Author Archives: Nookeen
Apple Music keyboard controls are not working
My control buttons on my Apple Magic Keyboard stopped working all of a sudden. I thought it had to do with Big Sur. I started digging the internet and the only thing I found was a solution such as: adding Music app to Accessibility in Security Options or even worse, granting Music app Full Access. I definitely do not recommend giving ‘full-access’ to anything, let alone some music app. Yes, it’s from Apple, but still. Some app can pretend to be this app or it can get hacked.
But, nobody mentioned that if you have Pandora or Spotify or some other playback app opened when the Music app is opened, it can be the reason why Music is not responding. One of those other apps may be getting the commands. So, close any app that uses playback controls and then try it again having Apple Music app opened. It should work then.
That’s it for today.
Cheers!
#MacOS #BigSur #MusicApp #AppleMusic #Pandora #Spotify #MusicControls #Playback
Non-Retina 2.7 GHz 15″ Macbook Pro 2012 vs 2.8 GHz 15″ MBP 2014, is upgrade worth it today in 2018?
Why 2014 model? Because it got to the point (Dec 2018) where it’s so affordable that compared to what it used to cost and the power it has, you just feel like getting 3 of them for all your family members.
The short answer
NO, but first, you gotta have the specs upped.
The longer answer… here we go
Non-Retina Macbook Pro has an incredibly powerful secret weapon that Retina Macbook Pro does not have: DIY upgrades (which also are quite affordable too). Good luck changing a battery in 2014 model… You’re going to need it. But apart from that, let’s see all the good stuff that you get out of your 2012 Non-Retina Macbook Pro model.
The good
Similar to mid 2014 model, but unlike 2011 models, you get USB 3 which is 10x faster than 2.0. Sorry to disappoint you 2011<= Mac owners, by raising this issue, but I consider this a major factor since I do work with external hard drives a lot. Anyway, another perk that Retina version does not have is that you can pull out your useless DVD drive and replace it with a second hard drive. I have 750GB Crucial SSD and Hitachi 2.5-inch 1TB 7200 RMP mechanical hard drive and I can’t tell you how convenient it is. Write me in comments if you are interested in knowing how I use and setup my hard drives and its backups, so that if one HD fails, I would have another copy of the system right there. Going back, with top 15-inch 2012 Macbook Pro models you also get a dual graphic card setup that gives you NVIDIA, which gives you CUDA capabilities (spice up your GPU processing). That brings us into GPU comparison.
NVIDIA GT 650M vs 750M rendering times and gaming FPS are not that different. My upgrade standard is: only buy a new machine if you win at least 50(-ish)% in specs and benchmarks. Based on my research, users call 750M: a 650M which is not underclocked, but basically it is almost the same thing. 750M has an extra 1GB of memory (2GB total), so you would expect it to be twice as powerful, but in most cases it isn’t so and the benchmarks do not impress me. 750M has still a long way to go to match up to minimum requirements of Witcher 3 for example (750M scores around 1300 (and 650M 1240) vs 4660 needed for The Witcher 3 (minimum NVIDIA GTX 660)). But… I did run Witcher 3 with Bootcamp on my 2012 15-inch 2.7 GHz Macbook Pro, and at lower settings it wasn’t laggy! Thanks Windows for DirectX. But if you’re into Video Editing and would like to play some games, get a PC for $850-$1200, you’d feel a lot more satisfied. Retina screen: I may be the only one, but my eyes really do no see much difference between Macbook Pro LED Display and Retina Display. LED Display is extremely well made where angles do not matter. So Retina is not a factor for me.
