Display iTunes music info on your blog

MacDude pointed out that you can use Now Playing to display iTunes track info on your
blog. Now Playing is a little widget that checks iTunes every 15 seconds and
then can upload the track data to any FTP, .mac or WebDav location. You can
either use one of the default themes or build a custom one, which is music to my
ears.

Unfortunately the documentation is in Japanese only and to
make matters worse their example XML file does not contain all the needed code
to make it work. Existing themes only address font styling. So, it took me a
while to find trick to get positioning sorted out, by adding an extra variable.
I don’t know all the ins & outs of how to customize this particular Now
Playing xml file; but this is what you need:

Create a subfolder under
Theme. In that folder you need a theme.plist file with xml info and a theme.png
image as
background.

The
first two # for PosAlbum PosArtist & PosSong indicate the left & right
margin. The third # is the vertical spacing from the bottom.

Add any
custom PNG image you wish to use for background, (set spaces & align
accordingly) and you
get:

I wrote the author asking about some English documentation.
Babelfish didn’t want to help translate.

iBlog 1.4.2

Lifli made iBlog 1.4.2 available with the
following updates (it’s not announced yet):

1. Uses the latest .Mac
SDK from Apple for iDisk publishing.
2. Added support for printing entries
from the Add/Edit entry window.
3. The next and previous buttons in the
photo entry window circle through the photo collection.
4. Fixed some
issues in the RSS 2.0 feed file.

This update should help with
podcasting & photo publishing.

Tire shopping

I had planned to do a swap front/back to get the deeper treads in the
front (power steering really takes a bite out of rubber), but with the flat tire
earlier this week that’s not going to happen. For even traction I need to buy
two tires and these Michelin MX4 run a tad expensive. The previous
set were Michelin MXV, I believe, a series they quit producing because of
manufacturing & wear (warranty?) problems. So, after this week’s side-wall
adventure, I’m not exactly thrilled to pay premium for Michelins.

C
got a recommendation for BF Goodrich at a good price. “BF Goodrich?” I respond
like a typical guy. “Which kind are they?” Hey, I’m just skeptical. The last
time I saved a bit of money on tires (which still was some $350 A-brand set of
185/60R14) I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the very noticeable increase in tire /
road noise in the cabin. Long story short: I prefer quiet tires with above
average water handling & stability and the thought of a cheap(er) tire makes
me itch.

After liking the BF Goodrich Traction TA/T information and their
value, I stumbled on tirerack.com which features a comparison and survey of all season tires in
which the Michelin MXV4 falls. The results are performance rating, value &
survey driven. Interestingly enough the Michelins are #12 and the Goodrich #1.
Respectively 5.7/10 and 8.8/10 would buy them again. So it sounds like C got a
good recommendation. I’ll take a good look at those Goodrich Traction TA/T
tomorrow and likely will get 4. That way we’re good to roll again Now if only
gas prices would drop a little …

If you are shopping for any kind
of tire for your sedan, truck, suv, … check out the tire surveys from tirerack.com

Stylesheet problems

I just noticed that stylesheets no longer stick across categories,
entries, … in Safari?!Safari has a problem showing my blog without
the default style on the first visit (there’s a few blogs with the same
symptom), which is why I added the little extra note at the top “if no style
is …” Now things just got worse. After the latest security update for OS
X (2005-003-001), every time I go to another page the styling is plain text. Of
course there’s nothing that obviously changed to Safari other than Unicode
International Domain Name support with the security update.

Strangely enough,
FireFox never has had a problem with the styling options. Every time, no matter
how empty the cache & cookies etc, it shows everything nice & styled.

I’m not sure what to do about it. I may take the stylesheets down
till I find a method that’s more Safari compatible. I did send another bug
report to Apple. Not that the previous ones changed anything. My luck they’ll
fix it in Safari 1.3 or 2.0, whichever we see with Tiger (sigh)

I’ll
look into the problem tonight. Hopefully I can figure something out. In the mean
time I apologize for all the inconvenience.

Update: Surfin
Safari from Safari guru Dave Hyatt suffers the same issue across
pages. So it’s a bug to me. I’m curious how long it’ll take for this issue to
make it through the “Report bugs”-mill. Tried to contact Dave directly, but it’s
a no go. His comments are locked down because of spam & no email displayed.
So I’m crossing my fingers that either Report Bugs, OS X feedback or Safari
Support message will get to the right inbox or desk and will result in a prompt
Safari update that fixes both alternate style-sheets issues.

And the reason you’re late is?

Now I
have go tire shopping.

Seven talk

Cats can meow, hiss, … and talk back.

Click the image to open the movie (~3MB compressed) in a new window.

