MacBook Screen issues

Sunday, January 25, 2009 ~ 10 comments so far

There is a dot on my screen. It’s not a small dot, it’s not a distinct dot so I guess it’s more of a blurry circle.

But it’s there, in the middle of the screen, glowing at me. It’s slightly worrying. It’s most noticeable when I dim the screen all the way down. On the MacBook you can use the F1 and F2 keys to decrease and increase the brightness. What the following photo tries to show is the screen set to minimum brightness (the next step down is completely dark/off).

Ignore all the reflections and screen dazzle, that weird glowing circle in the middle looks almost exactly like that (I’ve adjusted the pic very slightly to make it more obvious).

The most annoying thing is that it doesn’t always appear. It comes and goes on a random basis. I’ve tried it with and without the power cable in, with and without various applications open, I’ve restarted several times, yet still it comes back.

Any suggestions?? Anyone?

MP3 Tags

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 ~ 6 comments so far

MP3 Tags

“You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record baby” … Cue several of my younger readers to ask “what’s a record?”

When I first started ripping CDs to MP3 I was very careful when tagging the information. I used Tag & Rename to make sure they all (ALL) had complete fields. I didn’t bother, back then, with album art as my MP3 player didn’t support it. A few years on Apple release iTunes for Windows and, after a few false starts, I decide to forego my compulsion and let iTunes do what it does best. Take care of my MP3s.

Except it didn’t. Whilst I’m happy that iTunes manages where the files live (within a directory chosen by me) it isn’t really up to the re-tagging of MP3s.

And yes, for those of a nervous disposition, I am talking about illegally downloaded MP3s, and yes, if I like an album I will buy it at a later date. In fact this post is entirely due to the fact that I’m going through my library deleting albums I don’t want and checking what I have purchased.

Where was I? Oh yes.

The problem is one of album art. My older MP3s (mainly those ripped from CD) vary when it comes to the quality of the MP3 tagging. Some have embedded album art, some don’t. Some have track numbering, some don’t. I’m guessing that my switch over iTunes, many years ago now, is to blame but that doesn’t help me at the moment.

Whilst it’s not a big hassle to add album art, one thing that does seem to have gotten out of kilter is the fact that not only does an MP3 tag have an Artist field, it also has an Album Artist field. It seems that, for one or two tracks across most albums, this field is filled in whereas, for the rest of the tracks, it’s blank. So, when playing an album in iTunes (I’m still very album-centric) the track appear out of order as iTunes thinks they are DIFFERENT ALBUMS.

This is a royal pain in the ass and so I’ve been trying to fix it. I have a large library of music so I thought it would be a good idea to find some way of automating this, as much as possible. I’ve tried MediaMonkey on the suggestion of Lifehacker but that only does one album at a time and, I think, has actually introduced the same issue.

So it looks like I’ll be going through all of my music by hand, tagging it properly (although maybe therein lies the real problem, there is no standard to adhere to, just an open set of fields that can be (and are) abused). That’s over 20,000 MP3 individual files.

I’m seriously thinking of hiring a student to do this in the summer.

Backup

Saturday, January 10, 2009 ~ 2 comments so far

Over the past few months I’ve become much better at backing up the important stuff on my PC. Largely this is photos, music, any ripped DVDs and important House documents, license files and so on.

So, if my PC dies a death then at least I’ve got the important stuff backed up. The rest, the downloaded freebies, fonts, software and so on can be downloaded again and, in a way, it’s a chance to re-evaluate things.

Not that my PC is dying a death but it does, this very moment, have a virus. Not quite sure where it came from, as I’m very careful (having worked for an anti-virus company I remain somewhat paranoid about these things). All I know is that I was downloading an update to DirectX so I could have a go at Football Manager 2009 (a guilty pleasure if ever there was one), and as Microsoft downloads can be a bit flaky under Firefox, I fired up Internet Explorer (7) and kicked off the download.

Somewhere, somehow, I now have a virus. It’s proving a bugger to fix so I’m doing a little research to make sure I’ve got the right tools at my disposal. Such is the advantage of having a laptop. I can research the issue, download the right tools and fixes, dump them on a USB drive and I’m ready to tackle the virus.

