My Mac Sucks

Previously Viewed. No shit.

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 05:28:07 GMT

Frequently, when I insert a Netflix disc, in addition to launching the Apple DVD player, it will alert me that the disc has been previously viewed.

Yeah, no shit. Its from Netflix. Chances are if the movie doesn't suck, someone else has rented it, right? ;-)

Fucking IPv6 strikes again

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:12:04 GMT

QUICK SUMMARY:IPv6 has been ruined by spam (see the error log..) before most people even get to try it out, myself included. See the log? I don't think I'll miss out on adprotraffic.com, which is the kind of garbage that IPv6 promises a whole new slew of - in fact, it's apparently already waiting! New bugs, new security holes, and still not a single significant website or feature on the Internet that I actually need it for communicating with... it's pure shit.

IPv6, a "feature" that is "supported" by Apple, was disabled almost right away when I got this mac.

Why? It crashes the router's DNS. Apparently Apple's version of it also used to crash the DNS of some ISPs (LOL, the shit you find in Google!) even.

...and for what? Its not supported by any of the infrastructure anywhere near here, other than experimental shit at the university. As of today (still, two years later!) pretty much nobody in America needs IPv6.

Anyways, apparently this crap is catching on as a "backup" with some websites, mostly large multinational corporations (who fully support IPv4 and will probably for the remainder of anyone's lifetime, just like they still use paper and even FAX, which is oddly even more obsolete than paper) and the occasional oddball foreign spam site.

So yeah, turns out the DNS doesn't seem to care that the kernel isn't actively supporting it, because it was trying to look up garbage like this:

06-Aug-2009 20:40:57.882 host unreachable resolving 'penix.nl/A/IN': 2001:500:2e::1#53
06-Aug-2009 20:40:59.045 host unreachable resolving 'adprotraffic.com/A/IN': 2001:503:a83e::2:30#53
06-Aug-2009 20:40:59.045 host unreachable resolving 'adprotraffic.com/A/IN': 2001:503:231d::2:30#53
06-Aug-2009 20:58:57.781 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:240::53#53
06-Aug-2009 20:58:57.781 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:240::53#53
06-Aug-2009 21:28:10.613 host unreachable resolving 'ns1.debut.net/AAAA/IN': 2001:500:2f::f#53
06-Aug-2009 21:29:32.737 host unreachable resolving 'www.facebook.jp/A/IN': 2001:dc4::1#53
06-Aug-2009 21:29:32.737 host unreachable resolving 'www.facebook.jp/A/IN': 2001:dc2::1#53
06-Aug-2009 21:29:32.737 host unreachable resolving 'www.facebook.jp/A/IN': 2001:502:d399::245#53
06-Aug-2009 22:03:26.023 host unreachable resolving 'pod17.prospero.com/A/IN': 2001:503:a83e::2:30#53
06-Aug-2009 22:03:28.048 host unreachable resolving 'ns1.mydyndns.org/A/IN': 2001:500:e::1#53
06-Aug-2009 22:03:28.049 host unreachable resolving 'ns1.mydyndns.org/AAAA/IN': 2001:500:e::1#53
06-Aug-2009 22:03:28.049 host unreachable resolving 'ns2.mydyndns.org/A/IN': 2001:500:40::1#53
06-Aug-2009 22:03:28.049 host unreachable resolving 'ns2.mydyndns.org/AAAA/IN': 2001:500:40::1#53
06-Aug-2009 22:08:57.976 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:2f8:0:100::153#53
06-Aug-2009 22:08:57.976 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:2f8:0:100::153#53
06-Aug-2009 23:08:59.407 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:dc4::1#53
06-Aug-2009 23:08:59.789 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:dc4::1#53
07-Aug-2009 00:58:26.644 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/ANY/IN': 2001:dc3::35#53
07-Aug-2009 00:58:27.039 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/ANY/IN': 2001:500:1::803f:235#53
07-Aug-2009 00:58:27.039 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/ANY/IN': 2001:500:3::42#53
07-Aug-2009 00:58:27.040 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/ANY/IN': 2001:500:2f::f#53
07-Aug-2009 00:58:27.040 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/ANY/IN': 2001:503:c27::2:30#53
07-Aug-2009 00:58:27.040 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/ANY/IN': 2001:7fd::1#53
07-Aug-2009 00:58:27.041 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/ANY/IN': 2001:503:ba3e::2:30#53
07-Aug-2009 01:37:00.760 host unreachable resolving 'gss1.dfw.xpc-mii.net/A/IN': 2001:503:231d::2:30#53
07-Aug-2009 01:37:00.760 host unreachable resolving 'gss1.dfw.xpc-mii.net/AAAA/IN': 2001:503:231d::2:30#53
07-Aug-2009 03:48:58.808 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:502:d399::245#53
07-Aug-2009 03:48:58.808 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:502:d399::245#53
07-Aug-2009 03:48:58.809 host unreachable resolving 'nstd01.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:240::53#53
07-Aug-2009 03:48:58.809 host unreachable resolving 'nstd01.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:240::53#53
07-Aug-2009 03:48:58.809 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:240::53#53
07-Aug-2009 03:48:58.809 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:240::53#53
07-Aug-2009 04:29:04.101 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/A/IN': 2001:dc3::35#53
07-Aug-2009 04:29:04.486 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/A/IN': 2001:7fd::1#53
07-Aug-2009 04:29:04.486 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/A/IN': 2001:500:3::42#53
07-Aug-2009 04:29:04.486 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/A/IN': 2001:500:1::803f:235#53
07-Aug-2009 04:29:04.486 host unreachable resolving 'wpad/A/IN': 2001:503:ba3e::2:30#53
07-Aug-2009 04:58:59.002 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:502:d399::245#53
07-Aug-2009 04:58:59.002 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:502:d399::245#53
07-Aug-2009 04:58:59.003 host unreachable resolving 'nstd01.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:dc4::1#53
07-Aug-2009 04:58:59.003 host unreachable resolving 'nstd01.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:dc4::1#53
07-Aug-2009 04:58:59.003 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/A/IN': 2001:dc4::1#53
07-Aug-2009 04:58:59.003 host unreachable resolving 'nstd00.mesh.ad.jp/AAAA/IN': 2001:dc4::1#53