Google X

Just as quick as it appeared earlier this week, it was gone again.
Something about an OS X feel to Google? Thanks to some caching and clever guys,
you can now see what GoogleX was about. I like it

Who’s there?

Taking
a peek with a tiny flashlight

If you think M, you are
partially right. It’s M & M.

Note the darker nose hair? That’s
M2.

Around midnight Seven didn’t want to go to bed. Generally our
cats are pretty good about running upstairs with either of us, so the other can
close the hallway door to avoid cats running all over the house in the middle of
the night, sleeping on the sofa, etc. I called Seven by name several times and
did my cat-call-whistle. No show. Odd. A few minutes later, while we are dimming
the lights, turning off the tv … she runs in hastily. 2 seconds later we hear
“squeek squeek”. We immediately fell back on last week’s routine. I grabbed
Seven, we rushed both cats into the hallway (Seven did not like that!), closed
off the tv room and with the trusted kitchen strainer we had this mouse in no
time. We hope M likes this family member for company.

Changing tracks, going against the flow

Take a seat

The bench at the entrance of the Arboretum seems a little low to put your snow shoes
on or tie your shoe laces …

Supercharged iPod Shuffle clone?

I’m wondering what Apple’s response will be to the “Super Shuffle”.
Playlistmag reports that a Taiwanese company
just announced this clone. It looks exactly like the iPod
Shuffle but also has an FM tuner and voice recording capacity. Nice to have
extra features - an FM tuner would be nice on any iPod. At Engadget there’s even a link to the cloned Apple ads. Where will all this fit
together legally?

Maybe it snowed a little the other night?

The neighbors still had to dig out a little after the plow guy carefully moved the bulk of the snow away from their cars. Our driveway was not too bad. It only took me a big hour to shovel the driveway clean.

Run Jaguar and Panther on a PC

It may be sacrilege to some, but anybody can finally do it with CherryOS from Maui X-Stream

The release had been promised for late 2004, but after some delays
and now amidst some controversy (reportedly it would be a reworked version of
the open-source PearPC project and contain it’s code left &
right! ) it’s now available.

Don’t expect any blazing speed. Just
like with VirtualPC (software to emulate a PC on your Mac)
you are running an Operating System on top of an Operating System, so there is
some drag like when you’ve got weeds clinging to the fin on your
windsurfer. CherryOS is mostly geared to PC users who want quick access to a Mac
for web testing and running light applications that don’t have a Mac OS X
equivalent, …

System requirements are a Pentium / Athlon or later
(the faster the better) with 512MB RAM, 5GB HDD space available, an optical
drive and Windows XP Pro or Home.

It’ll be fun to run the trial in
some spare time. The trial download requires some registration, but should be
publicly available.

M is back!

Last night our quiet house was suddenly disturbed by cat activity in the
basement. I wanted to check what they knocked over and saw Seven & Wizard
make a u-turn running back down the basement steps just as they spotted me
coming through the kitchen. I followed them downstairs and saw Seven was
carrying a mouse in her mouth. “Oh no, that might be M!” I thought. They ran
up to the back bedroom and into the bathroom. I grabbed a hold of Seven, who
reluctantly let go of the mouse. Twice releasing & recapturing it before I
could snatch the mouse to safety. The 3rd time the mouse found a way under a
drop cloth (DIY still in progress) causing Wizard & Seven to be
confused. The mouse, turned up at the other side of the cloth where I caught it
under the handy kitchen strainer. “It’s M!” I started a distraction by throwing
a pen into the bedroom …

Long story short: M is
back!

He
does have some injury on his right side from a cat claw or tooth, but he seems
to be doing ok. He loves his crackers, found his water tank and has active
moments. To keep him in confinement, we wrapped his condo in a T-shirt so he
can’t squeeze through wherever the opening between bars may just be a bit wider.

The only thing we haven’t figured out yet, is how to keep the cats
away. Right now we keep both french doors to our office closed. But, Seven knows
where he is. When I ran in to answer the phone without closing the door behind
me, she was on top of the cage in an instant …

Know your Tax Code, there can be fun in the details

Had I been drinking coffee or soda I might have spilled it at the moment
I came across this:

According to IRS Publication 525 - Taxable and
Nontaxable Income - page 31 - Other Income

” Stolen
Property.
If you steal property, you must report its fair market
value in your income in the year you steal it unless in the same year you return
it to its rightful owner. “

ROFLOL - Yeah right!

Along the same line
” Found Property.
If you
find and keep property that does not belong to you that has been lost or
abandoned (treasure-trove), it is taxable to you at its fair market value in the
first year it is your undisputed possession. “

There are quite
some interesting things in this publication regarding what you should and
shouldn’t report (not the latter is a problem, really). For online viewing,
click: IRS Publication 525.

