I switched from iOS to Android when my iPhone 3G (not 3GS) finally gave up the ghost, and by that stage Apple weren't doing any OS updates to it either. That was a few years ago. On the whole I'm pretty happy with Android, since v4 it's felt less like a hobby OS and more stable. Even if it doesn't seem as stable as iOS, which is understandable since it gets skinned for each manufacturers hardware- making it akin to Windows in trying to accomodate everything.
I've got a Nexus 4 (the google phone) so you'd expect Android to play nicely with Googles own hardware, and yeah, upto 4.4.2, it has - it seems noticeably quicker doing things than on equivalent hardware.
So far, so good.
Android 4.4 came out late last year and it's caused problems on a number of devices. But the problem I had was when I made, or answered, a phone call - the dialler pad went black and inactive. The only way I could hang up was by holding the power button, or waiting until the caller hangup. And I couldn't use phone banking, or put the phone on speaker.
Sometimes hitting the power button on the side showed a brief glimpse of the panel. couldn't do anythnig with it, so presume this is Google's attempt at teasing me.
Not really the best look for a device marketed as a phone.
Even for me who doesn't really use the phone as a phone much.
So I've written this summary to bring together the number of pages and things I tried, eventually taking the phone back to Android 4.3.
What did I try
The internet is full of suggestions. Here's what I tried and what happened.
Tried alternative dialler
Kinda improved things, but still when receiving phone calls everything went dark.
Safe Mode
This is similar to booting into Safe Mode on a PC, it disables 3rd party apps etc. Instructions here.
Result: same problem, so it's Android and not an app I installed.
Restore to factory settings
Your phone has a restore to factory settings somewhere. It'll clear everything, so back up if you don't already sync to Google.
Result: as expected, same as Safe Mode.
Clean Install of 4.4.2
I'll give more detailed instructions under the restore to 4.3 section below. But figured before I took it back, I'd try a clean install of 4.4.2.
Result: phone seemed more responsive, but same problem with dialler.
Restore back to 4.3
And so, after being unable to get some voicemail, I decided to go back to 4.3. This involved a few webpages, and wasn't very Mac focussed, so here's my attempt at bringing it together - hopefully making it reasonably straightforward for most users.
Sources for this:
Cult of Android
Android Developer Site
Unlock bootloader for Nexus 4
Software you'll need
Android SDK- Developer Tools and API libraries
Android Factory Images - choose the 4.3 version
Android File Transfer Agent (maybe already installed if you move files/music around)
Instructions
Your Mac should already have the drivers to see the Nexus, if not install the Android File Transfer agent from here.
Extract the Android SDK, it will say you need to have a Java environment installed, but all you want from this large bundle is a small file called Fastboot.
Extract the 4.3 Factory image.
I kept both extractions in Downloads, as it was easier to keep track of where they were. But that's just me.
Find the file in the SDK called 'fastboot' and move this into the extracted 4.3 directory (called occam-jwr66y). Fastboot is probably in a subfolder called 'platform-tools'.
Put Nexus into Bootloader mode
Turn the phone off, then switch on by pressing the power key, and Volume Up + Volume Down simultaneously.
Connect the phone to the computer.
Start up a terminal window (Launchpad / Other / Terminal). Use the cd command to get to the directory you've saved everything into, for example mine was:
cd ~/Downloads/occam-jwr66y
type:
./fastboot oem unlock
You will be prompted on the phone to verify the process.
Open the script flash-all.sh using TextEdit from the occam-jwr66y folder and edit it so that all of the fastboot commands read ./fastboot my script now looks like:
./fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-mako-makoz20i.img
./fastboot reboot-bootloader
sleep 5
./fastboot flash radio radio-mako-m9615a-cefwmazm-2.0.1700.84.img
./fastboot reboot-bootloader
sleep 5
./fastboot -w update image-occam-jwr66y.zip
Back to Terminal, and type
./flash-all.sh
Your phone will automatically reboot, and ask you to set it up again. Things worked fine for me here.
But I also rebooted into the Bootloader, connected my phone up, and typed the following into the terminal window to lock the bootloader again:
./fastboot oem lock
It was then an annoying process of going through the Android store for My Apps, then clicking on the All tab and choosing what I wanted to reinstall.
However the phone dialler now does what I want it to do.
Hope this helps someone...
B
Showing posts with label Macs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Macs. Show all posts
14 May 2012
aMSN, MacOS 10.7 (Lion), iTunes - music artwork display
Ok, probably of limited interest to 90-95% of readers, but:
Problem:
My iTunes artwork isn't displaying when I use aMSN. This obviously upsets me, hugely.
Lion is a 64bit OS, aMSN (both SVN and standard release) appears to be 32bit. And that's why the two don't play nicely.
But there's a quick fix.
Solution
Close iTunes. Go to the Applications folder, do a Get Info, and select Open in 32-bit mode.
This seems to work. Although I've noticed that you need to start aMSN before iTunes - especially if you use a remote storage location (NAS) for your iTunes library.
Why, of course my life is exciting.
Problem:
My iTunes artwork isn't displaying when I use aMSN. This obviously upsets me, hugely.
