UPDATE: I just released A Geek Clock on the App Store, you can check out more info in this post A Geek Clock

So I decided that I would write up a quick tutorial on how to read a binary watch. It’s actually pretty simple after you learn how to convert binary to decimal. Not to worry converting from binary to decimal is easy. I’ll give you a quick example of how this can be done, quickly and easily.

Let’s say you have an 8 bit binary ( base 2 ) number 00010011 and you want to know how to convert it to a decimal ( base 10 ) number. You can write it out similar to the example below.

128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	0	0	1	0	0	1	1

All you have to do her is for every number that has a one in the bottom field add the top numbers together. So in this example we have 16 + 2 + 1 which equals 19. So our binary number 00010011 becomes 19 in its decimal form. This is as much information as you’ll need to know about converting binary to decimal in order to read a binary watch, therefore I will not go much further into converting binary to decimal or decimal to binary.

Most binary watches have 2 rows of lights, the lights indicate a 1 or 0. If the light is on, it represents a 1 if the light is off it represents a 0. I’m going to use the image below as an example:

In this example, there are 2 rows. The first row reads 1011 and the second row reads 110100. See if you can figure that out on your own by looking at the watch. Notice that I’ve substituted the lights that are on with 1’s and the lights that are off represent 0’s.

You’ll also notice that these watches don’t represent 8 bit binary numbers. This is o.k. and doesn’t pose a problem whatsoever. Either you can read from right to left or you can add leading 0’s. For example:

The top row being 1011 would actually be 00001011 and the bottom row of 110100 would be 00110100. Not too bad but it does waste time doing it this way. If you can remember the numbers: 1,2,4,8,16,32 then you’re all set, each number is just a multiple of the previous one. So knowing these numbers, we would read the lights from right to left. Starting with the top row, the light is on so it has a value of 1, the 2nd light is on so it has a value of 2 and the 4th light is on, so it has a value of 8. If we add these numbers together we get 11 and that would be the hour of the time. Now for the bottom row, The first and second light are off so they don’t get a value the third light is on so it has a value of 4. The fifth light is on and thus has a value of 16 and the sixth light is on giving it a value of 32 if we add all of these number together: 4 + 16 + 32 we get 52 which is the minutes. So the time that this binary watch is displaying is 11:52

It may seem like a difficult task at first but the more you use it, the easier it will get. Just think about it this way, we were all raised on base 10 system growing up. So for all the years in our life we’ve been using this base 10 system, trying to get used to a base 2 system for every day use is not simple but can be achieved with patience and practice.

On a side note, as I was writing this post, I thought it would be cool to make a dashboard widget of a Binary Watch for Mac OS X. I’ve actually finished developing it before I finished writing this post. You can download the widget from my Projects Page. Let me know what you guys think. If you like this widget, then you should definitely check out the real thing. How cool would it be to wear this widget on your wrist. Well if you check out thinkgeek.com, you’ll find that they are selling a binary watch that you can wear on your wrist. In fact their design is what inspired this widget. Here is a link to the watch http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/6a17/

In this screen cast tutorial I cover how to change a persons eye color using Photoshop CS4. The tutorial was creating using Photoshop CS4 for Mac but you should be able to follow along on a Windows version of Photoshop as well, without issues.

Below is the before and after of what we will be doing in Photoshop

 

For your reference I also have the original image I was working with below, all you have to do is right click and save the image to your desktop, if you want to follow along with the tutorial using the same image.

 

Now for the tutorial, I have uploaded this tutorial to youtube and linked to it here. Please let me know if you have any questions in regards to the tutorial. I’d also like to add that if anyone has any particular requests for tutorials, just leave a comment with your suggestion. Feedback is always appreciated

I was going to do a video tutorial on this at first but after checking out Wordpress 2.8 and discovering how easy it is to add themes now, I decided to just write up a quick how to.

So back on Wordpress 2.7 we used to have to download a zip file with all of the theme files archived and then extract the zip file, upload it to the themes folder and then go to wordpress and enable the theme, that’s the short version.

Now on Worpdress 2.8 it is much simpler to add / change your themes. Let’s take a quick look at how simple it is to install a theme.

