In praise of The Unarchiver

OS X's native archive manager won't handle zip files from the late 90s. The Unarchiver just opened one of mine from 1986.

Great app. Thank you Dag Agren.

Converting Eudora email archives -- the end is near (and Norton Commander ncmail.exe in a footnote)

I have years of email messages locked up in a 1.2 GB Eudora for Windows archive [3]. Converting them has been a pending project for about 10 years. This archive is a part of my extended memory; it has the keys to remembering people and places now forgotten.

Now time is running out. Eudora Mailbox Cleaner is one of the best tools for this project, and it's PPC only. Since Lion doesn't have Rosetta, the app won't run on 10.7 or higher. [1]

I've downloaded a copy. I think I'll delay my primary machine's Lion conversion until the Eudora conversion is done.

There are other Eudora archive conversion methods, but most run on Windows -- and I think Windows VMs on Mac will fade away as Apple locks the OS down to both block malware and enforce DRM. Time is passing. If you have old archives, you may have only a year or so to (relatively) easily convert them.

I'm planning to create a user account to test the import, then backup up my current Mail database prior to adding this one.

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Converting Eudora email
• Gordon's Tech: Converting Email from Eudora OS X to a modern format - the TidBITS review: Adam Engst's comprehensive guide

Update

It took a few hours to do the conversion; most of that was spent waiting for a bundled AppleScript to Rebuild Mailboxes. Post conversion the database is 2.4 GB and over 55,000 messages.

Follow the directions carefully. I didn't think the nicknames were worth converting until I saw them; the connections between Groups and Members turned out to have powerful memory value. I recommend testing first with a special user and an empty address book and email account. If you import into an existing Mail database be sure to backup ~/Library/Mail first.

I didn't import Filters. They'd just be noise now.

With OS 10.4 and later there's an essential 'Mailbox Rebuild' step. My Eudora had at least 478 folders across a deep hierarchy [2]. It would have been extremely tedious to try to rebuild them all. So I tried the 10.4-10.5 rebuild AppleScript, even though I am running 10.7 Snow Leopard. 

That script runs slowly, and because of the way UI Scripting work it must own the entire machine. It will steal focus. Don't try to even switch users. It took over an hour to complete. Thank Darwin it's there; the job would have been untenable without it.

As per the documentation (mandatory read):

Your imported mailboxes will be located in a new folder called "Import" at the top-level of your local mailboxes. The new files will be located at "~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Import" on your hard disk...

... due to the way the Address Book works, a new group will be created for each Eudora nickname which expands to more than one email address.

I've already leveraged the archive to rebuild memories of people I worked and corresponded with in the 1990s. Some have died, some I've lost touch with. My old Eudora email archive has now been reintegrated into my extended memory.

For now the email archive and my old Address Book are sitting in a distinct user account. I will decide over the next week whether I'm going to leave them there or, more likely, repeat the process. If I do a complete merge I may create yet another user account, copy both my current email archive and this archive there, and let the process run.

OS X mail has a virtually undocumented import Apple Mail Data feature. I don't think it will be practical to import the archive using that but I'll take a look at it. (Update: It seems to have worked quite well. I imported my old Netscape emails at the same time.)

- fn -

[1] A year or two ago our 8 yo G5 iMac hard drive died. I dithered about whether to replace it or not because of the infamous iMac capacitor problem and its slowly delaminating screen. (The G5 iMac was one of Apple's most troublesome machines -- they desperately needed to move to Intel. The heat problems were extreme. It was, however, extremely easy to repair. That was even a marketing feature. Perhaps the G5 iMac is why Apple doesn't design for fixability any more.)

I did replace the drive and it's still working. It can even, if I were to install 10.4, run Classic. It's now one of my most valued machines. I think I may turn our MacBook into the kid machine and put the G5 iMac on a very light duty cycle so I can keep it available for another decade. I'll also archive my software install library onto its now capacious hard drive.

[2] My Gmail archive has essentially 2 mailboxes: In and All. Full text indexing and search changes things.

[3] Created by Steve Dorner, Eudora was the preeminent Mac email software and was dominant for a time on Windows as well. This archive, during its lifetime, moved from Mac to Windows. I found some 1996 correspondence with Steve, he was a very approachable developer with a lot of correspondence!

