Crabtree Consulting LLC
Fixing computers since 1995.
Reset lamp timer for Toshiba TDP-T420 TDP-T360 projectors
Toshiba doesn't include instructions in the projector manual to reset the lamp timer. Instead, they include the instructions with the lamp. That's fine, unless you buy a generic lamp. And until you reset the lamp timer you will be shown a message every time you turn...
Formatting external hard drives on Mac
If you want to connect a hard drive to your Apple Airport Extreme router, you need to format it using the the GUID Partition Table (GPT) and format the partition as Apple Filing System (AFS) journeled. The problem is that Disk Utility formats external drives as Master...
Practical 720p vs. 1080p
Have you ever wondered why 720p televisions are still available? Are 720p TVs cheaper? Is that the only reason? Read on for a practical analysis. 720p is 1280 pixels horizontally 720 pixels vertically. 1080p is 1920x1080. The "p" means Progressive Scan which means a...
Apple Airport Extreme and damaged partitions
Oh Apple, so many of us trust your well thought-out products and don't complain when you remove features. After all, if you remove it, then we must not need it! Apple, if you ever read this post, please consider adding your Disk First Aid utility to the Airport...
How to make a MacOS 10.7 Lion DVD
The official way to get MacOS 10.7 Lion is to download it from the App Store or buy a computer with it preinstalled. What if I want to make a bootable DVD? Here's what you do: Download the installer (almost four gig!) from the App Store. Once finished, CTRL+click and...
Poor battery life with MacOS Lion (10.7)?
Upgrading to MacOS 10.7 (Lion)? My battery lasted about half as long as it used to once I upgraded. I went to Utilities -> Console and had a huge list of messages in the system query log. I found that Little Snitch wasn't compatible with Lion and kept "respawning"...
ProPresenter on MacOS 10.7 Lion
If you decide to upgrade to Lion, ProPresenter won't work right away. I upgraded and ProPresenter crashed immediately. So I went to the Renewed Vision website and downloaded the latest version (4.2.5). This version would hang on boot up every time I tried to launch...
Pitching analysis
Here is one of the high speed pitching analysis videos that I shot for the Westerville Warhawks. By filming from two angles and recording at a high frame rate, we can analyze the mechanics of your athletes. For more info, click here.
Larger hard drive on a Mac
Apple tends to fit many Macs with small-ish hard drives. Now to be fair the Mac apps also tend to be smaller than Windows equivalents so you may not need a bigger drive. But if you work with a lot of media (pictures, videos, music) you'll run out of space eventually....
Hardware failure after running for years
I had a PC running at my house that was running a web server, ftp server and performing some other tasks so it was turned on 24 hours per day. It ran for about 3 years in this state. I finally decided to turn it off and after three days of being turned off, it won't...