How to measure the area of an irregular shape

This article uses Meander for Mac OSX, which has a free trial period

1. View your shape on your screen using any app. This can be a map, satellite view, drawing or anything else.

2. Start Meander. The acetate window should cover the screen. You can resize this if you want to but the acetate should at least cover your shape.

3. Set the scale by dragging the cross-hairs to two points on your map or drawing which are a known distance apart. Type the known distance, not forgetting to select the appropriate units.

4. Trace your shape by pointing and clicking. You can change the style of the line you're drawing by going to Meander > Preferences (cmd-comma). Double-click to finish the line.

5. If you need to , you can adjust your line. Go to Line > Modify points (cmd-R) and drag individual points around.

6. Read off the area and line distance (perimeter). Note that you can choose your units for distance and area.

7. If you need to adjust the distance or area to take account of gradient / hilliness (for example, if you're measuring land for sowing seed), go to Meander > Preferences (cmd-comma) and adjust the slider. (The slider starts off at 'flat' for each new line you draw).

The slider's full setting is equivalent to a gradient (up or down) of 66% / 32 degrees over the entire length of the route or over the entire enclosed area. The slider is liner (eg half-way is equivalent to a constant 33% / 16 degrees) but note that the results aren't linear, and this is as it should be.

Hue-topia is now scriptable

Hue-topia now offers limited scripting support (Hue-topia version 1.7.1 + ). It makes your presets available from other apps or triggered by certain actions.

Below is a brief explanation and then an example of how to control your bulbs remotely by sending yourself an email.

Your presets are available using the command preset:

The name of your preset is case-sensitive. The result will be 1 if the preset was found and triggered, or 0 if there was a problem.

In addition to your named presets, you can use "All on", "All off", "All blink" (the latter could be used to alert you to something like new email coming in).

Control your lights remotely

This example allows you to send an instruction to your lights from anywhere and any device. It sets up Mail to trigger a script when an email is received with a specific subject line.

1. Create a script that says:

tell application "Hue-topia"

preset "All on"

end tell

2. Save the script somewhere.

3. Create a rule in Mail (Preferences > Rules. You will need to add the new script to Mail ( to ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail. Or choose “Open in Finder” from the rules window to open the folder so you can copy a script into it.)

4. Create a new script and rule for each preset you want to control by mail.

5. To test, send yourself an email with the subject you've specified in the rule.

New Year offer, Scrutiny 50%

Flagship application, Scrutiny, suite of webmaster tools, is used by larger organisations and individuals alike. (Read more about Scrutiny here) It seems fair to give the smaller businesses the opportunity to buy at a more affordable price.

This offer is now closed

Why not download now and take advantage of the free and unrestricted trial? Any questions - ask Ash: ashley@peacockmedia.co.uk

Hue-topia and the Apple colour picker

Since version 1.6, the Philips Hue home lighting controller for OSX, Hue-topia, has had a colour picker built in rather than previously a circular slider. (improved in 1.6.1 and 1.6.2)

Hue-topia now displays the colour in a way which is more akin to the bulb itself, but the colour picker itself is the standard OSX colour picker. The tips below apply to Hue-topia and any other app which uses the standard colour picker.

1. Favourites

When you've found a colour you like, save it as a favourite. Just drag and drop from the large swatch near the top (or from another colour well) to the little palette at the bottom. From now on you can just click on the little palette square to select the colour. Bonus tip - grab and drag that little handle just below the palette when it gets full.

2. drag and drop between colour wells

You don't even need to open the colour picker to copy a colour from one well to another. This works in any app that uses standard colour wells.

3. Other ways to choose colour

You're not limited to that colour wheel. The picker has several options built in - sliders, palettes, image (you can even drag your own image in there) and the very old favourite, crayons.

See the magnifying glass just below the toolbar? Click that to pick a colour from anywhere else on your screen.

If all of this isn't enough, you can add third-party plugins to the picker.

I bet there are some tricks that I've missed. Write them in the comments below.

Screensleeves' new Full-Screen mode

Did you used to prop the album cover up beside the record player when you listened to an LP? Or even sit and hold it while you listened?

The Screensleeves Screensaver is a great way to see the album cover art when you're listening to music (iTunes, Spotify and Snowtape supported). Now it has a full-screen theme which really shows off good artwork or works well if you're a distance from your screen.