Before Eudora I used Norton Commander Mail (ncmail.exe) with MCIMail (pre-inernet -- 4867991@mcimail.com was my email at the time.

Writing this post inspired me to look into those archives. I did have them -- zipped up from the days when 200K was a lot of data. OS X couldn't open the old zip archives, but Unarchiver did fine. I used Automator to attach a .txt extension to each file and assigned them to TextWrangler. That was enough to convince OS X to index my old NC email messages. For example:

I actually got a bunch of public domain and shareware Windows applications running SLIP under OS/2 over my 14.4K modem ... 

... The second thing I'm excited about ...) is learning HTML and creating my own home page on the SILS Mosaic connection...

...  for my next 'HOT tip'. Check out TeleScript. Ignore "General Magic" -- it's bogus. TeleScript is the secret pearl.

I didn't remember that 14.4K modems coexisted with HTML 1.x. TeleScript is huge in an alternative reality. GM was a copy co-founded by "Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld and Marc Porat". Historic names.

The next archive to crack is a set of email written using Netscape's email app. (Update: Mail imports these directly.)

Notes on converting a MacBook Core 2 Duo dual USB to Lion

Our vintage 2006 MacBook Core 2 Duo can, in theory, run Lion [1]. I just upgraded it from Snow Leopard, which it ran reasonably well albeit with lots of fan activity.

I didn't upgrade happily. There's a reason I've waited this long. I wanted to stay with Snow Leopard, but Apple's MobileMe migration was going to cause problem for Emily's Address Book/iPhone Contact sync. Yes, that was the primary reason. Sad.

I upgraded all the apps we use, said farewell to AppleWorks and many games the kids no longer use, removed all PreferencePanes and extensions, unplugged all cables, did a safeboot cleanup and two completely independent backups (one a clone). Then I upgraded.

It seemed to go well enough once Spotlight rebuilt its indices and I refreshed everyone's account. it does take a very long time to log out; Lion is saving a lot of state information and the MacBook doesn't like that.

It went well enough, that is, until my old account. Then things got slow. Even though I'd updated VMWare Fusion to the final "Lion Compatible" 3.x version, I suspected it was the problem. I tried running my VM -- that was a disaster. After power down and a safe boot I uninstalled VMWare 3 per directions.

That helped a great deal. In fact, the laptop is quieter than it used to be. I suspect Fusion has been causing problems for a while [3].

So will I try Fusion 4?

No, not on this old machine. I really don't use my VM's very often, and neither Parallels nor Fusion are sold through the App Store. To do their magic without Apple's help they must be hacking the underlying OS; and OS X is increasingly hard to safely hack.

For now the MacBook seems to have survived Lion - albeit at the cost of a little used VM I'm probably better off without and a dozen or so older games -- and AppleWorks.

So far, better than it could have been. I am, however, regretting obeying Lion's command to update my Airport firmware [2]. 

[1] That's almost six years ago! I'd forgotten how old it really was. Maybe I shouldn't be too upset it can't run Mountain Lion. [2] Lion really wanted me to undo my Time Capsule firmware regression, so I did. Now I'm seeing more problems with losing connectivity, i saw a -1 error again, and I'm again having to rebuild Spotlight indices of the backups. I have a strong feeling I'll be reverting again. I seem to be the only one with this problem though. [3] My best Fusion experience was version 2 with a Windows 2000 VM -- on that old MacBook probably with Leopard (10.5). It's never worked as well since. 

Update 6/17/2012: Logging out and user switching is much slower. It takes about 20-30 seconds to log out and 15-20 to switch. I think it's because of all the context saving Lion does; this old machine can't handle it. There are ways to disable saving of application states, but I'm going to wait a while on this one. Otherwise things aren't too bad. The machine is quieter than it has been for years, the fan no longer roars. I suspect that's due to uninstalling Fusion 3.x, but it could be a Lion improvement.

Update 6/17/2012: I went through each user account and turned off 'save and restore windows' in system preferences. Then I logged out and unchecked the restore windows on login option shown there. No logout and login is back to Snow Leopard times. Now I have to figure out what to do about #$@$ Google Software Update. it keeps popping up in managed accounts that don't have privileges to run it.

