iPhone mini-linkfest

Just a quick post for some iPhone notes.

I finally got around to upgrading the default iPhone calendar app to Agenda Calendar. I liked the interface and layout views and that it was able to pull/sync from the default Reminders app that comes with the iPhone. I tweaked a few of the settings and what isn’t clearly evident from the app page is that there are quite a few alternative themes included if you don’t quite like the black/white look. It took me no-time at all to get up and going with the UI and at just a $0.99 price point, it is hard to go wrong.

I seriously considered both the Fantastical and the Calvetica Calendar apps before settling on Agenda. Fantastical really, really looked good I totally get the to-do view appointment layout. However according to the reviews this version didn’t sync with the iOS Reminders so that was a bit of a drawback. Calvetica is very nice looking and I love the bars-on-calendar visual for appointments but the price point was a bit steeper than I was willing to bite into.

Gmail - free - (Apple Store) - just got bumped to version 2.0 this week. This is a very refreshing update as it now supports multiple Gmail accounts in the same app. That was something I was wishing for. I like the UI and after using it less than a week find that it has become one of the most-used apps on my iPhone. Love it. Now I only wish it had a “unified” Inbox view option so you can see all your incoming messages in one place rather than having to tap a few times to switch between your different accounts. More reviews below:

• Gmail for iOS Gets a Completely New Look, Finally Supports Multiple Accounts - Lifehacker
• The Gmail app for iPhone and iPad: version 2.0 - Official Gmail Blog
• Gmail 2.0 For iOS: It Doesn't Suck Anymore - ReadWrite
• Gmail for iOS gets a major update - BetaNews
• Gmail for iPhone and iPad gets redesigned, adds multiple account support, more - iMore.com
• Hands-on: Gmail 2.0 for iOS is more Google-Plus-ified than ever (Updated) - Ars Technica

About the same time, we also have a nice YouTube -free - (Apple Store) app update as well. I didn’t have any complaints about the first version but I see they have made some changes to the category pick and a few other things that might appeal to some.  No biggie either way to me. I enjoy using it pretty well. iMore.com has a quick review and AddictiveTips blog goes into a more detailed review as well.  Don’t forget Vimeo for iPhone also has a new update (Vimeo - free - Apple Store) that works nicely.

I still haven’t read an iPhone 5 manual at all and I’m sure there are a lot of navigational and usage things that I’m missing out on. So until that time comes, I’m collecting and reading a lot of tips and trick posts from iPhone focus sites such as over at iMore.com.

• How to replace the volume buttons in an iPhone 4S - iMore.com
• How to manually transfer media to your iPhone and iPad with iTunes 11 -iMore.com
• How to fix auto-brightness issues with iOS 6 - iMore.com

Likewise, I’m liking the new iTunes 11 release but as ArsTechnica points out, it’s a bit of a handful to take it all in: iTunes 11 review: Simple is as simple does - Ars Technica

Finally, there are bunch of quality iPhone wallpapers out there if you know where to find them.  Because of the standard square icon size of the apps, depending on the number of apps you have you might not get as much of a chance to see the background as much as you wish…unless perhaps on your lock-screen. Accordingly I think subtle goes a longer way than bold and detailed images.  Here are some to pick though if you desire.

iPhone 5 Wallpaper Pack - FiftyFootShadows.net. John Carey is an amazing writer and photographer and his blog is a must-follow read for me. His iPhone wallpaper pack is hands-down the very best (IMHO) of graphical goodness for refined and sophisticated images for iPhone. I selected one from this collection on the same day I brought home my iPhone (and though tempted at times) still haven’t found anything to make me want to change it.

iPhone 5 Wallpapers - Tumblr. This Tumblr blog is filled with iPhone 5 specific wallpapers. It’s a great place to check in daily at for some great high-quality wallpapers.

iPhone 5 Wallpapers HD - Retina ready, stunning wallpapers. This is a great site as it not only has more than a ton of HD iPhone 5 ready wallpapers, but it also has some gadgets to make your own customized wallpapers in a few themes. Nicely categorized for easy navigation and searching. If you notice, each image has two smaller icons underneath, hover over the padlock and you will see a sample of what the image would look like on the “lock” screen. hover over the four-grouped-icons and you will see a sample of the background covered with app icons.  This is a super-nice touch assessing the visual appeal of the wallpaper on an actual phone.

