HandBrake: simplified DVD to iPod ripping

Instant HandBrake got an O'Reilly app-of-the-year vote. Rip DVD to iPod. I'll try it with one of the kids on our next plane trip.

Update 12/29/06: I've done one movie in preparation for our flight and another one is pending. It's not fancy -- the "save other" option didn't do much on my machine. I left the defaults alone and it worked. The compression takes a very long time on a G5 iMac -- probably 3 times as long as the movie. It's a task that has to run overnight for a longer movie or a series of tv shows. The results look quite decent.

Monitoring hard drive temperature

Coding Horror makes a persuasive case for careful monitoring of Hard Drive Temperatures. I've had 3 laptop drives die this year (no data loss thanks to backups) -- I'm certain heat and movement were equally harmful.

CH likes DTemp for XP hard drive monitoring. I use a similar app on my G5.

Apple fixes the Aperture Trial

Apple's initial version of the 30 day free trial didn't include the 1.5.1 bug fixes. I ran into some of those bugs. They recently revised the trial -- now you can get the 1.5.2 version...

Apple - Aperture - Free Trial

If you download the current version of the Aperture Trial, you’ll receive Aperture 1.5.2. If you downloaded the Trial previously, you can download the new version, but the 30-day period of the trial will continue from the date of first usage. Please note that Aperture updates available via Software Update or the Aperture Download page can be used only to update purchased versions of Aperture and cannot be used to update Aperture Trial software.

Much better. My trial results were mixed, so I'm waiting to see what iLife '07 will be like. Chances are, though, I'll end up with Aperture.

Update 12/18/06: I decided to try again with 1.52. I removed all traces of Aperture (spotlight is handy) and reinstalled. Alas, despite the above text, the link in the download was to version 1.5, NOT 1.5.2. How obnoxious.

Update 12/18/06b: I got 1.52. The bug is in Apple's trial registration number email. The link there downloads Aperture 1.5. I'd used it because Apple's website died the on my attempt, so I had to use the email link. I figured this might be the problem, so I registered again and this time the 'success' page did appear. There's a download link on that page, it delivers 1.52. To install this you must delete the 1.5 version, but you don't need to do anything else. It will then install as an 'update' and will update existing libraries.

Google's photo sharing now offers printing and video uploads

Most of my photos are in SmugMug, but I've been grumpy about their lackadaisical approach to iPhoto integration. Still, they're pretty good. My next choice has been Google's photo sharing service - Picasa Web. The iPhoto integration there is excellent. They didn't offer printing, however. Until now ...

Official Google Blog: Holiday goodies from Picasa Web Albums

.... Now, when you or anyone else views photos in Picasa Web Albums, there’s an option to order prints directly from the site. We currently offer prints and products from Shutterfly and PhotoWorks, but we’ll be adding more soon.

Other new features include video upload for easy sharing (it’s just like with photos—select them in Picasa and click the “Web Album” button) and searching tools. Now you can search over your own captions, album titles, and album descriptions...

iPod longevity predictor

iPod Death Clock - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).

I recently read a medical journal article on a similar algorithm for predicting the longevity of persons over 65 yo.

iPod Update 1.2.1: An unknown error occurrred

This is only supposed to happen with Microsoft products.

I plugged my iPod video into iTunes 7.02 and I was told an update was pending. It included 'bug fixes'. The update seemed to proceed as normal, but the installer asked me for admin privileges to modify iTunes. After I entered my un and pw I got a lovely error message: "The iPod could not be updated. An unknown error occurred (1417).

The iPod then reset, and appeared to have updated itelf to 1.2.1. Hmmpph. I could referesh it entirely, but the USB iPods take forever to load (Firewire was way faster, no matter what the unknowning claim about USB 2.0).

So what happened? I can't download and reaply the update, Apple doesn't support that any more. Distribution is now only via iTunes. The OS X iPod update files are now in \Library\iTunes\iPod Software Updates. There are two identically sized files there: iPod_13.1.2.ipsw and iPod_13.1.2.1.ipsw. My guess is that 13.1.2 from 10/12/06 came with iTunes 7.02, and that 13.1.2.1 is a recently released fix to a but in 13.1.2.

The iPod says it's running 1.2.1. I think I'll wait and see what happens ...

Update 12/14/06: The 1417 error is very common on Apple's Discussion site -- but for Windows, not Mac. There's a hint enabling disk access may lead to the error message.

Creating a user-friendly find tool for OS X

I've been gradually beating OS X into something that's relatively user friendly. It's quite a struggle, and I'll summarize it at some point. The experience reminds me again how I miss the unequalled brilliance of the pre-switcher (eg. pre-pre-multifinder) Mac OS, or even of the clever GeoWorks 1st level GUI. Heck, even Simple Finder classic would be welcome (a pox upon Simple Finder OS X).