Lion is a 64bit OS, aMSN (both SVN and standard release) appears to be 32bit. And that's why the two don't play nicely.
But there's a quick fix.
Solution
Close iTunes. Go to the Applications folder, do a Get Info, and select Open in 32-bit mode.
This seems to work. Although I've noticed that you need to start aMSN before iTunes - especially if you use a remote storage location (NAS) for your iTunes library.
Why, of course my life is exciting.
29 October 2011
A day to myself, and technology
So, I've got the day and house to myself. What to do? Movies, coffee, music, and beer. Simple.
Movie watch (so far): My Little Eye (alright thriller); Badlands (really enjoyed this)
Music (so far): Opeth-Heritage; Dream Theater-A Dramatic Turn of Events
Both albums were loud, as they're supposed to be. And were used as a backdrop to my cooking of some piccalilli. Yes, that's the kind of radical behaviour I get up to when left alone. The house smells of white wine vinegar, mustard and ginger. Works for me. And co-incidently goes well with the Crabbies Black Ginger Beer (6%, aged, and includes other spices - very very tasty - tho not as quaffable as their standard).
I've got left-overs from last night for tea, as I can't be bothered moving.
Technology
usually it pisses me off, but in this case - win. I've got a ReadyNAS duo where I store all my music and stuff that's not in the google cloud. It has 2x1.5TG drives in there, set up for full redundancy, so if one fails, everything is backup on drive2. Mainly as I don't think it would be good for my sanity to lose my music collection...sure I could import it from CD again, but the purchased mp3s and vinyl<->mp3 conversions, not quite so easy to replace.
Anyway, I recently upgraded to the new firmware and noticed it supported MacOS Time Machine backup. I thought, that's kinda useful. And didn't do anything about it. Last week I enabled it, set aside 300GB of NAS space for it (to back up both Mac's, it's done on MAC address, so both machines can share that 300GB), and kicked things off. It's much slower than my firewire800 external drive - taking many hours to do the initial 65GB backup. I'd configured it to not backup the dropbox directory, and may yet remove the Applications directory. But once it had done the first backup, it's been very quick, and runs happily in the background every few hours.
this means at some point soon, I'll have a few external harddrives to dispose of (2x 250gb USB, a 1TB internal loose, and a 750GB firewire800) which will be nice to tidy the electronics up a bit.
Here's the info from ReadyNas.
Right, onto the next movie and some beer. Piccalilli is now bottled.
B
Movie watch (so far): My Little Eye (alright thriller); Badlands (really enjoyed this)
Music (so far): Opeth-Heritage; Dream Theater-A Dramatic Turn of Events
Both albums were loud, as they're supposed to be. And were used as a backdrop to my cooking of some piccalilli. Yes, that's the kind of radical behaviour I get up to when left alone. The house smells of white wine vinegar, mustard and ginger. Works for me. And co-incidently goes well with the Crabbies Black Ginger Beer (6%, aged, and includes other spices - very very tasty - tho not as quaffable as their standard).
I've got left-overs from last night for tea, as I can't be bothered moving.
Technology
usually it pisses me off, but in this case - win. I've got a ReadyNAS duo where I store all my music and stuff that's not in the google cloud. It has 2x1.5TG drives in there, set up for full redundancy, so if one fails, everything is backup on drive2. Mainly as I don't think it would be good for my sanity to lose my music collection...sure I could import it from CD again, but the purchased mp3s and vinyl<->mp3 conversions, not quite so easy to replace.
Anyway, I recently upgraded to the new firmware and noticed it supported MacOS Time Machine backup. I thought, that's kinda useful. And didn't do anything about it. Last week I enabled it, set aside 300GB of NAS space for it (to back up both Mac's, it's done on MAC address, so both machines can share that 300GB), and kicked things off. It's much slower than my firewire800 external drive - taking many hours to do the initial 65GB backup. I'd configured it to not backup the dropbox directory, and may yet remove the Applications directory. But once it had done the first backup, it's been very quick, and runs happily in the background every few hours.
this means at some point soon, I'll have a few external harddrives to dispose of (2x 250gb USB, a 1TB internal loose, and a 750GB firewire800) which will be nice to tidy the electronics up a bit.
Here's the info from ReadyNas.
Right, onto the next movie and some beer. Piccalilli is now bottled.
B
28 August 2011
4 June 2010
And on a lighter note
I feel slightly better after that constructed rant :) then came across the following App for iphones and now iPads.
This could be a really good use of an ipad - it's far easier to turn pages on a touch screen than swiping between pages in a folder (as I currently do).
iPad app to display sheet music.
This post brought to you by Iron Maiden's Brave New World.
This could be a really good use of an ipad - it's far easier to turn pages on a touch screen than swiping between pages in a folder (as I currently do).
iPad app to display sheet music.
This post brought to you by Iron Maiden's Brave New World.
16 January 2010
aMSN, SVN, iTunes plugin
I suspect this post will be of no use what-so-ever for most of you, but hopefully those googling away for a similar problem may find it helpful.
I'm running the SVN release of aMSN on the Mac - a MSN client which looks pretty and works so much better than MSN for the Mac. The music plug-in hasn't worked very well either on the SVN version, or Snow Leopard, opinion is divided. I seem to recall it being fine on Snow Leopard, so figure it's the SVN.