20 Unusual Wallpapers For The iPhone 5 - noupe. Nice roundup of some a bit more non-traditional wallpapers.

The Shelf iPhone Wallpapers - Barlelme.at - The standard iOS icon size and grid layout makes “shelf” wallpapers very appealing for some users. It’s not my thing but these are well done it it is yours.

iPhone 5 Internals Wallpaper - iFixit - These are simply brilliant and geeky! Wallpapers are in a perfect to-scale internal view of the iPhone components under the glass and a just-smaller-than-scale version to include a few more of the techy-bits if you want to see them.

Great iPhone 5 Wallpapers - MacStories.net - Nice collection of links to other wallpaper sites for iPhone.

Aperture Logos Modern Style (iPhone) - Damien Erambert - If you are a Portal fan, then you definitely need to consider these. Super fun for the “don’t eat the cake” fans!

Cheers!

--Claus Valca.

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Solving the DSL<-->WiFi<-->Nook<-->In-Laws Equation

The Valca home is and has been an Amazon Kindle only zone for some time now; thank you very much.

So last year Lavie decided that the E Ink keyboard one (of two) that we had was a bit uncomfortable for her (and not back-lit). She decided to move over to a B&N NOOK Color model. This was in the pre Kindle Fire days so I guess we could tolerate its presence.

The Nook Color served her well enough but when the Kindle Fire came out she had to swing back. It finally arrived last week as a back-ordered Christmas present.

Fortunately, she hadn’t purchased very many books for the Nook so we didn’t deal with trying to see if there were any options for porting her books over to the Kindle. It was an opportunity for a fresh start.

So, she passed her Nook on to her parents a few weeks ago and they loved lot. A lot.

They are on a DSL broadband service, and have a wired XP desktop system. One cable to rule all Internet service. No WiFi except when we stop in for an extended visit and I bring my D-Link DAP-1350 Wireless N pocket router and take over their single network connection for the weekend. Nice but not a permanent WiFi solution.

I suppose we could have just taught them to connect the Nook Color to their desktop via USB and manage it directly but it seemed time to add a WiFi router to their humble network and just do it right.

So that was this Saturday’s “honey-do” and this post is the process we had to go through to upgrade their DSL network and get the hand-me-down Nook color fully transferred over and set up for them.

First Part of the Equation: DSL<-->WiFi

First I picked up a WiFi router. I went with what has become my perennial favorite: DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router from D-Link 

I’ve had this unit personally for a number of years and is rock solid, has both the “N” and older wireless standards, has a rockin-long range, and is super-easy for configuration. The power was important in this case as the location of their DSL modem is on a second floor above-garage room pretty far away from their usual living areas. The signal will carry all the way downstairs and up. Check. And since it is the model I also own and maintain, I know and am comfortable mucking around in the settings. Makes providing extended support much simpler when a problem arises.

Typically I’ve been able to get away with just unbox, connect, run-wizard from CD config, then go and make some manual setting tweaks afterwards. However, this 2-wire DSL modem was a real headache. I could set up the internal network and WiFi perfectly. Just couldn’t get to the Internet through the DSL modem. Plugged the DSL modem Ethernet back to the PC and it was working, reconnect to the DIR-655 and it wouldn’t'.

Long story short, I eventually figured out that for their particular hardware and provider, I had to do a few more custom tricks.

I had to set the Internet Connection Type to PPPoE and enter their DSL username/password. (I got that from their email client settings.)  D-Link has a nice Emulator for this router to play around with: D-Link DIR-655 RevB Emulator

Then I had to go into the Network Settings and change the router IP Address to use 192.168.1.1 from the default IP address of 192.168.0.1   Turns out that the default IP address was conflicting with the internal Ethernet-facing IP address provided by the DSL router. This was the real trick.

Once I got the network stabilized, I tested the configuration survivability by powering off both the DSL modem and the D-Link (to simulate a power-failure), then powered them back and and made sure the PC could get to the Internet. Check.

This one was actually a DIR-655 RevB model so I then saved my configuration file, downloaded the latest firmware and ran an upgrade. Success. Naturally it lost all of my settings, so I had to upload my saved config file and it was back to normal. Yea me!

More helpful notes I had to find to work out that issue:

• DIR-655 & ATT DSL - D-Link Forum
• [Solved] Dir 655 problems - Setup-Configuration-Security - Wireless-Networking
• 3.15 D-Link Info AT&T Southeast Forum FAQ - DSLReports.com, ISP Information

So now I had taken care of the DSL<-->WiFi router part of the equation. Next the Nook.

