Delicious Library

Delicious Library is the catalog application I’ve been searching for. Being able to use a firewire camera instead of a barcode scanner? Brilliant!

July 21st, 2005

NetNewsWire vs iTunes

As registered user of NetNewsWire, I’d like to respond to comments made by the developers related to Apple’s new iTunes podcasting features. There are two things that iTunes offers up that are so good and useful, I’m currently using iTunes as my podcasting downloader of choice.

iTunes stores podcasts away from your regular music files thus allowing you to shuffle and browse your music without seeing or hearing all the podcasts. I had become very annoyed while traveling recently because while I love to use the shuffle feature when I’m driving, it’s very annoying to have to skip through podcasts, especially one’s that I’ve already listened to. Yeah, why don’t you just deleted them off you dummy? I’m a pack rat. I keep em for future reference, just like I keep my video game boxes. Don’t ask. I could have also added a new smart playlist that removed podcasts based on the category, meh, I want it to do it for me

I love, LOVE having bookmarks of unfinished podcats. Being able to come back to a podcast and have it save my place is critical as I listen to many different things during my day and hate having to seek for the last spot I was on in a particular podcast. This feature right here was the deal breaker. All podcasts downloaded through iTunes have the ability to be bookmarked. I’m assuming this is because of a conversion process done on the client side which is automatic to me and the way it should be.

I hope that Ranchero will at minimum develop the AAC conversion process into NetNewsWire as I believe it would add the most value. Not sure if they could use the new “Podcasts” menu item to sort them away from music but if they can, again, would be very useful. I’ll be using iTunes for now as it has the two features I’ve been looking for since I started listening to podcasts long ago, hopefully the other tools will fall in and I can start using them again for podcasts.

July 14th, 2005

Apple New Year!

Yeah… I’ve been out of the loop for awhile now as you can tell. World of Warcraft really is that great of a game to draw me away from blogging.

The annual Macworld San Francisco is starting again. If you remember last year I posted live from Starbucks during the streamed Keynote event. This year Apple has removed the live streamed due to “cost” and is now going to be showing a delayed Keynote at 6PM PST. However, due to the fantastic nature of the net there are several “live” web blog feeds going that will pump out the information as fast as they can type. Hopefully Apple releases something really innovative here in the next few minutes, I could use a new toy

January 11th, 2005

Install DBD::mysql On Panther

I spent a good deal of my evening last night installing DBD::mysql and DBI on Mac OS X 10.3.5 so I could upgrade Moveable Type to MySQL. Why bother? I wanted to see if it would improve the performance of MT and well, no it didn’t. While I was attempting to install DBD::mysql I kept receiving errors related to /blib/arch/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.bundle. Googling the error returned what was I looking for after digging through several threads. I’d decided to put all that information in one spot for easy reference.

Installing DBD::mysql on Panther is no easy task if you try to do it without knowing about the bug in the Perl Config.pm shipped from Apple.

p. 1. Correct the bug included in Panther. (Still hasn’t been fixed since 10.3.5)

We recently discovered the DBD::mysql problem as well. The patch is to edit /System/Library/Perl/5.8.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/Config.pm, replacing:

ld=’MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.3 cc’

with

ld=’env MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.3 cc’

p. *This step is critical*. If this isn’t corrected installing DBD::mysql will fail.

p. 2. Install DBI and DBD::mysql

The easy way is to use CSPAN from Terminal.app. If this is the first time running CSPAN there is a configuration step. Select the auto config option and all should be well. At the cspan> prompt enter in the install line.

sudo perl -MCPAN -eshell
install Bundle::DBD::mysql

A more complicated way to install the packages is manually. Download the latest versions of DBI and DBD::mysql from cspan.org.

At the time of this writing DBI-1.45.tar.gz and DBD-mysql-2.9004.tar.gz are the latest versions.

You’ll need to install DBI first.

sudo cp /Downloads/DBI-1.45.tar.gz /Library/Perl
sudo tar -zxvf DBI-1.45.tar.gz
cd DBI-1.45
sudo Perl Makefile.PL
sudo make
sudo make install

Next install DBD::mysql

sudo cp /Downloads/DBD-mysql-2.9004.tar.gz /Library/Perl
sudo tar -zxvf DBD-mysql-2.9004.tar.gz
cd DBD-mysql-2.9004
sudo Perl Makefile.PL
sudo make
sudo make install

I didn’t bother running make test on either of these installs. Feel free to do so however the DBD::mysql will most likely fail due to login errors.

Hopefully this will help somebody as I spent a good part of an evening figuring this out. Isn’t Google great?

3 comments October 14th, 2004

Cherry Apple Pie Alamode

Mixing cherries with apple pie just isn’t my thing, I’m sure for some of you though it could be the next best thing since sliced bread.

One of the main reasons I love Apple is not only for the wonderful OS but because the hardware just works. For those who still want to use a boring Dell can now run Mac OS X on x86 using Cherry OS [warning: this site has been slashdotted :)].