There's a few things to try, on some SVN versions removing the Adobe Unit Types.osa file from \Library\Scripting Additions will fix the problem. This fixed things a few times for me.
If it doesn't, try pressing Apple+P while aMSN is the active App, this displays the Plugin Log. One thing I came across was a permissions error on the Music plugin within aMSN.
I fixed this by opening the contents of aMSN (Control + Click on aMSN app, and choose Show Package Contents - there's a sex ref in there, somewhere), going to the plugin directory and deleting the music plugin folder. I downloaded it again from the aMSN main homepage, dragged this version into the correct place.
Things started working again.The import Plugin may work, but that app doesn't seem to have been updated for sometime, play around :)
I've just put the Adobe Unit Types file back into place, and restarted aMSN, and it's dead again, so it does appear to require that file to be moved, and in my case the music plugin with correct permissions installed.
B
I'm running the SVN release of aMSN on the Mac - a MSN client which looks pretty and works so much better than MSN for the Mac. The music plug-in hasn't worked very well either on the SVN version, or Snow Leopard, opinion is divided. I seem to recall it being fine on Snow Leopard, so figure it's the SVN.
There's a few things to try, on some SVN versions removing the Adobe Unit Types.osa file from \Library\Scripting Additions will fix the problem. This fixed things a few times for me.
If it doesn't, try pressing Apple+P while aMSN is the active App, this displays the Plugin Log. One thing I came across was a permissions error on the Music plugin within aMSN.
I fixed this by opening the contents of aMSN (Control + Click on aMSN app, and choose Show Package Contents - there's a sex ref in there, somewhere), going to the plugin directory and deleting the music plugin folder. I downloaded it again from the aMSN main homepage, dragged this version into the correct place.
Things started working again.The import Plugin may work, but that app doesn't seem to have been updated for sometime, play around :)
I've just put the Adobe Unit Types file back into place, and restarted aMSN, and it's dead again, so it does appear to require that file to be moved, and in my case the music plugin with correct permissions installed.
B
30 November 2009
Musings from the damp island
It's been an eventful time with my harddrive deciding to develop issues, nothing drastic and I'd done a recent backup, so I don't think I've lost anything. I had a couple of files I'd edited, but couldn't recover the new version of, but meh I'll cope. So I replaced it with a bigger faster one, and damnit, getting to the harddrive in a MacBook Pro is a nightmare. But I managed it, and did a clean install of everything before moving stuff from the old one with a a SATA<-> USB adapter. Yes, much excitement all round.
The big thing last week was that I grabbed a minion and we moved the other half of the couch upstairs, so we've now got a fully functional couch which does couch things. I celebrated this over the weekend by watching three games of rugby, drinking some beer and eating food. And then WWE Survivor series on Sunday, awesome.
I am not thrilled with living in a country where the number 1 selling album is Susan Boyle. I dreamed a dream? FFS, let's hope she gets what happened to the last guy who wittered (twittered?) on about dreams.
Too soon? Hope not.
But in this countries defense, there are some good things. Ok the TV is largely crap, but curling up with a very nice paneer curry, a 2007 Gamay from Park Estate to watch Antiques Roadshow and Top Gear is a good thing.
Off to see Marillion, Tragically Hip and Pineapple Thief this week, and I'm only at work for two days - huzzah. Might manage to fit some beer and scotch in there too.
Me
The big thing last week was that I grabbed a minion and we moved the other half of the couch upstairs, so we've now got a fully functional couch which does couch things. I celebrated this over the weekend by watching three games of rugby, drinking some beer and eating food. And then WWE Survivor series on Sunday, awesome.
I am not thrilled with living in a country where the number 1 selling album is Susan Boyle. I dreamed a dream? FFS, let's hope she gets what happened to the last guy who wittered (twittered?) on about dreams.
Too soon? Hope not.
But in this countries defense, there are some good things. Ok the TV is largely crap, but curling up with a very nice paneer curry, a 2007 Gamay from Park Estate to watch Antiques Roadshow and Top Gear is a good thing.
Off to see Marillion, Tragically Hip and Pineapple Thief this week, and I'm only at work for two days - huzzah. Might manage to fit some beer and scotch in there too.
Me
3 March 2009
The Mac wouldn't boot : invalid sibling link
Mac Fix for Harddrive failure
Firstly, I’m writing this in iWorks ’09 which is something different for me. I like the nice simple layout, and apparently Pages 09 supports Endnote X2 (or rather vice versa) which is why I’m trying it. And I apologise that this blog is every so slightly geeky. Slightly.
But the point of this blog is to detail the recovery of my Mac. I switched it on last night and it didn’t boot, did the spinning wheel thing, then shut itself down. Which wasn’t ideal !
I knew it wasn’t the harddrive as I could still bootcamp into Windows.
Had a chat to my Senior Mac support person, or #1 Mac Minion as I call him, and he made some suggestions, so here’s what I did.
