Firefox – Waiting for Google

Getting a (very long) “Waiting for www.google.com” message in your status bar when doing a Google search in Firefox?

A few suggestions on how to resolve:
1. In your address bar, type “about:config” and hit enter
Under Preference Name: look for Keyword.url
double click keyword.url and paste: google.com/search?&q=

2. For Mac users:
Disable IPv6 in both Firefox and Mac network preferences:
a) Mac: System Preferences > Network > (Connection – e.g Airport) > Advanced > TCP/IP > Configure IPv6 -> Off

b) Firefox: type “about:config” in address bar. Filter with ipv6. Double-click network.dns.disableIPv6 so that Value -> true.

Restart your Mac.

Making sense of Microsoft Word numbered headings

Microsoft Word’s numbering is ridiculously convoluted. Badly thought out and with too many options it’s a classic case of an archaelogical software dig – i.e. ancient features buried as newer layers of software are built on top.

Fortunately, this article strikes a path through the forest of options to clear up the opaque topic of numbered headings:

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html

Microsoft: The not-so-good…

Eloquent summary of Microsoft software problems:
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html

QNAP NAS – Why garbage characters are displayed in OS X telnet…

A very informative article on why, due to a small QNAP bug, occasionally odd characters are displayed when you telnet or SSH using a Mac terminal…

http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=7488

Using multiple backup drives with Time Machine

A guide to Using multiple backup drives with Time Machine:

http://spyder.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/using-multiple-backup-drives-with-time-machine/

mod_rewrite on the QNAP

Instructions for manually installing mod_rewrite on the QNAP:

http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=3512&hilit=apache+mod_rewrite

How to show your hidden files (dot files) in Finder

To show all files (including hidden files) in Finder, type this in the Terminal (Applications/Utilities/):
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

To revert back to not showing hidden files:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

…and relaunch Finder.

Acer Aspire One network center not working

The network center on the Acer Aspire One was not working. Apparently as a power outage corrupted the network settings. This helped:

rm -rf ~/.gconf/system/networking

Then restart the PC and the internet stuff will re-initialise. You have to re-do the wifi stuff, password.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-laptop-and-netbook-25/acer-aspire-one-network-center-not-working-694251/

Printing from a Windows XP PC to a printer attached to an Aiport Base station

Here’s how to print from a Windows XP PC to a printer attached to USB port of an Airport Extreme Base Station or Airport Express

http://www.ifelix.co.uk/tech/1004.html

Fix Slow DNS in Leopard

With Leopard, a major change occurred in DNS lookups. Any program in Leopard that can use version 6 IP addresses will send out a new type of DNS lookup request – the SRV Record. In Tiger and previous OS X versions, DNS lookups were A record requests.

SRV records are new (sadly, 8 years old is new in the DNS world), provide more information than A records, but have terrible support in terms of hardware (your DSL router or cable modem) and DNS servers that answer with SRV information. For every SRV request that Leopard sends it must wait for a valid reply. If the request fails, Leopard must try again. If it fails again, Leopard will finally ask for an A record. This is one reason why Mac users are experiencing slow Internet on new Macs with Leopard or after upgrading to Leopard from Tiger.

http://installingcats.com/tag/slow-dns-lookup/#direct_dns_better_dns