Brother HL-3040CN Reset Toner

Brother printers have a bad low toner count mechanism which prematurely tells the end user that the toners are low when they are not.  The following steps will rest the toner count.

1. Open the front cover that gives you access to the toners.
2. Press and hold “Secure Print” and “Cancel” at the same time. You will see “K-TNR-STD” display on the screen.
3. Using the “+” and “-” buttons select the toner you want to reset.
4. Press the “Ok” button.
5. It will display “Ok?” and hit the “Ok” button again to reset the toner.
6. Close the lid.

August 26, 2011 · tom · No Comments
Tags: , ,  · Posted in: Hardware tips

Unhide User/Library folder in Lion

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion hides the /user/Library folder from the user by default.

Accessing this folder can be done by going to the Finder Go–>Go to Folder and tying it in there.  Holding down the Option key while clicking on the Go menu will show as a menu option there as well.  For a more permanent solution the following Terminal commands will unhide and hide the folder.

Unhide:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

Hide:

chflags hidden ~/Library/

July 21, 2011 · tom · No Comments
Tags: , ,  · Posted in: Uncategorized

Adding Templetes to iWork Pages

Pages templates are keep in a templates folder.  Templates placed in this folder will show up in the list of templates in the “New From Template Chooser” window in Pages. This folder is located in your home directory under the Applications support iWork directory (/Users/yourname/Library/Application Support/iWork/Pages/templates/My Templates).  This directory may not be there under iWork and you will have to create it.  Place your templates here and they will show up when you need them.

July 14, 2011 · tom · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  · Posted in: Uncategorized

Brother 4040CN Drum Life End Soon Message

 

Recently got an “Drum Life End Soon” message. The printer still worked, but the message keeps popping up.

This is tied to a counter The message can be cleared by:

Need to get to the Rest Parts Life menu.  This can be done by one of two ways depending on the drum status.

If you are getting the Drum Life End Soon Message

Press the + or – button to choose “Machine Info”.
Press OK to proceed to the next menu level, and then press the + or – button to choose
“Reset Parts Life”.
Press OK, and then press the + button to choose “Drum Unit”.
Press OK two times.

*******************OR****************************

If you need to reset the counter without the message appearing.

With the front door open.

1.  Press the GO and + buttons at the SAME time.  The “Reset Parts Life” will appear on the LCD. 
2.  Select Drum Unit.
3.  Press OK

 

 

July 14, 2011 · tom · 3 Comments
Posted in: Uncategorized

Providing Licensing For your Application

Objective C Frameworks for providing licensing in your Applications

1. AquaticPrime http://www.aquaticmac.com/ . Strong encryption, easy to use and provides php scripts to link with paypal to automate the licensing process. However, it does have it’s weaknesses.   Unfortunately the function call that tests whether the license is valid provides a single point of failure.  Hack this function to return true and all is lost. There has been some work done as of late that may prove to be more secure.The updated Version can be found here https://github.com/bdrister/AquaticPrime

2. CocoaFob https://github.com/glebd/cocoafob/

3. Elliptic https://github.com/dchest/ellipticlicense

 

June 2, 2011 · tom · No Comments
Tags: , ,  · Posted in: Cocoa

Getting Mouse cursor position

 

To find a cursor’s position on the screen. All return and NSPoint

-[NSCursor hotSpot]. The hotSpot is the location inside the cursor image of the tip of the arrow.

If you need the mouse position at the time of some event, use -[NSEvent locationInWindow]. 
If you need the mouse position “now” inside some window, use -[NSWindow mouseLocationOutsideOfEventStream].
If you need the mouse position “now” with neither an event nor a window, use +[NSEvent mouseLocation].

This was taken from the Cocoa dev forms.

May 7, 2011 · tom · No Comments
Posted in: Cocoa

AFP and FreeNas

A few days ago I had to change some file permissions on my freenas server to allow ssh to work. In doing so I could no longer login to the AFP share from my desktop. The strange thing was I could not login from bonjour ‘Shared’ panel on the left of the Finder window but I could connect through Finder in the Go–>Connect. After some investigation I deleted the following files from the root of the share folder on the Freenas.

  1. .AppleDB
  2. .AppleDesktop
  3. .AppleDouble
  4. .TemporaryItems
  5. Network Trash Folder
  6. Temporary Items
  7. .DS_Store

Restarting the AFP service on the Freenas restored the files and everything was back to normal.

After further investigation I realized by looking at the logs that Error Code -5014 refers to a corrupt .AppleDB file. I only needed to delete the .AppleDB file and resart the AFP service to rebuild the database.

January 22, 2011 · tom · No Comments
Posted in: Uncategorized

Quartz composer plugin errors

-[QCPlugInPatch _addOutputPortWithClass:forKey:attributes:]: Inconsistent state

I came across this error recently when trying to write a custom patch for QC.  If you get this error more than likely you are trying to use a consumer patch with outputs.  You can not have outputs with a consumer patch.  Change kQCPlugInExecutionModeConsumer to kQCPlugInExecutionModeProcessor.

December 31, 2010 · tom · No Comments
Tags: ,  · Posted in: Quartz Composer

Split NSString into and array of Objects.

Split NSString into an array of objects each containing one line.

For example, say we have the following tab delimited string

AH162h 0 1926 2516 1 192.168.1.255

AH162h 1 1926 0×0012 3412

3456 7402 0×342 0×548

and we want to have each line be an NSString object in an NSArray

In OS X 10.4 and below

NSArray *lines = [stringOfLines componentsSeparatedByString:@\n]

Each NSString object in lines could further be broken down into Tab delimited NSString objects

NSArray *tabStrings = [lineString componentsSeparatedByString:@\t]

In OS X 10.5 and above

NSArray *lines = [string componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet newlineCharacterSet]];

December 24, 2010 · tom · No Comments
Tags:  · Posted in: Cocoa

D-Link DGS-1024D 24 Port Gigabit Switch

About a year or ago I purchased a D-Link DGS-1024D 24-Port Gigabit Switch to replace a malfunctioning Netgear 16 port gigabit switch. I really did not intend to purchase a 24 port switch as it is probably overkill for a home network. However, almost all my ports are connected to something. Nowadays, it is not just desktop computers needing a connection. It is everything from TV’s, wireless bridges, home stereo, set top boxes, and dvd players to gaming devices. I had not used D-Link products lately due to some less than desirable results from some of their products in the past but was surprised at the quality of this switch. It runs cool and powers down ports which do not have an active link. Best of all it has the ability to diagnose a faulty ethernet cable and let you know through the LED lights. This fast and responsive switch has made a hugh difference in the reliability of my network and clarity of my VoIP connection. This is probably one of the best switches I have owned.

 

December 24, 2010 · tom · No Comments
Posted in: Hardware Reviews