Booted off the 10.5 DVD and ran the Disk Utility, and Repair HD. This resulted in:
Invalid node structure
Volume check failed
Error : Filesystem verify or repair failed
Mac Minion suggested I boot into single-user mode (switch on and press Apple + s) which ran through the text display and allowed me to run some commands:
ran /sbin/fsck
invalid sibling link (4,318)
/dev/rdisk0s2 (hfs) exited with signal 8
Booting into verbose mode (switch on and press Apple + v) went through the commands, then shutdown.
Googling the invalid sibling link resulted in the suggestion of booting from the DVD and running from terminal:
df (to find out what the drive name is for your Mac HD, mine was disk0s2)
umount /dev/disk0s2
fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2 (which I ended up running twice to check it was ok as there were errors)
fsck_hfs -f /dev/disk0s2
and voila, I could boot again.
love, geek b
Firstly, I’m writing this in iWorks ’09 which is something different for me. I like the nice simple layout, and apparently Pages 09 supports Endnote X2 (or rather vice versa) which is why I’m trying it. And I apologise that this blog is every so slightly geeky. Slightly.
But the point of this blog is to detail the recovery of my Mac. I switched it on last night and it didn’t boot, did the spinning wheel thing, then shut itself down. Which wasn’t ideal !
I knew it wasn’t the harddrive as I could still bootcamp into Windows.
Had a chat to my Senior Mac support person, or #1 Mac Minion as I call him, and he made some suggestions, so here’s what I did.
Booted off the 10.5 DVD and ran the Disk Utility, and Repair HD. This resulted in:
Invalid node structure
Volume check failed
Error : Filesystem verify or repair failed
Mac Minion suggested I boot into single-user mode (switch on and press Apple + s) which ran through the text display and allowed me to run some commands:
ran /sbin/fsck
invalid sibling link (4,318)
/dev/rdisk0s2 (hfs) exited with signal 8
Booting into verbose mode (switch on and press Apple + v) went through the commands, then shutdown.
Googling the invalid sibling link resulted in the suggestion of booting from the DVD and running from terminal:
df (to find out what the drive name is for your Mac HD, mine was disk0s2)
umount /dev/disk0s2
fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2 (which I ended up running twice to check it was ok as there were errors)
fsck_hfs -f /dev/disk0s2
and voila, I could boot again.
love, geek b
17 January 2009
28 October 2008
Phones!!!
Ok I'll admit straight up I don't like gadgets much. Which probably comes as a surprise to most people, but really I can count on one hand the gadgets I have (ipod, laptop, appletv). And I hate phones. Really hate. I hate their ringing. I hate people wanting me to do stuff, and i hate their general intrusion into daily life. Which is why i don't have a landline at home.
I like text messaging and watching my phone ring, just so I know who I'm ignoring.
So when work told me I needed to put my mobile number on the business card I said 'no' it's a personal phone, so you won't be doing that. They said fine they'll get me a work phone. I got excited at that point and said, can I have an iphone. They said no, and my enthusiasm disappeared. I ended up a with a Palm Treo 700wx. It's a hefty wee thing, but does fit OK in my pocket, and TBH I'm a hefty wee thing too. It runs Windows Mobile and lets me read my emails and get reminders of meetings. That's proven to be very useful and I like it for that. The layout is mostly Windows-y so I can navigate around it pretty easily.
The battery seems crap, like 2-3 days (max) when ive got it checking emails and on phone. And it doesn't seem to have a phone only option (ie no Outlook), I'm not saying it doesn't have one, but I haven't found it. And I can't be arsed reading manuals. I tried. I really did. But got bored and found beer instead.
And my personal phone? well the SonyEricsson thing I had died. Badly. So I got an iphone. It's like sex, I can't get enough of it. Looks great, is really simple to use, does everything I want a phone to do (aside from MMS, but there's a hack for that), and syncs with my Mac - which was always a driving issue for a new phone. The SonyEriccson did ok via BlueTooth tho'.
It's simple to use, the keypad is easier to use than the Treo (which isn't too bad - looks crap, but works ok) and typing messages is quicker than I thought it would be. I would have thought my fingers would be too big and i'd get the wrong letters, but no. It's just great. And it looks even better!
I haven't ever felt this kind of need for a phone before. I even answer phone calls on it !!
So there is another gadget in my life, and I can see this one making life easier - which is my usual issue with gadgets, in large they don't add anything. This one - syncs my calendars, organises my shopping lists, allows me to dump to-do's on it including shopping lists, can check the weather, tap out emails, listen to music (if I ever get around to putting any on there), watch movies (if I get around to that). Oh heaven and joy :)
me (somewhat infatuated)
I like text messaging and watching my phone ring, just so I know who I'm ignoring.
So when work told me I needed to put my mobile number on the business card I said 'no' it's a personal phone, so you won't be doing that. They said fine they'll get me a work phone. I got excited at that point and said, can I have an iphone. They said no, and my enthusiasm disappeared. I ended up a with a Palm Treo 700wx. It's a hefty wee thing, but does fit OK in my pocket, and TBH I'm a hefty wee thing too. It runs Windows Mobile and lets me read my emails and get reminders of meetings. That's proven to be very useful and I like it for that. The layout is mostly Windows-y so I can navigate around it pretty easily.The battery seems crap, like 2-3 days (max) when ive got it checking emails and on phone. And it doesn't seem to have a phone only option (ie no Outlook), I'm not saying it doesn't have one, but I haven't found it. And I can't be arsed reading manuals. I tried. I really did. But got bored and found beer instead.
