How To Copy A Folder In Google Drive From Within The Web Interface

It’s really easy to copy folders within the Google Drive web interface when you know how.  You don’t to write special scripts, download and install the Google Drive desktop client etc etc.  Simply:

On a Mac:  Hold down ALT, select the folder and drag it to the location you want the copy.

On Windows /Linux:  Hold down CTRL, select the folder and drag it to the location you want the copy.

 

How to export OpenOffice / LibreOffice / Drawing (.odg) to Google Docs

I needed to import an OpenOffice Drawing file (.odg) into Google Docs.  Unfortunately Google Docs doesn’t open .odg files natively and there isn’t a file format which you can export / save the OpenOffice drawing file as which contains all the information in an editable format.  I found the only way to transfer all the information was to:

  1. Open the drawing in LibreOffice.
  2. Open impress (the LibreOffice presentation application)
  3. Cut and paste the drawing into a OpenOffice / LibreOffice Impress and save the file.
  4. You can then upload this Impress file to Google and open it there Presentation software.

I hope this helps someone.

How to stop Siri and voice control from lock screen on iphones

It seems to be a common problem that people want to stop accidentally making a request to Siri or using the voice control when the phone is locked. I’ve been in meetings when at least four different people have checked their iphone, launched Siri and then had their phone announce to the room ‘I’m sorry there is no match for that’.  So here is how to disable Siri and voice control from a locked iPhone.

Step 1 – Turn on Siri – Counter intuitively having Siri enabled will give you the controls you need to stop Siri and voice control being started from the lock screen. Go to Setting -> General -> Siri and toggle enable.

general_settings_to_enable_siri_and_block_it_from_lock_screenselect_sirienable_siri_to_turn_off_siri

 

 

 

Step 2 – Turn off Siri from the lock screen. Go to Setting -> Passcode -> disable Siri.

select_passcode_to_turn_off_siridisable_siri_from_locked_screen

Voila.

If you have disabled Siri completely then you won’t have this control and there isn’t a toggle  for voice control in the same way. Hope this is helpful.

Mac Crashing After Upgrade To Yosemite – Sophos Anti Virus

I just upgraded my wifes Macbook from Mavericks -> Yosemite and it started crashing constantly.   I found that it was com.sophos.kext.sav (9.2.50) which precipitated the problem.  Here’s what I did to fix the issue:

Step 1 – Restart into safemode

Restarting in safemode stops the computer restarting and allows you to actually do something to the computer.   You enter safemode by shutting down the computer, waiting a few seconds, starting it and then holding down the shift when the computer beeps as it restarts.

Step 2 – Look through the logs

You can do this using the Console program which is included with all Mac’s.   Do cmd+space and type console.  Alternatively find the concole from the launchpad.

Loading OS Console

You can then see all the kernal panics on the bottom left hand side and then view each report on the right hand side:

Kernel Panics

Click on the latest report and scroll down to the hexadecimal stuff.  Before this is the processes which caused the kernel to panic.  I’ve highlighted the interesting section for this Macbook.  It was:

      Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeZlib(1.0)[87A7A24B-087B-3F78-AEE4-D03F47ACB320]@0xffffff7fad81b000->0xffffff7fad820fff
com.sophos.kext.sav(9.2.50)[D9AF65D9-4A18-3B20-86BB-17DEBC7D5852]@0xffffff7fab41b000->0xffffff7fab41ffff

I googled the keywords com.sophos.kext.sav and found it was causing lots of kernel panics for other Mac users.   I decided to uninstall sophos.

Step 3 – Remove Sophos

Unfortunately, you can’t just remove Sophos from the application directory.  You need to run their uninstall process.  This is nicely explained in this animated gif produced by Sophos themselves.

locate_installer

I then rebooted the Macbook and it didn’t crash again.  Hurray for that!  I hope this helps some.

Comparison Of Google Drive and Dropbox

I’ve been using Google Drive and Dropbox alongside one another for several months. There are a number of subtle differences between Dropbox and Google Drive which don’t seem to be covered in other comparisons. My conclusion (as of December 2015) is that Dropbox is a much better tool for pure file syncing and backup. Google Drive is very beta and should only be your first choice if you are a heavy user of Google Docs (i.e really need the online document editing functionality).