The bad
When it comes to Macs, they are not a just a piece of equipment. It is a companion which I feel comfortable taking with me, opening up a lid without holding the full body, instant response to my actions, and integrations with other Macs and iOS services. It is a thing that I always want to take with me because it is so easy to use and work on, it’s like a toy that you always want to play with. Using it is bliss due to how everything is thought through and well organized. Not always, but most of the time. So a PC isn’t quite what I would always want to take with me, but it does get the job done. Why am I saying all this? Just to point out that Macbook Pro 2012 model feels just as good 2014 model. Heavier, yes. Bigger? Yes. No second Thunderbolt port. No HDMI, but it’s ok, just get MiniDisplay to HDMI cable if need to. However, the real bummer is a second Thunderbolt port since I can’t easily connect two monitors. I tried Realtek USB 3.0 card, it works, but it is laggy. But is it worth to ditch the machine? Based on what I just mentioned in the beginning, I really don’t feel like ditching my 2012 model just yet. So what I ended up doing is improvising: got myself super, super tiny 256GB USB 3.0 flash drive, which does not stick out even, and use that to go between my 2009 Mac Mini with 240GB SSD (which I personally put in, was hell of a job, but I made it) which does support two monitors. Even though Mac Mini has 2.0 USB and it has much slower processor, it works just perfect for me. I use it for web development and non-power consuming Photoshop/Illustrator work. With the SSD, that old 2.53 Intel Duo processor on the Mac Mini actually works amazingly fast. And its super bad and old GPU NVIDIA GT 9400 handles two 24-inch LED Cinema Displays with only minor lags, which are also happening on 2017 13-inch Macbook Pro with touch bar anyway, so age is not a factor. Those Mac Minis are very cheap now. Let me know in comments if you’d like to hear more about my search for dual monitor strategy and overall computer designation process – which computer does what.
So is it YES or NO?
If you already have 2012 model, and found a great deal for 2014 model, I would recommend against it. Whenever you are tempted to do so, try to remember a song “Anything you can do I can do better” – just remove the word “better.” The performance is pretty close and upgraded 15-inch non-Retina 2.7 GHz 2012 Macbook Pro is very much capable of keeping up with 2.8 GHz 2014 Macbook Pro model. It won’t arrive to finish line first, but it will be right behind it. My Geekbench 4 score for non-retina Macbook Pro mid-2012 is around 13000, vs 15500 for 2014 model. Just so you understand, 2500 is not such a noticeable difference in this case (not even close at being 50% better), especially while considering the price of $950-$1150 for a used 2014 model. If you truly need a powerful Mac-only machine, then this whole ordealio is going to be very expensive. Let’s disregard iMacs and only focus on laptops. Let’s also not get into ‘USB-C ports only’ conversation. Top 15-inch 2018 Macbook Pro model configuration comes with 6 cores which scores 22000+ on Geekbench 4. That’s almost 10000 of more power against 2012 model which is at 13000. That is a good upgrade, but unfortunately not many have extra $3K-$3.5K laying around. And with top graphic card, 2018 Macbook Pro still does not reach the scores of 7500 necessary for “recommended” Witcher 3 config. Macbook Pro’s top GPU, Vega 20, only gets 6130. Not bad, but still not there yet. As already mentioned, $850-$1200 PC can handle the job. They include NVIDIA cards that score 8000 and more.
Stats vs reality
But when you look at statistics you do have to consider a whole picture. Like with my Android phone which gets Geekbench score of 4000, which equals to iPhone SE scores, but my Android feels much, much slower and more laggy when it comes to gaming. That is because some components do not play together as well. Similar situation is with Mac vs PC. Macs are more in line with steady performance, while even OP [overpowered] PCs are less predictable. Depends on what mood they’re in that day.
Final Verdict
So, it is still too soon to upgrade if you got 2012 Macbook Pro model, especially to 2014 model even though today refurbished they cost 50% less than they used. As for newer Macs – their tech is not there yet either. -Wait, what!?… Yep… Unfortunately, it feels like Macs got lost a bit. Their super power seems to be there, but not really… Since the GPU is just “OK,” what do you use the machine for? To me it’s either gaming or video production. If you know or would like to speculate about what else all this power is good for please comment below because I do not know.
Since 2017-2018 Macs costs an arm and a leg just chillax and wait. Buy a PC if you need a powerful tool, but carry your Mac with you for everything else. Keep using your upgraded non-Retina 2012 Macbook Pros and feel super happy about it because you do have a secret weapon and its tech abilities are pretty good even in 2018.
Firefox Super Slow opening WordPress, GMail, and other pages with Firebug installed – Solution
I noticed that Firefox starts taking a lot of Memory (real and virtual) on my Mac, 1GB – 1.5GB when opened for a while. That is a part of the problem of it being slow of course, but it really starts getting slow and load pages like it is 1985 when I have Firebug installed and running.