And my personal phone? well the SonyEricsson thing I had died. Badly. So I got an iphone. It's like sex, I can't get enough of it. Looks great, is really simple to use, does everything I want a phone to do (aside from MMS, but there's a hack for that), and syncs with my Mac - which was always a driving issue for a new phone. The SonyEriccson did ok via BlueTooth tho'.It's simple to use, the keypad is easier to use than the Treo (which isn't too bad - looks crap, but works ok) and typing messages is quicker than I thought it would be. I would have thought my fingers would be too big and i'd get the wrong letters, but no. It's just great. And it looks even better!
I haven't ever felt this kind of need for a phone before. I even answer phone calls on it !!
So there is another gadget in my life, and I can see this one making life easier - which is my usual issue with gadgets, in large they don't add anything. This one - syncs my calendars, organises my shopping lists, allows me to dump to-do's on it including shopping lists, can check the weather, tap out emails, listen to music (if I ever get around to putting any on there), watch movies (if I get around to that). Oh heaven and joy :)
me (somewhat infatuated)
16 September 2008
Mac, Time Machine, happiness
My Mac had a harddrive failure. On the plus side this was three days before the warranty expired (go my mac!), and I had been doing weekly backups using Time Machine (part of MacOS 10.5) so I wasn't too worried.
Yesterday my Mac arrived back with a new harddrive and got to test how my Time Machine backups worked. Nothing like an emergency test :)
So I booted off an install disc, plugged in my external harddrive (FW800), selected the Utilities menu and 'Restore System from Backup', found my most recent backup and left it to it. Took about 90 mins for roughly 80GB. And voila everything was back to how it was. Sure MacMail needed to rebuild it's mailboxes (a minute or two), Spotlight needed to rebuild it's cache, and iTunes needed to be pushed towards my external drive (where I store things), but aside from those very minor issues...
Time Machine is bloody brillant.
B
Yesterday my Mac arrived back with a new harddrive and got to test how my Time Machine backups worked. Nothing like an emergency test :)
So I booted off an install disc, plugged in my external harddrive (FW800), selected the Utilities menu and 'Restore System from Backup', found my most recent backup and left it to it. Took about 90 mins for roughly 80GB. And voila everything was back to how it was. Sure MacMail needed to rebuild it's mailboxes (a minute or two), Spotlight needed to rebuild it's cache, and iTunes needed to be pushed towards my external drive (where I store things), but aside from those very minor issues...
Time Machine is bloody brillant.
B
13 May 2008
La Boheme
Last night another brunette and I wandered along to Puccini's La Boheme. It's surprising how hard it is to find people who want to go to the opera, or rather how many pop up *after* the event and say, oh I want to go to an opera...ballet and symphonies, no problems. Opera? issues. Not helped by the aged nature of the audience, jeez old people make a lot of odd noises.
So anyway, to drag myself away from a rant about old people at concerts, the basic plot revolves around the usual: boy meets girl, fall in love, some comedic relief by others (also in love), girl poorly, death. A more detailed summary can be found here. So what made this one good/great?
The stage direction and design was superb. The opera is traditionally set in a Parisian student quarter of 1830. This one was transplanted to a student flat in contemporary time, and it worked. Brilliantly. there's an interview with the designer in the Listener here. I've seen a DVD version in the traditional setting, and the transplant brought it to life much much better. I felt more empathy for the characters, I've lived in those places, I've been cold, I've had flats where we all held out for one us to get paid (or student loans). The opera is full of pathos to start with, but somehow this brought out more from the characters. The two main leads were superb, in particular Mimi played by Antoinette Halloran had a fantastic voice, and the interaction between her and Jesus Garcia who played Rudolfo was great. At times I thought the musicians weren't sympathetic enough to the singers, and at times the music was a bit ragged. I can see why a friend of mine a couple of years ago sent me some lyrics from La Boheme.
Overall? Excellent. Moving, interesting and brilliantly staged opera. I can see why purists would grumble, but TBH fuck'em, this worked, and it made it more interesting because of it. Realistically those purists are going to be dying off (judging by the age of the audience) and half of em wouldn't be able to see the stage anyway...
Oh, and there were vinyls in the flat, and vinyls in the market! and Rudolfo has a Mac PowerBookPro.
Capped off by a nice lemonade (no really!) at Midnight, since Simply Paris was closed.
b
So anyway, to drag myself away from a rant about old people at concerts, the basic plot revolves around the usual: boy meets girl, fall in love, some comedic relief by others (also in love), girl poorly, death. A more detailed summary can be found here. So what made this one good/great?
The stage direction and design was superb. The opera is traditionally set in a Parisian student quarter of 1830. This one was transplanted to a student flat in contemporary time, and it worked. Brilliantly. there's an interview with the designer in the Listener here. I've seen a DVD version in the traditional setting, and the transplant brought it to life much much better. I felt more empathy for the characters, I've lived in those places, I've been cold, I've had flats where we all held out for one us to get paid (or student loans). The opera is full of pathos to start with, but somehow this brought out more from the characters. The two main leads were superb, in particular Mimi played by Antoinette Halloran had a fantastic voice, and the interaction between her and Jesus Garcia who played Rudolfo was great. At times I thought the musicians weren't sympathetic enough to the singers, and at times the music was a bit ragged. I can see why a friend of mine a couple of years ago sent me some lyrics from La Boheme.