Seriously, what the fuck is this crap doing on my IPv4 network in the first place? I wonder which of my dipshit neighbors is loading those sites. Oh well, it's not me. Whoever it is, if they notice anything different, it'll be that whatever used to work will work faster.

See, the thing is, neither the router nor any of the significant backbone providers serve IPv6 anyways. I just wish they'd also do us the favor of sorting these bullshit replies out entirely.

So I had to edit a file and add -4 to it:

new contents of:
/System/Library/StartupItems/BIND/BIND

#!/bin/sh
. /etc/rc.common

if [ "${DNSSERVER}" = "-YES-" ]; then
  ConsoleMessage "Starting BIND DNS Server"
  /usr/sbin/named -4
fi

Sigh ...

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:23:33 GMT

Last nights update was POINTLESS

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:53:16 GMT

So I'm reading the news this morning and as it turns out, Apple fucked the entire Mac family RIGHT UP THE ASS for no purpose other than to rape anyone who happened to buy a Palm Pilot instead of one of those crappy phones they offer - phones that would remain pieces of shit no matter how well Apple made them simply because they only work with the extremely crappy AT&T network.

So the reboot was really necessary as a way to disable hardware, and it was labeled as coming from the Safari part of the update instead of the iTunes part of the update to conceal the fact that this was going on. Assholes.

I miss the Apple of the late 1980s and very early 1990s that gave us awesome tools to use our Macs any way we wanted, tools like ResEdit.

Subjecting every customer to a corporate sponsored denial of service attack just for the sake of engaging in anticompetitive business practices is a fucking outrage.

Didn't Mac users used to whine and bitch that Microsoft's OS was only popular because they did this sort of crap? Next time I hear a Mac user say something like that as a means of suggesting a Mac is somehow better, I'm going to throw a fucking pie in their face, same as was done to Bill Gates back in the day.

From http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090716/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_apple_palm_pre
SAN FRANCISCO -

Apple Inc. has shut down one of the most compelling features on Palm Inc.'s rival Pre smart phone, crippling the Pre's ability to act like an iPod.