How well does Gmail archive via IMAP really work?

My Gmail account holds 64,800 messages. Of those perhaps a few hundred are of lasting interest, but by the time AIs sort out what they are we'll be long obsolete.

So, perhaps illogically, I like to hold onto the archive. That means a local copy. 

I recently had an opportunity to test how well an IMAP archive approach works [2]. I upgraded a machine I'd not used for a while and had to catch up on a year's worth of email. It took a few separate synchronization sessions to catch up, I think I ran into Google's bandwidth limits/transaction throttling behavior.

I ended up with 64,440 in my local "All Mail" synchronized folder, so about 360 have been lost in the bowels of IMAP. Perhaps they'll trickle in with future synchronizations.

The oldest message in Gmail online is dated 2/29/2004 [1], in Mail.app (Lion) it's 2/2/2004. Yes, that's weird.

To answer the post question then, I'd say Gmail archiving via IMAP is imperfect but not pointless. A C grade.

[1] It's not obvious how you can see this. If you mouse over the message count there's a hidden option to swap newest and oldest. It's not easy to get to show; navigating large email collections in Gmail is almost impossible with the "new" UI.
[2] IMAP archive is what Google's all-but-defunct Data Liberation Front recommends. I miss that gang, but there were of the Google- era. In the Google 2012 they're an anachronism.

Sparrow — How not to do marketing

Sparrow's value proposition is that it works with Google's email much better than OS X Mail.app (even Lion OS X Mail), but it also uses the OS X Address Book.

It's a great solution to problems I face.

They don't market this though. If they had, I'd have tested it out long ago.

Aperture 3.3 is iPhoto Pro. At last. Sort of.

After years of false claims of iPhoto to Aperture migration support, and four months after I realized iPhoto was going down the wrong road for me, and three months after I began my extremely painful iPhoto to Aperture migration, Apple has released iPhoto Pro (aka Aperture 3.3).

Imagine my joy.

The only saving grace is that I might have saved a few people by advising them to wait for Aperture 4, which has now come in the form of iPhoto Pro 1.0/Aperture 3.3.

According to Apple's marketing claims, the latest (Lion-only) versions of Aperture and iPhoto  share a single database model. So, in theory, both apps can work on the database.

I doubt it works as advertised, but it has to be an improvement on my experience! I'd strongly advise waiting until September before doing a major iPhoto to Aperture migration. Now that you know the end is in sight the wait should be tolerable.

Personally, I'm looking forward to, at the least, using iPhoto's Picasa uploader and iPhoto's superior UI for Event/Project and many common image management operations.

Assuming the inevitable bugs get sorted out, this is an extraordinary conclusion to what must have been a formidable software effort. At one point Apple had two completely incompatible photo management products. One was a natural Mac app with an elegant UI and some infuriating limitations. The other looked like a port from NeXTStep [1]. They had almost nothing in common.

Slowly, painfully, Apple turned these two disparate products into iPhoto and iPhoto Pro. To do that they had to reconcile very different functional models and data models. It would have been a very hard, very long, glamor-free slog. I hope the team was at least paid well.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go cry in my Scotch.

[1] I was never able to learn where the heck Aperture came from. It's neither Windows nor Mac.

Update: I remembered my underused MacBook Air runs Lion, so I tested the new Aperture and iPhoto together. Unsurprisingly, they failed my first test.

First -- the good news. Annotations on an iPhoto Event are now visible in Aperture.

The bad news -- Album annotations (descriptions) are still not viewable or editable in Aperture.

Maybe in another year or two?

iTunes Store: "Error (-50)" - try GoogleDNS?

A few weeks after an intractable -100000 error iTunes error that only resolved when I uses SSH tunneling to download from a California server I ran into a iTunes Store: "Error (-50)" when downloading purchased content with a TV show my son wanted.

I cleared the download cache and deleted the partial download but I was stuck with the problem. I'd already ruled out all the other issues Apple mentions. I certainly didn't use a 'web accelerator' ...

But wait. "Web accelerator" gave me an idea. That suggests a networking issue...

