has completed, the next alert will ask if you want to verify your drive. If you have already performed this task because you are following on from my first “Speed Up Your Mac” article this is not necessary. If you haven’t already done this, it is well worth doing as it will find any drive errors. This process can take some time, and it will require all other programs to be closed, so if you decide to run it, go get yourself a coffee and some fresh air after you begin.

ONYX Verify Start Up VolumeWhen Verification has finished, ONYX will ask you to type in your password to give it permission to make changes and clean thing up.

ONYX Password Box

You will now see the main menu bar for ONYX.

ONYX Main Menu BarAs you can see, this program has a lot of in depth features and can do a lot of different things, but for this tutorial, we will focus on cleaning up quickly and easily. To start cleaning, press the “Automation” button. You will now see the Automation screen.

Onyx Automation Defaults

The safest way to proceed is to accept the defaults and press “Execute”. If you are following on from my first “Speed Up Your Mac” article you might want to un-check “Repair Permissions” as you will have already done this. Other wise, leave it checked. If you are like me and like living on the edge, you can go ahead and check/un-check the items you feel necessary.

*BE WARNED* – As with every clean up program, there can be unwanted side effects, so proceed with caution!

For me personally, I do change it up as I like to clean my system deeply, and I am happy to put things back how I like them after the cleaning (such as re-arranging my icons how I like them on my desk top again). I also like to execute my Macs built in daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts. Below is how I use ONYX.

*NOTE* – I take no responsibility if you copy my settings and loose something.

ONYX OptionsWhen you are happy with your cleaning options, its time to press execute.

Quit Open AppsONYX will tell you it is going to close any other programs that are open, so again, make sure you have saved your work.

Onyx In ProgressONYX will now start performing maintenance. In most cases this will take some time, so if you didn’t stretch your legs, get a coffee and some fresh air before, now is the time. When ONYX has finished, a dialogue box will appear. Click OK.

ONYX Maintainence Complete

ONYX will now want to restart you computer.

ONYX RebootRestart your computer and you are all done!

Easily add Meta Tags to your music with Musicbrainz Picard

The Webernets0 comment

musicbrainz-picardThere’s nothing I hate more than dropping new music into my iTunes library only to learn once it has finished importing that it doesn’t have meta-tags (No Song Name, Artist, Album Title etc etc). So now, before I add new music, I run it through MusicBrainz Picard. Here’s the programs description from their site:

“MusicBrainz Picard is a cross-platform (Linux/Mac OS X/Windows) application written in Python and is the official MusicBrainz tagger.

Picard supports the majority of audio file formats, is capable of using audio fingerprints (PUIDs, AcoustIDs), performing CD lookups and disc ID submissions, and it has excellent Unicode support. Additionally, there are several plugins available that extend Picard’s features.

When tagging files, Picard uses an album-oriented approach. This approach allows it to utilize the MusicBrainz data as effectively as possible and correctly tag your music. For more information, see the illustrated quick start guide to tagging.

Picard is named after Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

To get started, download and install MusicBrainz Picard HERE. Once you are up and running, drop the music files you want to tag anywhere in the window. They will then populate the list on the left called unmatched files.

mb1

When you have finished adding files, click the line of text with the folder icon next to it that says “Unmatched Files” to make it active. When it is active it will become highlighted. Now, go ahead and press the “Lookup” button, and MusicBrainz Picard will start scanning your music and comparing it to their database for identification.

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Once MusicBrainz Picard has identified the album and added all of the songs to it, the CD icon next to the album name will turn gold in color. If you don’t have all of the songs from the album, it doesn’t matter, you can still proceed, but the CD icon stays silver. The next step is to click Album Name next to the CD icon to make it active, and highlighted. You can now click “Save”.

mb3

MusicBrainz Picard will now write the Meta Tag Data directly into your music files. Once it has completed, you can close out of the program, and then drop your music files into iTunes, and everything will be correctly categorised and ready to play.

