- Tap Stores
- Find store where you have reservation.
- Click Store then Genius Bar. From here you can create a new appointment, or cancel or reschedule an existing appointment.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
How to cancel or reschedule an Apple Genius Bar Reservation
Friday, January 06, 2012
OS X opens Aperture every time I start
Every time I logged into my Lion machine, Aperture started up.
I checked the Login items option on my user account. Nothing there.
Then I figured it was a bug with OS X 10.7 Lion resume. I deleted all the saved states, including Aperture's (Delete Specific Application Saved States from Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Resume).
Didn't help.
Finally, something clued me. This wasn't a new Lion problem, it was the old 'launch Aperture when iPhone connected' bug. Same thing can happen with iPhoto or Image Capture or Preview or "Auto Importer". This particular machine is connected to a USB hub that had some iPhones attached.
I don't know the proper place to control this peculiar OS X behavior, but I do know it can be controlled through Image Capture. I opened that app, and clicked on the iPhones icons on the left side. For each one I set 'Connecting this iPhone' to 'No application'.
Problem solved.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
10.7 Lion: Automation and AppleScript
Surprise! Via Macintouch we learn that Mac OS X 10.7 Lion has Automation features.
It is weird that Apple's official Automation documentation is hosted on macosxautomation.com which is "not hosted by Apple". Even though it's seemingly an Apple site (with a broken icon on page 1).
Even weirder for all of us who figured AppleScript and Automator were dead, is that Lion has a lot of AS/Automator features. Some show up on Apple's Lion Features page, but many do not. Given rumors about Apple's new focus on textbooks and iPads, it's noteworthy that Automator has many new ePub support features.
Apple is eccentric.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
WordPress doesn't have a built-in table editor
The WordPress visual editor doesn't include tables. Neither does Blogger of course, nor, for that matter, MarsEdit.
FrontPage had terrific table support in 1995. WindowsLive Writer has decent support now. Otherwise, web tables doesn't get a lot of love. RapidWeaverdoesn't do tables. Sandvoxisn't any better and neither is Apple's abandoned iWeb.
SeaMonkey inherits the table technology built into Netscape Composer in the 1990s. TextEdit does tables (!) and (unlike Pages) will export HTML. It's hardly a web page editor though.
DreamWeaver does tables - and costs $400 (though I qualify for the $150 teacher edition).
It's too bad. HTML tables are really brilliant. I'm guessing implementation is very expensive especially when tables are combined with CSS; the market doesn't support this level of complexity.
Parental Controls on iOS and OS X: what we do now
A year or two ago I wrote about how Google and Apple have both failed Parental controls. Since then things have not gottenmuch better.
In response to a comment on an old post, this is the compromise I use for the children's accounts on iOS and OS X.
- Google is blocked. I find Bing searches easier to track and control because it doesn't use https.
- Children get our family Google Apps domain email through mail.app IMAP, not through Gmail.
- Children access our family Calendars from their iPhones, not from the desktop. (I could use iCal on the desktop, but iCal is one of the worst pieces of software garbage ever produced.)
- A 'Family and Learning' account can be accessed at any time. It has very limited net access, has WorldBook, has apps, iTunes, etc.
- Each child has their own account. Parental control is set to 'automatic' with a few domains specifically allowed. I was never able to get domain specific filtering to work. After they are on the computer I review their browser history with them. They could of course delete specific browser pages, but I don't believe they have (the computer is very visible and public). I stopped reviewing log files because Apple's log file review UI is almost as crappy as iCal.
- Because iOS apps have so many back doors to webkit, particularly via ads, we don't use any 'free' apps. Safari is disabled. For now we allow iTunes despite the content it provides -- the boys are getting older.
This works for us, but Apple's Parental Control support is lazy and incompetent. They simply don't care.
Android/Google, as best I can tell, are worse. Note that Google Gmail explicitly states all US users must be 14 or over (COPPA partly, but really this is a Google copout). i don't think Android OS includes any default parental controls.
I don't know how Windows 7 does. I suspect it's a bit better. I can't find anything about parental controls in Metro/Windows Mobile.
See also:
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Manipulating JSON data in a traditional relational database (Microsoft Access, FileMaker Pro, Converters)
While I wait to see if Pinboard can fix their Google Reader JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) import, and while I consider Google Reader Share JSON import into WordPress, I'm also exploring JSON import/export tools. If, for example, I could import JSON into FileMaker Pro or other data management tool I might be able to manipulate the archive and produce a more useful WordPress import.