I can’t imagine why any Windows user would even care about this. If they’re using Windows, why move over to the “ugly duckling” OS for which they won’t have any applications to run under.

Of course, I’ll give it a try at some point just to say I did and it sucked.

October 12th, 2004

Lot’s O’ Lust

Apple released a new version of their famed 12″ Powerbook last week. I know, this is a little late but I’ve been wrapped up in “Final Fantasy XI”:http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml and now “World of Warcraft”:http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ so as you can see, I’m quite the busy MMO player.

Back to the 12″… I’d love to upgrade my existing model, aka Rev. B, with this new Rev. C model. Just the 64MB of video memory alone would be awesome (boosting WoW’s graphics) plus add in the new 1.33Ghz processor with 167mhz bus, larger capacity hard drives and built-in Airport Extreme, this new model will surely make for some serious portable power at just under $1600.

Oh well, not today… now I’ll just have to lust after yet another Apple laptop until I can afford to upgrade, again.

1 comment April 23rd, 2004

Sounds Like A Personal Problem

Let this be a reminder to “those of you”:http://www.boingboing.net/2004/03/26/vlc_will_play_itunes.html out there that don’t “read the rules”:http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014. Nothing pisses me off more than someone complaining about something that has full disclosure.

Apple’s DRM licensing in regards to the iTunes Music Store is fairly loose, IMO. At any one time you can authorize 3 computers to play songs you’ve downloaded from the music store. Attempting to play on a non-authorized computer will prompt iTunes to ask you to authorize that computer. If you’ve used up your 3 slots, your going to need to deauthorize one. That’s the rule. Simple, right?

Well, some people forget to deauthorize their machines when they sell them or send them in for repair. Is this Apple’s fault? Should you blame DRM because of your lack of fore thought? I don’t think so. Some “people would rather complain”:http://www.boingboing.net/2004/03/26/vlc_will_play_itunes.html that it’s Apple’s fault and that their DRM rules are too strict instead of looking for the real solution, which is NOT cracking the DRM.

The “rules”:http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014 not only state that you can have up to 3 computers authorized at one time, they also mention that if you contact iTunes support they can deauthorize machines no longer in your possession. Gee, have you even tried that… I’ve actually done this before due to my own lack of fore thought and support was very helpful in that regard.

Next time instead of complaining about DRM, try reading the “rules”:http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014. You might learn something.

March 26th, 2004

The Gods Rejoice

MacSoft has finally released a patch to Age of Mythology that is suppose to correct the dreaded online gaming issues with AoM I’ve spoken about frequently.

bq. Most of the changes for this version were for improving GameRanger support, which now works much better overall. In addition, the following specific changes were made:
– The initial connection process for GameRanger games is much more reliable now, especially when running behind a router.
– Added support for GameRanger Premium.
– Online games now work from dial-up connections.
– Startup movies are skipped when launching GameRanger games.

bq. In this version, you no longer need to specify the “OverrideAddress” in the ‘user.cfg’ file if you are running behind a router or gateway. In fact, if you are using this, YOU SHOULD REMOVE THE LINE FROM YOUR USER.CFG FILE. The game now automatically determines your external “WAN” address, so the “OverrideAddress” is unnecessary.

bq. While the “OverrideAddress” is no longer needed, you still need to route UDP ports 2300-2301 to your local machine (or place your machine in the DMZ) if you want to host games.

Hopefully this will finally fix the problems so many people have had with trying to play the game online. There are also quite a few other fixes so maybe I’ll reinstall the game and start playing again. I didn’t see anything related to the Initialization Failed Error though, so make sure you don’t have any partitions named “Data” when trying to play AoM.

Download Macintosh AoM 1.0.1 patch

March 10th, 2004

AoM Developments…

Way back in November I mentioned a huge problem with Age of Mythology for Mac. This one post has been the most active thread here on snapturtle by far with a lot of user comments and I’ve seen it linked in several Mac gaming forums on the net. So four months later,you’d think that a patch would have been developed to fix this obviously horrid feature by now. Uh…. no. Macsoft, are you listening? Currently this issue isn’t even mentioned in their FAQ.

So, tell me Mr. Peter Tamte, MacSoft President, when am I, the average consumer, going to get a fix for this issue? You talk about piracy of your company’s games and patch Halo 3 times in a one month span yet nothing for AoM? This glaring issue is a serious problem. Someone like me who purchases this game with an advertised feature of online gaming expects it to work out of the box. Even through GameRanger for a majority of people it just doesn’t work. I have infact gotten it to work, yet countless others have not. What makes this so frustrating is that when attempting to play online most people have no clue the hoops they need to jump through in order to play online and others just can’t seem to get it to work no matter what they try.

I wrote the online configuration guide in hopes that it would solve the problem while waiting for an official patch. That has yet to happen. Please correct this problem so those who have spent good money ($50) on this game can enjoy the feature set that was promised to them on the box.

February 24th, 2004