Firebug needs to be running only on the pages you test, but not on every external page you visit e.g. WordPress.com, Gmail.com, etc.
“Deactivating” Firebug will make them much more responsive. Gmail used to tell you right away that Firebug would cause issues. But apparently there are many pages where Firebug would slow your loading time to almost unbearable.
To deactivate Firebug for a specific screen check this mini-post:
How to deactivate/disable Firebug for one specific tab
Very simple, go to Tools -> Web Developer -> Deactivate Firebug – it will deactivate it for the tab you’re in at the moment.
How To Fix Pandora’s Poor Audio Quality on Mobile Devices
At some point I noticed that Pandora’s audio quality on my iPhone 5 became awful. I explored all the options of the App, including Settings->Advanced->Call Network Audio Quality->Higher Quality Audio. Nothing worked. I was on the wifi, so I couldn’t blame At&t.
I even signed up for trial of Pandora One… Their 192 bit audio sounded like 64…
I read through all kinds of articles and none gave the solution. Many complained that their iTunes sounded great, but Pandora sounded ugly on the smartphones. However on a desktop machine it’s fine, since desktops get at least 128 bit sound. Many blamed Apple for limiting sound for the third-party apps (I find it amusing).
Anyway, the solution is simple: delete the app and install it again. Pandora One now sounds like it should!
It seems like the last update of iOS got some third-party Audio apps’ settings stuck at some low quality audio mode, possibly to save battery life. But if you reinstall the app, it starts to run fine, since it is now ran in a fully upgraded environment. That’s just my guess, I really don’t know. Since I read that this problem is also encountered on Droids, however, it might not be the case… Maybe it’s Pandora’s last update… Don’t know, anyway, the most important thing it worked for me. =) Hope it works for you too!
Thank you Apple for bringing back colorful icons in the new iTunes
Some time ago, I wrote a feedback to Apple about their new iTunes’ interface. It had no color and it was extremely difficult to find the right section, you had to carefully focus and read to see what they were. I asked them to bring the color back. And they did in their v.11 release of iTunes. So thank you Apple, and please keep it colorful, it is much easier to navigate once there is a visible distinction between sections!
When The Macs Go Blue – How I Diagnosed Macbook Pro Which Refused To Boot (Even From a DVD)
I’d like to share my recent experience dealing with my Mac after it suddenly broke down. My Macbook Pro (2010 series) stopped booting. I was watching Netflix in Firefox browser and paused the film while I was moving my Macbook Pro from one table to another. The moment I put it down, my screen got frozen and no matter what buttons I pressed, it would not react. So I held the POWER button to shut it down to reboot.
However, on my next boot, all I see is the spinning wheel (the wheel of death!)… I waited for 5-7 minutes – nothing happened. I rebooted again and see the same picture, so I waited longer. After about 10 minutes, the wheel was gone and the light blue screen appeared (it’s light blue right after it switches from the white and then it quickly becomes a darker blue, but not in my case). I waited for 10 more minutes and the light blue screen was still there. “OK, not my first,” I thought. I pulled out my original DVD and decided to reinstall the Mac OS X (which in my case was 10.5).
Booted from the DVD, chose the language, chose re-install the OS, but keep the files option. It was about to begin the install when I received a message saying: “An error occurred, please reboot and try again.” No mentioning of what kind of error it was. Rebooted from a DVD again, launched Disk Utility. It got stuck right after it started verifying volume. Rebooted again, but this time the DVD activity stopped during booting and nothing was happening for more than 10 minutes… There were no noises at all from the DVD-ROM, even no vibration from spinning, and all I could see was the light blue screen. I thought it was some kind of a virus for Mac that was slowly killing my computer. I got a bit nervous…
I pulled out another original DVD that tests the hardware. It read it well and found no errors with the hardware.
I quickly pulled out my old Gateway PC with Pentium 4 processor and Windows XP, which I bought in 2005 and which is a bit slow but still works great (the only part I changed was the battery – $40 on eBay) and started digging the Internet to understand what the heck was going on.
Gladly, I used Time Machine backup every once in a while, so I was not worried as much about my data, as I was about the possibility of needing to buy another computer!
