Robin's Blog

Archive for the ‘How To’ Category

How to: Reset the Software Update URL in OS X

Sometimes you may find that your Mac OS X installation has an old URL for the software update service in its preferences, which may mean that you can’t successfully run the Software Update tool under the Apple menu. In my case, I got my Mac from my university and the update server was set to some internal […]

How to: Fix sudden VPN problem in Vista

Well, I’ve finally solved a problem that I’ve been struggling with for days. On Friday my VPN connection to the University of Southampton was working fine, and then on Saturday it wouldn’t work. At that point, I assumed it was a problem at the university and waited until this morning to contact their IT support […]

How to: Snap points to lines in ArcGIS with Python

I’ve recently starting scripting ArcGIS using Python as part of one of my academic projects (about which I’ll post more later) and needed to be able to snap points to polylines – that is, move points so that they lie on the nearest polyline. An example would help to explain this: In the image above, […]