The OS X Image Capture/iPhoto EXIF orientation tag bug bites Apple TV

Some photos may not be rotated correctly when viewed on Apple TV is an old bug with EXIF orientation tags in Image Capture and/or iPhoto. I don't think Apple every acknowledged they'd messed up the EXIF tags for thousands of photos across thousands of customers (eg. millions of corrupted EXIF tags).

Apple should provide a utility to repair the damage.

Primary Keys: IDs versus GUIDs

I need to get a life. This actually made sense to me:

Coding Horror: Primary Keys: IDs versus GUIDs

...You can generate IDs anywhere, instead of having to roundtrip to the database...

The article, comments, and links are a good mini-tutorial on a relatively esoteric aspects of managing data -- how should one generate a unique identifier? This one advantage solves a problem for my work life ...

A use for my Apple remote

Sometimes the kids don't want to turn off the MacBook when their time is up. Now I can zap it from across the room ...

Stupid Apple Remote Tricks | Macinstruct

...Simply hold down the Play/Pause button and your Mac will go to sleep. To wake up your Mac, press any button on the remote...

Our Mac screens lock when they sleep, so this is a sleep and lock function for us.

(found via TUAW)

My singular war with Adobe Acrobat Update Manager

[9/25/08: skip to the end for Adobe's recommendation for OS X users]

For years I've had trouble with Adobe Acrobat Update Manager. I think it's something to do with the version Adobe distributes for large enterprises. The updates don't work, and I get messages with words like these:

"Adobe Acrobat Update Manager" "resuming a download" "file on the server" has changed

Every month or two I try a Google search looking for a fix, but I never find anything. I'm the only person in the world hit by this bug.

If you find this post when searching, you're probably in the same club. Send me a note and maybe we can figure this one out...

Update: apparently all I had to do fix this was blog about. Today I got the usual update manager dialog, but this time it actually downloaded a fragment of a file before it quit. The file was broken, but the file name was visible:

Ac705PrP_efgj.exe

A Google search on that pointed to an Adobe download link. The download went very, very slowly, but the file was intact. I was able to then update Acrobat Pro to 7.05. After restarting Adobe Update Manager tried AGAIN to do the update to 7.0.5, but this time it downloaded the file where I told it to and it did the install (nothing was changed since I was now at 7.0.5). So it's working -- for the first time in ages. So now I'll see what happens.

Update 11/26/07: This Adobe download link provides one with all the 7 series updates. A few related tips uncovered in this latest version of the adobe wars:

• be sure that you choose to retain the "installer files". If you don't, life will be heck. During the initial install there's an option to delete these. Don't.
• If you try to be careful, and you don't install Adobe's troubling plug-ins, you also don't install the default Adobe PDF printer! I chose to install the plug-in for Office and it's probably not a bad idea to install the Visio plug-in too. I avoide all Outlook 2003 plug-ins because I think Outlook 2003's add-in (plug-in) architecture is very unstable.
• Be very careful not to install Adobe's automatic updater. It's pure evil.
• Adobe 7.0.5 was the only cumulative updater. So a fresh Acrobat install of 7.0 Professional is very painful requiring multiple updates and reboots.

There's a good reason I don't let Adobe on my OS X machines -- neither reader nor Acrobat.

Update 9/25/08: Incredibly Adobe Updater still has the same problem, but a helpful reader did get a pretty quick answer from Adobe:

I found your page when searching for the same problem you had with your Adobe Updater (...file on the server has changed). I didn't see a solution so I ended up contacting Adobe and they responded in 4 hours with this:

The following steps will clear the Update Manager preferences so that the utility will recheck what updates have been installed:

1) Close all applications.
2) From the Finder select Go > Home.
3) Browse into ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe
4) Move the folder named Updater5 to the Trash.
To launch the Update Manager manually:
/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Utilities/Adobe Updater5/Adobe Updater.app

My personal spam blacklist: Gourmet, SONY, Canon and more

One of the more recent developments in the war on spam is the rise of spam from legitimate companies with real email addresses. These include companies I've previously liked (Canon) as well as real companies I've never done business with.

The good news is that, for this group and for political organizations, Blacklists work great. You block their addresses, and they don't bother you any more.

This is my personal Blacklist as of today. Canon is the newest addition. To get on here a legitimate company or political organization has to keep sending me spam despite my clicking a remove-me link. If a persistently spamming corporation doesn't have a one click remove-me solution they go right to the list.

antec.com
buy.com
canonmarketing@cits.canon.com
condenast.us
dailyupdates.org
emaillabs.com
gourmet.com
itw.itworld.com
mail.sonymediasoftware.com
mail.united.com
newsroom@elsevier.com
peakperformancellc.com
theclubbingforum.net (no, I have never been a customer)
travelmole.net

I'll update this post as I add more brick and mortar corporations with serious spam problems. Of this list I was most impressed with Gourmet.com -- they were relentless spammers. SONY media was almost as bad -- heck, come to think of it, they were all really bad. Canon went to the Dark Side about two months ago.

FullerScreen for Firefox

It's supposedly Windows/Linux only, but I really want this for OS X. I'll give it a try and see if it blows up!

Disruptive Innovations - Products - FullerScreen 

Yet another add-on to Mozilla Firefox from Disruptive Innovations... This extension enhances the Full Screen mode into a really full screen mode, hiding the remaining toolbars and statusbar and making them visible again when the mouse pointer hits an edge of the screen.

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.