Users of the recently released Pre had been able to put music on it by using Apple's free iTunes software — a unique twist for a device not made by Apple. But Apple updated iTunes on Wednesday to block this feature.

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said the update "disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre."

Palm spokeswoman Leslie Letts said Apple's move is a "direct blow to their users, who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience." For a workaround, she noted, Pre owners can stick to the older version of iTunes, move music from computers to a Pre with a USB cable or consider third-party music applications.

The iTunes software smackdown is the latest example of tensions brewing between Apple and Palm, which since June has been led by the former executive behind the iPod, Jon Rubinstein. Rubinstein became Palm's executive chairman in October 2007.

The $200 Pre includes a "multi-touch" screen like Apple's iPhone, letting users do things like pinch photos to zoom in and out. Apple was granted a patent in January related to certain multi-touch functions, though the effects on Palm are unclear.

Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton said Apple's move to squash the Pre's iTunes function could turn off some people looking to buy the Pre, since they might have considered the device as a way to consolidate their music player and cell phone.

Still, "it's not like 10 out of every 10 people who buy a Pre are going to use the device for their MP3 player," he said.

Right. I hope someone DDoS's Apple's entire fucking domain for the next month or so. It'll keep those of us with Mac's from being attacked like this again, second, maybe it'll teach 'em a lesson. After all, It's not like 10 out of every 10 business transactions Apple conducts flow thru their website, right?

Safari update shouldn't ever need an OS reboot.

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:36:31 GMT

My wife, pokedexquest, was unable to access the Pokémon GTS last night because Safari - a mere web browser - requires the entire computer to be rebooted for a lousy update.

Each time, apparently. Last night, the mac never made it thru the reboot. I have no idea why but when I turned on the screen this morning, it was all grey with a spinner in the middle, same as it would be right when turned on. I thought "oh, shit", turned the mac back off and on again, and everything magically worked.

Why the fuck does a Unix workstation need to be rebooted to update a web browser? That's just fucking stupid. Its every bit as insane as Windows was before Microsoft got XP released.

Of course with the fucking "Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool" being a part of every monthly update you end up rebooting XP anyways unless you unselect it, but thats besides the point.

Apple changed OS support about a month after I purchased this machine, and I wonder.. do they make people with 10.5 reboot this often too? Or are they saving that mistreatment until OSX 10.6 comes out?

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:26:17 GMT

Apparently the Whitecap iTunes visualizer is so incredibly bad-ass awesome to stare at, you could have a seizure.

I think in 1982, this was called "having a rap attack".

iTunes "Skip Count" in smart playlists

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:07:37 GMT

OK, it's pretty neat to be able to see a list of all the songs I've ever hit "Skip" on.

Even better, I can filter the list so it only contains songs that are still checked to actually play ...

But, that doesn't change the fact that (especially with more than one person in the home) eventually, every single track is bound to get skipped at least once. Sometimes, you just aren't in the mood, ya know?

What I'd really like to see is another option that shows the ratio between the number of times skipped, and the number of times played.

That way, say for example when I play a song I recently bought half a dozen times in a short loop (recently purchased) and skip it some of the time to hear another, I don't end up putting songs that I actually like enough to buy straight to the top of what otherwise is more or less supposed to be the "automatic shit-list function".

--

In other news, I bought "Farewell to Slavianka" from Amazon.com as a 256kb MP3 file because the version I wanted on iTunes was only available in a format crippled by Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). Oh yeah, it was only $0.89 too, instead of $0.99.

iTunes Plus has been around for a long while now guys. If Amazon.com can sell the file unprotected, so can you - the artist and company obviously isn't withholding it from the Internet due to copyright paranoia. Get your shit together Apple, and start getting rid of that copy-protected crap.

I would have paid the extra ten cents to get an unprotected AAC file, they really do sound slightly better... but the idea of a file that will never, ever play anywhere other than on an iPod, iTunes-blessed computer, or $500 cellphone is extremely repulsive to me.

Problem renaming file extensions in current update to OX 10.4

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:20:52 GMT

I don't know if this problem still exists in OSX 10.5 - hopefully not, but it might?