It respects the 'Keep centred and static' option. In that case it fits the whole album cover in the screen, with or without the 3D tilting effect. Otherwise it'll use a Ken Burns effect and enlarge the artwork according to your 'Artwork size' setting.

This new theme is in Screensleeves 3.5 which is available for download now. Use it for free (the only limitation is a small 'please support' message).

Getting started with the EyeSpy247 F+ (and similar) cameras

I've been working with this particular camera for a while now and I'm writing this article to share some information that I've discovered along the way.

Scope of this article: The EyeSpy247 F+ is an older (superseded) camera manufactured by Sercomm. The same camera has been sold under other brands and there are other contemporary models such as the EyeSpy PTZ which share features and interface.

Getting started

If the camera is new or you have done a factory reset (the little hole that you push a straightened paperclip into) then it won't have your wireless details and therefore can't connect wirelessly. You will need to connect it to your network with a cable in order to set up those details. Use an ethernet cable to connect it to your router and power it up. All LEDs should come on briefly and then some flashing lights for a while. Give it a minute before trying to find it on your network.

I have found this stage to be problematic if the camera has wireless details which are out of date. So if you've bought the camera secondhand or if your network has changed, it might be worth doing a factory reset before trying the above.

Unless you've already given it a fixed IP, then the camera will now have joined your network with an IP assigned by your router. To find this IP you can check your router's admin screen or use a utility like Network Device Finder which is a general device finder, or my own IP Camera Utility which will search for these particular camera models. To use these utilities you'll need to know the general scheme of local IP addresses on your network. This is often 192.168.1.XX but if not, you can check using your router's admin interface (Under 'IP Addresses', 'DHCP', something like that). (Or get a clue by checking the IP addresses of your computer / other devices)

Once you've found the IP of your camera, type that into your browser to see the administrator screen. You should be able to view the video from the camera and access its settings. You'll need to give the admin username and password - by default this is 'administrator' and leave password blank. You might like to change this at some point.

Go to Setup > Wireless. If you don't know your router's security method, you can check this within its admin screen. It seems that newer routers use WPA / WPA2 but I've had routers that have used WEP.

You may also be able to copy and paste your router's SSID from the same screen; this is the name that your network is known as under your computer's Airport menu. By default something like BTHub4-3XYZ. (You can leave this on 'Any' but I think things will work better if you give it the name).

If you're using WPA/WPA2, there's just a single box for your key - easy.

If WEP (this confused me for a while)  - Authentication type: Open system, WEP Encryption: 64-bit keys, clear 'Passphrase' and the WEP key fields. Enter your 10-digit key in the 'Key 1' box and save.

I like to give my cameras fixed IP addresses. This saves having to search for them again if anything is switched off and on. Go to Setup > Network, click 'Use the following IP address', pick an IP address (maybe the one that the router has already given it), enter it and save.

With all of this set up correctly, you should be able to disconnect your camera from the power and from the network, wait a few seconds, plug the power back in without the network cable and wait another minute or two.

If all's well, you should then be able to type the camera's IP into your browser and see video.

Note that the button above the camera's lens which lights up when pressed is the privacy button. If this button is lit then you won't get video or sound. You can disable this button if you like, or disable the other LEDs from the camera's admin interface.

To hear sound as well, add sound triggering and saving of video to your computer, you can use my free utility (beta)

Scrutiny v5.2, includes customisable summary report and spell checking

You know when you put something off because something about it just doesn't float your boat, but when you do it you discover it's actually great and works well?

What people have wanted is for Scrutiny to scan a site and produce a report, listing some stats about the site and problems found, also listing the urls of pages needing attention. With a company header so that it can be mailed straight out to a client or manager.

Now that I've done the work and been running it for a while I think it looks great and very useful.

Here's where you switch the feature on, among the list of things that Scrutiny can do on completion.

There are some new boxes in Preferences where you can add your header (as html and css). I've lifted some code from my own website to give my reports this header. The page itself, headings and text are customisable too via the same css.

The summary report contains information about problems found in the following areas: bad links, basic SEO problems, html validation and spelling.

Here's a sneaky peeky at the spelling check too. It allows you to choose language on a per-site basis, it counts spelling / grammar problems as it scans and then allows you to step through the issues on each page and 'learn' any specialist words.

5.2 will be available very shortly as a release candidate. email me if you're keen to try it!