Second Part of the Equation: Nook<-->In-Laws

This actually was almost harder than getting the router added.

Because the Nook was a hand-me-down, Lavie had it configured with our WiFi settings, her name, and the account information. She said she didn’t mind if her parents just kept it that way and we just change the billing information on the account. However, she had followed bad password security and used the same information she has used on several other of her on-line accounts. I needed to break that clean.

The rub was that Lavie had already purchased some books for her dad under her Nook account and I didn’t want to loose them. What I wanted to do was to figure out if/how I could transfer the B&N account she had set up over to them and remove Lavie’s information and add-in theirs.

Here’s what I had to figure out doing to keep the original Nook account (and purchased items) but swing it fully over to the in-laws “clean”. Note this was a serious trial-n-error process that took almost two-hours longer than it should have (by my reasoning). This is the “clean” version and from what I later read on the web, seems to be the only way currently I know of to “transfer” a nook from one email/owner to another one while preserving the purchased items.

Note: Lavie didn’t have any files or items on her Nook that were not already associated in her Nook account (like manually installed music/videos/pictures/stuff) so I didn’t have to deal with the loss of those in this process. If you have those on your nook and want to preserve them, you probably want to off-load/copy them to your PC first before beginning this process. Again, this assumes everything you want to keep is safe and and associated in the B&N account you will be restoring from. YMMV. So you were cautioned, so you were warned.

1. Take your Nook (the one you want to change the owner name/email account info on) and go into the settings and find the option to Unregister/Erase your Nook. Do this first. Really. BEFORE you do ANYTHING ELSE. It sounds serious and I guess it is, but that’s how the Nook rolls.
2. Once your Nook is reset, log into your B&N account from the BN.com page. If you can find the login link on the page. Seriously. I was using Chrome and it took me ten minutes to realize that tiny gray bar (which perfectly matches the address bar gradient and bookmark text in Chrome at the very top of the page) with the tiny text is the login location. Sheesh. Hey B&N. Can you make it a bit more obvious please?
   
3. Now change your name in the account. I changed it over from Lavie’s name to the in-law’s.
4. Change to your new email address in the account. Changed from Lavie’s to the in-law’s.
5. Change the password if you desire…I did so desire and changed to a complex full 15-character (most allowed by B&N) password.
6. Change the Shipping/Billing addresses as needed. Now set to the in-law’s.
7. Change your secret challenge question if needed. Selected and changed as picked by the in-law.
8. Update the associated credit card information. Definitely the in-law’s here!
9. Etc.
10. Once all the account information is updated to the way you want it and saved, make sure you can successfully log-in/out of the account. Good? Great.
11. Next fire up the now reset Nook and go through the setup process from scratch.
12. Accept the Terms of Service.
13. Set the Time Zone.
14. Connect to a WiFi network. It found the WiFi network I had earlier got working, I fed it the secure passphrase and it connected perfectly and strongly.
15. Register the Nook. (I passed it the updated email address from above and the new password.)
16. It Registered and identified perfectly as the in-law’s nook now.
17. Yea me!
18. We went to the Library and told it to refresh and all the books previously associated with the account flowed back down and “installed” without any issue.
19. I then went to the applications and downloaded the waiting previously purchased/associated apps. Perfect!
20. The Nook was now fully theirs.

Equation Solved: DSL<-->WiFi<-->Nook<-->In-Laws

We spent another hour or so going though the list of free NOOK Books at Barnes & Noble. We found a good selection of mystery and history classics to keep them both occupied for the next couple of months. Pop also found a good old-west history book to purchase as well. It was good training process and confirmed the purchase/credit-card association with the account worked.

Mission accomplished, five hours (and one super-awesome BBQ baked-potato for lunch) later, the equation was solutioned.

Additional Notes:

• Daughter hovering over your shoulder on the back of the couch while you have your laptop and the Nook balanced on your lap troubleshooting. Like a vulture lurking. Not helpful.
• Daughter making organic microwave popcorn and snuggling up munching away while you have your laptop and the Nook balanced on your lap troubleshooting. Also not helpful.
• Daughter not asking once to borrow your laptop to check out the WiFi and Facebook while you are troubleshooting. Very helpful and appreciated.
• Sense of patience and humor from all participants; self, daughter, in-laws. Very helpful.
• Extended road-trip to in-laws up and back with daughter on beautifully clear and cool day through the east-Texas pines lined country roads. Priceless.

