MAMA's Techno-Geek Thread

[jwardell]

Quote: Originally Posted by Oldpaint (original)

I'm spending hours now cleaning up my collection of music so the album view looks good. Abbey Road Rules!

I let it auto-find album art (had to run it overnight!), but in the end it only got art for maybe a third. iTunes has a lot, but it's still missing a lot too. I wish there was a way to upload to their database because some record companies will simple never make the agreement to be included (Apple/Beates for example).

[Oldpaint]

Practically all of my music is from CD's and I found that the information on the CDs is not always uniform in the 'get info' views. By cleaning that up I can get one album cover for the whole album (sometimes two albums would show up in the album view for a single disc album) and get the songs in the correct order. By editing that info I can also get multiple disc albums to show up as one album.

Itunes was able to get artwork for most of the collection but Amazon's collection is much larger so I've been filling in from there.

Overall I'm very happy with it. Also my ipod with the new firmware seems to be having a better relationship with icelink plus.

[GadgetGav]

Quote: Originally Posted by jwardell (original)

I didn't noticed any SPDIF jacks to output DD5.1 either. I have no problem doing both with my mac mini.

I've just been looking at some more analysis of the Showtime event and on the far right of the ports on the back of the iTV is an optical SPDIF jack....

[jwardell]

Just this morning my GF's macbook suddenly started experienced the random shut-off issue. Thankfully apple recognized it and I even got the notice this past week of the revised logic board/heat sink combo to fix it...so straight to the apple store we went. No genius bar wait (Despite several names listed and an hour wait on the screen? There wasn't many people in the store...I think they are fake!), he didn't even try to verify it thankfully (as it was certainly cooled off by then) and I'm sure well have it back in a week. I was hoping to have a battle with the "geniuses," which in my experience are anything but. It kills me that I am locked from entering any different shipping or billing info but work, so I can't do my own repairs or get parts.
(Hmm..come to think of it, apple no longer charges the $600 fee to be a service center, so maybe I can create one at home and link my account?)

[GadgetGav]

Oooh that's an idea... let's set up our own pirate genius bar..!

[Aqualung]

Quote: Originally Posted by GadgetGav (original)

Oooh that's an idea... let's set up our own pirate genius bar..!

I bet his Steveness would be all over you the day you open, right after he finishes suing ThinkSecret, of course

[GadgetGav]

Why is Cape Cod Mini suing ThinkSecret..?

[jwardell]

I meant to mention that I certainly took a look at the new ipod nano. Man that thing is small! New shuffles not in till next month.

[snid]

I'm very tempted by the new shuffle. If only it still had a USB connector built-in so it could be used as a thumb drive when needed. Assuming there is some sort of of "erase the music and use as a thumb drive" ability without needing special drivers / iTunes / whatever and you could just plug it into anyone's computer and have it show up as usable storage space.

Not that I've ever used a thumb drive.

[jwardell]

Good question. (The old shuffle) certainly does work as a thumbdrive on macs without drivers/software, but not sure about PCs.

To me the only useful thumbdrive is the one you have with you when you least expect to use it. I've kept a PQI iStick in my wallet for years now.

[GadgetGav]

AFAIK, all iPods can be thumb drive type devices if you check a box in the preferences within iTunes. You have to have disk mode enabled. I bet if the iPod is PC formatted, the Mac can use it as a drive, but not the other way around. I switched my nano to PC format and it still works just like it used to on my Macs..! Come to think of it, I think a Mac iPod only shows up as a removable drive on a PC, but I've never tried writing to it, only plugged it in to charge.

[jwardell]

That slider (if it is still there) used to let you select how much space for disk and for music. But it was only an internal limit on itunes. I would check off the box but leave it set to 100% as music. You could still throw all the files you want on there and itunes would autofill any free space. Which is of course how it should work.

[GadgetGav]

Got this email today from 'support@paypal.com'
I wonder if it's real..?

All the links go to a 69.149.109.154:82/ address...

----------------------------------------------------
Notification of Limited Account Access

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. We recently noticed the following issue on your account:

Unusual account activity has made it necessary to limit account access until additional verification information can be collected. Case ID: Number: PP-673-872-456

For your protection, we have limited access to your account until additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.


Click here to verify your account



Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any inconvenience.


If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choise but to temporaly suspend your account.

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department.

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the "Help" link in the footer of any page.

To receive email notifications in plain text instead of HTML, update your preferences here.

[GadgetGav]

Another email I got today was this old hoax...
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Microsoft/AOL Giveaway

It makes me so mad when people with an IQ lower than their shoe size blindly forward this cr@p..!The person who sent it to me sent it to 25 people, the person who sent it to him, 15 and so on down 5 more Fwd: fwd: fwd chains, to the origninator who looks like they sent it to their entire address book. Honestly, there must be close to 90 names in her list. Good to know that the people of New England Medical Center are always on the look out for a free dollar or two Aside from reporting the original spammer to her system admin which I have done, does anyone know of a good revenge...?

[benzamg]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aqualung (original)

FWIW, here's a good blog about some of the more common MacBook probs....click here to see it.

And, if your MacBook is prone to suddenly shutting off, click here to read more....

Thanks for that link..... My random shutdowns just started this week.... if they continue I may have to try that... It only seems to happen when the cpu is very busy so that makes sense...

So far.. I've had 2 repairs done on my Macbook... about 2 weeks ago, my hard drive suddenly died (went all clicky -- could not access it via external SATA->firewire adapter) ... got a new hard drive put in on the spot at the genius bar, but still a nasty inconvenience not to mention losing everything on the drive... good thing I have been keeping the important stuff backed up..

......because a month or so ago.......
I had a not-able-to-sleep on close issue which sounds like what bethandlouis is experiencing.... which within a few days turned into internal keyboard/trackpad not working (but external USB keyboard/mouse did)... not long after that, I had to bring into the genius bar and send away to apple for a week because the screen was coming up with the vertical colored bars instead of booting... (aka "The rainbow lines of doom")and with no internal keyboard, could not zap the pram.....

other than these problems I still love my Macbok .... I guess I should wait for Rev 2 next time