ScribeFire: a Firefox extension blog editor

I've been surprised by how few good blogging tools there are. There's BlogJet (disappointing new release) and Microsoft's Live Writer for Windows, but none of the OS X tools I've used (Ecto, MarsEdit) have worked adequately with Blogger [1]. I most often use Blogger's BlogThis! bookmarklet, but there's no similar bookmarklet for our corporate Community Server blog tool.

I'm one of those weird users who likes paying for good software, but there's nothing to buy that I like. (I paid for BlogJet 2.0 and I'm not a happy customer just now.)

So I'm interested in this Firefox extension: ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox). As an extension it should work for OS X and XP. I'll update this post with my experience.

[1] In particular they expect that the user always posts from one machine that holds a database of posts. Sorry, doesn't work like that.

Update: It's not too bad, but when I tried to edit a post it created two posts. There are better options for Windows, but I might persist to see what can be done for OS X.

Update: I thought it was double posting on edits, but I was ignoring the 'post as edit' button. That did the trick. So far it works well for OS X and blogger. I'm very interested and will post more.

Convert WMV (Windows video) to MP3 (or AAC) audio

Our corporate audio-conferencing vendor records phone conferences as WMV -- a video format. Since we'll listen to these in the car (iPod, car stereo, etc) this is not very functional.

I had a hard time finding out how to convert them into MP3, but once I'd figured it out I somehow found this article: convert wmv to mp3. I swear the Google search didn't work 3 weeks ago!

In any case, this is how I did it using stuff built into XP and iTunes for Windows:

1. Open in XP's built in Windows Movie Maker. Yes, it's on your drive! Right click on a WMV file and choose Edit.
2. Add as a clip to Movie Maker. Despite step #1 you need to do this manually.
3. Save move, but choose the audio-format only (WMA). Choose as high as you can because you're going to encode it again. (Click link to see options)
4. In iTunes, using advanced setup options, change iTunes import from AAC to 64kbps VBR MP3. (see also)
5. Drag and drop to iTunes. iTunes will conver to MP3. Drag and drop from desktop to upload as desired.

Update 1/17/08: I think MovieMaker may have changed since I first wrote this post. The trick now is epxlained here. Drag the imported movie to the Audio/Music timeline (NOT the audio timeline -- the post is wrong there). Now choose Save Movie File, then "My Computer" then "Show More Choices" link then "Other Settings" then choose "High Quality Audio".

Aperture: working on images that aren't accessible

This one blog post convinced me of the value of managing images outside of Aperture:

Editing Offline Images - O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

... The best part of this strategy is that you can still do quite a bit of work on your images even when your large external drives aren’t hooked up. You can’t make image adjustments to your photographs, but you can keyword and rate. This means you can edit your shoots down to your selects without the master images being available. And, you can also figure out which images should be rejected and deleted out of your image library forever...

This is a huge advantage for me. I can work on metadata from a laptop without the fear of losing a massive image library.

Configuring an OS X Mac box when simplicity is strongly preferred

I configured a Mac Mini for my mother last December (2006), and wrote up my configuration notes as I went along. It was a harder task than I'd expected, the modern Mac is very engaging, but it is not as user friendly as, say, MacOS Classic 6.

Configuring an OS X Mac box when simplicity is strongly preferred

... This is a very terse guide based on notes I took when I was configuring a Mac Mini for my mother's use. I also wrote up a less terse tutorial for here, a PDF version is here.

If you're setting up a machine for someone who needs a very simple and user-focused system you will find some ideas here. If you're not a Mac guru, however, this will not be very readable...

This has worked pretty well for my mother over all. It's been a very reliable setup. She has limited vision, so I paid a friend $25 (to cover his costs) for a massive 19" CTR and we run that at 1024x768. I think the next step for her would be to buy a 39" HD TV and use it as a monitor from 4 feet away ...