So I used OS X Location switching to swap my CenturyLink DNS services for GoogleDNS (I had both configured). That did it. My download streamed normally.

I wonder if DNS issues with iTunes will get more common; after all, iTunes is a competitor for many DNS providers (though not, I think, CenturyLink).

Perhaps more likely, I wonder if this is related to Apples IPv6 transition.

I'm leaving GoogleDNS running for now.

Access 2003: Join expression not supported with VBA type conversion

One of the stranger bits of my life is that I often do data manipulation using Microsoft Access 2003 in a Windows 2003 server VM.

 

It's a long story. I suspect I'm not completely alone however. Access 2003 is unbeatable for certain kinds of data wrangling across disparate data sources. Access 2007 was a quite severe regression (post-2000, software  regressions are increasingly common).

 

So perhaps it's worth sharing the weirdest bug I've seen in a while. I was unable to do a "left" join on two subqueries where one of the keys involved a type conversion (string/long using VBA CStr() or CLng() - I tested both ways). I got a meaningless "Join expression not supported" error message.

 

I think this has worked fine for years. I wonder if a forced security update broke something. I found if I switched the query from 'Dynaset' to 'Dynaset (Inconsistent Updates)' it worked. Snapshot didn't work.

 

Now you know.

 

For me, it's a sign that I either need to switch to Access 2007/2010 or switch jobs. (I don't think 2010 is 64bit, so I still face the problems with ODBC drivers and bitness. I might be better to try Access 2007 in an XP VM.)

Update: I'm seeing other issues. It feels like something very bad has happened, probably as a result of a Microsoft security update, but I can't tell what.

 

Update 7/4/2012: I'm not quite sure what's going on, still having some issues. It might be an ODBC issue. I think the error message is a red herring.

My Google Custom Search just died. Did I offend the GoogleNet? (fixed)

Two days ago my much loved Google Custom Search was working beautifully (emphasis added) ...

Why coupons? Price concealment information and memetic archeology in the pre-web world 

... I found that reference through my pinboard/wordpress microblog/memory management infrastructure now integrated into my personal google custom search...

My latest enhancement was paying off; my ("free" = ad supported) personal custom search engine was now successfully indexing a blog that archived my pinboard.in shares and annotations [1] as well as my ancient web pages (archived) and my tech.kateva.org and notes.kateva.org blogs.

My extended memory was better than ever!

Until it died. [2] As of yesterday my custom search engine is returning very few results.

My first thought was that I'd unwittingly committed a Class One transgression against the GoogleNet. Perhaps Google considers my link/annotation blog to be a link-farm-equivalent -- and had blacklisted my entire kateva.org domain. Perhaps I had broken an unwritten rule of the GoogleNet (formerly known as the Internet, home of Archie and Veronica [3]).

I'm still able to find my notes.kateva.or and even kateva.org/sh posts in Google's standard search however (if I restrict by domain). So I'm not certain I've transgressed. If the search doesn't work soon I'll try recreating that engine. If that doesn't work, or if I detect more signs of transgression, I'll have to remove my pinboard archive and beg mercy of The Google.

I've a broken iPhone I could burn. Perhaps that will appease.
--
[1] It's my tawdry substitute for my long lost and much mourned Google Reader Share page. I hate the way it looks, but it's primary use is RSS consumption and index fodder. I am looking for a better template but WordPress themes/templates are a rats nest of complexity.
[2] Echoes of losing Google Reader Share!
[3] If you know what that means you either used Google or you are a very old geek.

Update 5/31/2012: It's back.

I followed some of advice that "omr" (not a Google employee) generously gave on the Google Search product forum. Instead of creating a new CSE however, I replaced many of the entries of the old CSE with the patterns he suggested. Perhaps most importantly, I changed the setting for indexing kateva.org/sh.

I'd previously opted to index all entries and all linked pages. Considering I add about 20-60 links a day I think that was a tad ambitious. I now index only the text of this shared items/pinboard (micro) blog.