Final thoughts.

Lavie had successfully set up her Kindle Fire just fine by herself (thank-you-very-much) so I didn’t get to participate in that except for applying a smokin-hot DecalGirl skin she had picked out for her Kindle (my hands are super-steady for such things). She had also picked up screen protector but turns out that it is a full edge-to-edge cover which would cause issues with the DecalGirl skin on the front (which frames the blacked-out display edge portion). I suggested trimming it down so it fits inside the DecalGirl border but she passed on that for now…so it remains uninstalled at the moment.

Alvis and I both have the WiFi-only version of the E Ink Kindle model and we love them. Light, super-durable, and the charge lasts a long time.

Last night Lavie did ask me to copy some songs from her iTunes playlist to the Kindle Color. You can do it a few ways, apparently most popular is to upload music from your PC/Laptop to the Amazon Cloud Player service. What I ended up doing was to connect Lavie’s Kindle Fire directly to my PC (which holds our iTunes library) via USB, then opened iTunes, opened her play-list, sorted it by album, then I selected a song, hit the three key-combo “Ctrl-Shift-R” which opened up the location of the file itself on the library, selected any additional songs in her playlist from that album, copied, then pasted them in the Music folder on her Fire. Repeat as needed.  It was a bit slower but got the job done. All of them appeared to be in the compatible .m4a format and I didn’t find any .m4p that would not have been supported.

She was jammin…though I left her to work out creating a new playlist from those songs directly from within the Kindle itself.

Adding photos/videos would be the same process, locate on your PC, drag/drop into the correct folder on the Kindle when it is attached via USB and shows as an external storage device. Piece-o-cake.

Based on the (admittedly still limited) time I spent on both the Nook Color and the Kindle Fire, I found the Kindle Fire was more to my liking. I could navigate around the Nook Color and it was pretty intuitive (never did get around to reading any manuals on either one) but I did like the “hand-feel” of the Kindle Fire better. And the navigation just subjectively felt better to me on the Kindle Fire than the Nook.

Since I am (for now) a hard-core Kindle E Ink format lover, the extra bells-n-whistles of the Kindle Fire haven’t captured my eye yet, so I cannot comment on app-support and performance of videos/games/applications between the Nook Color and Kindle Fire.

The other think I noticed while helping set up the in-law’s Nook was the apparent lack of easily found free E Books directly within the B&N Nook store. Searching for E-books at B&N was a super-pain as well. In the end I had to do a Google Search to find this “all-in-one-place” location for Free NOOK Books.

When I first got my Kindle, right on the Amazon Kindle pages I found this Amazon.com: Free Book Collections: Kindle Store link. In no time flat I had downloaded almost twenty amazingly awesome classics from literature, philosophy, religion, and reference. All free. I’ve since moved on and expanded my collection to include many additional eBooks I’ve found scattered on the net including some great ones in PDF formats and I have made a number of eBook purchases for the Kindle as well. That smooth and awesome experience jumping into the Kindle right-out-of-the-box probably helped solidify my personal leanings towards the Kindle platform. I’m sure there are lots of additional Nook-compatible ebook formats and ways you can get them to your Nook, but for the in-laws, having in-store access to locate and select-to-download-direct to their Nook has a lot of appeal.

I’ve got a lot of great Kindle resource links saved and building for a GSD Kindle post…along with some cool technical and for/sec bits related to the device I have found as well. Hopefully that will come soon.

Anyway, hope this helps someone else trying to get their DSL <-->WiFi<-->Nook<-->In-Laws equation to balance out and solution properly.  Now I remember why I found Calculus so challenging. It was a real love/hate relationship and this turned out to be very much the same.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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New Year’s Day - First Post 2011

Same day I came out with my first post after a long drought, I fell upon this article Blogging Seems To Have Peaked, Says Pew Report over at ReadWriteWeb.  According to the study, blogging activity on-line has heavily dropped, while on-line content consumption has continued to grow.  Looking back at my side-bar, I have to confess that my raw content-generation post numbers have declined since my high-water mark in 2007.  However I would like to argue that while volume has decreased, quality has increased slightly.

Of course, the amount of leisure time I have available has also decreased which accounts for much of the decline in GSD posting.  At the same time, I could probably work on being more disciplined with some of my time.  Couple that with our “study” slowly turning into a laundry-room/super-closet of sorts and my blogging desk hidey-hole has disappeared. Yesterday I took down and stored away the Christmas decorations for another year (almost two-weeks early from my usual procrastinations).  This brought on a major re-setting of the living/family room area and I now have a micro-desk area set up there instead.  Maybe that will stimulate the blogging juices as well.