It’s THIS kind of thing that just pisses me off. I don’t download illegal software, I virus check everything that I do download, even if it’s from a ‘safe’ source, and I have a good clean system which is checked for spyware, malware and viruses every 6-8 weeks. Then something like this happens and I just know I’ll spend a couple of hours fighting it.

That’s not why I have a computer. It’s not supposed to be a battle, it’s supposed to be a tool. Just like those arseholes who keep creating and releasing viruses. They’re a bunch of tools too.

iPhone Apps

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 ~ 10 comments so far

I’m still loving my iPhone, despite it’s foibles (why can’t I send a link of my current location from the Maps application to another iPhone user? Or even a weblink to Google maps? Or.. you get the point).

To capture my current usage I thought I’d jot down the apps I currently have installed. Because, you know, blogs, lists.. etc etc. So without further ado other than the default applications my iPhone runs:

• Twitterific – paid version – still a little buggy but easily the most used application other than the SMS and phone functionality.
• Mobile Fotos – after ditching my Windows Mobile phone a couple of years ago, one thing I missed was Shozu which allows you to upload your photos to Flickr. Shozu is available for the iPhone but Mobile Fotos is a more rounded application.
• Digital Clock – I have a dock, and can set this application running, set an alarm (turn on Airport mode) et voila, my own alarm clock. Oh yeah, you need to change the screen timeout as well. ONE app to do all of those settings would be worth money to me.
• Instapaper – paid version – a simple bookmarklet which I was already using to track articles to read later on. The iPhone app lets me read them when I get a few spare moments (yeah, on the loo!).
• Airsharing – free version (was only available free for a limited time) – lets me easily moves files to and from the iPhone meaning I can do away with my other USB drives.
• Zenbe – a list application that syncs from the iPhone app to my online Zenbe account and vice versa. Has replaced TaDa lists for me purely because of the iPhone app.
• Here I am – a simple app that emails your current location (long/lat). Haven’t used it much, kept ‘just in case’.
• Movies – to quickly find the latest movie times, not used often but v.useful.
• Palringo – a bit like Trillian, lets me log into multiple chat clients on my iPhone. Not used often.
• Light – cos sometimes you need a completely white screen when you don’t have a torch handy.
• VNC – so I can VNC to my computer. Works FAR better than you’d think!
• WeightTrack – in an effort to lose some weight I thought I’d gadget/geek up and use my iPhone. Had the application for 3 weeks and entered 2 weights so far. Must do better!
• iChoose – a coin flipper/decision maker type app. Silly but.. MAY be useful someday?
• Cube Runner – simple tilt based game. Navigate the ‘ship’ through the cubes as you fly through them.
• Lightsaber – ohhh shut up. I’m a geek and I like Star Wars, I can’t NOT have this on my phone!
• iPint – really should delete this…
• Monkey Ball – another tilt based game, guide the monkey in the ball through the courses. Simple, frustratingly hard!
• Brain Challenge – a nice diversion which has the added benefit of stimulating your brain, keeps track of your progress too.
• HoldEm – poker game which is curiously addictive and has helped me understand poker a LOT better.
• Oblique – an iPhone app of the Brian Eno Oblique Strategy cards designed to inspire you to think different.
• Last.fm – installed after a recommendation, have yet to do much with it.
• Simplify – iPhone app to hook into the Simplify Media server which runs on my home computer (primarily to let my PS3 see my ‘media’).
• TV Plus – tv listing application that can hook up to your Sky account and send remote record requests! VERY slick and waaaayyyy better than the sky website. In saying that I think my Sky box needs set up again or something as it’s not managed to work for me, yet.
• PhotoFrame – nice idea this, if you set the screen timeout to never turn off, run this app you get a digital clock, date and picture slideshow. Only 6 photos at present but looks good. Another app that would be way better if IT could change the settings for the screen timeout (if it’s docked and getting power, leave the screen on).
• Exposure – location based photo app (amongst other things) which I don’t really use. Can pull Flickr photos based on location… interesting but not hugely useful.
• Vicinity – location based app that will give you listings of useful numbers (restaurant, taxi and so on) depending on where you are. Not often used but COULD prove useful in the future.
• Google – quicker than firing up Safari and going to the search bar there, that’s the only reason I use it.

