1. Open Disk Utility (Spotlight/Quicksilver: Disk Utility, or Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility)
2. Select “Macintosh HD”
3. Click “Verify Disk Permissions”  It will take a while to verify, but once it’s done it may come up with a whole list of permission errors.
4. Click “Repair Disk Permissions.”  This again will take a while.
5. Repeat the same for “Verify Disk” and “Repair Disk”

So why do we have to do this from time to time?  The simple answer is that OS X expects certain files to have certain permissions (in other words, for a user or process to be allowed to access the file).  If reality differs from what OS X expects, any number of issues can be the result: printers not working, applications not opening, or even being unable to login.

Nine times out of ten, repairing disk permissions will fix your problem.

The results are quite varied.  Many make me not feel so bad.  Others make me swoon.

What are your opinions?  Do you think it is important for a designer to have good handwriting in this digital age?

• The first thing you’ll have to do is fire up your terminal and type diskutil list:
  
  $ diskutil list
  /dev/disk0
  #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
  0: GUID_partition_scheme *298.1 Gi disk0
  1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
  2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 265.9 Gi disk0s2
  3: Microsoft Basic Data 31.9 Gi disk0s3
  /dev/disk1
  #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
  0: GUID_partition_scheme *298.1 Gi disk1
  1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk1s1
  2: Apple_HFS Time Machine 297.8 Gi disk1s2

  This will report on the status of all of your disks, returning essential information. What you’re looking for is the one labeled “Microsoft Basic Data” Followed by the name of the volume (Usually Windows, but if it’s left “Untitled”- like mine is- it won’t show up here).

• Once you’ve found the identifier (in my case, it’s disk0s3, you’ll need to type another command to get more info on the disk: diskutil info disk0s3 (where “disk0s3″ is the identifier found above):
  
  $ diskutil info disk0s3
  Device Identifier: disk0s3
  Device Node: /dev/disk0s3
  Part Of Whole: disk0
  Device / Media Name: Untitled

  Volume Name:
  Mount Point:
  File System: NTFS

  Partition Type: Microsoft Basic Data
  Bootable: Is bootable
  Media Type: Generic
  Protocol: SATA
  SMART Status: Verified
  Volume UUID: A59D682A-B749-4CE9-9CB3-7E89BC93B520

  Total Size: 31.9 Gi (34247852032 B) (66890336 512-byte blocks)
  Free Space: 0.0 B (0 B) (0 512-byte blocks)

  Read Only: No
Ejectable: No
Whole: No
Internal: Yes


  What you’re looking for is the Volume UUID, which (in my case) is A59D682A-B749-4CE9-9CB3-7E89BC93B520.

• All that’s left now is to add the following line into your fstab file:
  UUID=A59D682A-B749-4CE9-9CB3-7E89BC93B520 none ntfs ro,noatuo 0 0
  You can do this using pico, just by typing:
  sudo pico /etc/fstab
  and then pasting the above line into the file, making sure to replace my UUID with yours. Once you’re done, press Ctrl-X and save the file, then reboot.

A QUICK WARNING
This will also remove the drive from the startup disks list in your system preferences. In order to boot into Windows, you’ll have to hold down the “Alt” key after hearing the startup chime when you turn your mac on. There have been reports of this method of booting into Windows not working when using a non-apple keyboard.
Also, make sure you take great caution when editing the fstab file. If you were to accidentally enter the wrong UUID, you may not be able to boot into OS X. This is because the fstab file determines which partitions/drives are mounted at startup, and if you enter your OS X disk UUID…well, you won’t have a drive to boot to. Similarly, if you enter your Time Machine UUID, you won’t be able to run backups until you remove the line from fstab and reboot.