One thing I've wanted is a simple Find function that would search documents and email. Spotlight is too geeky and searches too many areas. The embedded Find you get when typing in a folder bar, or the Find you get from Cmd-F or the Finder menu is a bit better, but not simple enough. MoRU is almost right, with a few changes it could become a very novice friendly tool.

None are quite right however. The best I could come up with was a tweaked Smart Folder, unfortunately it doesn't search mail (more about that). Here's what I did:

1. Create a smart folder called 'Find Documents'. Put it on the desktop.
2. For the initial search text enter 'Type your search here'.
   
3. Right click on the center of the window and choose View Options.
4. Set View to icon only, make the text displayed 16 point and the icons very big.
5. Save the Smart Folder.
6. Right Click 'Get Info'. Click 'Locked'.

The resulting file sits on the desktop and is easy to see. Open it and see the instructions. Click there and type. It's locked so it can't be saved and overwritten.

BTW, the Get Info dialog will show part of the Spotlight query represented by this folder. The exclusion of com. apple.mail.emlx, I think, is what prevents Smart Folders from returning results from Mail.app.

Google takes the domain name business

Hey GoDaddy! Here's my Promo Code from Google - Digital Inspiration - Amit Agarwal

Good summary. Google is the spot now for most new domain registrations. I wonder when they'll offer switching services?

Putting the OS X trash on the desktop

Bin-it 1.2.1 – Mac OS X – VersionTracker looks like the best option for putting the trash on the desktop. The other alternatives are a script solution and exposing the .Trash folder so one can create a shortcut to it.

I may do this for my mother -- the dock is such an annoying usability mess.

OS X esoterica: key mouse combos and the Dock

Somewhere some eccentric geek has memorized every known mouse/keyboard/gui interaction in OS X. They belong on reality tv -- the list is very long. Now comes a new list for the Dock. If Andy doesn't read this first I'll be able to stun him with geek wizardry (emphases mine):

Mac OS X: Additional features of the Dock

... to press the mouse button means that you hold the button down until the desired action happens.

....

* Command-click
Reveals the original item in the Finder.

* Command-Option-click
Hides other open items, in addition to click action.

...

* Option-press
Force Quit replaces Quit in menu, in addition to press action.

* Shift-click
This applies to minimized windows only. The item is de-minimized in slow motion. You can see the item minimized in slow motion by pressing Shift while minimizing it.

* Shift-drag
When used on Dock separator, changes Dock position on screen (left, bottom, right).

* Option-drag
When used on Dock separator, resizes Dock to common icon sizes (128 by 128, 64 by 64, 32 by 32, 16 by 16).

...

* Command-drag a Dock item from the Dock
Copy the item without removing it from the Dock.

* Command-drag an item to the Dock
Create a Dock item without moving (sliding) existing Dock items while dragging. You might use this feature when dragging to a folder icon on the Dock, for example.

* Command-option-drag a file to an application's Dock icon
Attempt to open the file with the application regardless of file type or what application the file is associated with (if any). The application may or may not be able to open the file.

Update 12/14/06: I've since found that some of the same key combinations work with the Spotlight results drop down. In particular cmd-click opens the item in its containing folder. Now THAT is a great shortcut.

Configuring Parallels in Coherence mode

In coherence mode individual applications appear in their own windows next to OS X apps. I've not tried it yet, but a user has detailed what they did to optimize the experience: Hack Attack: How to run Windows and Mac apps side-by-side with Parallels - Lifehacker

Graphing calculators - on the web

Download squad has a brief review of Calc5 and mentions InstaCalc as a competitor. Both new to me. InstaCalc is particularly neat.

Spotlight for a Simple Finder user: How?

Update 12/12/06: You can't delete a file in Simple Finder.

Think about it.

Simple Finder is proof positive that Apple is quite capable of producing absolute cr*p. I wasted several hours of work experimenting and learning Apple's undocumented Simple Finder, only to realize I could create files in SF, but I couldn't delete them.

Simple Finder in OS 8 was an important addition to the OS. In OS X it's an blight, a festering sore, a sick joke on Apple's customers. (Can you tell I'm annoyed?).

--------------------

My mother's Mac Mini will run Simple Finder -- at least for a while. I've been experimenting with SF and, if one ignores the official way to configure it and uses the 'Full Finder' configuration method (more on all this is a later post, I'll create a future link) I think it will work. Nisus Writer Express, which can be configured to look and feel like a very simple word processor (it's really quite powerful), will be her writing tool.

The biggestA relatively minor problem is that Simple Finder knocks out Spotlight. That's right, there's no way for an SF user to use Spotlight to find items. Kind of ironic, since Spotlight is in part a response to the complexity of the folder/hiearchy world.

So now I'm looking for a Spotlight front end. I searched on one I've licensed (MoRU), that led me this post where the comments mention a few others [1]: Hawk Wings: Two apps for a smarter Spotlight. I'll also play with Launchbar and see how that will work -- but a simple Spotlight front-end that works with Simple Finder, and that can be constrained to only search Documents, is what I'm looking for. I'll see if I can configure MoRU to do that.

