Pixelmator: How to Draw an Unfilled Circle Around Text

Want to draw a circle around text in a Pixelmator image? Here's how.

1. Press M to bring up the selection tool. For drawing a circle, make sure it is the circle selection tool (you may have to press "M" twice).
2. Draw the circle using the selection tool. It will appear as a dotted line like any typical selection.
3. Go to Edit.
4. Select Stroke.
5. Choose a color and line thickness and any other options you want to fill out.

That's it. You can also use this method to draw unfilled squares, or to draw filled-in circles and squares.

Apple iMac Hardware Test Error 4SNS/1/40000000: TG0D-11.500

My 2009 iMac has been acting strangely for a few months. I noticed that the fan seemed to be running fast and noisy. At first I just ignored it, thinking that maybe iMacs just ran hot. But after a while I sensed something wasn't right, and I looked into what was normal fan behavior. With the help of the iStat widget, I discovered my fan speed was staying consistently over 3500 rpm. Normal fan speeds are around 1400rpm for iMacs. Something was wrong.

More research uncovered that Apple has a hardware diagnostic test for their Macs. To run it, you shut down your computer, restart the computer, and quickly press and hold the letter D (you've got to press the key immediately after hitting the power-on button). Running the test revealed the following error: 

4SNS/1/40000000: TG0D-11.500

I haven't called Apple to confirm exactly what it is, but researching similar error codes suggest it has something to do with my iMac's temperature sensor. It's likely faulty. I found a temporary fix in resetting the Mac's System Managament Controller (SMC). The process is super easy. Apple has instructions on their site, but I'll paste them below (instructions are for iMacs and Mac Pros):

1. Shut down the computer. 
2. Unplug the computer's power cord.
3. Wait fifteen seconds.
4. Attach the computer's power cord. 
5. Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.

It had an immediate effect on my computer. Usually upon restarting my computer, the fan would immediately start running at 3500rpm. This time, it ran at 1000rpm for a minute or so. Unfortunately, the fan slowly revved up to 3600rpm again. I will be taking my iMac in to the Genius Bar to see what they say. Hopefully it is not a logic board issue, as they can be extremely expensive to repair (like $800+).

How to Avoid Orphans in Blog Titles (Wordpress)

I'm a proofreader by day, and I am constantly noting orphans (or widows, depending on who you ask), which is a single word or maybe even two small words that break to the next line, creating an awkward, unbalanced appearance. I noticed this happening recently on my Wordpress blogs but didn't have much of a clue how to fix it. Here's how: you simply add   in between words with no spaces before and after, like this:

Add these characters in between words

Doing this creates a single unit out of the three words that will break to the next line together if the title runs too long.

Disqus.com: A Total Con Game?

I recently came across a service called Disqus that offers a free service that puts comments on your blog along with some nice features. At first glance, it's a seemingly innocent service that can remove some headaches such as spam for people who use blog engines like Wordpress.

However, if you are running a blog to generate money, I cannot stress the following point enough: Do not use Disqus for your comments. What Disqus does is take your comments and create essentially their own content from them. If you do a Google search for a post on your site and add the word Disqus to them, your will discover that Disqus.com has created their own blog out of your comments and also each of your posts, whether the posts have comments or not. They are using your comments and your blog to generate traffic to their site. Brilliant con, I have to give them credit.

Google Reader's Notes Feature

I've been waiting a long time for the new Google Reader notes feature. What I don't like is the focus on the social angle. Basically, when you create a note, the default is that your note will be shared and viewable by your friends. There is a checkbox to keep the note private, but I think the note should be private by default.

Also, the notes feature could be so much more powerful. I want to keep a searchable database of personal notes for news stories in Google Reader. I've always had a strong desire to record quick initial commentary on news stores in Google Reader so I can come back to my thoughts later and perhaps expand upon them. I want to be able to export those notes sorted by labels to Google Docs to create a printable document.

I mean, how great is it to record notes right alongside the source material. This has always been my dream with eBook readers. Could you imagine being able to write notes electronically in the margins on an eBook reader?

Here's an example of my vision for Google Reader notes. Say you've just bought a bunch of plants for your apartment. You come across a New York Times article on the best way to water plants. You think this might be a good idea for your plants, so you write a few quick notes about having to buy a new watering can, etc. Then a few days later, you come across a Wired article about a new gadget that measures the amount of sunlight hitting your plants. You also write a quick note to check out Amazon.com for this gadget and to also move one of your plants to a south-facing window. You also tag each of these posts with a label like "Plants." When you felt like it, you could come back later to the topic of your plants and revisit both these posts viewable in a personal book dedicated to to plants complete with source material (created by labeling each with "Plants").

Anyways, I think the notes feature is a big step in the right direction. Let's hope they keep adding features.

History of Obviously Wrong Published Statistics: Part I

I love Boing Boing, but a statistic they just published as a headline has got to be the height of sensationalist ignorance. This is the title:

60% of World's Paintings Come From One Village in China

The "one village" is called Dafen, where there are factories of artists who paint "counterfeits, replicas and nothing close that would be considered art." Are they saying there is someone who counts all the paintings in the world, knows where each painting in the world is painted down to the village level, and then produced this statistic? Boing, Boing, give me a break.

Link to article.

How to Add Sidebar in Single Post Pages With PlainTxt Wordpress Theme

The PlainTxtBlog Wordpress theme is one of my favorites. However, under the hood, it's totally confusing for new users. I was trying to figure out how to get the sidebar to appear on Single Post pages, which are the permalink pages that people mostly come across from a search engine. The sidebar just wasn't there--so frustrating. I'm not sure why the author left it out.

I actually contacted the author for help and thanked him for the wonderful theme. He responded that he does not supply support for his themes (understandable) and directed me to the readme file, which did me no good. After about a month of searching, I think I figured it out. Here's what you got to do.

First, go to your Wordpress theme editor and access the single post php page (it will be called single.php). Go to the bottom of the code and add the following line just before the code. Now, go to your style.css page and delete this line:

body.single div#container,body.page div#container{margin:0 0 2em;}

Now, click on a permalink (single post) page and the sidebar should appear.


*Update* In some versions of the PlainTxtBlog style, the sidebar is suppressed in the style.css page by the display:none attribute. Open the style.css page, do a search for sidebar, and find the style instructions that say display: none. Remove the body.single sidebar text from that set of instructions. The sidebar should now appear on the single page.