I automatically downloaded an MP3. It saved with the entire extension, including the garbage after the ? that the web server on the other end needed.

When I try to change the end of the name to .mp3 instead of the mess I had, I got this popup:

Oops! Arrow keys don't work, the only way out is to keep the existing file.

Once again, I'm stuck using the unholy COMMAND LINE on my Macintosh...

mv 200135320_S64.mp3\?e\=1233269155\&h\=be87cefbe9b07d9d1ede71855e095956 200135320_S64.mp3

Now, the file works.

Quake 4

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:15:01 GMT

... ten years ago, I had to write my own "Modelines" to get Quake 2 to work at the resolution I wanted in Linux...

Today, its not much different with OSX! But, at least there is a control panel that allows me to manually enter the information, called "SwitchResX", that I have installed. Its a lot like xsetres (if thats what it was called?) but it saves the changes for you.

Still have to restart the window server, err I mean entire computer, to see the effects.

This probably isn't a problem for people who don't have their computer hooked up to a 1080p HDTV.

Actually, when I ran it at either 720p or 1080p resolution, everything was absolutely beautiful. I've never seen 3 frames per second look so detailed and amazing ... um, yeah. So anyways, I Quake4 supports something called "852x480" which is NOT one of the "native" modes of this macintosh. *sigh* ... The 480p resolution it does support in the default video config works great, but isn't 852 pixels.

Q4 also seems to work good in 640x480p, with huge black bars down the side. Yuck.

iTunes can't play its own .ipa files?!?!?

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:28:08 GMT

iTunes plays the music purchased (or downloaded for free) from the iTunes store, without requiring the user to purchase an iPhone or iPod.

Why doesn't iTunes play the .ipa "apps" that can be purchased or downloaded from the iTunes store?

I can't think of any good excuses for omitting this functionality from the player, considering Apple seems to have crammed it into every other device they know how to make. What does it say about Apple, if they can't figure out how to get the files to play when they've got not just an overpriced cellphone or MP3 player to work with, but, an entire computer - one they made and should know inside and out, even?

No decode delegate for image format

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:48:03 GMT

ImageMagick, near as I can tell, is very nearly completely useless.

What kind of image manipulation tool doesn't support JPEG?!?

Directory Flavoring

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:27:12 GMT

If there were a way to label certain directories as "perpetually write-cacheable" it could significantly speed up the user experience of a computer without significantly increasing risk of data loss (as with so many other write-cached filesystem schemes)

For example, changes to a browsers cache don't really need to be written to disk with any urgency at all, but manual saves should probably be completed right away.

I wonder if there is anything like this available or in use?

iTunes Equalizer window suddenly has monitor size requirements

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:23:49 GMT

I had to reconnect the Mac Mini to the 40 inch 1080p monitor, because apparently the last time I used the equalizer, I didn't remember to position it correctly before closing iTunes...

The equalizer opens hopelessly off-screen, and I haven't figured out an easy way to retrieve it.

Maybe I could have deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist, but I have this feeling that if I did that, then I would have lost the position of all the sliders that I had manually set.

Unfortunately, unlike WinAmp's .ini file that once caused a similar problem, iTunes keeps all of its settings stored in binary format, which means its impossible (as far as I know) to edit the file in an easily human-readable format.

DISABLE SPOTLIGHT (Until its more configurable)

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:48:30 GMT

If you happen to like to use the Internet, Spotlight really sucks the life out of your computer. It's a neat idea, a search engine for your computer. Except it indexes fucking everything any time it changes, which means bittorrent or even a browser with a refreshing web page on triggers it to do its thing, over and over, lagging the computer slightly. Or doing just about anything else, god forbid I don't have an up-to-the-minute index of the contents of a bunch of log files ...

This is not a fault tolerant script, but, it gets the job done. Try to run it when you aren't doing a billion other things already.

mv /etc/hostconfig /etc/hostconfig.old
cat /etc/hostconfig.old | sed s/"SPOTLIGHT=-YES-"/"SPOTLIGHT=-NO-"/ > /etc/hostconfig
mdutil -i off / 
mdutil -i off /Volumes/* 
mdutil -E / 
mdutil -E /myotherdrive 
kill `ps ax | grep -i mdimport | cut -c 1-5`
kill `ps ax | grep -i laserver | cut -c 1-5`
rm -rf /.Spotlight*
rm -rf /Volumes/*/.Spotlight*

If it fails, it may need rerunning.