I tried every single booting advice I could find online (resetting PRAM and NVRAM, booting in safe mode, single user mode and so on). Nothing. It kept showing me light blue screen every time I boot with or without the DVD. Booting in a single user mode was getting stuck after mentioning loading the Airport utility and giving numerous messages saying “Still waiting for root device.”
I got my hands on another Mac (iMac also with 10.5 Mac OS X) and a firewire. I decided to boot my Macbook Pro in a Target Mode (holding T after turning it on) and see if the hard drive would respond. And it did! I got the remaining non-backed up files out. Then I tried to load my iMac’s OS on my Macbook Pro, and it worked. Thus, it seemed that the Macbook Pro was OK, but each time the computer would try to load something from its internal drive, it was becoming paralyzed like as if it had a virus. I tried loading vice-versa (my Macbook Pro’s OS on iMac) and that did not work, it got stuck again on the light blue screen. After that, for some reason, each time I reboot the Macbook Pro it would show me a broken folder icon – a crossed circle icon, which means the system can’t figure out where to boot from.
On a side note, I find it quite amazing that you can load one Mac’s OS on another just like that. Very convenient!
I kept trying different methods and then all of a sudden, after I let my Macbook Pro rest for a night, it booted from the DVD. It got passed that light blue screen in a manner of seconds and switch to a darker blue and then to the background galaxy image almost instantly. I tried full re-install with no backup option. It showed the installer window and again: “An unknown error occurred.” Reboot from DVD, blue screen again! Come on you silly Mac! I should have started taken bets: ladies and gentlemen, make the bet! Is this Mac going to boot this time or not!
Ah well, it was time to open this thing up (for the first time). Not worrying about the warranty that expired a year ago, I opened it up, and boy was it dusty!! I carefully cleaned it, checked all the connections, and all looked fine. I unattached the Hard Drive blew on the connection, connected it back, but did not screw it back in, so the hard drive was loose. I decided to try booting, maybe it was the dust. It booted the DVD! YEAH-HA!!! WOW!! So much for dusting! This time, I ran Disk Utility which did not find any issues with the disk. I still decided to format the drive and zero it out completely. After it was done, I chose clean install of the Mac OS option and it actually began installing it!!! I was amazed how much dusting could do and couldn’t wait to tell my friends about how weird it was!… Then it got stuck on 82% and that was it. The install log was not showing any activity…. I waited for an hour and it just sat there… frozen… like when I tried to install Windows in Parallels… succeeded after a few tries. So I decided maybe it would take several attempts as well. I screw in the hard drive holder bar, but booting from a DVD stopped on a light blue screen again. So, I unscrew it back to make hard drive loose again, and it booted OK. “So strange,” I thought, “why would it have any effect?” I tried to install again, but each time install would freeze, sometimes on 12%, sometimes on 25%.
By the way, if you are going to open your Macbook, make sure you discharge any static electricity before digging into it to avoid any close circuits. Follow the instructions in the beginning of this post: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1270#link2.
I must admit, compared to the desktop PCs that I used to build which had wires hanging everywhere and the modules were plugged in wherever they could fit, the inner-content of my Macbook Pro was very elegant, well designed and organized! Really neat!
Back to my problem, I was certain it was my hard drive at fault, so I started looking for a new hard drive online. I heard some stories that original Macs’ Hitachi hard drives would break after 3 months after purchase, so I was not that surprised. But usually the first sign of a faulty hard drive is its making of a cracking noise. Mine was very quiet and it did mount on another Mac, so I was confused…
When you look for a new SATA hard drive for a Mac, be careful, firstly you have to find the one that supports Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Secondly, some Western Digital hard drives I found will not allow you to format them without some special configuration with pins (that were used on old desktop machines) since there is some Owner/Slave config issues. As for the prices, at that time, there was a flood in Thailand which caused some major shutdowns on hard drive factories and all internal and external hard drives went up in price! Just grrreat!
Since I wasn’t 100% sure that it was my hard drive at fault, I got a hold of a device in which you can plug the 3.5 or 2.5 SATA internal hard drive and connect it to your computer via USB cable (you can find one for $20). So, I extracted my hard drive and connected it via USB. I tried booting from a DVD, and not only had it worked, but the whole installation went SUPER FAST, it took 40 mins to complete the install of Mac OS. Reboot, everything is perfect! Then I put my hard drive back inside of my computer, boot, light blue screen again (at least no broken folder icon).