StackOverflow and its kin have a good set of references on this topic. Note that CSV can manage only very simple JSON; we really want native importers similar to what Microsoft Access tried with XML [1]. I suspect one approach might be to convert JSON to XML then use Microsoft Access 2010 import.
Incidentally, this topic veered off unexpectedly into something that's actually relevant to my work life and a Strata conference I'm attending in a few weeks.
As of today here are some of my pointers ...
- What is “JSON” and what does it have to do with distributed computing? « DivConq: great reference (see below for DivConq series on Access)
- JSON - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: I liked the comparison to XML [1]
- JSON.org: points to libraries
- 18.2. json — JSON encoder and decoder — Python v2.7.2 documentation: If I have to use a programming library to manipulate Google Reader json files my choices are probably Python or Javascript and I prefer Python.
- conversion - Convert JSON format to CSV format (for MS Excel) - Stack Overflow: JavaScript
- convert from json to csv using python - Stack Overflow
- Download JSON data and convert it to CSV using Python - Stack Overflow
- python - Convert JSON to CSV - Stack Overflow
- javascript - Python - convert csv file to JSON - Stack Overflow
For me this DivConq series was particularly useful because it placed JSON nosql processing in a familiar context - Microsoft Access.
- What is “JSON” and what does it have to do with distributed computing? « DivConq: best single reference for my purposes
- Export a Microsoft Access Database to JSON (Northwind Example) « DivConq
- Why Cassandra « DivConq
- Installing and Running the Cassandra Database « DivConq
- Migrate a Relational Database Structure into a NoSQL Cassandra Structure (Part I) « DivConq
- Migrate a Relational Database into Cassandra (Part II – Northwind Planning) « DivConq
- Migrate a Relational Database into Cassandra (Part III – Northwind Conversion) « DivConq
- Migrate a Relational Database into Cassandra (Part IV – Northwind Import) « DivConq
Maybe I should start using Apache Cassandra to manipulate my Google Reader JSON archive and prepare it for WordPress processing. For example ... Cassandra Development Environment in Mac OS Snow Leopard « BigDiver.
[1] I doubt JSON has truly significant advantages over XML as a data interchange format (see JSON Example and wikipedia xml/json). Alas, nobody asked me. Fashion is more powerful than geeks imagine.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Pinboard imports Google Reader JSON exports
Pinboard is the first service I know of that will import a Google Reader Social (shared item) JSON file:
Pinboard: howto page
Google Reader Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the page. Select the Import/Export tab. Choose either items you have starred or items you have shared and click the Reader JSON link (the rightmost column)
When I stumble unexpectedly over something I've been looking for, I look for who else found it. Then I add them to my reading list. Google gave me only these references:
- Google Reader Shared Items -> Pinboard, FeedDemon, Send to Pinboard… « cmiles – blog 11/5/2011
- Pinboard Blog - Nov 2011 - "... Added importers from Firefox JSON format and Google Reader. Wrote scripts for tarring up user archives in human-readable form so people can download them. Removed Google Reader support (RIP, Google Reader, I'll mourn you til I join you)...
- Gordon's Tech: Recovering Shared Reader items: JSON import into Wordpress
- Gordon's Tech: Sharing and annotation: Instapaper's supporting apps
Update: I paid my $10 and imported by Google Reader shared item JSON file. I have 3 days to cancel. I used Amazon payments.
Here are the results; as of today the most recent post is 7 weeks old. I may also try importing the JSON for my Reader shared items, which may produce some duplicates.
- http://pinboard.in/u:jgordon - my pinboard collection - really my Google Reader shared items. Note my user name is a part of the URL, so it's nice that 'jgordon' was available. Posts show a title, a bookmark, and an excerpt. I think my GR annotations precede the excerpt. It's more like Google Reader Social than I'd expected.
- http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:jgordon/ - the public feed for my collection. I viewed this in Google Reader; gave me a real sense of deja vu. Alas, GR only pulled in 44 items.
I'm still studying the results. So far Pinboard is only showing a fraction of the JSON file, there are not tags, and every item shows with date of '9 weeks ago'. I don't see a convenient way to navigate across the entire collection.
Update 12/31/11: Pinboard has now imported 2 months of Reader shares - about 1100 items or roughly 1% of the total.