About iPhoto Library Manager:
Updated for compatibility with iPhoto 6.0.1
Fixed a bug where imported photo dates would be set incorrectly in iPhoto 6
Movie files are now copied properly under iPhoto 6
Fixed a problem where original photos would not be copied properly in some libraries
Saturday, February 18, 2006
iPhoto Library Manager updated for iPhoto 6.01
Surprisingly, the recent iPhoto 6 patch also required a new version of IPLM. Turns out the old one had a nasty bug anyway ....
Friday, February 17, 2006
Using an XP laptop as an iPod charger: preventing iPod mounting
I'm not having any luck on with a Google search on this topic.
I have a new 5G video iPod. The only real advantage of this device over the 3G iPod it replaced is that it can charge off a USB port. This is big, because I don't like carrying power adapters when I travel. I have to carry a corporate laptop, it has USB but not firewire.
Fine, but the iPod is formatted using HFS+ under OS X. It syncs to OS X. If I plug it into windows box the OS mounts it as a USB drive and asks if I want to format it.
Yech. What if I clicked the wrong button?
I've partially disabled this. I went into the XP services menu and stopped and then disabled the iPod service. I then went into my XP hardware profile and with the iPod mounted I disabled hardware support in all profiles for this device.
The result is the OS still tries to mount the USB device, but stops as soon as it 'recognizes' it as an iPod. So I don't get the nasty offer to format the iPod. I still have to manually dismount the partially mounted USB device in order to be able to use it while it's connected to the USB port (though since the file system is not mounted I could probably just ignore the warning and unplug it if I just wanted to charge it).
So, not bad really. Still, it would be nice if it didn't even TRY to mount. Anyone know a workaround?
I have a new 5G video iPod. The only real advantage of this device over the 3G iPod it replaced is that it can charge off a USB port. This is big, because I don't like carrying power adapters when I travel. I have to carry a corporate laptop, it has USB but not firewire.
Fine, but the iPod is formatted using HFS+ under OS X. It syncs to OS X. If I plug it into windows box the OS mounts it as a USB drive and asks if I want to format it.
Yech. What if I clicked the wrong button?
I've partially disabled this. I went into the XP services menu and stopped and then disabled the iPod service. I then went into my XP hardware profile and with the iPod mounted I disabled hardware support in all profiles for this device.
The result is the OS still tries to mount the USB device, but stops as soon as it 'recognizes' it as an iPod. So I don't get the nasty offer to format the iPod. I still have to manually dismount the partially mounted USB device in order to be able to use it while it's connected to the USB port (though since the file system is not mounted I could probably just ignore the warning and unplug it if I just wanted to charge it).
So, not bad really. Still, it would be nice if it didn't even TRY to mount. Anyone know a workaround?
Palm Tungsten E2: wicked amazon reviews
Wow. Watching Palm die is a sick sort of entertainment -- but I can't resist.
Amazon's reviews on Palm's most important PDA product, the Tungsten E2, are wicked. It looks like the E2 has a defect with the on-off switch, shortly after the 90 day warrantee ends the switch dies. Palm had similar problems with several earlier models -- I guess they just can't figure out the on/off switch.
The Treo 650 is popular, but I can't see how it can forestall doom. They've sold the PalmOS software to a Japanese company so there's no revenue stream there.
What a train wreck.
PS. Since there's no real replacement for the dying Palm PDA (PocketPC PDAs are also on death row) I may yet buy a Tungsten E2! (4/06: I did.) I'll wait for a great offer however. I'll also use TealLaunch to turn the device off and a function button to turn it on -- so I'll completely avoid the flaky on/off switch. It might last longer if I never use it.
Amazon's reviews on Palm's most important PDA product, the Tungsten E2, are wicked. It looks like the E2 has a defect with the on-off switch, shortly after the 90 day warrantee ends the switch dies. Palm had similar problems with several earlier models -- I guess they just can't figure out the on/off switch.
The Treo 650 is popular, but I can't see how it can forestall doom. They've sold the PalmOS software to a Japanese company so there's no revenue stream there.
What a train wreck.
