Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Monday, May 23, 2005
iPod esoterica: manually putting iPod into Disk Mode
Putting iPod into Disk Mode
The page has directions for newer and older iPods. These are for the older non-click wheel iPods:
1. Before manually placing the iPod into Disk Mode you should verify that it has a charge, if not you need to either charge iPod before continuing or connect it to power. You can either connect it to a high-powered USB port, or plug the iPod Power Adapter into an electrical outlet and connect iPod to the power adapter.
2. Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Set it to Hold, then turn it off again.)
3. Press and hold the Play/Pause and Menu buttons until the Apple/iPod logo appears, then release them. This resets iPod. When you reset iPod all your music and data files are saved, but some customized settings may be lost.
4. When the Apple logo appears, immediately press and hold the Previous and Next buttons until the Disk Mode screen appears. (For iPod Software 1.0 through 1.1, a FireWire logo appears on the screen.)
5. Disconnect iPod from the power adapter and connect it to your computer.
The page has directions for newer and older iPods. These are for the older non-click wheel iPods:
1. Before manually placing the iPod into Disk Mode you should verify that it has a charge, if not you need to either charge iPod before continuing or connect it to power. You can either connect it to a high-powered USB port, or plug the iPod Power Adapter into an electrical outlet and connect iPod to the power adapter.
2. Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Set it to Hold, then turn it off again.)
3. Press and hold the Play/Pause and Menu buttons until the Apple/iPod logo appears, then release them. This resets iPod. When you reset iPod all your music and data files are saved, but some customized settings may be lost.
4. When the Apple logo appears, immediately press and hold the Previous and Next buttons until the Disk Mode screen appears. (For iPod Software 1.0 through 1.1, a FireWire logo appears on the screen.)
5. Disconnect iPod from the power adapter and connect it to your computer.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Definition of a blogger post: date and subjet
Note the structure of the 'persistent url' used by Blogger:
http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com/2005/05/derivatives-for-small-investor.html
It contains the year/month/date and text taken from the subject. In database terms, it is the date (YMD) and subject text that uniquely defines a posting. Change either and any links to the prior posting will break.
I would have much preferred a level of indirection with a unique ID for a blog posting. This design, if deliberate, says quite a bit about how the Blogger engineers think about blogs and blog postings. Heaven forbid one should have a typo in subject line! It can never be fixed, or the links to the posting will fail. Likewise, if one wishes to update a posting and draw attention to it, one must edit locally and not revise the date, then create a new posting pointing to it.
These are fundamental design decisions, but they will be invisible to most users. Much software is this way; the mechanics of identity (in this case blog identity -- foreign keys in other words) are the invisible 'deep themes' of the software.
http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com/2005/05/derivatives-for-small-investor.html
It contains the year/month/date and text taken from the subject. In database terms, it is the date (YMD) and subject text that uniquely defines a posting. Change either and any links to the prior posting will break.
I would have much preferred a level of indirection with a unique ID for a blog posting. This design, if deliberate, says quite a bit about how the Blogger engineers think about blogs and blog postings. Heaven forbid one should have a typo in subject line! It can never be fixed, or the links to the posting will fail. Likewise, if one wishes to update a posting and draw attention to it, one must edit locally and not revise the date, then create a new posting pointing to it.
These are fundamental design decisions, but they will be invisible to most users. Much software is this way; the mechanics of identity (in this case blog identity -- foreign keys in other words) are the invisible 'deep themes' of the software.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
All IDE ATA drives are not the same
[Update 6/5: The Maxtor has been fine after being relocated and reformatted. Then I received a note from Vantec, who've been serious about looking into this, that they'd bought a Seagate 200 and it worked quite well. That was the final clue. What could be affect two different drives in slightly different ways, get worse over time, cause drive corruption and seek errors, not affect the older lower performance drive, and be better in some settings than others?
Heat.
So I checked out the cooling fan on the Vantec case. It is immobile. With some compressed air I can 'kickstart' it, but it has basically seized up. The higher performance drivers either produced more heat or were less tolerate of overheating; without the fan they were cooked.
I need to do some more testing, including asking Vantec for a replacement fan, but my guess is that heat was indeed the culprit.
[Update 5/21: ... the Maxtor in the Vantec cartridge has been malfunctioning and now will not format. I wonder if the drive has been damaged! I've updated my table.]
If you think of standard ATA IDE drivers at all, you probably think they're pretty much an interchangeable commodity with some modest performance differences, some variations in rarely used diagnostic and configuration software, and unpredictable quality problems.
That's what I thought. I was wrong.
I tested 3 drives from three vendors (Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital) in 4 different settings. All were fine in a routine IDE setup, but there were problems with a firewire enclosure and a removeable drive bay catridge.