In the meantime, here is a getting-the-new-year started linkfest of new applications and neat utilities to jump-start the effort to push the GSD post-count for 2011 upward again.

FreeCommander XE Beta now public

FreeCommander remains my #1 top go-to dual-pane file manager.  I’ve tried tons of other file-managers and while there are many great options out there now, IMHO, none come close to the features and flexibility of FreeCommander.  It just works with the way I jockey files all day.

The developer, Marek Jasinski, was kind enough to give me private access to the alpha builds of the next generation of FreeCommander and I have been diligently putting them through the paces.

So it just in the last week or two that he posted the first publically available release of FreeCommander XE.  While it retains the same form and function of FreeCommander, the style has been seriously updated and the fine-tuning control is greatly enhanced.  You can get both the install version or a “portable” zip file version from that page.  Just be aware that it is still clearly a developmental “preview” release so while most of the features will work as planned, you might be a bit frustrated with what still does not if you are a power FreeCommander user.  I’m still not ready to replace the latest stable version of the “old” FreeCommander with this version just yet.  But it is a nice look at what is to come.

Other related tips that might be of use to you if you are both a FC user and a TeraCopy user.

• Integrate in the TeraCopy freeCommander - Basskarre.de via Google Translate
• FreeCommander Forum • View topic - Integrate TeraCopy ?

Run Command Links

When I am setting up special purpose XP systems, sometimes I have to make some tweaks to system settings.  Going the long way through menu systems to get to a particular windows is time consuming, so pulling it up via a run line is a big time-saver.  I’ve memorized many of them, but every now and then I can’t recall and Windows doesn’t make it easy to access the commands if you don’t know what they are to start.

Here are three bookmark-worthy resources for just when you need them most (XP/Win7).

• 174 Run Commands For Windows XP - Very Useful - PCRunEasy
• Run Commands for Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums
• Run Commands in Windows 7 (List) - Windows 7 Bits (included as though it has much the same content of the one above, the comments are filled with many more cool items.)

VirtualBox 4.0 Final

Oracle has now released the final public release of VirtualBox now sitting at 4.0 - Downloads - VirtualBox.

You can also get it via their ftp page: Index of /virtualbox/

Brett Shavers of WinFE Blog fame recently reminded me of the MobaLiveCD tool.  While not related to VirtualBox, it does provide a clever and portable Qemu package to run virtual sessions of LiveCD’s for down-n-dirty testing.  It worked on my rippin-fast Win7 x64 laptop, but was very, very slow in performance.  So while handy in a portable pinch, it probably isn’t useful for production-level virtualization work.

There is also vbox.me ‘s Portable-VirtualBox project.  As I understand it currently, while there is a v4.0.0 new release support out, Oracle has now required the developer to remove direct inclusions of VirtualBox items from the package, and it is now set up in a manner that first downloads the VBox binaries then unpacks them for the portable setup process. And USB support still is in works as well at the moment.  YMMV.  See also How To Make Portable VirtualBox 4.0 For Windows at addictivetips.com

Network Briefs

Always a great source of personal tippage, TinyApps passed on a lead to the Dualcomm Mini USB Powered 5-Port 10/100 Ethernet Switch TAP.  How cool is this at less than $100? They also offer this larger Dualcomm USB Powered Gigabit Ethernet Switch TAP at a $150 price point.  In both cases Port #1 is mirrored to Port #5.  See also this brief post by George Starcher » Review – DualComm – Ethernet Tap.

Speaking of taps, in a former GSD post on the subject I offered these references:

As such here are some related materials on that subject for future reference when needed.

…But first, read and review this brief TaoSecurity post on SPANs versus Taps: TaoSecurity: Expert Commentary on SPAN and RSPAN Weaknesses

It links to two MOST Excellent articles on the issues of using spanned switch ports for collecting your network capture data, both form Tim O’Neill:

• SPAN Port or TAP? CSO Beware (by Tim O’Neill)
• RSPAN … Friend or Foe? (by Tim O’Neill)

OK, now the linkage on SPAN’ing

• Catalyst Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) Configuration Example - Cisco Systems. A definitive resource.
• Port Mirroring on a Cisco 3550 Switch -danielmiessler.com
• Security Wizardry - Switch Port Mirroring
• How to Configure Local SPAN Port on Cisco Catalyst Switch - ItsyourIP.com

And my oldies but goodies favorites:

CDP - What Switch Am I Connected To? and Monitoring Traffic with Span Ports – SynJunkie.  Two really great posts out of series of ones touching on network monitoring, and Cisco switch/router configuration techniques.  I’m singling these out in particular as they are of interest to sysadmin troubleshooting on the network as well as traffic captures.

