iTunes store on the iPod touch

So I'm thinking about how the iTunes store as seen on my iPod touch is fairly difficult to navigate.

It's a little sad when the main app for buying content (other than the app store) from Apple is fairly badly done.

I think an iTunes app that has a bookmark screen for each favorite category or show or actor or whatever, and each bookmark looks like a mini-app would be a much cooler way to go.

But that's just me.

Modest Thunderbird trick

So I swapped out my woefully small 30 GB hard drive for a 120 GB hard drive (for my notebook) with a some appreciated help from a good friend. I decided to start fresh rather than copy the old one onto the new.

My problem was, I didn't have the foresight to email myself my essential old emails, like the various keys for unlocking programs. The old drive was in an external enclosure, but how to get to the email files was the problem.

So with the main folder "local folders" selected, I went to edit, properties and and under local folders there is a local directory. This is the directory where the email file is stored. Some of the folders in the path to this directory are hidden, so it takes a little perseverance. Once I found out this, I copied the appropriate files, in my case purchases and purchases.msf, to the new folder and opened up Thunderbird, and there is was.

Just to make sure there wasn't some strange file that I sort of need to copy but didn't copy over also, I copied the emails to a temp file, deleted the now empty file and then renamed the temp file to "purchases".

The last step was probably just paranoia, but it was easy and didn't do any harm.

There might be instructions on how to do this somewhere out there, but I couldn't find them, so I decided at the very least I would post them there in case anyone else finds themselves in the same bind.

Whether they can find this, however, well that's a different question.

Reinvention

I often use the sentence "It's bad luck to be superstitious." because I think it's funny. I like the reaction it provokes.

I was thinking I might have made it up, but then I heard a variation used on the t.v. series Jack of All Trades and so I thought I'd go look it up.

Turns out there's a guy named Andrew W. Mathis who this quote is attributed to. So I wanted to look him up. The only thing that comes up is that he came up with this phrase.

Oh well. It's not the first time I've come up with something when in fact I heard about it, forgot about it and then reconstructed it.

Angle Reference on Bones

Last night, while watching my second favorite show Bones I noticed that the hotel they were investigating in was called the Hyperion, the same name of the hotel were Angel and Co. hung out.

I've looked around and I haven't found anyone who picked up on this little inside joke.

twin towers II

I'm not a fan of Donald Trump. I think the development he's doing in San Pedro is awful. I think the celebration of the ultra rich is bizarre.

But I do agree with him wholeheartedly on one point, the Twin Towers II concept.

The message of the current project seems to be "if you knock us down, we will go limping away". It should be "if you knock us down, we will get back up stronger than before, so there".

Having an antenna be the reason the building goes up higher than before? That's just lame! Who thinks that's a good idea? That has no vision, no strength. It is beneath contempt.

On a completely other topic, I'm excited to see the remakes of Star Trek: TOS. I know there are fans that will automatically hate the update of the special effects, but seriously, they were fine in their day and heralded things to come, but these days, some of the effects are so laughable that it distracts from the story. When I heard about Star Trek 2.0, I was hoping that this would be the remake. It isn't, I think there's an online chat that goes along with the show. After seeing the Deep Space Nine Tribble episode, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how much the show could be improved.

On to something completely different again, sure Stargate has been on for a really long time, and there is a spinoff to continue the storyline, but I'm pretty bummed that it isn't going to be renewed. I loved the addition of the Farscape castmembers to the show. I can't get enough of Vala. Maybe the powers that be will change their minds and give us one more season. We'll see.

dumb luck

So I was looking around the menus on my Panasonic DVD recorder. I have a DMR-ES20. I accidentally put the dvd player into progressive mode, 480p, which my poor old tv can't deal with.

The problem is that then I couldn't see the menus to set things right.

I remembered reading about a set of buttons to push to restore factory defaults, so I had my brother look it up online. While he was doing that I guessed and pressed and held stop and play at the same time. This resolved it.

I'm pretty sure this information isn't published on Panasonic's website, but I'll go doublecheck tomorrow. The buttons combo they suggest to restore factory defaults, involves pushing the up channel button. They either mean on the remote or they are mixed up, because there are no channel buttons on the console.

I'm going to test the unit out and see if it's stable. I was having trouble with erratic behaviour, a strange insistence on both being in the correct time zone (pst) and having the wrong time (+3 hours) and having trouble recording (which may have been an effect of the previous problem) and needing to do a power cycle to get back control of the unit (it would freeze and be unresponsive to remote control codes as well as buttons on the unit.)

DVD-RAM to DVD+R

I love the Panasonic line of DVD recorders. They have some shortcomings, but I really like what they've done with the technology.

I have some tv shows recorded that I wanted to transfer over to DVD+R's so that I could share them and I spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to get them from the DVD-RAM to my hard drive.

Turns out, Nero does just fine importing the video clips. Actually better than fine, because after it imports them, encoding them takes just minutes, when usually my poor old slow, 3 year old laptop usually takes a couple of hours to encode an hour long show.

I wish I knew what the difference was, because this would be an ideal format for people to share recorded tv programs with, rather than what is typically used.

Even nicer would be a DVD recorder with two trays. And, while I'm wishing, an unprecidented two sided read/write, so that double sided DVD-RAMs, (or store bought DVD videos for that matter, although I'm happy that that is going out of style, because I like the artwork to look at while I'm deciding if I want to see the movie) wouldn't have to be flipped over.

If I was to wish for something a little more modest, fixing the chasing playback so that when the recording should go from one recording to another it actually does. If you are watching chasing playback on timed recordings and the recording switches from one program to another, it goes out of record mode. This is a terrible way to have it set up. The workaround is to be attentive of the time, and before the hour turn off the recording, let the new program start and then find your place again in what you were watching.

That's not fancy. Not fancy at all.

But the rest of it does pretty well. The thumbnails are nice. I really like the chasing playback. And even though they are a little pricey, I even like the DVD-RAM format. I like the cases they typically come in, which make it all but impossible to scratch the surface. I think they should sell just the cases for parents so that they can put their kid's movies in them so they won't be scratched.