I also have home screen links to Google Reader and the new iPhone optimised Flickr webpages

Blimey, that’s more than I thought. There are a couple there I should remove and I’ve installed at least twice as many as listed here but ultimately these are the ones that currently work for me.

I know a few of you have iPhones (and yes I know a few of you think they are over-hyped) so do let me know if I’m missing out on the MUST HAVE application, won’t you?

Private Private

Friday, August 15, 2008 ~ 14 comments so far

Continuing the terrible titles, this is a take on Catch-22, for no particular reason other than being able to play on the word “private”. Think yourselfs lucky I didn’t choose the schoolboy route and go with “Show us yer privates”.

Oddly the only reason I’m writing about this is because Twitter is currently dead, if it wasn’t then my comment on the issue would’ve been something along the lines of “@plasticbag – nice pic on BBC website! And don’t some people get in a tizzy sometimes..”.

At this point I should probably explain that I’m talking about the recently opened Fire Eagle service which

“… stores information about your location. With your permission, other services and devices can either update that information or access it. By helping applications respond to your location, Fire Eagle is designed to make the world around you more interesting! Use your location to power friend-finders, games, local information services, blog badges and stuff like that…”
[from Fire Eagle help page]

It’s a smart idea, and one which plays nicely into the fact my iPhone has GPS built-in so I can ping exact location information back to the Fire Eagle website at any time I choose. Clever.

But, of course, the privacy nutters (I use the term advisedly) have leapt all over this, stating that locational information could be stored by any of the 3rd party websites or applications that use Fire Eagle and then they’ll know where you have been!

Don’t get me wrong, I realise such things could be abused but from what I can make out Fire Eagle has considered such things. For starters they let you control the level of granularity of the geographic information that you share with other services, from pinpoint co-ordinates to a “I’m near this city” level location. Whilst you can purge your current location from the service at anytime, the privacy busters are more concerned about the historical information that could be stored.

Now I can see that will be an issue for some people, and that having a system know where you’ve been is worrying as it will, no doubt be used to guess where you will be at a given time and then… umm… yeah. Not sure what happens then.

Worse is the possibility of a hi-tec burglar watching out for your location changing before breaking and entering your house. These days I’d guess it’s not that hard to find an address for someone who looks rich, use Google maps to get the geographic co-ordinates of their home and then just wait until they update Fire Eagle with a new location (hey hang on, that DOES sound simple, eep!!).

Or, you know, if you are worried about it DON’T USE IT!!

And no, I’m sorry but the argument of “some people won’t know any better” doesn’t cut it. If they don’t know any better why are they signing up for a service they don’t understand? The Fire Eagle website does a pretty good job of telling people what it is all about so perhaps we need to shift a little responsibility on to the individual?

I’m sure some of you have stronger opinions on this topic than I do, I’d love to hear them. But be prepared to be mocked for, if I’m honest, I really don’t believe the end of the world is nigh because someone knows where I am.

Storage

Monday, August 11, 2008 ~ 10 comments so far

I have a MacBook, and I really enjoy using it as it is a very nice experience.

I have a PC, and I really enjoy using it as I am a power-user and have it tailored to the way I work and I’m very comfortable in the environment.

I find myself wanting to use the Mac for more but as I’m still learning keyboard shortcuts I find myself pausing and.. well it’s still not as fluid for me as working on the PC. Part of that is the resolution of the MacBook screen which is, these days, rather low. Hence my recent ponderings about a KVM to allow me to hook up the MacBook to my LCD monitor.

Anyway, another thing that stops me switching fully to the MacBook is the pitiful hard-drive. My music collection ALONE, is larger than the drive which brings me to the topic of this blog post.

I think what I need to do is switch out all of my storage needs, files, photos, music, to an external drive. That way it doesn’t matter what machine I’m on, I can just switch the external storage drive and access whatever I need.

So I just need to figure out how to move the iTunes library files to an external drive and I’m all set, I think… Ohhh yeah, and buy a big enough hard drive (and backup).

Or maybe buy an iMac… hmmmm

My Firefox 3

Sunday, July 13, 2008 ~ 8 comments so far

So I’ve been living with Firefox 3 for a week or so now and I’ve pretty much got it under control. Here’s what my current browser window looks like.

As you can see it’s fairly customised, mainly to cut down on space and makes use of some rather nifty extensions.
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