And recently found this Wireshark Wiki article as well -- CaptureSetup/Ethernet.

Which is neat as I just ordered up some additional reference for the new year: Wireshark Network Analysis: The Official Wireshark Certified Network Analyst Study Guide by Laura Chappell, Gerald Combs.  I sooo can’t wait for this one to arrive!

Finally, the Microsoft Network Monitor blog has this new post: Filtering On Timestamps which is good information to know if you prefer Network Monitor or NMcap (CLI) for your traffic capture handling.  Don’t miss the tip link to the online Date format converter page to assist in your conversion work.

Utility Roundup

Via the German blogger Caschy (through Google Translate magic), CopyTrans TuneSwift.  There are more than a few ways to move your iTunes stores from one system/location to another…though they all have their own quirks and shortcomings.

Check out either the CopyTrans Suite of tools or the CopyTrans specific utility as it may have a full-featured backup/transfer/restore solution you are looking for for iTunes/iPod management and recovery.  Currently CopyTrans is being offered for free, but will switch to a pay-version 03/15/2011.  You will need an unlock code so either use the one Caschy has provided on his page or the direct one on this CopyTrans page.

Because I never can remember the conversion rates for bps to Bps to Mbps as I deal with various network bandwidth graphs I’ve settled on Converber Portable over at PortableApps.com to prove me a super-handy tool for all my IT figure conversion needs.  Tip: While it can do so much more, just set the “Category” field to “Computer” to filter down the list of over 1324 various units of measure in 38 categories to just those used in the IT field.  It’s much less overwhelming that way!

ImageX GUI (GImageX) still remains my fav ImageX CLI Gui-based tool for super-fast WIM management.  However, 4SYSOPS recently posted about an alternative ImageX gui manager GDism ELDI v3.0.2. As Michael Pietroforte points out, the strongest feature/drawback might be the fact that it is a Java application so depending on your viewpoint on Java, that may or may not be a good thing.  That said it is a nice alternative. (Note: the CGI ‘avatar’ figure displayed on the ELDI page might be a bit racy for some so depending on policy standards, you may want to check the page out at home first before hitting it from work…just to be safe.)

First there was Orca for picking apart and manipulating MSI packages. Then came InstEd It! which seriously seemed to expand the options available.  Then I really fell in love with the light but perfectly handy (for me) lessmsi tool (still alive and cool). Now comes wind from Kurt Shintaku via his blog post RELEASE: MSI Explorer – Inspection Tool for .MSI installation packages of yet another MSI package inspection/change tool; MSI Explorer coded by Sateesh Arveti.

Ryan at CyberNet News seems to have slowed down on the blogging as well, but his post Stress Test a PC with HeavyLoad offers an additional (portable) freeware tool that can be used to put the heavy on a system for load-testing and performance monitoring.  Don’t forget other beefier tools such as the Phoronix Test Suite and Inquisitor. MakeUseOf blog also offered a while back The 5 Best Free Benchmark Programs for Windows.

See also the JAM Software - FileList CLI tool (freeware) for generating file-lists in a given directory.  Check out the ReadMe for additional CLI arguments.

What the Web Says…

Sometimes you have to go to the Web to find out just what is what and where stuff is ranked.  These were pretty cool finds this past week.

Browserscope - From the web-page “Browserscope is a community-driven project for profiling web browsers. The goals are to foster innovation by tracking browser functionality and to be a resource for web developers.”

namebench - From the project page “It hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use. namebench runs a fair and thorough benchmark using your web browser history, tcpdump output, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation.”

See also the super-tiny, fully portable GRC’s DNS Nameserver Performance Benchmark utility for a no-install alternative.