For reference, here's an edited version of omr's recommendations:

In the "Sites to search" box, enter this URL Pattern:
  *.kateva.org/*
If you wish to include some of your other sites, enter additional URL Patterns to match them.  (Enter one URL Pattern per line.)  For example, if you want to include the msptrails site, add:
  *.msptrails.org/*
For more information about URL Patterns, see
Please include only a limited number of sites.  Start with the minimum number of sites that you consider necessary to include; or, if you wish to include several, preferably no more than ten.  (If you own some older or less-active sites that you don't need to search anymore, don't include them.)
Click the new CSE's "control panel" link (which takes you to the "Basics" page of the control panel).
Leave the "Search engine keywords" box empty.
Near the bottom of the page, note the "Show automatic thumbnail" option.  The automated thumbnail-image selection is not always ideal, so perhaps you may want to turn off that option.  (Click to remove the check-mark, then click the "Save Changes" button BELOW the option.)

The mysterious iTunes -100000 error: This file cannot be downloaded - Fixed

I think I need to sacrifice a goat to the spirit of the Nameless One. How else can I escape the curse of really weird Apple bugs?

This bug isn't quite as weird as the Apple ID vs. MobileMe verified forwarding email bug, or even the mysterious Image Capture Slowdown, but it's bad enough. 

The other day an iTunes track download failed. First time I'd seen that. So I tried with iTunes. It made 3 tries and failed there too; the download list showed an error code of "-100000" and iTunes told me:

There was a problem downloading ...

The file seems to be corrupted. To redownload the file, choose "Check for Available Downloads" from the Store Menu.

I tried several tricks including changing user accounts, trying it on another machine from my home network, trying it again from my iPhone, trying it on AT&T's network, etc. Of course I restarted my machine, different version of iTunes, etc etc.

Nothing worked. 

I tried downloading to my wife's phone. Everything downloaded ok except for that one Arcade Fire track: "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels".

So I went through Apple first tier support, then to 2nd tier. They reset my password so they could try downloading -- and it apparently worked for them. So they washed their hands of me.

Of course it doesn't work for me, no matter the device. The one track is bad.

So what's going on? Well, I'm not the only one. There's a clue in an iTune's Discussion:

...I  also tried all of the suggestions to no avail.  As an experiment this weekend I tried accessing the "corrupt" file from my daughter's  network in the Chicago area.  Logged in, downloaded, bam. Worked like charm. I have no security software on my home network, but by golly I worked from another network...

I bet this is a geography problem. The file is corrupt on a server that manages my geographic area.

One way to test this would be to travel and try it.

Another would be to connect via VPN to a different region and then retry.

It's late for me to try that tonight, but Dreamhost (California) does support SSH connections. Tomorrow I'll try that one ...

Update 5/23/12: VICTORY. I connected via SSH Tunnel to Dreamhost then downloaded again (clicked Buy). It worked instantly. This supports the theory that an instance of the tune was corrupted on the iTunes server for my geographic region (Minneapolis St Paul).

Apple ID Hell: Apple's identity mismanagement and an insanely obscure ID bug with MobileMe send as email

Apple has long had trouble with truly basic concepts of authentication, but lately they've gone off the rails.

It's not just the new and quite demanding Apple ID password requirements that will lead most customers to put them into iPhone Notes -- since it must be entered each time you buy something.

It's not just the bug in their password instructions; when they say "no more than 3" repeating characters they mean "no more than 2" repeating characters (test it yourself).

It's not just that Apple prevents one from seeing the ugly and unmemorable Apple ID that we have to type in -- while also disallowing copy/paste into the password field (take that password manager!).

It's not just that Apple's Apple ID maintenance UI wants me to change my primary email address to match my .mac ID -- which doesn't have email.

No, it's even worse than all that.  The big problems are the proliferation of Apple IDs, and a bug that hit my very old Apple ID.

By trial and error I've discovered I have no less than four distinct Apple IDs.

I have an Apple ID that matches an old MobileMe account I abandoned years ago.

I have an Apple ID that matches my current MobileMe account. When I changed its password I also changed my MobileMe account password.

I even found an old developer account that is now an Apple ID too. (Apple merged these databases). So that's #4. It has yet another email address of mine and so I verified that. 

Lastly I have the Apple ID that is associated with hundreds of dollars of purchases. That's the one I care about -- and that one has two email addresses associated with it. That's critical for password security. One of the email addresses is my personal Gmail address.

