Speeding up my sluggish XP Fusion VM

When I gave up my last XP machine, I created a VM from the disk image. It worked, but the performance was poor. My XP VM on an i5 iMac was quite a bit slower than a Windows 2000 VM on my much less powerful MacBook.

It took me a while to speed things up. I removed some custom settings for the Windows swap file and I gave the VM more cores. I upgraded my system memory that helped too; I gave the VM more RAM.

Even so, I could hear much more disk activity than I liked and file saves were often slow. I don't use the VM for much, so I took my time on fixing this.

More recently, I got some help from VMware KB: Troubleshooting Fusion virtual machine performance for disk issues.

I found the VM had inherited 35% fragmentation from the old disk (I'd also made it too large). I used XP's built in defrag to fix that. Then I ran VMWare Fusion's cleanup utility, and I flipped my VM from 2GB files to a single large file.

It's fine now; as fast as I need it to be (not much!).

Tweeting Google Reader Shares and Notes via feedburner

I've been using twitterfeed to tweet my Google Reader Shared Items for about a year (via jgordonshares now).

It's mostly worked, albeit with the limitations of Google's oddball Reader shared item feed. Recently, however, I've been concerned about Twitterfeed's understandable need to monetize their service. It's not the monetization I mind, it's that I'm a passenger wherever they go.

So I poked around a bit. I reviewed some services I'd looked at previously, including RSS Graffiti, but they didn't give me the warm fuzzies. Then I learned I could use a services I already know, Google's Feedburner, to tweet a feed ...

• How to Auto Tweet your blog Post using Google Feedburner
• Official announcement

I configured feedburner to turn my Google Reader Generated Page feed ...

http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F06457543619879090746%2Fstate%2Fcom.google%2Fbroadcast

into a Feedburner feed:

feed://feeds.feedburner.com/faughnanreadershares

It took several tries to get it to work. I repeatedly got an "internal error" message even when I provided the shared item web address (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/jfaughnan) and let Feedburner discover the feed. Just as I was about to give up, it worked.

The Feedburner version of the Google Shared Items feed has some interesting properties.  For example, my Reader shared item notes now appear as inline text. I can also get odd links to posted notes like this one:

http://www.google.com/reader/item/tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/4ba48c42d43b00ab

From Feedburner it was easy to link the output from this Atom feed to my jordonshares Twitter stream. I'm using the following services there ...

Optimize

- Title/description burner

- BrowserFriendly

Publicize

Socialize - Twitter

I wonder how long this will work, but for now I'm using Feedburner instead of Twitterfeed to post my Google Reader Shared items and notes to Twitter.

See also (lots of experiments!)

• More of me: My Google Reader Shared Item Feed (10/09)
• Loving Google Reader - Shared post feed (9/08)
• Gordon's Tech: Google reader shared items to Facebook (3/09)
• Filtering my Google Reader Share with Yahoo Pipes (9/08)
• Google Reader: Experiments with notes, following and sharing (11/09)
• Social wrestling: Google Reader, Twitterfeed, Blogger and Facebook (4/10)
• FreeMyFeed - Getting Twitter feed to Google Reader (4/09 - a different use of Feedburner)
• Reimagining realtime focalcast communication – Buzz and Twitter 2.0 (3/09)
• How do I share my Google Reader Shared Items Feed and process it via Yahoo Pipes? (9/08)
• Twitter feed for my Google Shared Items (9/10)

Migrating from Blogger to WordPress - a guide

I need to move from Blogger to WordPress (via Dreamhost).

I'm studying how to do this, starting with these guides:

• The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress | MamaBlogga (8/09)
• Moving From Blogger To Wordpress – Maintaining Permalinks, Traffic & SEO (1/22/2009)
• Blogger.com (BlogSpot) To Wordpress Migration Professional Service (3/24/10)
• Blogger To Wordpress Migration Service (current)
• Blogger To Wordpress Traffic & Permalinks Redirection Plugin (1/2008)
• How to migrate from blogspot to wordpress with 301 permanent redirection without leaving traffic behind (4/22/2009)

Happily many have gone before me. I'll study these posts and make the move in a few weeks.