UPDATE: What I really need here is an easy to use (or easier to find?) option for "Don't allow Spotlight to search this folder". Then I can set that option for the folders in question, and turn the service back on.

In the meantime, with the service off, there's no point in leaving old indexes around, which is why the script removes those too.

Racial profiling in Apple Genius?

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 04:07:21 GMT

First, let me start by saying that I am in no way implying that a human being at Apple or iTunes did this. I'm fairly certain it happened because of automatic organization in Apple's "Genius" product.

First, I used wget -x -m -np to download the entirety of ytcracker's freely available music; you can too at http://ytcracker.com/music/

I added the entire thing to iTunes after clearing out the single songs that I had downloaded in the past.

I updated Genius, and saw that it recommended I check out some YTCracker stuff on iTunes. I did, and elected to purchase two songs "I did it my way" and "I am a pirate", from the album "Serious Business", which was recommended to me. Then, I updated Genius again.

Prominently featured in the top recommended spots were several titles from Cyprus Hill and Eminem. White people that Rap (Yes, Cypress Hill is not only white people, but, nevertheless...). There were also lots of other suggestions from Cypress Hill and Eminem...

The third entry was MC Chris, who, while also white, is at least related in a logical manner to YTCracker in that both are in the genre "nerdcore".

Given exposure to over 2GB of YTCracker, Spamtec, Nerdy South Records, Category Five, and of course, my first iTunes purchase, "La Cancion de Pokemon", I wouldn't have expected Eminem or Cypress Hill to be recommended more than YTCracker stuff I hadn't downloaded yet (there's a few sets on iTunes) or MC Chris or any of the other nerdcore music available on iTunes.

Genius is a success - it even resulted in two purchases - but it does still need a little bit of fine tuning. I shouldn't be left feel like the genius decided I ought to like something because, hey, it has white people.

==

A couple hours later... as I continue to play the thing, it seems to be fine tuning the list away from its initial racial bias and more towards the content of the songs.

==

Nevermind. While searching the term "Soviet" in order to find some cool Russian theme songs, I saw: S***o: Russia's extreme fighting.

What was it? What could possible be SO HORRIBLE it needed censoring, like fuck and shit?

I googled the rest of the title, and got my answer: SAMBO.

Apparently, iTunes is run by a bunch of closet-racist white motherfuckers who have some serious issues with "white guilt".

Duplicatable problem with monitor color calibration

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:30:54 GMT

Setup where problem occurs: Mac Mini with more than one user, when using user switching, on a 1280x1024 LCD monitor rotated 90 degrees (1024x1280 portrait mode).

Problem: After changing users using the pulldown in the upper right corner of the screen, color calibration gets all screwed up when changing back to original user. Entering the display module of system preferences to fix it doesn't work, as the color calibration profiles no longer have any effect at all when clicked!

Temporary workaround: Set rotation to zero. Set rotation back to 90 degrees. Reload color calibration profile - now it will load.

I couldn't find any log entries relative to the failure of the display module of system preferences to be able to set the color calibration.

Office 2008 really, really sucks for editing docxuments!

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 02:46:15 GMT

I just made the mistake of spending my own cash on Office 2008, the so-called office suite from Microsoft.

So why is it that I feel like I'm using a badly compiled ripoff of Sun's OpenOffice. What the fuck happened to this product in the last several years, anyways? Its AWFUL, and I mean that in every sense of the word.

One deal-breaker: Things just don't plain work at all! There's that hideous blank line on top of tables that simply cannot be deleted without erasing the page break that puts the table on its own page in the first place. What the fuck? How about when I erase a line at the end of a paragraph, and suddenly with no warning, the text for the section heading of the paragraph underneath it changes losing its underline and bold and italics, even though that text was NEVER SELECTED in the first place. Something else to fix.