Then it hit me, maybe, it is loading but very, very slow, something like an old 386 IBM. So I rebooted and just let it sit there. Sure enough, after 40 minutes, I see the desktop but without the background image. It felt like the memory Usage was at 101% all the time – it was extremely slow! To open a Finder window took 10 minutes.
So since the hard drive worked great outside, it was not it, so it must have been a Hard Drive Cable which connects it to the mother/logic board. Maybe that is why it was booting better when the hard drive was loose. Something must have close circuited and some connections got broken. If not, then it might have been the board itself. I googled the price of my board and it was around $800… Like a new Mac almost… That got me upset.
Considering it was some unrepairable board connection between itself and the hard drive, I could always use an external USB drive to avoid spending this kind of money, but that kinds of shutters the purpose of a laptop, which is supposed to be compact. Carrying and booting from an external drive all the time, getting “Incorrect Device Removal” notices when the USB cable is shaken was not a pleasing thought… Laptop won’t feel quite movable and portable anymore…
I decided to check how much that hard drive cable is. It was hard to find, a regular hardware store won’t carry it, nor would the Apple Store (they have them, but not for sale individually, only with labor). I found a local store that had them and one reliable store online (iFixit). Both had them for about the same price ($50). eBay had it for $25, but even though it looked similar to the one needed, its part number was different. I did not want to risk it – it’s not just some plastic door nub, it’s a complex wire that has a potential of frying a logic board.
Digging the Internet for all that info, I read some posts that mentioned it was ridiculously expensive to bring your Mac to Apple Store’s Genius Bar without warranty. They also mentioned that the store performs a free diagnostics, but if your issue is complex, it would have to be shipped out. I thought that my issue was complicated since it required more than simply plugging in the DVDs for diagnostics, which I had already done. It needed opening up, trial and error, connecting drives and so on. I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money at Apple store only for diagnostics since I thought they would charge me, or worse – ship my Macbook Pro to Texas for a month. So I wanted to go to them once I knew what was wrong to avoid any diagnostic fees. At that point, I had already figured most of it, and the only thing I needed was to verify what else it could be if not the wire before I spend $50 on it.
So I finally decided to take advantage of a free appointment at the Genius Bar. I was expecting 15 minutes of preaching about “Oh, you should not have opened it up yourself, you’re not the expert – we are, it might be this, or that, we can’t tell for sure until we take a closer look, we charge $100/hour…” and so on. HOWEVER, after I explained to the Genius guy about my trial and error testing, I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say, “Probably it’s the cable.” Wow! He actually took me seriously! And that took only a minute to explain! I asked, what if it is not, is there anything else that it could be. He said then it would be the logic board BUT, (LISTEN TO THIS) for about $300 (incl. tax), they ship your Mac to Texas where they fix EVERYTHING that is wrong with your Mac. And he meant EVERY SINGLE THING, for about $300 (incl. tax). A pixel on a display is dead, they put a new display. The only thing, they won’t fix a part if they see a water or some physical damage administered to it. I double checked, “Even the logic board for $300?” He said, “YES, everything!” I got so relieved that I forgot to ask a bunch of other questions.
[UPDATE Aug 24, 2015] – I just learned they stopped this kind of service for Macs made on or prior to 2010. Not sure if 2011 as well. So it does depend on the age of your machine.
I left them my Mac to put in this Hard Drive Cable and see if it fixes it. It was $60 (incl. tax); however, if the cable was not the reason, they wouldn’t charge me for it and just send my computer to Texas, which at that point would be cheaper anyway than buying a new logic board.
Next day I picked it up and everything was fine again!
Here Are The Lessons I’ve Learned:
- Always back up your files. Restoring data from a Time Machine did not go well for me. It refused to load the Libraries and System files (gave a permission error). I had to do it manually, so I came up with the whole system that would allow an easy full system restore.
