Text to speech to iPod

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): Terminal tips - say

Picture Arena: OS X photo management software imprts iPhoto images

Producttour > Import // Picture Arena - next generation digital picture management for MacOS X // IOSPIRIT GmbH - for creative minds ..

Dynamic iPhoto™ album import

On startup, Picture Arena is dynamically importing your existing iPhoto™ albums, including comments and thumbnail data. As this import is dynamic and happens at each startup of Picture Arena, they are always up-to-date and you don't have to delete and reimport them each time you have made a change to them or added new albums. If you want, you can permanently convert your iPhoto™ albums into Picture Arena albums, though, and benefit from all of Picture Arena's features for these images, too. The extensive support for iPhoto™ albums in Picture Arena gives you the best out of two worlds and the flexibility to use Picture Arena as either an extension, a replacement or in combination.

Brave words -- interoperating with iPhoto seems brisky. They have a free download. I doubt the import routine will import original images (vs. current) or keywords. BTW, this is a German company, so the sometimes awkward English is no reflection on the quality of the product.

Problems with my hard drive backup -- Vantec cartridge incompatible with Seagate Barracuda 200GB drives.

I outgrew my 80GB backup drives in my Vantec EZ-SWAP cartridge (see Backing up a mixed OS X and Windows 2000 Home Network) and confidently ordered two 200 GB Barracude ATA drives. I was sure it would be a half hours work (max) to swap out the 80 from the Vantec and put in the 200. Wrong. The 200 GB Barracudas don't work in the Vantec cartridge, though they work fine as regular drives.

The BIOS recognizes the Seagate perfectly during initial startup. The hang occurs after the POST is complete, when Windows starts up. The yellow and green lights on the front of the drive light up and the system waits about 20 seconds. Then the system continues and the Windows splash screen appears with its progress bar. The progress bar continues to move, but the system never gets past this point.

I hear a 'zuttt' sound every 20-30 seconds when these drivers are powered up in the Vantec.

I've tried many tricks, including configuring the Seagate as a 32GB drive using the jumpers. I've tested with two identical Seagate drives, two different IDE cables, two different controllers (Paradise and MB IDE). I've tried Master and cable-select configurations. I've confirmed that the Vantec EZ-Swap continues to work very well with my 80GB drives. I've confirmed that the drives work fine outside of the EZ-Swap cartridge.

In short, the 200GB Seagate Barracuda ATA ST3200822A appears to be completely incompatible with the Vantec EZ-Swap.

The Vantec support people actually answered an email, but they've had no ideas. My guess is that the Seagate can't tolerate the minor signal degradation created by the IDE cable splices to the cartridge.

Backing up Blogspot sites with Teleport Pro

Teleport Pro -- Offline Browsing Webspider

Blogger has an official way to backup one's blog. Problem is, it's slightly ridiculous and it produces a huge document.

I tried using an OS X personal spider (SiteSucker) to suck down my blogspot site, but it started failing with a download error after page 300 or so. So I located my ancient copy of Teleport Pro (windows, alas) and fired it up. It worked perfectly, creating several thousand pages and localizing all the URLs pointing to internal blogspot pages.

I'm impressed. Incredibly, you can still buy Teleport Pro at this site. It's not the most intuitive application, but it works great.

Update 11/25/08: I ran into a 65K limit for URLs when using Teleport Pro with the 2008 version of Gordon's Notes. There's a more advanced spider sold by the same vendor, with a $30 updgrade discount it's $165. I'm going to look around for alternatives. Also in 2008 Blogger did introduce the ability to export blogs in a Google defined XML format.

Hard Drive Cooling for 10 Cents

Cheapbooks.com - Hard Drive Cooling for 10 Cents

He mounts an 80mm fan over his drives using a cheap hardware bracket. Note these larger fans are much quieter than the small fans sometimes sold for hard drives. My Vantec case let me install an 80mm to blow external air over the drives ...

OS X and all its bizarre keyboard shortcuts

macosxhints - An OS X keyboard shortcut reference

Well, probably not all of them. A complete collection is probably impossible, since they vary between machines and OS versions. One imagines an immense grid in several dimensions ...

The comments reference other collections, including Apple's. I've printed them into one big pile in my desk -- useful for when the Mac isn't working.

A psychoanalyst could make much of the Mac keyboard fetish -- especially since the Mac was born of a the mouse world. Single button mouse, one trillion keyboard shortcuts ... hmmm. Compensation perhaps?

Uber-Geek usage of Safari

All About Safari :: Apple-X.net :: Alternative Mac Tech News, Analysis, Reviews, and Opinion.

There are tips here even I'd not heard of.