The iPod’s missing features

C & I in the mean time both own a 20GB iPod. We’re
quite happy with them, but here’s what we would like to see
improve.

The
iPod’s missing features
#1 - Shuffle Playlist
Shuffle playlist (in
addition to Shuffle Album and Shuffle Songs) is a must have when you have
playlists spanning different albums and your iPod is loaded with different
genres. Right now it will play any song from anywhere on the iPod ~ Rock, New
Age, Holiday, Classical, Podcasts, … and sadly enough the iTrip beep files to
set up the FM frequencies.
[ In my opinion one should be able to set
the iTrip frequency under settings, where you scroll to the frequency you wish
to use, and not via a series of audio clips. Griffin?]

#2 -
OFF
The described turn off function is actually a low sleep mode that
drains the battery over a number of days - weeks. For those with less frequent
listening habits, there should be an option to turn the iPod OFF. Let stand by
be default for everybody, but make an OFF option available. I wouldn’t mind
waiting 30secs for it to boot when I’m on a trip, but, I do mind getting caught
twice on the same trip with a dead iPod. Can you imagine this would be your
digital camera’s behavior: you don’t use your digital camera for a week and it’s
battery went empty?

#3 - Notes
Note files are truncated after
4k? I honestly can’t understand why, when an iPod can handle 20 minutes of
music, equal to xx MB of buffered MP3s. When longer files are moved to the iPod
or played on the iPod it should leave them intact and if there is a technical
insurmountable obstacle, it should load the note in chunks, with read more links
to chunck #2, then chunk #3. Those would preferably be located at both the top
& bottom of the note with a previous & next link as well.

#4 - Games
I don’t know about you, but the games frustrate me.
I can’t play for 10, let alone 20, minutes without getting increasingly
frustrated. How about some entry level difficulty that gradually increases? It
should be entertaining and relaxing. Not raising my blood pressure.

#5 - Charging
Battery level / charge indication while the iPod
is being charged. The animated icon is nice, but it doesn’t tell you anything
more than it’s charging.

Also: installation can be tricky. If during
first installation you select manage music manually, your system / iTunes will
no longer find your iPod with no iPod can be found, or something of that nature.
You have to start with automatic mode and as the files are starting to upload,
quickly cancel it, and then change the preferences. Seems manual mode could use
some double-checking.

On my feature request list would be stereo FM
reception, so when you want to listen to the news or a certain radio show, you
can simply do so on your iPod. Thinking forward, all iPods should come with a
color screen and include recording capability without 3rd party hardware
(built-in mic and line in). Whether those are going to be realized by Apple is a
whole different matter.

PS: There seems to be an import bug in
iTunes. Upon inserting a CD that was previously imported, iTunes warns that the
files already exist and gives the option to replace the existing files or to “do
not import”. Clicking do not import results in the disc being imported anyhow
…

A touch of Christmas

A touch of Christmas in March

Sunday afternoon

Aah. Sunday afternoon. Finally some time to sit down and blog. Between
some projects, beta-testing & troubleshooting a few things, some computer
repairs, increased DIY activity, going to the gym again a few times a week and
catching mice - haha - … time really flies.

It looks like our
second bathroom will be finished shortly. It’s been a very long process with
quite a few obstacles and interruptions (you may remember this started last
fall, before the hurricanes … ), but since earlier this week all major
fixtures are in place & operational. Woohoo! Now it’s down to some finishing
touches like grouting the shower, applying sealer, installing molding, hanging a
mirror, towel bars, etc. We can hardly wait ’till it’s finished. That bathroom
has certainly taken more time and effort than I generously anticipated, but then
there were some structural and technical adventures we didn’t know about. Oh
well, once it’s finished, the reward will be double. I’ll share some images
later this week once it’s near final.

Plastering in progress on rear wall.

Last weekend we started
working on the walls and ceiling of the staircase and upper hallway. With all
the wallpaper removed and several gallons of plaster things start to look pretty
smooth. Was that ever a messy job. There was so much dust (from sanding) it
looked like it was like snowing inside. Just a few more little spots to hit here
and there and we can prime it We found some non-toxic paint stripper we’re
testing out. Because of the cold weather we can’t keep a door or a window open
for ventilation, but along with the resurfaced hallway we want to get rid of the
dark green trim paint. So, hopefully next weekend we’ll have a white hallway.

It’s been two days now Since M escaped. Wizard & Seven have left
their observation spots in the kitchen for their baskets. Either they think it’s
gone, or are too tired to stay on the lookout. I do miss the little critter. It
was so cute. M, where are you?

Hello M

Wizard killed a mouse yesterday, which he proudly brought to me.
Later in the evening he brought another, this one was quite alive and squeeking
as Wizard was trying to recapture him after he dropped him.

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