Office 2003 for the PC didn't suck this bad. I loved the early MS Word word processing products for the Mac OS too. But this, I absolutely hate. Its actually harder to use than Open Office, and the help function is a complete joke - its nowhere near as complete or easy to find what I want, whichever, as the help for 2003 was for the PC. Probably because in most cases, there is no answer anyways.

I know now why they implemented that fucking "docx" and "xlsx" file type: Because without literally forcing us to upgrade in order to open files sent by their other victims, there is no way anyone in their right mind would use this crap.

QuickTime & iTunes update disables all internet access

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:45:29 GMT

I got yet another update for QuickTime and iTunes that requires - what the fuck - restarting the entire goddamned computer. Why?

Who knows. But, whatever the fuck Apple did, apparently prevents named - the Unix nameserver - from running automatically at startup! As a result, I was unable to contact any domain name anywhere until I realized that no, it wasn't just my usually crappy COX cable connection acting up, it was the goddamned Macintosh.

What the fuck did Apple do?!? Why?

This is a previously viewed disc!!!

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:07:03 GMT

I put a NetFlix into my Mac, thinking I might enjoy watching it on the 40 inch LCD 1920x1080 monitor.

I got a warning box that said this is a previously viewed disc.

No shit, its a fucking rental video.

I don't need to be hassled like this just because I'm not downloading movies from iTunes or some shit. Just play the damned disc already - and whats with clicking fast forward or rewind and seeing "Not Permitted"? Since when?!? Thats just absurd.

The Mac Mini DVD player doesn't have a working fast forward or rewind button!

Damn, I really, really, really miss PowerDVD. It ~~was so much easier to use~~ actually worked.

Making a web link on the desktop causes sudden explosion

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:04:17 GMT

So, I open Safari, cause I figure if anything can make a web link on my desktop, Safari ought to be able to do it.

I drag a link from the toolbar out onto the desktop, into an area with plenty of free space -no icons nearby.

Suddenly, I hear an explosion! On screen, where I dropped what I was expecting to be a copy of my toolbar bookmark, I see the explosion!

My original bookmark has actually been destroyed In an icon-sized poof of smoke! How was I to know that bookmarks explode on contact with the desktop? I had no idea this would happen.

Luckily, since I'm used to this sort of abuse by now, I had only used a link to "Yahoo!" as a test case. Still, it was rather surprising. It's not like I dragged it to the Trash can - I dragged it to the Desktop!

It blows up if I drag it to the trash too. Or anywhere else in the "Dock" for that matter. Go figure.

blurry itunes visualizer

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:54:12 GMT

I just got a new Sony with the HDMI inputs. 1920x1080 with the HDMI<->DVI adapter

The iTunes visualizer looks crisp and beautiful when I run it in "windowed" mode, but when I use the full-screen mode, its all blurry and sloppy looking, as if it were scaling the image up from some other resolution - except that iTunes never changes video modes.

For some reason, the iTunes software must be using scaling in software when it runs in fullscreen mode. Probably on older, slower macintoshes this was necessary in order to keep a decent frame rate, but it stands to reason if it works in a very nearly fullscreen window now, it should do about the same in fullscreen.

The setting is available in iTunes "Preferences - Advanced" by checking or unchecking "Display visualizer full screen". There is also a setting for "Visualizer Size". "Large" is the least blurry, and "Small" makes really blocky graphics.

It looks like the iTunes visualizer software hasn't kept up with user-friendly support for modern display sizes or the relative need to engage in scaling in the first place: a 1.6GHz Intel Core Duo Mac Mini is hardly representative of the "high end" of macintosh performance these days, but it performs quite well when handling a pixel-count of about 1920x900, so 1920x1080 shouldn't be too hard to handle either.

--

I'm also a little pissed off that when I wanted to view some 1080 HDTV trailers from the Apple website, my choices were either to hope that the video loaded as fast as it plays (not always the case, even with a Cable Modem, if I am using my connection for other things at the same time) or buy QuickTime Pro to "save" the file. Fortunately, I was able to simply do a "view source" on the Apple page, locate the QT file, then copy and paste in the URL, at which point I could save the file and view it with QuickTime without any choppiness.

