Trouble with The TEDinator

One of the weekly doses of encouragement, motivation, and inner growth I take in are the regular presentations on TED.

However, I don’t yet have a data-plan on my growing-older mobile phone and I cannot always count on WiFi availability running around.

What does work is downloading TED talks locally and then keeping them on my laptop for later viewing or conversion/transfer to my phone.

To aid in that process I have been relying on an awesome tool called The TEDinator coded by Obin Shah.

Obin updated it back in May to version 3.0 and it really has rocked.

So when I recently learned about an older 2005 TED presentation, Richard St. John's 8 secrets of success - TED.com, I went to The TEDinator to fetch it…and was greeted with this error:

The TEDinator error was:

Ouch!!! We just had a Boo-Boo!!
Length cannot be less than zero.
Parameter name: length

Granted, at least Obin coded it as a “kind” error. That was a nice touch.

I checked the settings and everything looked cool.

Usually the primary problem I find with these “download” helpers is that the provider has changed their URL patch format slightly requiring the developer to tweak it again to keep up.

I checked the version and it was listed as Version - 3.0.0.0

So I then hopped over to Obin’s site Scenario-Solution to look for an updated version.

No dice. Still listed as V3.0 from July 1, 2012.

However, I was curious to see if others had been running into the same issue and dove into the comments.

I found a brief thread from August 30th about someone else having the same issue.

There wasn’t any mention of a fix, but on a whim I went ahead and downloaded The TEDinator again from the link on the page which hosts the download over on bitbucket.

And the downloads worked again!

So what up?

I checked the version number of the working one.

Still the same version 3.0.0.0.

However the binaries are clearly different. 

First the non-working TEDinator properties:

File version 3.0.0.0
Size: 679 KB
Original filename: TEDinator.exe

Next the working TEDinator properties:

File version 3.0.0.0
Size: 601 KB
Original filename: TEDinator.exe

Clearly they are different binaries despite the same internal file version listing.

I am a bit surprised that Obin didn’t seem to clearly post information that a version change was made. This might be confusing other TEDinator fans who are running into the same problem.

Solution: Just hop over and redownload the “updated” version 3.0.0.0 TEDinator binary and you should be good to go.

I’m hoping that Obin will kindly provide some brief changelog or explanation as well as bump the version number to be more clear internally or from his TEDinator page that this is an updated version to fix a problem with the older one. Some of us geeks like that sort of thing and find it helpful.

TEDinator V3.0.0.0 (the updated one): Highly Valca recommended.

Cheers!

Claus V.

Bonus: Richard St.John also provides some motivational wallpapers based on the principles in his “Eight Secrets of Success” presentation.

I like the iconic style of them from a graphic design perspective and may need to come up with my own custom wallpaper based on my own set of core values and processes.

Originally spotted via The Eight Secrets of Success, According to TED Attendees - Lifehacker