Remove Played Podcasts

Quite unfortunately, Apple removed a very useful feature in iTunes 9.1. Previously, it was possible to go to the Podcasts pane and bulk-select the entire podcast list, and in the context-menu, select “Allow Auto Delete”.

This was an important feature, as otherwise, podcasts with set to “Do Not Auto Delete” would stick around after refreshing my podcast feeds. Of course, I had already set in the iTunes preferences that I only wanted to keep unplayed podcasts, but iTunes had this extra un-Apple-like complication of overriding that setting on a per-file basis.

Anyways, as a stop-gap measure, I wrote an Automator service to delete played podcasts.

The service is stored at http://sites.google.com/site/smithco/Home/remove-played-podcasts/RemovePlayedPodcasts.zip?attredirects=0&d=1 and can be installed by unzipping it and copying it to your Services folder (<user>/Library/Services).

The service is built for Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6).

This service contains AppleScript code from Rob Ryan (http://discussions.info.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11316250#11316250).

iCal/GCal Integration Works Really Well

Google has finally opened up CalDAV support in Google Calendar. Simply put, this means Apple iCal and Google Calendar can sync with each other directly now. There's no more need for a third party tool like spanning sync.

So far, the syncing works really well. My Google Calendar shows up as a new calendar in iCal, and any edits and additions I make to it in iCal show up a few minutes later in Google Calendar. There are some limitations to the service, but none of them have been an issue for me in regular use.

Instructions on how to set this up can be found in the Google Calendar documentation.

Time Machine is Awesome and How to Reset the Administrative Password

The hard drive in my MacBook failed this weekend. I have the worst possible luck when it comes to hard drives. It's the fourth drive that's failed for me in under a year's use.

Thankfully Apple made it easy for me to back up and to restore a system. Time Machine is awesome. I plug my external hard drive in and it backs up my whole system without any hassle. But what was better is how well the restore went, well almost how well it went.

First, I had a new drive put in my MacBook. It's a good thing that hard drives are getting cheaper! And then I installed Leopard. After the base install Leopard kindly asks me if I want to restore from a Time Machine backup, and I say yes. After waiting for my data to copy over I get two surprises.

The first surprise is that my password for login does not work. That's bad; I'll explain the solution after. The second surprise is that after logging in, everything is exactly as it was before the failure. All my documents and settings have been restored. It's amazing how well that part worked.

Now the password bit. I don't know how, but the install seemed to have initialised my account with a password other than what I had set before the failure. Perhaps Time Machine doesn't store passwords? That would make sense from a security perspective, but I would think that the installer should have prompted me for a new one.

But, it turns out that an administrative password can be reset using an installer disc. Pop the disc in, reboot and hold 'c' as boots back up. This will cause it to boot from the disc instead of the hard drive. Then, when the installer pops up, there's a Utilities menu on the top bar. Under that menu is a tool to reset passwords.

After my password was reset, I'm happily again using my MacBook!

Phantom Front Row Entries

I've been finding a number of dead entries in the Podcasts menu in Front Row lately. Podcasts that I've listened to and have long since been deleted. Mysterious.

It turns out that there is an enigmatic sequence of events that cause the iTunes database to retain entries for deleted items. I never did find out what are the particular causes for this to occur. However, there is a way to fix these phantoms of podcasts past.

After a few dead ends, I found a thread on the Apple forums about this issue. No one knew why it happens, but one astute poster had a solution. Luckily, Doug has a script that searches the iTunes database and excises incorporeal entries. One run of the script neatly solved the problem. Huzzah!

A Mac Desktop Picture Changer Using Flickr

My recent switch to Mac has so far been nothing but awesome. Generally, Macs are just better at everything. But, there is one application that I miss from the Windows world: a wallpaper changer that uses photos from Flickr. John's Background Switcher did exactly what I wanted, but that only exists on windows.

There is photocast trick over on Mac OS X Hints, but that has the limitation of only using recent photos out of a Flickr stream. I would really like to pull random photos out of my Flickr photostream, just like John's Background Switcher does. I'd also like to have some specific Flickr interaction, like jumping to the displayed photo, or showing the most interesting photos.

Unfortunately, I just can't find a good application on the Mac to do this. Thus, my only solution is to write one! I think that this should be a relatively simple application when it's done; however, discovering the most elegant way to put this together will be a small adventure. It should be fun and a good way to explore some of the principles of Mac development.

We'll all just have to see how this develops.

To keep the information about this project separate from the miscellaneous clutter of this blog, I've started a new blog specifically to journal my progress. You can visit this project journal at http://flickrdesktop.blogspot.com.