• /Applications ~20 GB (Varies greatly from system to system) - Do you really need to backup all of your applications? Chances are, you still have the original installation media or can easily download it again.
• /Library/Audio - ~360 MB - Do you need to backup the audio files that make OS X run? You can easily pull these off of the installation media.
• /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches - ~440MB (Varies) - I highly doubt you’ll ever need to recover your temporary files in the event of a system meltdown, so nuke em.
• Parallels or Fusion Virtual Drives - 3.0GB - ???? - Depending on the size of your VM installation and other factors (did you set the drive size to static or dynamic?) these files can range from somewhat large to simply MASSIVE. What’s worse, because they are constantly changing, Time Machine will probably be making a separate instance of this file for every hour you run windows/linux. The directory to ignore for Parallels is ~/Documents/Parallels/<Insert OS Installation Name Here>. (If anyone knows where Fusion keeps its disk images, please let me know in the comments!) Yeah, Time Machine won’t backup your Windows installation, but you’re better served backing it up separately anyway (if at all. I only run Windows as a testing environment for web design anymore).
• ~/.Trash and /.Trashes - Varies Greatly - Do you really need to backup your trash? Nuke it. NOTE: These are hidden files, and you must first allow finder to show hidden files. To do this, open up your terminal and type:
  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

  followed by:

  sudo killall Finder

  When you are done hiding these files, simply type:

  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
• ~/Music/iTunes - Varies Greatly - This is your iTunes music. Whether you want to remove it from backups or not is up to you. I choose to avoid backing it up simply because I figure it’s backed up on my iPod, and I can easily rip it from there with various iPod ripping tools. What are the chances of both my hard drive and my iPod dying at the same time? About as high as adding Time Machine into that mix. I haven’t verified yet, but I’ve heard rumors that even changing your iTunes meta data (artist, song title, album, rating, play count) will cause TM to make a completely new backup of the file- I’m skeptical of this, but if someone can either confirm or deny, you’d bring some peace of mind!

That’s it for the folders I choose not to backup. I’ve saved myself about 40 GB on Time Machine, and I’d assume that should get me a few more months without getting a second one.

What about you? What folders do you hide from Time Machine?

Check out the Goodtree & Company blog here.

But, of course, it didn’t. So, how else can this be done?

The Prop Div

Without a height attribute, the .entry div will fit the height of whatever it contains. (Duh, that’s the default behavior of a div container!). So, if we want it to have a minimum of 110px height, we can just insert another div inside with a defined height of 110px:

And insert this inside the .entry div:

But wait! We can’t just stop there! For one, your formatting is probably all messed up. So what can we do? First of all, we can define the width, telling it to only take up 1px:

Finally, we can move it to the right, minimizing any damage caused even further:

Much better! …In Firefox that is.

That’s right, in classic CSS fashion, this hack doesn’t quite work in IE…yet. But we’re about to fix that using…

The Clear Div

You see, in IE, the height attribute doesn’t do anything if it has nothing to “push down” on. By adding another div for it to push on, IE will implement this hack correctly:

And add it to your page, like so:

Now your div should never shrink below 110px (or whatever value you provided for “prop”)! Best of all, this code doesn’t use any selector hacks, so it will validate! Double score!

As always, any questions, comments, criticisms, let me know below!

Please, let me know what ya’ll think below! Comments, criticisms, browser-incompatibilities, etc. Thanks!

That’s mainly because I have a pile of stuff to write about, and I don’t know where to start!

So I’m leaving it up to you guys. What do you want to read here? Photoshop tutorials? Photographic Effects? Text Effects? 3D Studio MAX Tutorials? Illustrator? Linux? Or more articles like “9 More Rules to Designing a Logo?”

Also, I’m thinking of splitting this blog into two separate blogs- one for Linux, and another for design-related stuff. I don’t really post linux stuff all that much, but I wonder if I should give it its own space. On one hand, I think knowing Linux is vital to any serious web designer (and that’s why it fits here), on the other hand, I don’t want to alienate any non-web designers that visit here.

What do you think? Please, let me know!

Never show a client a logo that you don’t absolutely love
This is by far the single most important rule if you want the client to go with a logo you like.  It’s also the first rule I had to re-learn.  I got the idea to show  the client the two logos I was liked, and accompany them with a few logos I thought were just silly.  I mainly included them as filler (I was fresh out of school, and thought I needed to show the client a lot of stuff), but I also thought they would make the logos I liked look even better.  Sounds like a good plan, eh?  Well, the client picked one of the silly logos.  And this has happened to every single person I’ve talked to in this position.  Remember, you were contracted for a reason: you have a skill your client lacks.  If you were contracted to design a logo, it’s because they don’t know how to.  They trust your expertise, and part of that is to provide quality work.  If you’re showing them crappy logos, they assume your seal of approval is on them already.  And once they have their heart set on it, there’s no convincing them otherwise.