Any suggestions?

[1] My favorite technique for finding good reviews of a class of products is to find two product names, search on the two together, then find three, search on the three together, etc. Chances are a review that discusses 2-3 competing products is a genuine review, not a fake.

Update 12/12/06: I tried creating a smart folder that would emulate a spotlight interface, using the trick of defining the smart folder to show all files created in the past 99 years. Alas, smart folders are inert in Simple Finder. Then I tried MoRU ($10). It works pretty well, and with a bit of tweaking I was able to create a simple interface. It even supports zooming the UI. So far MoRU is looking like a good bet, but I'll try a few others.

Lessons from another XP disk crash

Another year, another 3 disk deaths. Laptops are murder on drives. I lost two in my work (Dell) laptop, one from my home (iBook) laptop. Only the most recent Dell death was suspicious, the other drives were about 3 years old and they'd been worked far beyond reason. Laptop drives are not designed to be flogged continuously, they can't get rid of the heat fast enough.

Still, the cost of these dead drives is high; the lost productivity costs on the XP drives probably exceeded the costs of the laptops -- much less the drives. There was no data loss thanks to my backup obsession and some advance warning of each failure, but the time required to restore a complex XP work environment is daunting. The big problem with XP is that critical user data files and metadata are scattered all over the drive and registry, but a 'clone' restore isn't well supported by most automated backup systems. OS X is vastly better of course, but still imperfect -- I'm most interested in what 10.5 will do to speed this process.

A picked up a few more XP lessons from this recent series. Here they are:

• Funny noises are a common warning of impending disk failure, but in the latest case I was experiencing some inexplicable problems with network connectivity. It was very hard to figure out what was causing these. Turns out bits of the disk were dying, taking out XP system components.
• The clue that my software unreliability was due to a failing drive were seek errors on my backups. Retrospect Pro didn't makes as big a deal of this as I would have liked, but at least I knew enough to chase down the report. Errors on backup systems always need to be investigated, and a 'seek error' is a mark of doom.
  
• The windows Event Viewer (note this web page, reviewed 9/06, is missing about half its content. I think Microsoft has outsourced its knowledge base management to Apple.) was catching the disk errors, and quietly recording them. Did it scream a warning every time this happened? No, why should it? Warnings like that might distract me from Microsoft's Vista marketing effort. Lesson: Use filter settings on the event viewer to show only alerts and warnings and check it once a week. I'll keep an eye out for a utility that generates a real alert for me based on checking the event viewer log, I'm sure one exists for XP. I'm also going to take another look at XP disk error monitoring utilities.
  
• Most backup software, when it encounters a disk error, just stops. Of course one would prefer it continue and get as much as it can, then announce the disk error in red letters several inches high ...
  
• If you delete an XP user profile, it doesn't go to the trash. It's just gone. Data recovery software works well on this kind of goof, however. If you ever do this, turn off the machine immediately and take the drive out! (Ok, so this was only tangentially related to the drive crash. I was naively/stupidly following the advice of tech support when trying to sort out the network errors that were, in fact, drive failure errors). My backup was a bit out of date (see fail on drive error, above), so we tried data recovery software first (OnTrack) and it worked very well.
• When copying files from an old drive or backup repository to a new drive Windows copy is way too slow and unreliable. xcopy has a switch to ignore errors (important given those seek errors); it works but doesn't log the errors -- so you don't know what to fetch from the backup. I prefer robocopy.exe (free from Microsoft, see resource kit, below). Here's the command line example: ROBOCOPY D:\WORK E:\ROBOCOPY /V /TEE /S /E /COPY:DAT /B /R:5 /W:2 /NP /LOG:E:\ROBOCOPYLOG_061117B.TXT. Note OnTrack will do offset read/writes to try to get things ROBOCOPY can't, but ROBOCOPY is free. I ran robocopy. exe on my flaky drive before resorting to backup, the bad sectors only knocked out one data file which was easy to restore.
• When sorting out the new machine, start by downloading and installing XP Power Toys (I always need to run TweakUI to fix the worse annoyances of XP, and install the power tab switcher and command-here, etc) and the Win server 2003 resource kit.

Firewire bus problems: an apple kb article

The firewire bus has often been flaky on Apple's machines. Sometimes it stops working, sometimes it restarts under peculiar circumstances. I've always thought this was somehow related to Apple's complex hardware abstraction approach and the complexity of what firewire does (a sort of peer-to-peer mini-lan). Whatever the cause for this perennial problem, it's interesting to note that Firewire audio devices can create a problem that's solvable by an SMU reset on some machines (see link for how to do the SMU reset):

Power Mac G5 (Late 2005), iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor): FireWire bus stops responding after computer restarts with FireWire audio device attached

If a FireWire audio device is connected to a Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) or an iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor) while the computer is restarting, the FireWire bus will stop responding and no FireWire devices will be detected on the bus. The device may stop responding or stop charging, depending on the specifics of the device.