Finally, got an Intel chip-based Windows system? You might want to hop over and try the Intel Driver Update Utility.  Ed Bott gets the hat-tip and has more information on his How to update Intel drivers automatically blog post.  I found a very new wired Ethernet port driver update for my new Laptop.  Please carefully note this one item from the Intel page easily overlooked:

Intel® Wired Networking note: If the Intel Driver Update Utility shows your Intel wired networking product ending in '(OEM)', Intel recommends you use the networking software provided by your computer manufacturer. OEMs may have optimized the drivers for your system.

Happy New Year!

Claus V.

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iTunes Damage Control

modified cc image by bmb at flickr

So while the majority of issues related to my desktop systems volume failure have been rebuilt, there was one  glaring hole facing me.

The system volume that got blown-out just so happened to be the one that held all our iTunes music and video files.

Bummer. REAL Bummer

Fortunately, I had many fortunate things working in my favor when it came to recovery and rebuilding of the years worth of iTunes data and purchases that had accumulated.

No, I hadn’t yet installed the latest iTunes version that allows for backups/restorations.  I didn’t even know that was a feature until I started this rebuild.

No, the biggest thing that have saved me are patience, my original 40 GB 1st generation iPod “brick” device that I synced all our music to, regardless if it was my interest or Lavie and Alvis’s, and the iPod Nano’s that the girls use have all the movie/video files on them, and they haven’t been able to connect them to the downed system, the files they contain are tucked safely away there as well.

So what did I do?

• Connected my iPod before reloading iTunes on the rebuilt system, and made an iTunes recovery folder on my new partition.
• I then copied all my iTunes user files from my recovered user profile when I recovered the system into that folder.  This kept the original files “safe” just in case I mucked something up and needed to try again.  For that I just found the correct path/subfolder location in this What are the iTunes library files? Apple article.
• I then connected my iPod and browed it to find the “iPod_Control” folder and copied that sucker (and all contents over to the iTunes recovery folder as well.  That was after spending some time reading this excellent iLounge post Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide.  Disconnecting the iPod device when done.
• Then I installed iTunes.
• Then I launched iTunes and let it do some initial startup.  Once it settled down I tweaked the options to get it to not do any automatic synchronizations with iPods when attached.
• I then shut down iTunes and killed any associated background services with Process Explorer just to be safe.
• I then copied my recovered “copy” of the original iTunes user profile folders over into the corresponding location on my new user profile.
• I re-launched iTunes and let it figure out (which it did instantly) that it needed to rebuild the list of items there.  Of course, if you clicked on any song, it tossed an error as it couldn’t find the actual media file that went with it.  Not a big deal, yet.
• Now I had to restore the actual media files themselves.  There are a number of excellent and full-featured for-buy ($) programs that can do this.  However I knew of a few wonderful free ones that offered to back up and restore you iTunes library and songs on the iPod itself.
• SharePod - (freeware) – this is the one I chose to use.  It has a easy to use GUI interface, can actually replace iTunes when run as a “standalone player/manager” directly from your iPod when connected to a system, and was rock-solid in performance for me.
• (YamiPod) - Yet another iPod manager - (freeware) – another great standalone iPod player but also has a number of useful device and music library management tools as well.
• iDump - (freeware) – Not updated for a while but it does the basic task of transferring songs off your iPod to a PC.  Very simple and no-frills.  Portable so good to keep on the iPod in case of an emergency
• Sharepod quickly moved my music files from the copied iPodControl” folder back into the correct location for iTunes.
• Next I found I had a bunch of duplicate entries in my library.  I added a “date added” column and sorted by this, then deleted all the entries that were before the date I added in the real media files again.
• I also had to clean up the imported play lists..no biggie..
• Finally, the “Purchased” folder still wouldn’t associate the songs we had bought with the ones I had re-imported.  This confused me for a moment.  Did I have to re-purchase them? Beg Apple to let me redownload them? Nope. They were in my library. Turns out that this folder just is a specialized playlist of sorts that shows which ones you have purchased specifically (Reformated, Backedup iTunes Music Folder, how to restore purchased songs? - iLounge Forums). I just deleted the mess.  All the purchased ones were still present and accounted for.
• Finally I authorized the computer (About iTunes Store authorization and deauthorization) with my iTunes account and all was well…except for the video files that I still have to pull off the Nanos.
• Once it is all cleaned up, I’m going to do a back up (How to back up your media in iTunes and Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive) and tuck it away for safe keeping.  Just in case.

Additional linkage

• Why can’t iTunes Find My Songs? - Ask Dave Taylor!®.
• How to recover purchased itunes songs after computer crashed? - Mac Forums.

Lesson learned…

Claus V.

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