Overall? Excellent. Moving, interesting and brilliantly staged opera. I can see why purists would grumble, but TBH fuck'em, this worked, and it made it more interesting because of it. Realistically those purists are going to be dying off (judging by the age of the audience) and half of em wouldn't be able to see the stage anyway...
Oh, and there were vinyls in the flat, and vinyls in the market! and Rudolfo has a Mac PowerBookPro.
Capped off by a nice lemonade (no really!) at Midnight, since Simply Paris was closed.
b
14 April 2008
AppleTV Take 2
Given my post on how I hacked my AppleTV v1 was, according to Google Analytics, my most popular/viewed post, I've decided that I'll recount my experiences for AppleTV Take 2.
I'd been putting this off for a bit until a few more of the apps I like were available for Take2 (which is just Apple's name for v2). So this past weekend seemed as good a time as any, so I kicked in to it.
Firstly: many of the websites mentioned that the upgrade from v1.1 to v2 would delete any AVIs sitting on the machine, and since these were the only copies I had of some of the stuff I decided backing them up would be a good idea.
Turned out that the upgrade left them all alone, so you may want to skip this stage.
Useful command time: rather than dragging things across using Fugu (for an SCP connection) I decided to do a bit of hunting and find commands to all of the backup in one foul (slow) swoop. The directory I had previously created on the AppleTV was 'Movies' under the user frontrow so the command you want to move them all across to the local computers Movies folder is:
scp -1 -r frontrow@appletv.local:~/Movies/ /Users/USERNAME/Movies/
Allow a long period of time.
Having backed everything up I ran the update, took about 5 minutes to download everything and then 10-15 to install it all. Not very exciting seeing small white bars move across the stage, but eh. It didn't break anything. And all my music was available and I could surf YouTube. Woohoo.
However I couldn't connect to the box so needed to install SSH. Again a patchstick seemed the easiest way - as it's non-invasive and I was watching a DVD at the time. Rather than going through the tutorial again, the best description I found on the web was here. You'll need a 512mb USB drive, 10.4.9 combo updater (link on the site to download), AppleTV 1.1 (link on site) and your MacOS 10.4 install disks - the ones that came with your computer are fine. Or steal from somewhere.
the process is quite simple and went pretty quickly, so I soon had an SSH enabled appletv.
Connecting to the appletv using terminal and ssh -1 frontrow@appletv.local (or ip address) suggested all of the files I'd backed up were still there which was exciting.
The next step was to enable Sapphire (the AVI browser). Now the method to do this on appleTV1.1 was to load ATV Loader, sadly thats not compatible with Take2. So I had to load Sapphire manually. Reasonable instructions are available here. I found it easier to use Fugu and dump the downloaded files across to the AppleTV using that.
After a reboot etc things were rocking along, well I could see the files. Admittedly no codecs had been installed so I couldn't actually watch anything! So next step is codec installation.
Again found a good tutorial for this here. And that seemed to work well. I now have a Take2 AppleTV which is working nicely with my AVIs. I did have to delete off some Sapphire settings: (frontrow - Sapphire - @TV - and levels below that from memory) then got Sapphire to rescan the AVIs I had - which put them into the Movie and TV lists that the new version of Sapphire has.
Quite simple, painless and impressively didn't lose any of the files I had left on there.
Woohoo. And all while I watched Pollock, so arty and geeky. !!
love,me
I'd been putting this off for a bit until a few more of the apps I like were available for Take2 (which is just Apple's name for v2). So this past weekend seemed as good a time as any, so I kicked in to it.
Firstly: many of the websites mentioned that the upgrade from v1.1 to v2 would delete any AVIs sitting on the machine, and since these were the only copies I had of some of the stuff I decided backing them up would be a good idea.
Turned out that the upgrade left them all alone, so you may want to skip this stage.
Useful command time: rather than dragging things across using Fugu (for an SCP connection) I decided to do a bit of hunting and find commands to all of the backup in one foul (slow) swoop. The directory I had previously created on the AppleTV was 'Movies' under the user frontrow so the command you want to move them all across to the local computers Movies folder is:
scp -1 -r frontrow@appletv.local:~/Movies/ /Users/USERNAME/Movies/
Allow a long period of time.
Having backed everything up I ran the update, took about 5 minutes to download everything and then 10-15 to install it all. Not very exciting seeing small white bars move across the stage, but eh. It didn't break anything. And all my music was available and I could surf YouTube. Woohoo.
However I couldn't connect to the box so needed to install SSH. Again a patchstick seemed the easiest way - as it's non-invasive and I was watching a DVD at the time. Rather than going through the tutorial again, the best description I found on the web was here. You'll need a 512mb USB drive, 10.4.9 combo updater (link on the site to download), AppleTV 1.1 (link on site) and your MacOS 10.4 install disks - the ones that came with your computer are fine. Or steal from somewhere.
the process is quite simple and went pretty quickly, so I soon had an SSH enabled appletv.
