Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Forum member DeathRobot (who is probably nicer than his or her name implies) is interested in FTP and Automator. It writes:
I’ve created a folder action in Automator, where any files I drop onto it upload to a favorites folder on my FTP server via Panic’s Transmit. I would like to change the workflow so that when I drop a file on the folder a dialog box comes up that asks me to input a folder name. It would then create a new folder on the server with that name, and drop the files in it. Is this possible?
Sure. Transmit installs a few Automator actions. Among them is Mount, which you can use to mount a directory on your FTP server. But you can save yourself some trouble by instead using Transmit’s Transmit Disk feature that lets you mount an FTP directory as if it were a local disk. Then configure Automator this way:
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Patricia Whitney has done the Bad Thing to her iPad and wonders if there’s a way to make it Good. She writes:
I dropped my first-generation iPad and now the screen’s colors are all wrong. Blacks are green and there’s a lot of “static” in all the images the iPad displays. Is there anything I can do to fix it?
In the days of classic sitcoms there was an old wheeze where Main Character A would suffer a bump on the head, causing said A to lose his or her memory. After the ensuing hijinx, the arrived-at solution was invariably to bean them again, thus restoring their memory. Those penning today’s sitcoms avoid such advice, understanding the litigious society we now live in.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Faithful reader Dick Fiddler has a question regarding cordless phones and Wi-Fi interference. He writes:
I’m having interference issues with my AirPort network and cordless phone. Repositioning has helped some, but I’d like to pursue restricting the channels used by the Extreme. Unfortunately, I need a little more information to make it work. My Uniden phone says only “5.8 GHz” with nothing in the specs at all. The Airport Utility seems only to list channels without much reference to which are which. Any ideas on how to figure out which channels to use?
After researching the subject in greater depth I’m going to take the advice of my betters—and pass that advice along to you.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Michael Burke dutifully accepted my counsel but came up with unexpected results. He writes:
I followed your advice in How to Sign Digital Documents for capturing my signature in Preview, but it came out 90 degrees from horizontal. I would like to know why my signature came out vertical, not horizontal, and how to fix that.
I haven’t had this problem, but it’s not unknown to me. Why? It's a bug. How? Like so:
Occasionally, my 1080p Apple TV (ATV) loses interest in connecting to my local network. More specifically, if I go to the Network setting I find no IP address listed. That’s right. The IP address listing is empty. There isn’t even an invalid self-assigned (169.x.x.x) address. Not surprisingly, when this vanishing act occurs, the ATV can no longer access my iTunes Library or any of the ATV’s Internet-based services.
The Apple TV is hooked up to my network via a wired (Ethernet) connection. I had thought this would make for a more reliable connection. Apparently, not in this case.
Some quick diagnostic checks determined that the source of the problem was almost certainly the ATV itself. All the other networked devices—whether connected by Wi-Fi or Ethernet—were functioning as expected. My AirPort Base Station and Internet modem both showed all-systems-go. Even my second ATV, connected to another television, was working just fine.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Apparently my recent Mac 101 column on using Mountain Lion’s Calendar has unearthed a lot of questions. Reader Michael Wolfson has one about Calendar and holidays.
I was wondering if there is a way to get the holidays to show up in Calendar (on Mac and/or iPhone). It would be nice to know these things when I look at the calendar.
There is. By default Calendar doesn’t come equipped with a holiday calendar, but it’s easy to add one through calendar subscriptions. The manual way to do this is to cruise the Internet until you locate the kind of calendar you seek, copy the URL for that calendar, choose File > New Calendar Subscription, and in the sheet that appears enter the copied URL and click Subscribe.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Pete Curry has come thiiis close to stumping Mac 911 with a question concerning contacts and Calendar. He writes:
I read your recent Mac 101 column, Introduction to Calendar, and it reminded me to ask a question that’s been bugging me for awhile. I want to use Calendar’s Address Panel to add invitees but when I open it, it doesn’t show me my contacts. What’s happening?
Yep, Address Panel is confounding. You’re frankly better off choosing Window > Contacts and inviting people by dragging contacts from the Contacts application to the Invitees field. But here’s what’s happening.
