up | The Webernets

How To Speed Up a WordPress Web Site by Optimizing Images

May 15, 2015 The Webernets0 comment

The Webernets has been running a bit slow lately, so I started looking at ways to speed things up. I stumbled on an article on WPMUDEV titled “How To Massively Reduce Your Images For A Faster WordPress Site“, and I thought I would put it to the test. I downloaded my entire images folder from my server, and here are the beginning stats.

As I am using a Mac, I downloaded the free app recommended in the article called ImageOptim (The article recommended Caesium as a free alternative for Windows users). I was impressed to read on the download page that “ImageOptim is lossless — it compresses image files without changing pixels.”

Opening the program shows a pretty familiar looking window.

I dropped the whole folder in using the default settings and away it went. It took about 50 minutes, and here is the summary it displayed when finished.

And this is the specs on the folder from the finder.

63.9 MB saving is nothing to sneeze at, but I was interested to see if I could push it any further. In the settings, I found a “Quality” slider for Jpegs. By default, it is set to 100% hence the claim to lossless, So sliding it down to 80% will obviously reduce the quality and void the lossless claim, but is the trade off for file size justifiable?

With the Jpeg Quality Slider set to 80, I ran the program again on a copy of the original folder I made before the first optimization run. It took about 60 minutes this time, and here is the summary from the window footer

And here is how the Finder views the folder

110.5 MB Saving on a 330.4 MB original file size is impressive. That’s 1/3! I went through a number of files to check the quality, and even though there is a slight difference if you look hard, for the most part the quality is good.

Stop FaceTime asking for a Password in OS X Mavericks

March 8, 2014March 8, 2014 The Webernets3 Comments

All of a sudden, when I turn on/log in on my Macs that are running OS X Mavericks, I am getting a window that asks me to input the password for FaceTime. This really started driving me crazy, as I don’t use FaceTime, and I don’t even have a camera connected to my Mac Pro.

To stop this from happening, I just turned FaceTime off. To do this, open a new finder window, and then open your Applications folder. Now click/open FaceTime. Click and drag down the “FaceTime” menu option and simply select “Turn FaceTime Off”.

Fix Connectivity Problems by Power Cycling your Home Network and Computers

May 22, 2013May 22, 2013 The Webernets0 comment

Power Cycling sounds like riding a bike really fast up a hill, but in the technology field it refers to a way to get everything back online when things aren’t working right, or you have to recover from a failure or freeze.

A Power Cycle is achieved by turning everything off safely, disconnecting the power sources, and leaving everything to sit for a in-determined amount of time (some say 30 seconds, some say 30 minutes).

I find Power Cycling makes all my devices talk to each other quicker. As I have a somewhat sophisticated home network, yanking the cord on everything from time to time allows new routing tables to be created, and old machines that are no longer connected to the network (That may have been a Master Browser (Machine that tells other machines where everything is located)) to be removed from the environment.

We’ll use my network as an example to go through the procedure, as things do need to be done in a specific order. Using a IP Scanner (There’s lots of free ones available – just Google IP Scanner) I generated this view of my home network.

To begin a Power Cycle, I turn all off the Computers and my Server off. Once they are safely and completely shut down I yank the power cords from the sockets (This is important, if it is still plugged in, there is still power going in, keeping things in memory – So YANK IT!). With my Laptops, I take the batteries out. Next, I shut down and unplug my WD TV media machines and the “Elements” hard drives attached to them. My iPhone and iPad are now shut down by Pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button (Power Button on top right side of device) for a few seconds until the red “slide to power off” slider appears, and then slide the slider. Lastly, My Airport Extreme Router, D-Link Switch, and ADSL Modem are all disconnected from the outlets.

Now I go throw a tennis ball with my Dog Benson for about 10 minutes. This allows plenty of time for any power left in the devices to drain away, and all caches and memory to clear.

After playtime I get ready to restart everything. First, I plug the modem back in and let it initialize and connect to the internet. Then I turn on my Switch, and my Airport Extreme Router is next. When they are all operational and happy, I turn my computers on one at a time, beginning with the one I use most, first (So it can become the Master Browser). Once it is up and connected to the internet, I turn the next one in my usage order on, and let it connect, then the next, etc, etc. Then, I boot up my WD TV Live Hub and reconnect the “Elements” storage drives, and lastly, I power on my iPhone and iPad by holding down the Sleep/Wake (Power Button on top right side) for a few seconds until I see the silver Apple logo appear.

Everything should be back up, running, and happy!

Some people will tell you there is no advantage to power cycling. I personally, do believe it helps, and if you are undecided, Try it for Yourself and make up your own mind! What have you got to loose?

Keep your network drives and servers clean of DS_Store, AppleDouble, apdisk and even Thumbs.db files with BlueHarvest

May 15, 2013December 31, 2020 The Webernets0 comment

Lately, My WDTV Live Hub has been REALLY slow. In an effort to see what was going on, I mounted the drive in my FAV Linux distro PUPPY LINUX. What Puppy Linux showed me, was ALL of the thousands of files that my Windows and Mac OS X computers had been creating and hiding on my drive without my knowledge. When I have accessed my shared drive with my Mac, it had been creating DS-Store files and .AppleDouble files in each folder, and my Windows machines have been creating Thumbs.db files.

It was pretty easy to delete these files, but my question was “How can I stop this Madness from happening again?”. After a little Googling I found a program called BlueHarvest. I downloaded the trial version, and I have to say, within 15 minutes, I had paid my $15 US and had a license key that was good for 3 different Macs. If You are sharing drives or a server in a Mac/Windows/Linux environment, YOU NEED THIS PROGRAM!

After installing, you tell BlueHarvest which drives and folders you want it to monitor, and the file types you want it to clear, and it deletes them as soon as they are created.

BlueHarvest not only prevents these files, it is also the quickest and easiest way there is to clean up a drive of existing files. I have a 8TB server running FREENAS, and to clean it up, all I did was click the BlueHarvest icon in my menu bar and select “Clean Using BlueHarvest”

Then I selected my server…

And then BlueHarvest went to work – check out the result!

It cleaned out 173144 files from the drive!

And at $15, BlueHarvest is a gift! Download the 30 day trial HERE.

**UPDATE** – Ive been using this program for a few days now, and it has been really cool watching it delete these annoying files as soon as they are created. That part has been working great. However, I have been playing around with a program called Total Finder today, and it shows Hidden/Invisible files. I ran it on my Freenas server and to my surprise, it turned up nearly 45000 .AppleDouble files.

I opened up BlueHarvest and initiated another clean on the drive, and after it scanned it reported it had cleaned 4 files. I ran Total Finder again, and it still came back with almost 45000 files.

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

May 3, 2013May 3, 2013 The Webernets0 comment

In 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.

Once 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.

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

You will now see the main menu bar for ONYX.

As 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.

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.

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

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

ONYX 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 will now want to restart you computer.

Restart your computer and you are all done!

Move and Insert Cursor anywhere in text on iPhone and iPad

April 10, 2013April 10, 2013 The Webernets0 comment

Have you ever typed out a bunch of words on your iPhone and wanted to go back and delete, change or insert something? There is an easy way to do it.

Just put your finger on the word or place you want to change, and leave/hold it there for a second or so, and a little magnifying glass will pop up. Without taking your finger off the screen, just move your finger left, right, up or down, and you will see the cursor inside the magnifying glass moving around the text. Just move the cursor to the place you need it to be, take your finger off the screen, the magnifying glass disappears and your cursor is right where you need it to be to make your changes.

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