Show the logos in black and white ONLY
This is actually for three reasons.  One- why would you put all the effort into designing multiple logos in color, if they’re just going to be discarded?  The first client I ever had ended up going through 42 logo revisions before finally settling on one.  The first two sets of 5 were in color, after that I switched to black and white only.  Two- colors will just confuse your client.  I know it sounds silly, but it’s true.  The client will spend more time focusing on color schemes than on how well the logo conveys their brand or image- which is what they should be focusing on.  And finally (and most importantly), about 75% of the time their logo will only be used in black and white, so you need to make sure it looks good that way first.  Remember, settle on a design first, then add color.

ALWAYS design your logos in a vector program
I personally use Adobe Illustrator (honestly, any serious designer should).  Your logo needs to be scalable.  If you’re thinking “it’s just a logo for a website, so I can make it in Photoshop,” stop now.  You never know where that logo will end up.  If two years from now, your client wants to put up a billboard (or even a print catalog), you have to make the logo again from scratch.  If you’re thinking “Illustrator doesn’t have all the filters I need to design the logo I want to,” stop again.  If you’re designing a logo that you want to be effective, you shouldn’t be using those filters anyway.  There are a few rare cases where it’s okay to use them (for example, if you are designing a logo for a film studio, and they want a specific effect to happen when it appears on screen)- you can export it and add whatever effects you want/need to then.  But you will ALWAYS need a vector file of it.

Have only one master
Preferably the one who makes the final decision ;)  If you have to sell your logo to the Seven Dwarves,  the great you sold them on in step one will get chopped, hacked, and mangled as you attempt to please them all.  I once had a client who passed me between 3 different people (each with different backgrounds and tastes) while designing the logo, and I’ve never worked so hard in my life.  Find out who will make the final decision, and work directly with that person.  If they don’t accept those terms, or there is no single decision maker, don’t accept the job.  It might sound extreme, but trust me- your life will be much less stressful that way.

Make the logo work on the nano-scale
They may have no desire to do it now, but what happens to your fancy logo when the client wants to put it on something small, like a pen?  It turns into a blob.  Trust me, nobody wants to be remembered as The Blob.

Don’t be gimmicky
This includes using filters, drop shadows, etc.  That cool new effect you learned how to do in Photoshop (why are you still using Photoshop to make your logo?) will be old and tired next year.  Remember how cool Bullet Time was in The Matrix?  Remember all the movies that did it afterwards?  Now it’s pretty lame, isn’t it?  Leave the gimmicks to the fly-by-nights.  You want your logo to stand the test of time.

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)
Look at it this way: Every extra feature you add to the logo makes it harder to remember.  The most effective logos are usually no more than a few simple shapes.  This also goes hand-in-hand with the previous rule about making the logo work at small sizes.  Remember, you’re not creating a work of art, you’re creating a logo: and that means it needs to be easily recognizable, scalable (both up AND down), and make an IMPACT.

Variations, VaRiAtIoNs, VARIATIONS!
Your logo will be used in different formats, and it’s okay to modify the logo to fit those formats.  Remember, the only goal is to make sure that when people see the logo (or part of it), they think of the brand it’s tied to.  It works even better when you design the logo with this in mind from the start.  Of course, the less complex your logo is, the less you’ll need to modify it.

Look to the future
I don’t mean come up with the “next big thing.”  Remember, you’re not creating a gimmick.  I mean think of where the logo will appear.  It won’t always be on a blank piece of paper.  The client will want to put their logo on everything from print ads to television commercials to billboards to trucks.  Will the logo you designed stand out when put next to stunning photography?  Will people recognize it when it passes them at 60 mph on the highway?

Of course if you follow all these rules all the time, you would have a pretty bland logo.  That’s why you’re a designer.  Any effective logo will have a number of these properties; it’s up to you to balance out which ones to keep in mind.  Some are steadfast rules (such as designing the logo in a vector program, or keeping scale in mind), while others you can sometimes let slide (Is your client even in an industry that has shipping trucks to put their logo on?).  In the end the choice is up to you, and remember: Your client is counting on you to make the right one.

Many of the most famous logos have no inherent meaning. Think of the Nike “swoosh.” The meaning is created by a consistent branding and marketing message tied to the abstract image. So don’t stress to much about the design - consider the long-term support for your brand and the logo itself as just one piece of the initiative.

You can check the whole thing out on his blog, or read the whole article here.