The Maxtor worked initially in the Vantec PC cartridge, but then failedand may be damaged. The Seagate never worked. The Seagate works much better than the Maxtor in the iBook attacked OWC external firewire case. The Western Digital works in the Vantec PC cartridge, I haven't tried it in the firewire drive (too much trouble for now).
Most surprising. The lessons I draw for now are:
Heat.
So I checked out the cooling fan on the Vantec case. It is immobile. With some compressed air I can 'kickstart' it, but it has basically seized up. The higher performance drivers either produced more heat or were less tolerate of overheating; without the fan they were cooked.
I need to do some more testing, including asking Vantec for a replacement fan, but my guess is that heat was indeed the culprit.
[Update 5/21: ... the Maxtor in the Vantec cartridge has been malfunctioning and now will not format. I wonder if the drive has been damaged! I've updated my table.]
If you think of standard ATA IDE drivers at all, you probably think they're pretty much an interchangeable commodity with some modest performance differences, some variations in rarely used diagnostic and configuration software, and unpredictable quality problems.
That's what I thought. I was wrong.
I tested 3 drives from three vendors (Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital) in 4 different settings. All were fine in a routine IDE setup, but there were problems with a firewire enclosure and a removeable drive bay catridge.
| Maxtor Diamondmax | Seagate Barracuda | Western Digital WD 800 | |
| 200 GB | 200 GB | 80 GB | |
| PC MB IDE controller | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| PC Paradise IDE controller | Yes [2] | Yes [2] | Yes [2] |
| OWC Firewire Drive w/ iBook | Partial [1] | Yes | not tested |
| Vantec EZ-Swap MRK 103F in PC | No | No | Yes |
[1] Works as long as the iBook doesn't go to sleep.So, not all drives are the same -- by any means!
[2] This Paradise IDE controller emulates a SCSI drive. It supports 200 GB drives and works well with everything - except Retrospect 6.0. Retrospect, a notoriously difficult pile of software, has to be forced to use "NT Passthrough" when writing to a drive attached to this controller. This secret preference is enabled with the magic keystroke: Ctrl-Alt-PP. No, I'm not making this up. With the WD 80 GB drive Retrospect would stop after at some magic limit (I forget what it was), with the Maxtor it wouldn't even start -- but it would lock up my XP machine with an unkillable process that demanded a hard reset. With "NT Passthrough" enabled this problem goes away. This bug may be fixed in Retrospect 6.5, though I suspect others take its place.
The Maxtor worked initially in the Vantec PC cartridge, but then failed
Most surprising. The lessons I draw for now are:
1. Before purchasing an even slightly non-standard container for an ATA IDE drive check with the vendor what drives are known to work. If they say "all drives" then don't trust them. (SATA may be better).
2. Of the 3 vendors tested, only Wetern Digital MIGHT work in all configurations, but more testing is needed.
3. Not all bad behaviors come from one problem. In the course of managing this very aggravating situation I ran into three: the Seagate incompatiblity, a bent pin, and the Paradise/Retrospect incompatibility. And some people have to resort to television to explain increasing IQs!
Friday, May 20, 2005
Google accelerator bug: Webmail incompatible
Faughnan's Notes: Google Web Accelerator for XP and Firefox (ok, for IE too)
I was working on webmail access to a user account in my domain and the Horde and Squirrel web clients seemed both to be failing. Perhaps this is coincidence, but after disabling Google Accelerator they worked again.
I was working on webmail access to a user account in my domain and the Horde and Squirrel web clients seemed both to be failing. Perhaps this is coincidence, but after disabling Google Accelerator they worked again.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Macintouch spotlight review
Spotlight (Tiger Review)
The best overview I've seen of Spotlight thus far. The bottom line -- it works well enough to be useful, but it has at least two more revisions to go before it will be a solid tool. I'd guess 10.4.4. (10.4.1 is out, 10.4.2 will focus on bug fixes, 10.4.3 will start to address functional issues).
Using Spotlight with application controlled data stores is the interesting question (Entourage, FileMaker, etc). This is much more ambitious than merely indexing documents. I dimly recall old issues of BYTE referring to a 1970s era OS that had a true database as its file store -- it could manage this trick.
The best overview I've seen of Spotlight thus far. The bottom line -- it works well enough to be useful, but it has at least two more revisions to go before it will be a solid tool. I'd guess 10.4.4. (10.4.1 is out, 10.4.2 will focus on bug fixes, 10.4.3 will start to address functional issues).
Using Spotlight with application controlled data stores is the interesting question (Entourage, FileMaker, etc). This is much more ambitious than merely indexing documents. I dimly recall old issues of BYTE referring to a 1970s era OS that had a true database as its file store -- it could manage this trick.
O'Reilly: Build a Simple MP3 Player for Your Site
O'Reilly: Build a Simple MP3 Player for Your Site
Embed tag and JavaScript. I've seen bits of this in many places, but never in one article.
Embed tag and JavaScript. I've seen bits of this in many places, but never in one article.
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