It will be a great pleasure not to have to deal with Google's paragraph, rich text editing, anf formatting problems any more.

Blogger's 3 year paragraph debacle - the case of universal line break conversion

(Post title revised to reflect updates.)

I'm increasingly running across old posts that I've not touched where paragraphs have now vanished.

Not content with ruining formatting on newer posts, Google (blogger) is is now blowing up older posts.

I need to find an alternative to Blogger.

Update: I ask at Blogger's help group, but, based on the questions there, I doubt it will get any attention. Here's a sample of the damage. I have hundreds to thousands of old posts like this ...

Update 10/29/10: This has been going on since 2007. Three years of screwing up.

Update 10/29/10b: I've figured out part of this, thanks to a hint in that 2007 article. Blogger has a feature in settings that turns out to have devastating side-efects:

I believe the default setting is "convert line breaks". I changed it to NO to see if non-conversion would help with Google Composer's longstanding paragraph and format mangling. It never occurred to me that I was changing a setting that would be applied to every post in my blog. I reversed this setting on tech.kateva.org and my old posts now have line feeds again.

On notes.kateva.org I'd never changed the setting, so it wasn't disrupted.

Incidentally, I have two new insights on what's wrong with Blogger's various editors. MarsEdit's HTML view illustrated the second bug:

1. Blogger's rich text editor paragraph controls get confused when a paragraph begins with bold text. Frequently, but not always, this triggers an extra line feed.
2. Blogger's editor sometimes inserts <div> tags when it should insert <p> tags. In the rich text editor these create paragraphs, but browser behavior is variable. To quote Jennifer Kyrnin: The <div> tag is not a replacement <p> tag. The <p> tag is for paragraphs, only, while the <div> tag defines more general divisions within a document. Others have been confused about this distinction.

Update 10/29/10c: It appears that the editor is inserting two <br> tags and a <div> tag instead of a <p> tag. Both the current standard editor and the draft editor do this, I think the old editor might have inserted a single BR tag and a DIV tag. This is a terrible practice. See this Stack Overflow discussion and this one.

Update 10/30/10: The MarsEdit forum has a 2008 post on Blogger's flailing about with paragraph breaks, there's a companion thread in the Blogger developer forum. The developer group is only moderately interesting, it's been invaded by desperate end users seeking support. There is a "new developer relations engineer", perhaps because his predecessor was last seen drinking heavily in an Alaskan bar.

I wonder if there's a fundamental flaw in Atom Pub 1.0 that somehow led to Blogger's twisted implementation of the paragraph.

Annals of irritating design: Apple's auto-linking of iPhone contacts

When a computer / smartphone syncs to multiple address services, you will end up with multiple entries for some people.

It's easy to imagine clever ways to address this problem (though most are probably patented -- even though they are trivial to reinvent). That's not what Apple did.

Instead Apple "links" (merges when viewed in iPhone) based on matching first and last names. That's a formula for high error rates if you have a large number of contacts. (Though I admit it probably works for most people who have smaller number of Contacts.)

This rule is "sensitive" (will favor merges) but not "specific" (high number of false positives).

I ran into it today, and I deleted information before I realized what was going on.

Now you're warned. If you see a screwy looking contact in the Contacts.app, first look for the "unlink" button. It will appear when iOS has done its automated "merging". Click it before you start deleting apparently nonsensical information.

iPhone HDR - why there are two pictures (and Apple's updated user guide)

I tried using the iPhone 4 HDR feature, but I couldn't understand why I got two pictures.

I expected one image made up of the merger of two images with different exposure levels.

Apple's web site explains ...

 Apple - iPhone 4 - About the 5-megapixel camera with LED flash

... After selecting HDR, just point iPhone 4 at your subject and shoot. iPhone 4 automatically captures three photos of the scene — each with different exposure levels. Then iPhone 4 layers the shots together to create a single photo that combines the best elements of each shot and more accurately represents the wide range of light in the scene. Both the regular shot and the HDR photo appear in the Camera Roll.

I assume the first picture is the standard exposure, the high and low are discarded, and the second is the merged image.

