Os-X on WELLINGTON ROAD Pictures

Using Kaleidoscope to sync iTunes

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:34:36 +0000

Like many of you, I have multiple iTunes Libraries. One for the laptop, one for the house and another for my media center. Keeping these in-synch with almost 6,000 songs and over 1100 TV shows as become more than laborious.

I have tried to use Supersync in the past and while attempting to use it yesterday, I ran into a “must download Java 6 SE” issue that I really didn’t want to solve. (Hint: google “Java zero day”)

A couple of things...

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:30:57 +0000

I haven’t updated the blog in quite a while. I’ve been working on a lot of things but haven’t found the time to document the work.

The latest thing I did was update this blog to 3.0. So far I haven’t seen a huge difference. I also changed the theme from “minamalism’ to twentyten, which is the new theme for Wordpress.

I like the new theme. Very simple, great style.

DON'T HAND EDIT YOUR MAMP PHP.INI FILE!!!!

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:56:57 +0000

Oh, the agony.

I spent the better part of a day trying to get Xdebug working on my MAMP site on my Mac. I read here, here and here… all you have to do is to “edit your php.ini file” and bada-boom! you are off to the races.

No, no and no.Â The problem was that it kinda works, then it doesn’t, then nothing does, then things work but xdebug doesn’t.

Over the years, I have realized that when things start to get real hard, I’m doing something wrong, terribly wrong. Some where in some place, I’ve made the simplest of errors, creating a cacophony of bugs so bad, I’ve got to look down to see up.

Yes, you can...(retain data on a split OS X Mirror RAID)

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:47:00 +0000

My Leopard installation used a OS X RAID 0 implementation to keep my system safe and sound. I mirrored two 1 TB drives then used them for my startup volume. Â When I switched to Snow Leopard, I needed an extra drive to ensure I had sufficient backups prior to installation (I always clean install when I upgrade operating systems.)

I thought the easiest thing to do would be to “split” the RAID 0 drives up with both containing a complete backup of my Leopard installation. But I also thought it sounded too easy and while purchasing Snow Leopard at the Apple store, I casually asked “can you split a mirrored RAID and retain the data?”

Cameras, FlipShare and iMovie

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:50:40 +0000

I’ve been using the Flip Ultra HD for a few weeks and I really like the camera. What I don’t like or more accurately need is the FlipShare software. If you don’t have iMovie 09, FlipShare is probably worthwhile. Â I do have iMovie and FlipShare is worse than superfluous, it auto-launches when I attach the camera to my Mac even though I want iMovie to import the clips. [ iMovie importing isn’t cast in-stone… I might start converting the H.264 video to ProRes format, if iMovie can easily handle it. More to come on this.]

OK, now I get it

Sun, 17 May 2009 00:14:48 +0000

Spaces… didn’t get it, didn’t try it, til today.

WOW! What a concept!

In a nutshell, OS X has the ability to create virtual screens for you. You create a matrix of screens, assign applications to a specific screen then manage your work by going to specific screens. Yeah, it sounded too complicated to me as well.

Here’s what I did:

Created a matrix of 2 wide by 3 deep of screens and added the Spaces element to the menu bar

Compressor (and multiple cores) is your friend

Tue, 05 May 2009 03:23:43 +0000

This is a big deal.

In addition to what this note says note says, you can use other computers to render your files. It has taken me a little while to figure this out. This tutorial describes just using one computer but you can do the same for multiple computers. I did try this on a Dual 1GHz G4 and it slowed things down, so make sure that the additional computers have sufficient power.

iMovie 09 and Ken Stone

Mon, 04 May 2009 00:53:39 +0000

iMovie 08 was a bit controversial on introduction last year. It was substantially different than the previous versions of iMovie, so much so it angered most heavy users. It was clearly a version 1.0 release and Apple was atleast kind enough to keep the old version iMovie HD around so we could still use it.

This January, iMovie 09 was released and this new version has made all the difference in the world. Many of the missing or incomplete features were fixed and some significant additions were made, most notably “precision editing”.

I love it!

Sat, 02 May 2009 17:32:27 +0000

So I wanted to add a picture to my header… not a problem. BUT! Now the picture and my blog title were in conflict. Because the header photo was half dark and half light, any title color would look great on one side but not the other. Sigh.

Here’s where it got fun!

Using Safari 4’s Develop menu (enable using the Advanced Tab in Preferences), I used the Web Inspector to see if I could drop the title to just under the photo, oops, move it to the right, and make sure the Search widget lines up at the bottom, change the color, FINIS!