New Blog!

Hello all! As my may (or may not) have noticed, I’ve all but abandoned this blog as of late. Good news is that I’m planning on restarting my tech-writing over at a new site! It’s a co-site written by myself and my friend, Maryam Alam. The title of said site? Ninjas, Pirates and Stuff. You can head over to NPS now by clicking this link.

How To: Use Spotify Outside of Supported Locations

Background

[Windows/Mac] For those who don’t know, Spotify is a new music streaming service based out of Sweden currently making waves around the world. It allows for instant access to Spotify’s database of 4.5 million tracks through searching for artists, songs, albums, labels and genres for no cost and completely legally. Of course with something this good, there’s always a hitch. Currently, Spotify only supports access in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, France and Spain – some of which require an invite.

Spotify interface.

Not in a supported country?

Not to fear! Thanks to my super-incredible Google-fu (not really), I found a posting on a forum detailing how to set up an account online and download the program. All that’s needed is a proxy to set up our account and once that’s set up, the proxy is no longer required and you’re home free. Quoted below is the original forum posting found here.

TO MY KNOWLEDGE, THIS DOES NOT WORK IN THE US. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CONFIRM THIS FOR ME, FOLLOW THE STEPS BELOW AND LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS.

“Step 1. Find a good UK proxy. Easiest will be web-based, since you’ll only have to use it to register. I used this one.

Step 2. Through the proxy, visit https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/

Step 3. Register. You’re going to need a UK postal code, the one I used is LS18 5AZ, but you might find another one on Google.

Step 4. Download the installer. It should give you a link, otherwise use this one.

Step 5. Install it and enjoy your music. No need for any proxies or anything, you’re just enjoying free music. One extra pro here is that if you listen to it through an unsupported country there are no ads!

Step 6. Set your country to your actual country in the settings.

So, there you go, enjoy.

Oh, and once you have it, you can try it out with this link.”

Happy loophole-ing!

New Design Blog

Recently, I launched my new design blog on Tumblr to show off recent designs/sketches along with pictures and other sources of inspiration I come across on the web. It is connected to my portfolio site which is located at PixelRock.ca. Feel free to check it out at jahfer.tumblr.com. Enjoy

Turn off Compatibility Check for Extensions in Firefox

Want the latest and greatest Firefox build but find that when you install it, none of you extensions work anymore? WEll here’s the simple solution – although this is not always guaranteed to work, in my case, it helped a lot.

Step 1: Open a new page and type about:config in the address bar

Step 2: Right click on the page and select New > Boolean

Step 3: Enter extensions.checkCompatibility as the name

Step 4: Choose False

All done! Now restart Firefox, and you should be good to go!

Make Safari Open Links in New Tab [Terminal Tip]

One of the major gripes I have with Safari is that when you click a link, it opens the page in a new window. I find this totally throws me off and I end up with a bunch of windows and a cluttered mess. Luckily, there’s a quick workaround.

First, quit Safari by going to Safari>Quit Safari (or ⌘Q). Next, open up the Terminal, which can be found in Applications>Utilities>Terminal.app. Then all you have to do is copy the following text and hit enter.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Once you hit enter, you can quit the Terminal and relaunch Safari. Now you will notice that all licked links open in tabs instead of new windows!

My Desktop

This is my desktop as of current. The window in the center along with the list on the side are just a skinned Adium with some tweaks in the settings; The wallpaper I made; The list on the paper is a combination of GeekTool and iCalBuddy; the date at the top of the “page” is GeekTool as well; The album cover in the bottom left is from CoverSutra. The circle in the bottom right is from DropCopy. Any more questions, feel free to ask.