I'll point the Take Control eBooks folks to it as I think this would be a great eBook topic:

Expose tips and tricks

macosxhints.com - 10.4: A couple of Expose tips has some interesting tips in the post and comments alike. I didn't follow them all, but I'll give them a try on my Macs and update this with any I like.

My network MFC scanner works with OS X 10.4.9 Image capture

A year ago I bought a Brother [1] networkable multifunction device the MFC-7820N. I wrote a series of short articles all stuffed into one blog post about various issues and solutions for XP and OS X. I like the machine, but it's strictly for geeks. We have a long way to go before this type of device works reliably for the non-geek [2].

Anyway, today I discovered OS X Image Capture will pull in a scan over the network! Neat. I don't know if would always do that or if it's the result of various updates. Anyway, I added a note on how to do it at the end of the old blog posting.

[1] There's no connection to the typewriter company my father new in the 1950s or so. All these old brand names have been bought up by Chinese companies.

[2] I think Apple would have to resell it with their software to make it regular person friendly. At twice the price of course!

Unsanity.org claims every OS X update is a game of russian roulette

It's an incredibly claim, made by a company that specializes in an OS X "hack" (called a haxie). The claim is that each time you apply a significant OS X update you run the risk of being hit by a known OS destroying bug.

It sounds like my usual pre-update practice is not a bad way to avoid this alleged bug:

1. Download full update for major updates so it's stored locally.
2. Do a "safe start" to trigger the routine diagnostics then shutdown.
   
3. Reboot machine into my admin account (no startup items, simple account).
4. Run the update and walk away from the machine.
   
5. When the update is done, restart.
6. After this restart is done do a full shutdown.

By contrast, Gruber's is more minimalist. He logs out, then logs in holding the shift key (suppresses startup items -- I didn't know that one!). My admin account has no startup items so I don't need to worry about them.

Gruber and the Unsanity article both agree that you should not do anything while an update is running. As is often the case, the harsh part of the following is the claim that Apple has known about this bug for at well over a year -- and hasn't fixed it.

Unsanity.org: Shock and Awe: How Installing Apple's Updates can Render Your Mac Unbootable and How You Can Prevent it

... When you see the "Optimizing System Performance" phase of a software update, Mac OS X is really updating prebinding. Updating prebinding has a very, very nasty bug in it (look at _dyld_update_prebinding). If multiple processes are updating prebinding at the same time, then it is possible for a system file to be completely zero'd out...

... I've been tracking this particular bug for about 18 months now. Most of the real "random" failures reported on various Mac OS X "troubleshooting" sites after a user has installed an Apple software update are actually manifestations of this bug...

... Every single time you install an update to Mac OS X whether it be an iTunes update, a QuickTime update, an update for daylight saving time, a security update, an Airport update, or an actual Mac OS X update, you can be hit by this bug. In order to prevent yourself from being smacked in the face by this bug, follow this simple rule: When "Optimize System Performance" appears during the update process do not touch your computer and definitely do not launch any applications. Just back away from your computer box as if it were a swarm of bees...

... The worst sign you've been hit by this bug is an inability to boot after installing a Mac OS X update. Sometimes the little wheel will just keep on spinning. Other times you'll get to the point where you should see your desktop but all you see is a blue screen (because [the] loginwindow is repeatedly crashing due to a missing library). The "easiest" sign is an application will crash either at launch or when you do a specific action and the console.log /Applications/Utilities/Console (or a crash log) will spew out a message about dyld that says: "Reason: no suitable image found." and then sometimes "file to short" [sic]. The file is too short because it is zero-length...

... This bug has been filed with Apple, along with steps to reproduce it 100% of the time (at least in my testing). It was marked as a duplicate, which means the bug was already in Apple's system before I filed it. And since it is duplicate, I don't know what is going on with it. Yes, before anyone mentions it, I know prebinding is deprecated. However, Mac OS X still does it when installing Apple updates...

The full article has some diagnostic steps to try and discusses recovery . I think for most people recovery is to boot in firewire mode, remove data, and reinstall.

If this if for real, and it's really been 18 months, Apple is not showing its best face ...