It would be "nice" to have some more documentation. There's nothing in my iOS4 user guide about HDR. However, it turns out, the Apple website has a different iOS4 user guide. It reads on page 121:

On iPhone 4, you can turn on HDR to take HDR (high dynamic range) photos. HDR blends the best parts of three separate exposures into a single photo. For best results, iPhone and the subject should be stationary.

Turn HDR on or off: Tap the HDR button at the top of the screen. The button indicates whether HDR is on or off. (HDR is off by default.)

Note: When HDR is on, the flash is turned off. With HDR, you can save both the normal-exposure version and the HDR version of a photo in the Camera Roll, or save just the HDR version. By default, both are saved.

Choose whether to save both the normal-exposure version and the HDR version of photos: In Settings, choose Photos, then turn Keep Normal Photo on or off. If the setting is turned off, only the HDR version of a photo is saved.

If you save both versions, [HDR icon] appears in the upper-left corner of the HDR photo when you view the photos in Camera Roll (if the controls are visible).

My June 23, 2010 iO4 user guide is 18MB and 243 pages, the one I just downloaded is 19.7 MB and 258 pages. The part numbers on the last pages are different

• original: 019-1838/2010-06-22
• latest: 019-1891/2010-09

So Apple updated the manual in September. The update included a new HDR section.

I wonder if I'm the only person who's ever noticed this.

Small discoveries in tech

Fragments of things ...

• Some corporations have stopped paying for remote employee business phones. Employees are signing up for Google Voice. They get much better service for "free", and they now own their business number. When they leave they take it with them. These corporations are outsourcing a business function to Google. There will be unintended consequences.
• In 10.6 QuickTime Player will trim video fragments. This is old news, but new to me. I hadn't noticed. It's a big help. Now I can take the 300MB videos Emily and the kids make and trim them in seconds to a fragment I can file in iPhoto. This is the kind of high speed video editing I can manage. AVI inputs are saved as QuickTime movie. One bug -- no date/time metadata! I need a utility that will change the file creation and modification time stamps to match the true video acquisition date. Metadata standards for video are a mess.
• Yesterday I wanted to conference in a remote speaker to a lecture. In under 10 minutes I plugged external speakers into a WiFi connected laptop and called his cell from Gmail's Talk/Phone capability. He gave the 10 minute presentation from his airplane seat. Everyone could hear him easily. It was all a bit supernatural.
• The latest version of iTunes does quite a good job simultaneously synchronizing multiple iOS devices. That's an improvement. It still has some problems when users accounts switch however.
• Google Voice quality to Canada nose dived a few weeks ago, but is very good now. The improvement corresponded with switching from using the dial-up method to establishing a connection using GV Mobile+ on my iPhone. Could be coincidence, but the call setup is different. This service has saved me about $2,500 -- and cost AT&T that much. I'm now seeing non-geeks using Google Voice. I wonder when this will impact AT&T.
• Apple killed the 5.25" floppy, the 3.25" diskette, the serial and parallel cable, and the CD (data and music). Now Apple is killing the DVD and the hard drive. I wonder if they're going to try to kill the unborn USB 3. Ruthless.
• The power, value, and significance of Apple's FairPlay DRM is grossly underestimated. In technology as in politics some of the most important discussions are completely invisible. In my 50s I am more intrigued by what is not said than what is said.
• Blogger's rich text editor paragraph/line spacing problems are getting worse, but maybe that's a sign of progress. At this point I'll take any straw.
• FaceTime for OS X is a big deal. The big fight now is whether a future carrier will allow it over a 4G network (WiFi only now). Sprint?
• Microsoft, Dell and HP are walking dead. That's shocking. Is Intel next?
• The MacBook Air 11", iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch all provide overlapping value. The iOS devices have much better Exchange/ActiveSync synchronization services, the Air runs other software I prefer. I have an iPhone and I'm a geek, so the Air is under serious consideration.
• OS X management of mounted drives on a WiFi network sucks.
• First family trip with each kid one iPhone equivalent. I don't like it -- much better to have the kids watch one DVD. More on this in another post I think.