Overall, I partitioned my 500GB external backup drive into 3 drives:- Time Machine (dedicated it 150GB) – I use Time Machine to backup only the areas I work frequently with like Users folder. I excluded all system files, Dropbox (does it on its own), Libraries, and Applications (unless I work with the data in their folder, like folders in MAMP program)
- For a full backup that I sync weekly or after major software updates, I use Carbon Copy Cloner (250GB to match my internal hard drive’s size) – it’s a great program that makes a bootable copy of your drive (it’s free, but if you love it like I do, I suggest you donate $20 or more to its developer! He truly deserves it!). If your Mac crashes, you can use this copy of your internal drive booting it on any other Mac until you get yours fixed.
- Third partition I use for the Parallels (50GB) since I do not want to back up 20GB each time just because I launched the Virtual Machine once. I prefer to manually back it up once in a while since I don’t change much in it.
- Always KEEP YOUR ORIGINAL DVDs!!! Will save you so much headache, money and time!
– - Unlike many forum posts say, opening your Mac is NOT the last resort, and should be done BEFORE formatting the Hard Drive. I could have saved myself the need to restore the Hard Drive. Just make sure you do not void warranty. If you still have it, just make an online appointment to visit the Genius Bar, they’ll fix it
– - Don’t be afraid if your screen goes blue, or gray, or shows some icons you have never seen before, it may be easily fixed!
– - If you want to buy an external hard drive, make sure it is a firewire or USB 3. Regular USB drives are slower.
– - Macs are like any other PCs where you can plug stuff in and out and it will still work after (I removed RAM, unplugged some logic board plugs, unplugged battery, and all works OK. Just be gentle and careful, don’t connect or touch the metal spikes on the board)
– - If you can’t boot from a Mac DVD, unplug the Hard Drive, if it boots most likely there is something wrong with the Logic Board or Hard Drive Cable.
– - Genius bar is a place to go, especially if you think you have a faulty logic board
I leave you with a wonderful song by The Corrs and Bono from U2 called “When The Stars Go Blue.” Just substitute the words “The Stars” with “The Macs” and it will still make sense!
Have you had any issues with your Macs? Did your hard drive or anything else failed? Have you visited the Genius Bar, how was your experience? Please let me know, I am curious.
Questions? I’ll be happy to help with what I can.
How to Unsubscribe from a Google Apps Group Mailing List
I was working on a project and found it hard to understand how Google Groups mailing works. So here is a tip on how to automatically unsubscribe from a Basic Edition Google Apps Group.
When you receive an email from a Google Apps Group, if you want to unsubscribe, simply reply to the Group’s email address it came from with a subject line ‘unsubscribe’. NOTICE, not the email it came from, but the Group’s email address.
For example, when you receive an email from a Google Group, it looks like this:
FROM: my-email@my-domain.com
TO: my-google-apps-group-name@my-domain.com (NOTICE: it does not have your email address, but rather only Group’s email address)
SUBJECT: Hello World
To leave the Member List, reply using the email it came on:
FROM: your-email@your-email-host.com
TO: my-google-apps-group-name@my-domain.com
SUBJECT: unsubscribe
You should shortly receive an email notification that would look similar to ‘my-google-apps-group-name+noreply@my-domain.com’ confirming that you have successfully unsubscribed.
Twitter and Facebook and Social Sharing Plugins Errors
uncaught exception: Error: Permission denied for http://platform.twitter.com to get property Proxy.InstallTrigger uncaught exception: Error: Permission denied for http://www.facebook.com to get property Proxy.InstallTrigger
So strange, I am getting these errors on all my ShareThis plugin sites. It also gives off error when I use one click ‘Follow Me’ twitter button.
It doesn’t seem like I am the only one getting it either. I am checking Google and some report having the same errors. All posts are very recent. What the heck is going on?