Connecting to the appletv using terminal and ssh -1 frontrow@appletv.local (or ip address) suggested all of the files I'd backed up were still there which was exciting.
The next step was to enable Sapphire (the AVI browser). Now the method to do this on appleTV1.1 was to load ATV Loader, sadly thats not compatible with Take2. So I had to load Sapphire manually. Reasonable instructions are available here. I found it easier to use Fugu and dump the downloaded files across to the AppleTV using that.
After a reboot etc things were rocking along, well I could see the files. Admittedly no codecs had been installed so I couldn't actually watch anything! So next step is codec installation.
Again found a good tutorial for this here. And that seemed to work well. I now have a Take2 AppleTV which is working nicely with my AVIs. I did have to delete off some Sapphire settings: (frontrow - Sapphire - @TV - and levels below that from memory) then got Sapphire to rescan the AVIs I had - which put them into the Movie and TV lists that the new version of Sapphire has.
Quite simple, painless and impressively didn't lose any of the files I had left on there.
Woohoo. And all while I watched Pollock, so arty and geeky. !!
love,me
19 February 2008
oh dear
Wearing jeans - check
Wearing obscure band t-shirt - check
Band known for obsessive fandom - check
Wearing sneakers - check
iPod - check
Large headphones - check
Laptop in backpack - check
Carrying OS backup disc - check
Firewire cable in bag - check
Listening to intense/emo music - NOPE (Mountain Goats)
Not painting a good picture. Gets worse when I say I was heading off to go hack someone's computer. Turned out to be nice and simple, their recently deceased (ex?) partner had a mac and they didn't know how to turn it on. Was running OS9 so security wasn't hard to bypass. All I really had to do was rename files and add suffixes so they could use them on a PC.
And in an attempt to claw back karma kudos, I said no to money. She kept insisting, so I pointed out people were nice to me at a similar time, so it was nice to pay them back in kind. Which made me feel all warm n fuzzy. She kept insisting so I suggested a donation to charity, Kidney Foundation. I'm a fuckin' saint.
B.
Wearing obscure band t-shirt - check
Band known for obsessive fandom - check
Wearing sneakers - check
iPod - check
Large headphones - check
Laptop in backpack - check
Carrying OS backup disc - check
Firewire cable in bag - check
Listening to intense/emo music - NOPE (Mountain Goats)
Not painting a good picture. Gets worse when I say I was heading off to go hack someone's computer. Turned out to be nice and simple, their recently deceased (ex?) partner had a mac and they didn't know how to turn it on. Was running OS9 so security wasn't hard to bypass. All I really had to do was rename files and add suffixes so they could use them on a PC.
And in an attempt to claw back karma kudos, I said no to money. She kept insisting, so I pointed out people were nice to me at a similar time, so it was nice to pay them back in kind. Which made me feel all warm n fuzzy. She kept insisting so I suggested a donation to charity, Kidney Foundation. I'm a fuckin' saint.
B.
21 January 2008
Mac-ery
With thanks to the adorable 'i agree with everything you said' fan-person, here's a link to 25 signs of mac geekdom.
Is it bad I want a mac keg dispenser? Other than that, I came through reasonably unscathed.
Is it bad I want a mac keg dispenser? Other than that, I came through reasonably unscathed.
11 January 2008
NetNewsWire
My favourite RSS reader, NetNewsWire is now free to Windows, Mac and Linux users. More details here.
I've been using it for a year or so now and have no complaints - the lovely mr P put me onto it. And if he likes it, then it's gotta be good.
Me
I've been using it for a year or so now and have no complaints - the lovely mr P put me onto it. And if he likes it, then it's gotta be good.
Me
10 December 2007
VCDs, AVIs and nifty apps
Anyone remember VCDs? Those CD sized video's, hugely popular in Asia and never really taking off anywhere else. Except for the TV series episodes - ahhh fond memories of Angel and Buffy on VCDs. Marathon sessions with alcohol, coffee, food and great company. Aaahhhh. Nice.
Anyway, I had the reasonably rare Queen GH III VCD which I recently flicked off on Ebay, having kept a copy of the files on my harddrive. The video files were 'DAT' files, which my AppleTV couldn't play and none of the video things I had sitting around on my machine could convert them to AVI (Handbrake, iDVD, iMovie etc). All abit annoying.
Enter, ffmpegX. What a great wee application. It seems to be able to convert anything to anything else. I seem to remember something very similar on a PC a few years ago, but this one is delightfully easy to use. Didn't seem to have any Queuing function available, but I didn't do much hunting either.
Next up converting some Greg the Bunny 2005 special to something my AppleTV is happier with.
So yeah, big thumbs up for uber powerful and uber easy software for your converting needs.
Me xxx
Anyway, I had the reasonably rare Queen GH III VCD which I recently flicked off on Ebay, having kept a copy of the files on my harddrive. The video files were 'DAT' files, which my AppleTV couldn't play and none of the video things I had sitting around on my machine could convert them to AVI (Handbrake, iDVD, iMovie etc). All abit annoying.
