In this clip I am going to add a simple text logo/watermark, (it could just as easily be a graphic), to iMovie 9.0.2 quickly and painlessly.

And WITHOUT getting the blacked-out box over your logo.

The steps are fairly simple:

1. Load your iMovie project
2. Create an alpha, (transparent), Portable Network Graphics image in your favorite image editing software with the same dimensions as your project, (mine was 1280x720).
3. Copy/Paste your logo, or create your graphic.
4. Save file as png.
5. Drag this image on to your clip and adjust image runtime to your preference.
6. Edit Crop/Fit/Ken Burns and finalize project.

My unibody MacBook Pro has seemed to increase a few degrees fahrenheit every couple of days or so for a few weeks now.  The machine becomes sluggish and very noisy and hot to the touch.

Having some down-time this evening with the temp around 190F with both fans spinning at 6200 RPM, I decided to crack the MBP open.

I found exactly what I had expected to find: Clogged cooling system.

So I broke out the canned air and cleared the fins...

Buttoned the MacBook Pro back up and fired her up.

I'm running my usual virtual machines right now, (an Ubuntu 10.04 server and a Windows 7 workstation in Parallels), and iTunes is playing my favorite tracks while I type.  CPU utilization is up around 80-90% on each core and the machine is cruising along at a steady 135 degrees fahrenheit.

Overall, a successful twenty minutes and my travel machine is happy once again.  And so is my lap, (since I'm one of those people who actually likes to place his laptop ON his lap from time to time).

Today I have an internal Dell RD1000 drive for backup services with 1TB removable cartridges. Here is my process for getting the device up under Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server and running the first backup.

Get the partition table of your device, (this particular device was located @ /dev/sda):

nmino@localhost:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda 
Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000200691712 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121600 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot       Start          End       Blocks        Id   System
/dev/sda1                1       121601    976756736     7   HPFS/NTFS

Here we can see that the drive has all space allocated to a single NTFS volume.
Time to change that partition table to something we can use for backups.  

Let's delete the existing NTFS partition and create a new linux partition: nmino@localhost:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda
WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to
switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to
sectors (command 'u').

Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 1

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-121600, default 1): Using default value 1
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (1-121600, default 121600):
Using default value 121600

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
nmino@localhost:~$

Now lets take a look at our newly created linux partition:

nmino@localhost:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000200691712 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121600 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot      Start          End              Blocks           Id    System
/dev/sda1                1       121600    976750976           83    Linux
nmino@localhost:~$

Now we can create our filesystem, (ext3 in this case):

nmino@localhost:~$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
mke2fs 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)

Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks

61054976 inodes, 244187744 blocks
12209387 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
7453 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
102400000, 214990848

Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 33 mounts
or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
nmino@localhost:~$

The new linux partition is setup and ready to be mounted and written.

Time to mount the volume:

nmino@localhost:~$ sudo mkdir /mnt/RD1000
nmino@localhost:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/RD1000

Before going any further with the setup on this box, I am going to make my initial backup of the client data via rsync:

nmino@localhost:~$ sudo rsync -a -v --delete /shares/vol1/ /mnt/RD1000/

Once that is complete I will move on to the setup of the backup utility...

These are the steps I take to install Webmin on the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Servers that I deploy.  (Also works on 10.10 Server and Desktop)

(Use your servers IP Address).