PS. Since there's no real replacement for the dying Palm PDA (PocketPC PDAs are also on death row) I may yet buy a Tungsten E2! (4/06: I did.) I'll wait for a great offer however. I'll also use TealLaunch to turn the device off and a function button to turn it on -- so I'll completely avoid the flaky on/off switch. It might last longer if I never use it.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The Calvin and Hobbes Searchable Database
Credit to Pharyngula for pointing me to The Calvin and Hobbes Searchable Database.
Enter a keyword, find a cartoon. Try "bicycle" for example. Wonderful.
Enter a keyword, find a cartoon. Try "bicycle" for example. Wonderful.
Good practices if enabling SSH remote login
MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh
[MacInTouch Reader 2] This is a good time to mention what I'm sure has been mentioned before - since you can't count on users *not* reusing their login creds elsewhere (or using weak passwords) - you can limit who can remotely login to your Mac with a simple addition to your sshd config. Just add:
AllowUsers dad mom
to /etc/sshd_config and then stop/start remote login using System Preferences -> Sharing.
Now only 'dad' and 'mom' can login remotely, so when daughter lets her login creds out of the bag (or you create a user/pass like 'guest/guest' or 'test/test') you're not wide open to attack.
[David Charlap] In my case, I want to allow any user to log in from my LAN or from my office computer, but I don't want to allow any account to log in from the internet. This can be done by editing /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny:
My /etc/hosts.deny is set up to deny everything (only allowing what hosts.allow explicitly permits). It contains:
ALL : ALL
My /etc/hosts.allow has rules that allow all services to accept connections from my LAN (192.168.1.*) and ssh logins from my office subnet. It contains:
ALL : 192.168.1.
sshd-keygen-wrapper,sshd : office IP prefix
Attempting to connect to ssh from any other location results in the Mac dropping the TCP connection before the ssh daemon even gets a chance to find out what the user ID is.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Blogbot for Outlook
Jacob Reider likes this Outlook blogging integration tool. That means it must be excellent. It's also free and it blogbot %u2122:Syncs with Bloglines!
If you have an account on Bloglines, you can sync Outlook with your feeds there.The "syncs with bloglines" feature is a killer.
Now you have the convenience of using Outlook at the office, and still
having access on the web via Bloglines.
Friday, February 03, 2006
iPhoto 6: what a bloody mess
I was pretty confident when I installed iPhoto 6. After all, I'd verified my Libraries with iPhoto Library Manager.
Hoo boy. Was I wrong. What a bleeping mess. See [1] (below) for details, but my IPLM merged Libraries were a reall mess after updating to iPhoto 6. The unmerged Libraries were ok, but the process was odd. Two of them took only a few minutes to convert. One, about 3 times as large, seemed to hang. It let it run overnight [2], when I returned it was done. Forty images were "recovered", but in fact they were all duplicates.
Fortunately, despite my misplaced confidence, I had backups upon backups. So, I'll probably survive. I did find that when iPhoto hangs during a Library update, your best bet is to go to bed. Chances are in the morning it'll be done.
iPhoto still wreches and hangs when it comes across a corrupted JPEG. The code base for the app must be horrendous -- or the current engineers are spectacularly incompetent.
I came across some really ugly looking images, but it doesn't look like I was hit by the color space problem -- my old iPhoto 5 versions of the same images are just as ugly.
So what went wrong? I'm not sure yet. I suspect some complex interaction between the legacy of old OS X and iPhoto bugs mixed in with quirks introduced by merging my iPhoto 5 Libraries using iPhoto Library Manager. One of my many update attempts produced 620 "recovered" images, but they look like odd duplicates related to original images. I set them aside to study, but chances are I'll delete them all.
Later I did a test merge of these 3 iPhoto 6 Libraries into one new iPhoto 6 Library [2]. This time the test image was handled correctly [2], but I'm still evaluating counts of images.
More importantly, I'm done with iPhoto. I deserve Pro tools. I want to use an application that gets properly tested -- because screw-ups lead to really nasty lawyers gnawing on Apple. (I'm one of the few physicians in the world who thinks that junk dog lawyers are the best solution humans can come up with to drive quality work.)