Enter, ffmpegX. What a great wee application. It seems to be able to convert anything to anything else. I seem to remember something very similar on a PC a few years ago, but this one is delightfully easy to use. Didn't seem to have any Queuing function available, but I didn't do much hunting either.
Next up converting some Greg the Bunny 2005 special to something my AppleTV is happier with.
So yeah, big thumbs up for uber powerful and uber easy software for your converting needs.
Me xxx
7 December 2007
Leopard
I bought my third ever OS yesterday. First was Win95 upgrade, second was Mandrake 10.1 and the most recent was MacOS 10.5 (Leopard).
Didn't bother about a backup as I figured a) it wouldn't be too likely to kill anything, b) I didn't have much on my laptop I cared about too much and c) I'd back myself to be able to recover anything I did need.
So I checked a few apps homepages to see if I needed to know anything. Adobe CS3 apps are largely supported, NetNewsWire should be fine, and Shapeshifter isn't supported. Those are my three big ones that I checked as I forgot about CLC FreeBench. Oh well, fingers crossed.
Obviously I chose the Upgrade option, the reformat option didn't seem a good plan given my lack of backups! And roughly 45-60mins later I had an upgraded OS. Yup it was that easy. I'd grabbed the 10.5.1 patch off the server at work before I left so ran that and installed the other two patches. Simplicity itself. And all done while watching TopGear and QI. Whoot!
Impressions? It's slightly prettier than 10.4 and I do like the nifty pseudo 3D effect on the Dock. Everything seems to be working properly (aMSN, Adium, Azureus, NetNewsWire, Handbrake of the non-Apple apps) and seeing as my laptop was designed for 10.5 (apparently) it does seem to be running better. But that's probably just imagination.
Initial conclusion: it's not that expensive as an upgrade, but there's not a whole lot of reasons to be upgrading if you are happy with 10.4. Having said that Bootcamp is on this release, and the Mail and Calendar apps are improved. Mail handles RSS now so I'm trying to work out if I transfer my NNW feeds to Mail. The one catch I've found is that Mail doesn't seem to allow folders within the RSS section. And I like my many RSS feed divided up into folders.
Love, B
Didn't bother about a backup as I figured a) it wouldn't be too likely to kill anything, b) I didn't have much on my laptop I cared about too much and c) I'd back myself to be able to recover anything I did need.
So I checked a few apps homepages to see if I needed to know anything. Adobe CS3 apps are largely supported, NetNewsWire should be fine, and Shapeshifter isn't supported. Those are my three big ones that I checked as I forgot about CLC FreeBench. Oh well, fingers crossed.
Obviously I chose the Upgrade option, the reformat option didn't seem a good plan given my lack of backups! And roughly 45-60mins later I had an upgraded OS. Yup it was that easy. I'd grabbed the 10.5.1 patch off the server at work before I left so ran that and installed the other two patches. Simplicity itself. And all done while watching TopGear and QI. Whoot!
Impressions? It's slightly prettier than 10.4 and I do like the nifty pseudo 3D effect on the Dock. Everything seems to be working properly (aMSN, Adium, Azureus, NetNewsWire, Handbrake of the non-Apple apps) and seeing as my laptop was designed for 10.5 (apparently) it does seem to be running better. But that's probably just imagination.
Initial conclusion: it's not that expensive as an upgrade, but there's not a whole lot of reasons to be upgrading if you are happy with 10.4. Having said that Bootcamp is on this release, and the Mail and Calendar apps are improved. Mail handles RSS now so I'm trying to work out if I transfer my NNW feeds to Mail. The one catch I've found is that Mail doesn't seem to allow folders within the RSS section. And I like my many RSS feed divided up into folders.
Love, B
6 November 2007
Oh No!!!
My iPod has developed a case of 'click-of-death'. That's generally fatal.
AAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHH
Why the F*(K it couldn't have gotten this a couple of weeks before I left, or after I came back I don't know.
It is getting a bit elderly now so I'm not going to yell at it and there wasn't anything irreplaceable on it.
B
AAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHH
Why the F*(K it couldn't have gotten this a couple of weeks before I left, or after I came back I don't know.
It is getting a bit elderly now so I'm not going to yell at it and there wasn't anything irreplaceable on it.
B
16 October 2007
Calendar update
Some initial reviews of SpanningSync. It seems good, except I can't find a way to sync my URL field from iCal to GoogleCalendar. I've emailed the maker of the program, and yesterday entered the URL in Notes rather than the URL field of iCal. So we will see what happens.
What I may end up doing is using the iPod. Currently I sync my iCal to my iPod which does provide URL information. And I can open that calendar on any machine (well any Mac) using iCal. So that's all good.
S commented that my last post I appeared to be 'very tired' - a polite way of asking if I was pissed due to the spelling 'issues'. I've made a special attempt here.
Me x
What I may end up doing is using the iPod. Currently I sync my iCal to my iPod which does provide URL information. And I can open that calendar on any machine (well any Mac) using iCal. So that's all good.
S commented that my last post I appeared to be 'very tired' - a polite way of asking if I was pissed due to the spelling 'issues'. I've made a special attempt here.
Me x
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