Broswer: Firefox 8.0
Error displayed by: Firebug Add-on in Console tab
Special Character Removal and substitution with HTML syntax (WordPress , TinyMCE, UTF-8)
Once, I had an issue of HTML code within WordPress when going through email submission appeared all wrong and full of strange characters. The apostrophes were all messed up: ” and ‘ were showing up as euro signs and some other weird characters in the email (e.g. €). So I digged into TinyMCE settings and found these very useful features: entities and entity_encoding. I use a great plugin called Advanced TinyMCE Configuration (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-tinymce-configuration/)
After some research I get that basically what happened was when I inserted the text from OpenOffice, UTF-8 encoding let the special signs for quotes (“ ”) slide. Whereas our email submission provider uses Western-ISO-8859-1, which is very picky and wants to see either standard “” or “ and ”. So entering the following into the Advanced TinyMCE Config Plugin fields solves it:
Option name: entities
Value:
160,nbsp,161,iexcl,162,cent,163,pound,164,curren,165,yen,166,brvbar,167,sect,168,uml,169,copy,170,ordf,171,laquo,172,not,173,shy,174,reg,175,macr,176,deg,177,plusmn,178,sup2,179,sup3,180,acute,181,micro,182,para,183,middot,184,cedil,185,sup1,186,ordm,187,raquo,188,frac14,189,frac12,190,frac34,191,iquest,192,Agrave,193,Aacute,194,Acirc,195,Atilde,196,Auml,197,Aring,198,AElig,199,Ccedil,200,Egrave,201,Eacute,202,Ecirc,203,Euml,204,Igrave,205,Iacute,206,Icirc,207,Iuml,208,ETH,209,Ntilde,210,Ograve,211,Oacute,212,Ocirc,213,Otilde,214,Ouml,215,times,216,Oslash,217,Ugrave,218,Uacute,219,Ucirc,220,Uuml,221,Yacute,222,THORN,223,szlig,224,agrave,225,aacute,226,acirc,227,atilde,228,auml,229,aring,230,aelig,231,ccedil,232,egrave,233,eacute,234,ecirc,235,euml,236,igrave,237,iacute,238,icirc,239,iuml,240,eth,241,ntilde,242,ograve,243,oacute,244,ocirc,245,otilde,246,ouml,247,divide,248,oslash,249,ugrave,250,uacute,251,ucirc,252,uuml,253,yacute,254,thorn,255,yuml,402,fnof,913,Alpha,914,Beta,915,Gamma,916,Delta,917,Epsilon,918,Zeta,919,Eta,920,Theta,921,Iota,922,Kappa,923,Lambda,924,Mu,925,Nu,926,Xi,927,Omicron,928,Pi,929,Rho,931,Sigma,932,Tau,933,Upsilon,934,Phi,935,Chi,936,Psi,937,Omega,945,alpha,946,beta,947,gamma,948,delta,949,epsilon,950,zeta,951,eta,952,theta,953,iota,954,kappa,955,lambda,956,mu,957,nu,958,xi,959,omicron,960,pi,961,rho,962,sigmaf,963,sigma,964,tau,965,upsilon,966,phi,967,chi,968,psi,969,omega,977,thetasym,978,upsih,982,piv,8226,bull,8230,hellip,8242,prime,8243,Prime,8254,oline,8260,frasl,8472,weierp,8465,image,8476,real,8482,trade,8501,alefsym,8592,larr,8593,uarr,8594,rarr,8595,darr,8596,harr,8629,crarr,8656,lArr,8657,uArr,8658,rArr,8659,dArr,8660,hArr,8704,forall,8706,part,8707,exist,8709,empty,8711,nabla,8712,isin,8713,notin,8715,ni,8719,prod,8721,sum,8722,minus,8727,lowast,8730,radic,8733,prop,8734,infin,8736,ang,8743,and,8744,or,8745,cap,8746,cup,8747,int,8756,there4,8764,sim,8773,cong,8776,asymp,8800,ne,8801,equiv,8804,le,8805,ge,8834,sub,8835,sup,8836,nsub,8838,sube,8839,supe,8853,oplus,8855,otimes,8869,perp,8901,sdot,8968,lceil,8969,rceil,8970,lfloor,8971,rfloor,9001,lang,9002,rang,9674,loz,9824,spades,9827,clubs,9829,hearts,9830,diams,338,OElig,339,oelig,352,Scaron,353,scaron,376,Yuml,710,circ,732,tilde,8194,ensp,8195,emsp,8201,thinsp,8204,zwnj,8205,zwj,8206,lrm,8207,rlm,8211,ndash,8212,mdash,8216,lsquo,8217,rsquo,8218,sbquo,8220,ldquo,8221,rdquo,8222,bdquo,8224,dagger,8225,Dagger,8240,permil,8249,lsaquo,8250,rsaquo,8364,euro
Option name: entity_encoding
Value: named
Voila! Now every character e.g. ™ or © are coded as ™ and ©.
Nookeen's WP Blog 