 

1. Begin by logging into your Wordpress Admin Area
2. Once logged in, find the appearance panel on the left hand side.  
    
3. Click on Add New Themes and you should be presented with a screen similar to the one below  
    
4. From here you can choose to either upload your own theme or search for one on Wordpress. I’ve tried out this new search feature and I have to say, I like it. So lets go ahead and search for a theme on Wordpress. I’m going to put a check mark in 3-column since I want a 3 column theme and then click on Find Themes
5. When the search result display’s you’ll have 3 different links you can click on, Preview, Details, and Install
6. When you find the one you like simply click on Install
7. You’ll get another pop up window, click on Install Now
8. If you haven’t entered the information in already, Wordpress will ask you for your FTP account information. Go ahead and fill this out and click on proceed.
9. Now you have 3 options, Preview, Activate, or Return to Theme Installer, if you’d like to see what your blog will look like with the new theme, then go ahead and click on preview, otherwise click Activate to activate the new theme.
10. Your new theme is now Activated

I think that the Wordpress team has done a wonderful job adding this feature into the admin area. It really does make for a seamless theme installation and leaves no room for error. I am still exploring the new version of Wordpress, but so far I think this is the coolest new feature for Wordpress.

Just a quick note, if you’ve downloaded a theme somewhere else and you’d like to install it on your Wordpress 2.8 blog then all you have to do is follow the same steps as above but click on Upload Theme instead and browse to the zip file you’ve downloaded.

In this tutorial we will cover the process for installing Wordpress 2.8 on Plesk. There is a 2 part screen cast as well as some text you’ll need to read in order to accomplish this. So lets go ahead and get started. Read more

Here’s a quick Photoshop Tutorial on how to make a gradient from A to Z, screen cast style

Hope you guys enjoy it, its my very first screen cast. I’m hoping to make a lot of these little tutorials, what I would like is for all the readers to submit requests for tutorials and once a week I’ll pick a suggestion and we’ll call it the tutorial of the week. What do you guys think ? Read more

This was giving me a problem some days ago so I thought I’d write up a quick tutorial on how to shrink dmg files on a mac. Why would you want to do this ? Well lets say you are creating an application and you want to package it in a DMG so you open up Disk Utility and create a blank image. Well you can only choose certain sizes. Most of us would choose a 40MB image so we have plenty of initial space to work with.

As far as I know there are 2 methods for shrinking the dmg down to the size of its contents, they are listed below.

Method – 1:

• Right Click on the DMG
• Click Compress

This will generate a zip file down to the actual size of the content of the DMG since free space has 100% compression ratio.

Method – 2:

This method involves the use of the Terminal App which can be found under Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

• Launch Terminal
• Type the following hdiutil resize -size 10M /Path/To/DMG/DMG_Name.dmg

Code Breakdown:

• hdiutil – A utility that comes preinstalled with Mac OS X, that manipulates disk images, etc…
• -size – An argument passed to hdiutil, indicating that you want to change the size of an image.
• 10M – means I am changing the dmg size to 10 Megabytes, insert your own value here.
• The rest should be self explanitory

So there you have it, 2 methods to resize your dmg in Mac OS X. Thanks for reading.

If anyone would benefit from having a little GUI App that resizes DMG’s let me know, if I receive enough requests, I might make one and post it here.

Requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.4 or later
- Intel Processor
- Dual Layer DVD Burner 

Installation:

So today I have decided to release the an Alpha Version of ISOx360. You can download it from my projects page.

ISOx360 makes burning XBOX 360 games on your Mac just about as simple as it can get. Simply download ISOx360 and extract the .dmg then open the .dmg and drag ISOx360 to your Applications folder to install. Once installed you can launch ISOx360 and you should be presented with a screen similar to the illustration to the left. 

Download ISOx360 on my Projects Page: http://chris-fletcher.com/projects/ Read more

OSx360 probably the only application that is available for Mac that can properly burn XBOX 360 games. It seems as though the developer has abandoned the project. I have checked the developers website and a few forums where he interacted with a few people that had issues with OSx360.

I’ve tried to contact him to see if he would release the source code to the application so that I could continue development and work out all of the bugs, including the ability to verify stealth on the newer released games. However, I have not been able to make any contact so I will be developing a new burning application for Mac OS X that will burn XBOX 360 games.

I’d like to ask my readers to please leave me comments with feature requests, etc…

In the meantime, OSx360 will still properly burn XBOX 360 games even if stealth is not verified. What I would suggest is this, use abgx360 to verify the ISO to ensure it has been properly patched. You can follow my tutorial on how to do that by clicking the link here. http://chris-fletcher.com/2009/06/07/how-to-stealth-patch-xbox-360-games-on-a-mac/

After you’ve finished with abgx360 and everything appears to look good, you can proceed to open OSx360. Follow my tutorial by clicking the link below on how to burn XBOX 360 games using OSx360.

http://chris-fletcher.com/2009/06/05/how-to-burn-xbox-360-games-on-a-mac/

You’ll want to follow the tutorial step by step, here’s the exception, If everything checked out fine in abgx360 but you are seeing stealth not verified in OSx360 then you must make a minor change to the configuration. 