Except ... neither of them are "validated". That's bad.

Apple won't let me validate them either. It claims both are associated with other Apple IDs.

One of them is my current MobileMe email. Since I've discovered that account morphed into yet another Apple ID, that makes sense. I removed that one and added a new email that I was able to verify (I own my own domains, so it's easy to make email redirects).

Then I tried removing the Gmail address and adding it back in. Uh-Oh, that's no longer allowed. It's been orphaned.

I check each Apple ID in turn, including my mother's and the kids. The Gmail address is not associated with any of them. So is there a fifth AppleID somewhere? Is there a bug? Is there a security breech?

There's more. After I changed the email address and password for my mac.com Apple ID, Apple enrolled me in iCloud for that account! So now it has an email address too?

I'm beginning to understand why Apple's share price is relatively low. If they can't manage something this basic, they're in trouble.

Apple, if you need a clue, here's a few:

1. We need a way to delete Apple IDs. Unwanted IDs are a security risk.
2. Or we need a way to merge Apple IDs!
3. You need to fix my gmail bug Apple.  If #2 is not a bug, you need a way to reclaim that address (does someone else have it as "unverified"? Is that part of how iTunes accounts are hacked?

See also:

• Apple's messed up Apple ID system: what are they smoking?! 7/2008 (!)
• Apple's identity and account system is screwed up. Again. 10/2008
• Apple is again messing with Apple IDs – pay attention! 6/2009

Update: I've figured out the bug. It arose as a side-effect of changes to the way Apple IDs work, and it only impacts people who are still on MobileMe accounts and who have the same email address associated with two Apple accounts prior to the time Apple made that illegal. In brief:

1. The Gmail address was a validated 'send as' forwarding address in Mobile Me Mail.
2. The Gmail address was the primary email on my mac.com Apple ID.
3. Then Apple created an Apple ID for Mobile Me email. Somewhere in Apple's databases the Gmail 'send as' address became an alternate email for the new Apple ID. HOWEVER, it was already a primary email for another Apple ID. So it didn't display in the AppleID maintenance screens for my Mobile Me account.
4. Since it existed in the database, however, it couldn't be validated in my .Mac account.
5. When I removed it from my .Mac account I wasn't allowed to add it back, since it was associated with my MobileMe account -- but in a partial state there.
6. It couldn't be located using my First and Last name in the Apple ID locator page because it wasn't properly associated with the MobileMe account. However, Apple's 2nd tier phone support was able to see it there.
7. I went to the MobileMe account and added the email manually. It suddenly appeared -- as verified! I removed it, but Apple Support confirmed it didn't remove completely. So I left it "verified" with the MobileMe account. Now I know where it is.

Apple is closing MobileMe, so there's no way they'll ever fix this bug. I'm glad I seem to have fixed it however, it might have screwed up my iCloud migration. I think before I go to iCloud I'll remove that forwarding email address.

Postscript: Apple's Support Profile is supposed to show the products associated with my Apple ID. I think it used to. I don't see them any more. It says my home number is associated with a different Apple ID...

Image Capture hangs at "Scanning", process pegs at 100% - ghost iPhone and dust removal

I've used my Epson V700 with Image Capture for years. Until today it's never had a problem.

Today it has a problem!

My scans are taking a very, very long time to complete. They seem to hang after the scan is completed, but after about five minutes they complete. It's as though something is timing out. In Activity Monitor the Epson Scanner Process is pegged at 100% CPU.

I switched to another account and the scan completed in seconds. So it's not hardware. It's something about my primary account.

A restart didn't fix it and deleting Image Capture preferences didn't help.

The problem started after several scans, so it's not related to a software install. The /private/tmp folder that Image Capture uses to cache its work seems fine.

Next up I'll try Onyx and clear out all my caches.

It's a weird one.

Update: I've identified one difference. On my primary account Image Capture thinks an iPhone is attached, even though it isn't. I found one other report of this in Snow Leopard and another here.

Update 2: I got rid of the "ghost" iPhone camera by removing all USB peripherals and restarting. That didn't help however. Scanning in my primary account is still far slower than scanning in my admin account. I even tried repairing permissions; as usual that made no difference. I started an Apple Discussion thread on this.

