A howto video detailing how to set up SMB shares in OS X to allow Windows PC users to share files with Mac users. This method should take no longer than a minute to set up!

Windows to Mac file sharing in less than a minute from Mac Hax on Vimeo.

A couple of months ago my friend Max bought a Wacom tablet for his Macbook in a shop in London. Once he got home and began using it Max noticed that the tablet kept freezing up and was intermittently unresponsive. Plugging it out and in again helped for a minute but the problem persisted. He told me about it but before I could take a look he’d already made his way to the store and got a replacement.

Much to my surprise he contacted me the following day to report another dud tablet. The second tablet displayed exactly the same symptoms. Too much of a coincidence I thought and made my way to his place. After fifteen minutes of routine troubleshooting I had made no progress. But then as I looked away from his Macbook and at his table a sudden flashback enticed a eureka moment.

“His table is made of metal!”, I thought. “That’s it!”

Remembering how the trackpad on my Powerbook G4 had become similarly unresponsive when I had used it on a metal surface a couple of years back (I got around this by placing several magazines underneath the laptop), I advised Max to try using his Wacom on a different surface. Lo and behold it worked fine on his wooden kitchen table and fine when he separated the tablet from the metal table with a shoebox.

I’m no physicist but I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for this phenomenon. Please leave a comment if you know the science of it.

Anyway this behavior is not limited to Wacom tablets, but as I’ve already said Powerbooks and probably Macbook Pros too.

- Child Har0ld

Yesterday a relation of mine asked me how to combine a .avi file with a .srt file in order to create a single video file he could watch on his iPod. For those who do not know, subtitle files can be downloaded for many different programmes and in many different languages from websites such as podnapisi.net and divxsubtitles.net.

Once you have downloaded the subtitle (.srt) file you must place it in a folder with the corresponding video file and rename the .srt so that its name matches that of the video file, excepting of course the suffix which remains .srt (see picture below). Now when you open the video file with apps like VLC and Quicktime the subtitles appear in the video! You should be aware that in order to play AVI files in Quicktime you’ll need to download and install Perian, the “swiss-army knife of Quicktime components”, from perian.org.

In order to combine the two files into a single video file compatible with an iPod (or indeed Front Row) you will need a copy of Quicktime Pro. Simply follow the steps above (not forgetting to install Perian) and then in Quicktime Pro select File > Export > Movie to iPod (see picture below). And that’s all there is to it! You now have a single video file (in this case a .m4v) with subtitles ready for playback on an iPod or iPhone. Although we chose Movie to iPod you could choose any of the video formats from the Export window.