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!

I Fixed My Logitech Bluetooth Mouse

I really do like my Logitech Bluetooth mouse. It's great to have a wireless mouse that does not eat up a USB port on my MacBook. Unfortunately, over the last few weeks it started performing poorly. The cursor was dragging around slowly and jumping a lot.

Crud. I figured it must be due to one of the major Leopard updates. But, no one else on the Internet seems to have a similar problem. Could it be that there's a physical fault developing in my mouse? I hope not. The M-RBB93 is a hard to find model: it's not flashy or expensive enough to warrant a shelf spot among the 27-button MS über-mice.

After a few weeks of hunting for an answer, I discovered the problem! I leaned in a bit closer to my mouse and realised that my mouse pad had a nice layer of mouse turds. There was simply enough gunk built up from the last few years to throw off the mouse's laser.

The problem was easily fixed by taking a washcloth to my mouse pad. Now, my mouse works like new again. It's nice to know that sometimes a simple solution is still the best fix.

Milton

Milton, originally uploaded by smithco.

I got a Sock Monkey kit for Christmas. It contained a pair of socks, some thread, needles, some fabric and sewing instructions.

He's named for the Top Banana, Milton Berle. He's a little lumpy, his ears uneven and his hat's a bit too large. But, he's my monkey.

The Wii and the D-Link WBR-2310 (error code 52040)

Hooray! Santa brought me a Wii for Christmas. Boo! Attempting to connect to the internet gave me error code 52030.

The set up I have is a Wii and a D-Link WBR-2310 wireless router. Usually, this router just works without any problems. But, it sure didn't like my Wii. I went through a whole swath of experiments with the settings, but I could not find a solution.

However, after a while, it occurred to me that I should try a firmware update for the router. And, Hurray! the firmware upgrade fixed it all. Now, I can enjoy the best weather forecast available and participate in odd polls.

So the lesson is, the D-Link WBR-2310 with firmware 1.02 does not work with the Wii, but upgrading to 1.04 does.

Colin Smith shot dead

Liverpool's top gangster Colin Smith shot dead

Suffice to say, I'm not the Colin Smith in the article.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Quicksilver Tip: Fix a Slow Quicksilver

Over the last week or so, my much beloved Quicksilver has gotten very, very slow and sluggish. I'd hit the hot key (option-space in my case) and start typing. And then I'd wait. After a few seconds, the command would register and the action would take place.

After snooping around for what the problem is, I found a few web pages that suggested reducing the catalog size. Yes, I did have a large number of items in my catalogue. Therefore, I promptly unchecked many of the items in my catalogue and issued a rescan command. However, contrary to my expectations, this had no noticeable effect.

Apparently deselecting items does not actually remove them. The whole lot is still sitting in memory. They are only cleared out after Quicksilver is shut down and restarted. Ugh. That's the way I had to fix things on my old operating system.

Gripe aside, here's the lesson. To really fix a dawdling Quicksilver, pare down your catalogue and restart the application.

Movie Tip: Rotate Movies With BitPlayer

I've run into a rather simple problem. When taking short movies with a digital camera, it is sometimes nice to film in a portrait orientation. However, digital cameras always assume movies are in a landscape orientation.

It turns out that there are a number of available tools to rotate movies. I'm sure that most top-end movie editors can do this, but iMovie doesn't. QuickTime Pro can, but I don't want to shell out for the pro tools just for a simple edit.

The solution I found is to use BitPlayer, a simple video player with the abilities to apply some transformations and re-encodings. All we have to do is rotate the video in the playback display and export it with the current settings applied. All very simple!

Calgary 33 - Toronto 10

Yahoo! The Stamps stomped down the Argos with a solid victory. After the last two games, I was worried about our favourite CFL team, but today's game was a nice reasurance. It was especially nice to have Burris turn in such a well-tuned peformance. He seemed to have the team hitting all the right plays. In the end, a very good game.

Go Stamps!

Solar Insect

Solar Insect, originally uploaded by smithco.

Now this is an interesting little thing. Somehow this cool little photo of a nifty tiny robot shot up to be the most viewed photo on my Flickr stream. I have no idea how that happened. I never promoted this photo, sent it to any groups. It's yet to be favourited or showcased anywhere. But somehow, it is my most viewed photo.