I didn't think it was possible, but you just have to watch this guy do it ...
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Drowned by an Apple Smugstorm
I am no doubt a member of a fairly large group of independent thinkers who consider Apple's unbearably smug adverts smearing Windows in every possible way to be getting tiresome. And that is, of course, an understatement.
What really chaps my ass is that Apple has suffered many of their own indignities over recent years ...
But what really bugs me :-) is how poorly they appear to have tested iTunes 9 on Windows 7 with their older iPods. I have the 160GB Classic model and it completely uses up all of my memory on Windows 7, slowing the system to a crawl and crashing other apps.
See this page for a discussion.
Here are the instructions given there to fix the problem ... I'll edit this post when I get a chance to perform them.
What really chaps my ass is that Apple has suffered many of their own indignities over recent years ...
- How many people have had to reinstall iTunes a dozen times? (I have)
- How many times did that fry either your library or your iPod? (several for me)
- How many people *fear* the next iTunes reinstall? (everyone)
- How many have had an iPod die early? (:-))
- How many people have replaced an iPod battery? (I have ... ripping the damned thing completely apart in the process)
But what really bugs me :-) is how poorly they appear to have tested iTunes 9 on Windows 7 with their older iPods. I have the 160GB Classic model and it completely uses up all of my memory on Windows 7, slowing the system to a crawl and crashing other apps.
See this page for a discussion.
Here are the instructions given there to fix the problem ... I'll edit this post when I get a chance to perform them.
Please make a screen shot of your USB drivers in "Device Manager"
I'm looking for Apple Mobile Device.
Perform the following operation:If its not visible you will need to remove all Apple Software, ITunes, Bonjour Apple Mobile Service, everything apple including Quick time must be removed.
- Connect your Apple device to a USB port
- Listen for the connection, it usually occurs twice in succession.
- Go to device manager,
- Go to the end of the device list and expand the usb list.
- "APPLE MOBILE DEVICE" should be visible.
- View the screen shot I supplied.
Then you must re-install.Edit: After a complete uninstall of every Apple product, reboot, and installation of the latest iTunes / Quicktime download, things seem ok. I find that the iPod still hammers the USB bus ... but the memory seemed stable this time ... running free memory to zero pretty quickly, but leaving available memory stable throughout the sync.
Fotolia Update
As some of you know, I have a few images up on Fotolia, a microstock site of some note. The average selling profit to me has been about a buck an image lately, and October was a banner month ... 17 sales for a total profit to me of $18.80. Yeah, I know, that's peanuts ... and does not even come close to covering the costs of the hobby itself.
My point, though, has always been that this is really on the strength of one series of images ... my pen and ink images, the best of which has 126 sales on its own ... the whole series of three images has a total of 165 sales over the last few years. Imagine how one could do with a few dozen heavy hitters ...
Anyway, after the success of October ... and considering that September was not too bad either ... I thought I might be undervaluing these images. So I doubled my prices across the board. And was surprised to get a sale today ... only the second day after the start of this experiment. Interesting ...
My point, though, has always been that this is really on the strength of one series of images ... my pen and ink images, the best of which has 126 sales on its own ... the whole series of three images has a total of 165 sales over the last few years. Imagine how one could do with a few dozen heavy hitters ...
Anyway, after the success of October ... and considering that September was not too bad either ... I thought I might be undervaluing these images. So I doubled my prices across the board. And was surprised to get a sale today ... only the second day after the start of this experiment. Interesting ...
Sunday, November 1, 2009
EveryTrail for iPhone
When I last went to Gatineau Park, I looked around for a GPS map for my iPhone and found the EveryTrail site. This application allows you to track your trip, whatver it is, to almost any level of accuracy -- the caveat being that high accuracy equals high battery drain.
I used it during the Pink Lake walk ... and somehow screwed it up. I think I used a feature that required a constant link to the Internet, which of course I did not have.
But now I have 3G on my phone in test mode (free for a month), so I thought I'd check it out again. I turned it on while sitting in the Broadway restaurant at the end of our breakfast (Jon was there with me but Nick begged off, ostensibly to read Hamlet.) I also captured an image with the iPhone, which EveryTrail can use directly on the site as a visual waypoint. Very cool ...
Once completed, you can save the trip as a draft, to be uploaded later, or you can upload directly to the EveryTrail site. I did the latter and it sent me an email (which you specify when you register on their site for free) containing a link to the trip.
The site provides a direct link to twitter and Facebook, and also a field that you can copy to embed the trip or the slide show, both of which I embed here:
Test: Broadway to WalMart to Home at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Trail Maps
I find the site and the application quote easy to use and recommend you experiment with it to see how useful it is for you ...
I used it during the Pink Lake walk ... and somehow screwed it up. I think I used a feature that required a constant link to the Internet, which of course I did not have.
But now I have 3G on my phone in test mode (free for a month), so I thought I'd check it out again. I turned it on while sitting in the Broadway restaurant at the end of our breakfast (Jon was there with me but Nick begged off, ostensibly to read Hamlet.) I also captured an image with the iPhone, which EveryTrail can use directly on the site as a visual waypoint. Very cool ...
Once completed, you can save the trip as a draft, to be uploaded later, or you can upload directly to the EveryTrail site. I did the latter and it sent me an email (which you specify when you register on their site for free) containing a link to the trip.
The site provides a direct link to twitter and Facebook, and also a field that you can copy to embed the trip or the slide show, both of which I embed here:
Test: Broadway to WalMart to Home at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Trail Maps
Test: Broadway to WalMart to Home
Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS CommunityI find the site and the application quote easy to use and recommend you experiment with it to see how useful it is for you ...
Moving your iPhone to a New Computer -- Apple's Shame
My god .... what a chore. iTunes is now at version 9 ... so they are on to their 9th life. And yet, these cats can't get the simple process of moving your iPhone or iPod to a new computer to work worth spit.
You have to remember the authorizations of your "audible accounts" ... you have to figure out how to export and import your library (I created a new library so apparently I can no longer import my other library) ... you have to remember to export and import play lists separately (why do these not come with your library?) ...
This could all be automated with one command on iTunes ... "Move iTunes to another computer" and the choice of the home base for iPods and iPhones could be handled with "make this computer my iPhone's home computer" ... it's a trivial concept ...
On Apple's advice forums, you can see this thread, which documents some 14 3rd party utilities that have been written to help with the process ... each does it differently and will varying degrees of completeness and success. Unbelievable ...
Apple are unbearably smug in their commercials ... but they should be ashamed of their iPod / iPhone software cluster fuck ...
Shame on you Apple.
You have to remember the authorizations of your "audible accounts" ... you have to figure out how to export and import your library (I created a new library so apparently I can no longer import my other library) ... you have to remember to export and import play lists separately (why do these not come with your library?) ...
This could all be automated with one command on iTunes ... "Move iTunes to another computer" and the choice of the home base for iPods and iPhones could be handled with "make this computer my iPhone's home computer" ... it's a trivial concept ...
On Apple's advice forums, you can see this thread, which documents some 14 3rd party utilities that have been written to help with the process ... each does it differently and will varying degrees of completeness and success. Unbelievable ...
Apple are unbearably smug in their commercials ... but they should be ashamed of their iPod / iPhone software cluster fuck ...
Shame on you Apple.
A November Haiku
a flurry of leaves
soft winds, sunny skies fading
winter's bite anon
Ok ... I'm not much of an artist ... but I think this one captures November just fine.
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