Update 6/9/2012: There were two issues. Removing the "ghost" iPhone did make a difference. The rest of the difference was dust removal. I was used to having it turned off. Turning it on really extends scan duration. Perhaps it's on by default and removing preferences enabled it?

Finding partly played podcasts: In Our Time

iTunes tracks how many times tracks have been completely played [2], but it doesn't provide any UI for tracks that have been partly played.

This isn't a big deal for music or videos, but it's a real bother for podcasts. I have 72 episodes of "In Our Time" in my "IOT unplayed" shortlist; and I know some of them are partly played. I just don't know which ones. 

It's been a longstanding frustration, but this week, Doug's AppleScript for iTunes gave me the answer:

Project: Gather Partially Played Tracks « Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes

... Smart Playlists don’t include any criteria for detecting how far along a track has been played, and Last Skipped may not necessarily have been set if a track was simply stopped rather than skipped.

... a track’s bookmark property will contain the number of seconds the track had been played before it was stopped. Thus, if any tracks have a bookmark value greater than zero then they’ve been partially played...

I'm lousy at AppleScript, but it wasn't hard to modify the example Doug provided. I have a smart Playlist called "IOT Unplayed" and I modified the AppleScript to find tracks in that Playlist that had a bookmark value greater than zero [3]:

property nameOfPlaylist : "Partially Played"

tell application "iTunes"
	set opt to button returned of (display dialog ¬
		"Find partially played tracks in:" buttons ¬
		{"Cancel", "Podcasts", "IOT Unplayed"} default button 3)
	
	if opt is "Podcast" then
		set targetLibrary to (some playlist whose special kind is Podcasts)
	else
		if opt is "IOT Unplayed" then
			set targetLibrary to some playlist whose name is "IOT Unplayed"
		else
			set targetLibrary to library playlist 1
		end if
	end if
	
	try
		set thePlaylist to some playlist whose name is nameOfPlaylist
	on error
		set thePlaylist to (make playlist with properties {name:nameOfPlaylist})
	end try
	
	try
		delete every track of thePlaylist
	end try
	
	duplicate (every track of targetLibrary whose bookmark > 0) to thePlaylist
	reveal thePlaylist
end tell 

Of course this isn't as elegant as a Smart Playlist -- I need to run this AppleScript manually. Even so, it solves 80% of my pain. Thanks Doug!

[1] I donated $5. It was a royal PITA to do so. It reminded me of how bad our donation system is. Among other things:

• I distrust PayPal intensely based on past experience. So I had to use the awkward data entry UI.
• It took me a while to figure out I had to 'update amount' - so that cost me two data entry episodes
• I had to go back and add an email
• If I could keep track of how much I'd previously donated to the site, I might make a larger (or smaller) donation.

Sucks.

[2] I have a feeling that years ago iTunes would consider a track "played" if one simply started listening to it. I'm probably wrong about that.

[3] In my hacked AppleScript the 'library playlist 1' statement will never be reached; I just kept it in as a reminder of how to scan all tracks. AppleScript only allows 3 buttons, otherwise I'd have made this an option.

Navigating AT&T mobile's web site: a cheat sheet

I have a hard time navigating AT&T's mobile site. So I wrote this post to store some of the links I use. I'll update it periodically. Some links may embed one of our phone numbers, so they're not so useful for others.

In general I login first, then copy and paste these links to navigate.

• SMS blocking options, esp. email management
• Data Usage on key number (filter to show text/im)
• Manage/review features: how to see what's currently on your phone. It's not a very useful summary.
• Bill Summary: includes current charges
• Device Management: change wireless number ($36), reset voicemail password, suspect/reactivate, unblock SIM card
• Send a text message (free to send, is sent from own number)
• Marketing preferences: turn off spam from AT&T and "partners"
• User Information: including link to customer service summary, contract and contract end date
• Support: 611 from phone (best) or live chat agent or phone support

Google results 100% ads?!

I did a search on "open source document management".

My result page was 100% advertising.

I've never seen this before. I'm hoping it's a bug of some kind. I tried opting out of Google personalized ads to see if that helped. Next up I'll just block every advertiser on the page using Ad personalization.