(Nov 1, 2008) UPDATE: Apple seems to have fixed this problem at least a week or two ago! I hope they fix the equalizer problem just as quickly - people are already with hints for a manual fix, so adding a prefs button for "reset window positions and sizes to default" ought to be possible.

More trash

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:32:18 GMT

All of our digital camera's now have these little "Trash" folders on them, because they've been connected to the Mac at some point.

The trash can be cleaned up, but every time they're reconnected, the Mac makes a new litterbox.

I'm not sure how to prevent trash on removable media, nor am I sure I want to, at least not universally. The 1TB external hard disk I have is recognized as a 'removable' device - I wish I could change this too since I've accidently ejected it in the past, which requires switching it off and back on again (or using unix commands?) to get it going again.

iTunes visualizer shows apple ad at random times

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:22:28 GMT

Why does a lone apple logo appear splotched dead-center on top of the visualizations at seemingly random times during music play?

I've had this problem both when listening to Philosomatika on iTunes, and even when playing a "legally downloaded from the artist" MP3 file (specifically, "The Castle of his Oxynis", by ytcracker, if anyone cares.)

Big solid white apple with a bite missing, right on top of all the colors. No idea what turns it on or off or what preference I ought to set to prevent this from happening.

I know they are very impressed with their new, all-white, "The Mac ithn't gay, we even lost the rainbow guyth!", but it simply doesn't match the otherwise rainbow-brite colorful iTunes visualizer graphics.

How do I get rid of this popup?

(Mac version of) Firefox spellchecker sucks

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:49:46 GMT

So many words are just flat-out missing. Worse, it seems like every so often, a word that I swear I've typed recently shows up missing again. Maybe downloading updates every so often changes the core dictionary, and a word I was used to using gets dropped from the list until I manually re-add it to the custom dictionary. Maybe I only thought I'd recently used it, or maybe I really used it in a whole other application and had to add it there also. I honestly don't know.

Usually its something semi-technical and sort of a forgivable error, but sometimes its just plain annoying. Like "divorcee".. thats a word almost all of us know. What the fuck, firefox? Stuck in 1908 again, when divorce was unheard of and a divorcee would be someone to shun?

Today, it underlined "snuck" as a misspelling. Yeah, maybe if it were 1908 instead of 2008. Google has it as an underlined word. Who the fuck are these people, anyways, to say "snuck" isn't a word or is misspelled?

I strongly get the feeling this software either relies on a formerly copyrighted dictionary who's original author has been dead at least the mandatory 75 years and is therefore extremely obsolete outside of a mashup of changes patched in by a few key open-source nerds, or a public domain one published by some pompous prick who has decided that they know the only one true, right way to spell a word.

Either way, its pretty fucked up.

The suggestions it gives are absolutely horrible too. For example, if I misspell bulletin, my suggested spellings are as follows (four examples provided):

Excuse me, but.. WHAT THE FUCK?!? Would it be too much to assume that the word I was trying to spell might be something at least vaguely similar to the actual word, and maybe even, like, actually start with the same letter?

This is one thing that Apple seems to have done a hell of a lot better with, in Safari.
The Safari spellchecker doesn't completely suck ass.

QuickTime is for spams and scams

Mon, 05 May 2008 09:41:59 GMT

What moron at Apple decided it would be a good idea to enable QuickTime to open Safari browser windows?

Jesus fucking Christ. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't just seen it. Its like I'm using Windows ME meets Linux or some shit.

At least in XP Pro, I can completely disable MediaPlayer from accessing the Internet as a result of a file on the local hard disk. Apple won't even give me the full version of their media player unless I pony up an extra $30 (US).

On a mac, there's no way to stop the stream of popup ads until they're all done popping up, if you click on the wrong movie file. This just goes to demonstrate the fact that its not that macs are these great, secure, well designed computers - because they are anything but. Its just that really, not too many people have one, so most people looking to scam a quick buck don't bother with Macintosh when it comes time to writing up viruses, trojans, and popups. Just like business software vendors and game developers, for the most part.

Shit, Microsoft couldn't even be bothered to port VB for the latest Mac Office's Excel!