• Configuration
• Burn Options Pane
• Uncheck Require Stealth Verification

 

After you’ve made the configuration changes you can proceed to burn your game. I have been able to this without any problems, but don’t blame me if this ends up producing coasters for you.

Just wanted to mention again that I will be developing a new burning application for Mac OS X to burn XBOX 360 games and urge anyone reading this blog to submit any type feature requests.

The goal of the application will be to mimic OSx360 in that you can open an ISO it will verify stealth, dmi, pfi, etc… and allow you to burn the game. I’d like to try and keep it as simple as possible but will consider all feature requests.

That’s it and thanks for reading.

NOTE: This will only work with backup copies of Wii Games, there is currently no support for the internal DVD drives that come standard in any Mac for reading original Wii discs.

In an effort to keep things simple, this is a follow-up of my tutorial on How To Backup And Burn Wii Games On A Mac. I have developed an application that allows you to simply insert the Wii Game into your DVD Drive and then select a location and name for your ISO and simply click on Backup Wii Game.

NOTE: This is an Alpha release of WiiOSx, I will need to receive a lot of feedback as far as functionality is concerned. WiiOSx has been tested on OS X 10.5 and works without any issues. Please leave comments and let me know what you’d like to see in future releases as well as any bugs you may experience.

Just follow the simple step by step Tutorial Below:

WiiOSx Tutorial:

 

Download WiiOSx, extract and then Launch the Application.

Insert your Wii Game that you want to Backup, Finder should pop up and say that you inserted a blank DVD. Click on Ignore. Now you should see information for Media Type and BSD Name. This information is not important but it should say something other then No Disc.

Click on Select and choose where to save your image and give it a name and then click Save

You should now see your chosen location and image name appear next to the Select Button. 

If this is correct then you can proceed to click on Backup Wii Game, you should then be presented with a progress bar. Wait for it to finish and then burn with Disk Utility. You can follow my other tutorial for that bit. http://chris-fletcher.com/2009/05/17/backup-and-burn-wii-games-on-a-mac/

Download WiiOSx

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I will not charge for WiiOSx but I’m hoping that I’ll at least receive some donations for my hard work. You can use the form below to donate any amount you wish.

[donateplus] [donorwall title='Donor Recognition Wall']

This is a tutorial on How To Stealth Path your XBOX 360 games on a Mac. After much searching on google I have had a really difficult time finding anything to help me stealth patch XBOX 360 games on Mac that I’ve downloaded from the internet.

 

So this is sort of a follow up tutorial for How To Burn your XBOX 360 games on a mac. If you’ve opened OSx360 and the Stealth verification failed then you can’t burn the game and even if you could, you probably wouldn’t be able to play it in your XBOX 360 console.

This tutorial will explain in detail what you should do if Stealth doesn’t pass verification in OSx360. First you must download an application. The application we will need is called abx360, you can google for it or download it below. This application will fix an unverified stealth patch. ( Most of the time )

• abgx360

Download and install abgx360. Once it’s installed, open the application and then open up your ISO file of the game that didn’t pass the Stealth verification by clicking on the blue folder icon to the right of the text input field. You should have something similar to the below illustration.

Now click on the AutoFix tab and copy the settings below.

 

When you have everything set correctly you can click on the blue Launch button at the very bottom it should turn green when you hover over it with your mouse.

 

After clicking on the Launch button, a Terminal window should open and you should start seeing a bunch of text similar to the below. DO NOT INTERRUPT THIS PROCESS. Let it do its thing.

Notice the lines in Red, the game I am working with has a blank DMI, a blank PFI and my Stealth check has failed. These are all bad things and fortunately are all things that abgx360 will fix for us.

 

 You will notice that towards the bottom you’ll see some nice green lines of text. PFI, DMI, Video and Stealth have all been fixed, now it just needs to verify the CRC of the ISO. Let it finish, be patient this could take a few minutes. Finally we know that the program has finished when we see the line AutoFix was successful!

You can now close the Terminal and abx360. Now you can follow my tutorial on how to burn your XBOX 360 games on a mac using OSx360 and when the Verify screen pops up you should see something similar to the following.

Everything looks good, Stealth Check has passed, PFI and SS Sector Data are Valid, DMI is Valid and all is right with the world. Now go ahead and burn your game and enjoy.

Hopefully I’m not repeating what someone else has already done but like I said, I have not been able to find a good / if any tutorial on the internet. Please let me know if I missed something or you have some questions or need some help.