Space

Dropbox charges more for space.


Backups

Dropbox has a backup solution which cost $39 per year for personal and unlimited backups for their Business services. Google Drive doesn’t provide any backup service. Therefore, I never empty my Google Drive trash just in case.

dropbox_backup_servicesDropbox backup services for business.

dropbox_backup_packrat
It costs just $39 to have full backups on Dropbox.


Event Information

Dropbox provides clear access and change logs allowing you to see what is happening. Google Drive doesn’t provide any information.

dropbox_recents

Dropbox provide a list of recent activity.

dropbox_events

Dropbox also provides a log of events.  If only Google Drive would add this feature.


Selective Sync

Dropbox allows you to selectively sync sub folder. Google drive only allows you to selectively sync folders in the root. This is especially annoying if you have a complex sub folder structure with a large amount of data. For example – I have all my photos in /photos/2012 /photos/2013. With Google Drive, I can’t just be working on /photos/2015.


Upload information

Dropbox provides clear information about how many files there are left to upload and how this will take. Google Drive doesn’t provide any time information and just tells you how many files you have left. Google Drive also seem to have a bug in the UI which doesn’t always show the correct number of files left to upload – as files are uploaded the numbers doesn’t increase.

google_drive_menu

Google Drive provide basic information which looks like a student knocked it together.


Upload Algorithm

Dropbox uploads the smallest files first.  Google Drive seem to things randomly. I prefer the Dropbox’s method because this means that you get small file changes nearly quickly (for example lock files as transferred near instantly). It also makes you feel like things are happening quickly.  In Google Drive a few large files can block tons of small changes from going through.  For example – if you have deleted lots of files on the web these won’t sync down until the large uploading files are finished which is obviously pants.

On Dropbox you can also scroll to see all the recent changes.   Google Drive don’t allow you to do this.


Application Controls

Dropbox is very easy to control – allowing you to pause uploads with a single click. Google Drive makes you click through more windows to pause uploads.


Failure Handling

Dropbox tries numerous times to upload files before giving up. Google Drive fails in the background and waits for you to discover it and ‘retry’.


Application Appearance

Dropbox is well honed both on the web and desktop. Google Drive looks good the web and like a student project on the desktop.


Email Notification Control

Dropbox provides good control over your email notification and infact everything else. Google Drive gives basic controls.

dropbox_notification_control

Look at all the things you can tweak on Dropbox.

 

google_drive_limited_settings


Buggyness

Dropbox is super stable and rarely crashes. Google Drive crashes at least once a week.  For example – while writing this post Google Drive could not connect.   I tried to restart it and it hangs for enough time for me to screenshot it and write this paragraph.

 

google_drive_is_buggy

How to remove the first or last page of a .pdf using a Mac

I needed to remove the first and last pages of a hold lot of .pdf files on a Mac. It wasn’t that easy to find solutions and so I thought I would document the process:

1 – Install pdftk server which rather helpfully has a Mac installer:

https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server/

Run the commands
To remove the first page of all the .pdf files in a directory use this command:

for i in *pdf ; do pdftk $i cat 2-end output output/$i ; done

To remove the last page of all the .pdf files in a folder use this command:

for i in *pdf ; do pdftk $i cat 1-r2 output trimmed/$i ; done

Hope this helps someone.

How to split a .pdf every 2 pages using Python

I’ve just scanned in some old copies of Trail walking magazine. I had around 150 .pdf files in a directors and needed to break the split them every two pages. I thought my python script might be useful to someone. It used pypdf which you easierly install using:

pip install pypdf

The script is as follows:


#!/usr/bin/env python

from pyPdf import PdfFileWriter, PdfFileReader
import glob
import sys

pdfs = glob.glob("*.pdf")

for pdf in pdfs:

    inputpdf = PdfFileReader(file(pdf, "rb"))

    for i in range(inputpdf.numPages // 2):
        
        output = PdfFileWriter()
        output.addPage(inputpdf.getPage(i * 2))

        if i * 2 + 1 <  inputpdf.numPages:
            output.addPage(inputpdf.getPage(i * 2 + 1))

        newname = pdf[:7] + "-" + str(i) + ".pdf"

        outputStream = file(newname, "wb")
        output.write(outputStream)
        outputStream.close()

I hope this helps someone.