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Gruffys Free Domain Parking Script

The Webernets0 comment

Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script is a simple and FREE script I created for domain names I have purchased with the intention of selling at a later date. Rather than have the name lying dormant, you can put it to work for you by making it advertise itself, as well as by displaying Google Ads which can make you money. This script can also be easily modified to suit regular parked domains.

Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script is made available here FREE of charge, I offer no warranties, support, and accept no responsibility for consequences of its use (unless you make heaps of money and want to give some of it to me). By downloading and using Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script you are confirming that you understand these conditions and acknowledge you are using it AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script
Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script
Download Now!6146 Downloads

Detailed usage instructions can be found HERE.

SCREENSHOT:

Parking-Capture

How to listen to 80’s Hairband’s Music and other Internet Radio Stations 24 Hours a day – Part One – On The Go

The Webernets0 comment

I just love the internet radio station 181FM 80’s Hairbands. I love all of those glam rock bands like Poison, Motley Crue and Bon Jovi. I find myself listening to it daily, and in a variety of places. It occured to me that not everybody is aware of internet radio, and the plethora of cool music that is available to you, so I thought I would put together a tutorial on how you can listen to any of the thousands of internet radio stations anywhere, 24 hours a day, and we’ll use 80’s Hairbands as an example.

Part 1 – If you want to listen in your car, or through your head phones on the go, your phone is the best bet. Navigate to the App store for your phone (I’m using iPhone for this tutorial, but Tune In has a Free app for Android, Palm, Blackberry and Windows phones as well – see HERE) and search for the FREE Tune In Radio App.

Once you have downloaded and installed the app, open it and press “Browse” down the bottom.

In the search bar that appears at the top, type “80’s Hairband”

181FM 80’s Hairband Station should be the first one, so click it, and it should start playing. With in seconds of pressing it for this tutorial, I was listening to Malmsteen….SWEET HUH!

At this point it is important to make the station a favorite, so each time you want to listen, you dont have to go through the whole searching routine. To make it a Favorite, press the “Heart” in the top right corner, and then press “Add 181fm 80’s Hairbands to Favorites”.

Another station I also recommend is the Hard Drivin Radio Networks “Big 80’s Metal“

 

How to listen to 80′s Hairband’s Music and other Internet Radio Stations 24 Hours a day – Part Two – At Work

The Webernets0 comment

In PART 1, we looked at how to listen to internet radio (specifically 181FM 80’s Hairband Station) on the go. In this part, we will look at two ways to listen at the office on your computer with a web browser, assuming your computer has sound capabilities. The quickest and easiest way to listen is to simply navigate to www.181.fm.

Once there, you will find a list of ALL of their cool stations down the left hand side. There’s SO much good music to listen to there. But if its Glam your looking for,  Just navigate down to “80’s Hairband”, and click it. A new window will open with a player in it, and it should start playing immediately.

Another way to listen to internet radio through your web browser is to go to Tunein.com, and in this case, again, we will search for “80’s Hairband” in the search bar at the top.

Once 181FM 80’s Hairbands appears, click it to open a new window which contains a player, and even the album art for the songs it is playing.

How to listen to 80′s Hairband’s Music and other Internet Radio Stations 24 Hours a day – Part Three – At Home

The Webernets0 comment

In Part 2, we looked at how to play Internet Radio on a web browser, but at home you are more likely to have iTunes installed, which is a better way to listen in my opinion.

With iTunes open, look down the left hand side, and find the word “Radio”.

Bet you didn’t even know that was there did you! Give it a click, and behold the staggering amount of music you have access to that you didn’t even know was there!

Towards the bottom of the list you will find 80’s Flashback. Expand this category by clicking the triangle to the left, and way down the bottom you will find 181FM 80’s Hairband.

Give it a click, and it will start playing.

To avoid having to do the search each time, just grab the listing for “181FM 80’s Hairband” and drag it to the playlist area and drop it.

It will create a link to the station, so next time you want to listen, all you need to do is click the playlist, and it will start playing immediately. Cool Huh!