Macbook Pro thermal paste

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I have a early 2011 Macbook Pro model that has been running pretty well for me. I am running 16GB of ram and a Samsung 840 Pro. My laptop has been running really hot for the last few months and it has been really frustrating. Running dual monitors would slow down my laptop to a crawl. There are a lot of articles online about macbook pros having issues with thermal paste and i have seen a lot of photos with poorly applied thermal paste. After all the research I have come to the conclusion that my laptop needs to be taken apart as well.

I bought Arctic MX-4 thermal paste because it seems to get the most positive reviews online. The procedure took about an hour. I am not an expert with laptops but it seems that Apple makes their hardware pretty easy to take apart as compared to some of the PC laptops I have had in the past.

THe reason I wanted to write this article though was to post photos of my macbook’s thermal paste that i found once i took off the heat sink. It was worse then a lot of the other photos online.

Here they are

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Some of you might not think you are expert enough to remove the laptop motherboard and do this. What i would do is at least remove the fans from the board and clean the dust that has accumulated there. After 2 years of using my laptop i found a thick layer of dust that was limiting the fans from doing a great job cooling.

If you have any questions let me know below.

Block Youtube Video Ads In Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox And Opera

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If you are watching a lot of youtube, ads that happen on some of the videos are very intrusive and annoying. You dont want to sit there for a long time watching more ads then videos.

There is a plugin I use which blocks these ads so all you see is the videos. It is also useful for other websites as you will not see ads anymore wherever you go. The software is called AdBlock. It is available for all browsers. I use chrome but it does not matter what you use. I will add the links to these plugins below so you can download them.

Mozilla Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
Google Chrome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom
Opera https://addons.opera.com/en/addons/extensions/details/opera-adblock/0.52/

Your internet experience should be a lot better now!

Add photos to iPhone / iPad simulator add photos to iphone simulator

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When doing iPhone or iPad development sometimes there is a need to do processing on photos in the iPhone photo library. Instead of just testing the app on the device there is an easier way.

You can create a photo library on the computer that shows up in the simulator. The path to the simulator photo library is:

~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/5.0/Media/DCIM/100APPLE

If the directory structure is not there create it and add your photos / videos in there.

To have them show up in the simulator delete ~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/5.0/Media/PhoneData. This will rebuild the iPhone photo database and allow you to use those items during development.

That is what i do. Good luck.

airplay

Airplay stream audio and video for Windows free

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airplay
I have been looking for a simple remote solution for my Windows media center pc. My audio system is connected to it so i needed a way to stream audio wirelessly from iTunes. I have used the Airfoil for Windows free but it starts garbling sound after a while if you dont buy a copy. I am trying to keep my media center mostly using open source software. Two softwares have actually made this possible for me.

I can now stream both audio and video over Airplay from my iPhone or iTunes on my laptop and its FREE!!!!

Audio Streaming

For streaming audio over Airplay i use Shairport4w which is located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/shairport4w/

Sharepoint4w allows you to make any Windows machine into an iTunes speaker making it very easy to send music to it. It has settings to allow a user to set a password on it so not everyone can send audio to it. It also allows for audio output selection. This helps if your audio system is not your default audio device. PERFECT!

Video Streaming / Photo Streaming

Streaming photos / video over airplay from iPhone to TV is a very useful and very cool feature to have. I use Windows Media Center for my media needs and i found a plugin which is also open source. It is called Airplay for Windows Media Center. Follow the link: http://thomaspleasance.com/2011/05/23/airplay-for-windows-media-center-beta-1/

These are free tools. If you find them useful support these creators by donating help or $$.

If you have any questions about how to use these tools let me know below. I can explain to you how to install them or use them.

IOS SDK Check if device is an iPhone or iPad at runtime

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This is the code i use to check if the user device is an iPhone, iPhone4 or IPad. Based on this i show different screens.

//check the device type - iphone / ipad / ipod / whatever
if ([[UIDevice currentDevice] userInterfaceIdiom] == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPhone) {
         if ([[UIScreen mainScreen] respondsToSelector:@selector(scale)] == YES &&
             [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale] == 2.00) {
                 // RETINA DISPLAY CODE
         } else {
             //NON RETINA DISPLAY CODE
         }
} else {
         //IPAD CODE HERE
}

Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck

Shut down or restart computer via Remote Desktop in Windows 7

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It is very simple

For Windows 7 press the start button and in the search box type in shutdown /r
This will reboot your computer.

If you are using Windows Xp you can right click on your Taskbar and open TaskManager and on the TaskManager window you will see the Shutdown menu and can choose your options there.

Change Mac Mail and Outlook 2011 file location

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Apple does not seem to give details about this. If you dont want the mail files to be on your main drive you can change this by creating a symbolic link. Dont worry it is very easy.

Where are all the Mail files on a Mac?
They are located at ~/Library/Mail (~/ represents your home directory — /Users/YOURUSER )

Before doing anything close your Mail App or Outlook 2011 if you have them open.
To change this to something else you have to first move your mail folder to wherever you want.
The command line command for that is: mv ~/Library/Mail WHERE/YOU WANT/TO MOVE IT
You can also move your files in finder.

After this you just have to create the symbolic link. Open the Console.
The command is: ln -s path/to/where/you/moved/mail/ ~/Library/Mail

After this is done you can open up Mail or Outlook and all your files will be there.

If you have any problems with this or any questions use the comment box below. Good luck!