I'm so mad I'll punish Apple by spending $250 (edu price) for Aperture -- once it gets its next point update. Oh, wait, that a minute ...
PS. I had to use Smart Folders to help with some of my analysis. That's when I realized you can't sort results based on path data, and you can't easily see the path. I'd like tp put the Spotlight engineers in the same boat as the iPhoto team, and send them all to a southern island -- something just off the Antarctic coast.
[1] IMG_0092 is the test image. Original images is 320K
[3] As per [1], but now I upgraded each of the 3 iPhoto Libraries separately to iPhoto 6. Two went very quickly, one took several hours and found 40 'recovered' images (all were unwanted duplicates). Then I merged to one new Library using IPLM. The test image was now handled correctly:
Hoo boy. Was I wrong. What a bleeping mess. See [1] (below) for details, but my IPLM merged Libraries were a reall mess after updating to iPhoto 6. The unmerged Libraries were ok, but the process was odd. Two of them took only a few minutes to convert. One, about 3 times as large, seemed to hang. It let it run overnight [2], when I returned it was done. Forty images were "recovered", but in fact they were all duplicates.
Fortunately, despite my misplaced confidence, I had backups upon backups. So, I'll probably survive. I did find that when iPhoto hangs during a Library update, your best bet is to go to bed. Chances are in the morning it'll be done.
iPhoto still wreches and hangs when it comes across a corrupted JPEG. The code base for the app must be horrendous -- or the current engineers are spectacularly incompetent.
I came across some really ugly looking images, but it doesn't look like I was hit by the color space problem -- my old iPhoto 5 versions of the same images are just as ugly.
So what went wrong? I'm not sure yet. I suspect some complex interaction between the legacy of old OS X and iPhoto bugs mixed in with quirks introduced by merging my iPhoto 5 Libraries using iPhoto Library Manager. One of my many update attempts produced 620 "recovered" images, but they look like odd duplicates related to original images. I set them aside to study, but chances are I'll delete them all.
Later I did a test merge of these 3 iPhoto 6 Libraries into one new iPhoto 6 Library [2]. This time the test image was handled correctly [2], but I'm still evaluating counts of images.
More importantly, I'm done with iPhoto. I deserve Pro tools. I want to use an application that gets properly tested -- because screw-ups lead to really nasty lawyers gnawing on Apple. (I'm one of the few physicians in the world who thinks that junk dog lawyers are the best solution humans can come up with to drive quality work.)
I'm so mad I'll punish Apple by spending $250 (edu price) for Aperture -- once it gets its next point update. Oh, wait, that a minute ...
PS. I had to use Smart Folders to help with some of my analysis. That's when I realized you can't sort results based on path data, and you can't easily see the path. I'd like tp put the Spotlight engineers in the same boat as the iPhoto team, and send them all to a southern island -- something just off the Antarctic coast.
[1] IMG_0092 is the test image. Original images is 320K
Original library (iP6 - this is correct)[2] My guess is that that there's some global timeout that kicks in after an hour or two of failing to complete a task, and iPhoto skips to the next step.
Ancient/Modified/2002/Roll 25: 368K
Ancient/Originals/2002/Roll 25: 320K (this is correct)
Merged library (iP6)
BadLibrary/Originals/2002/Roll 25: 368K (switch original and modified)
BadLibrary/2002/10/26/Originals (this is weird, another originals?)
Merged library, different approach (iP5)
NewMerge/2002/10/2/: 368K
NewMerge/2002/10/26/Originals: 320K (this is correct)
As above, but iP6 with 1000 "recovered" images.
NewMerge/Recovered Photos/IMG_0092.JPG: 320K
NewMerge/Originals/2002/Roll 25/IMG_0092.JPG: 368
[3] As per [1], but now I upgraded each of the 3 iPhoto Libraries separately to iPhoto 6. Two went very quickly, one took several hours and found 40 'recovered' images (all were unwanted duplicates). Then I merged to one new Library using IPLM. The test image was now handled correctly:
AllMerge/Originals/2002/Roll 11: 320K
AllMerge/Modified/2002/Roll 11: 368K
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