NSLog();

Every time I get a new Mac, I think long and hard about what to name the hard drives. Because I studied French in high school and college and really like the whole Musketeer saga, I thought I might name my three disks Aramis, Athos, and Porthos. One main drive, one backup drive, and one Windows drive. The computer itself (in the "Sharing" pref pane) could be called simple "Musketeer" (or Dumas, perhaps).

That won't work. I can't find icons for the Three Musketeers, swords, the hats they wore, or other things like that. So, I'm stuck there.

I'd like to find a theme that plays into the whole scheme - main drive, backup drive, Windows drive. Toy Story would have been perfect - toy.local could be the computer name (the old joke about Macs being "toys" and this Mac Pro being pretty badass would be cool), plus Woody and Buzz could be the two Mac OS X drives (my backup is a fully functional one), and "Zurg" could be the "evil" or "enemy" Windows drive.

Alas, I couldn't find any Toy Story icons. Admittedly, I only ever looked at xicons.com. What ideas do you have? What would you name your hard drives and computer if you were me?

My two G5 disks (500 GB) come with Native Command Queuing while the 250 GB SATA drive I pulled from my G5 does not. Does this really matter? And how do I check to see if the 250 GB drive is the same speed as the others? I intend to use the 250 GB drive - after I am sure I have pulled all the content from it - as my Windows disk in the Mac Pro.

My Finder will also (currently) not allow me to change the name of my 250 GB disk. I have already named the 500 GB disks "Aramis" and "Athos" and would like to name the Windows one "Porthos." The Finder tells me "The name "Porthos" cannot be used. Try using another name, with fewer characters or no punctuation marks." Riiiiight. I am sure this is some sort of bug, but I haven't had time to google it yet. Also, the 250 GB disk will force the Finder to come to a halt for a minute at a time sometimes (when it spins down and goes to sleep, I believe). Very odd.

P.S. Anyone know if there are any good Musketeers icons available?

iTunes 4, 5, and 6 all required an "SC Info" folder in /Users/Shared to work with iTunes and the DRM. I looked today while running repairPermissions from the command line and the contents of the folder have changed.

-rw-rw-rw-   1 iacas  wheel     852 Sep 12 14:42 SC Info.sidb
-rw-rw-rw-   1 iacas  wheel  200356 Sep 13 07:31 SC Info.sidd

Previously, the folder contained only "SC Info.sidb." Now my "SC Info" folder contains "SC Info.sidd" as well. What do they do? How is this secure? Questions still remain.

I didn't expect to be given this warning in repairPermissions, but I was, and it is simply:

[11:40am root@Hamlet:~] # /usr/sbin/diskutil repairPermissions /
Started verify/repair permissions on disk disk1s3 Rack
Determining correct file permissions.
parent directory ./Users/Shared/SC Info does not exist

Question: Do you have a Digg account? What features do you use?

My Answer: Only recently, yes. Thus far, I haven't used Digg except to "digg" one of my own articles to see how it works. Is there an RSS feed for each of the categories? Is that how most people use the site?

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I've added Digg support to this site. In the little "info bar" (or whatever you'd call it) - the grey area with the title, the permalink, the comments and TrackBack links - you'll now see a "Digg This" link with the little "digger" fellow.

If you'd like to digg something, I suggest this article. I'm still not sold on the value of something like Digg, but it's probably harmless at worst.

Over the weekend, it came to my attention that a site (I won't link to them, or even mention their name) was re-publishing content from The Sand Trap's RSS feed, sans author and copyright information. The summary text, often with images, was being re-published. The Sand Trap was not the only site having content stolen - about four or five sites appear to be having their content re-published without their permission or knowledge.

The site in question provided no original content in their entire archive. The re-published content was the only content on the page(s). The story titles did link to the original content (because it was dumbly re-publishing content from the RSS feeds, so those are the PermaLinks it had available). In addition to the re-published content, about 20 different Google ads were running around the edges of the site - top, left, and right. The site owner was quite literally making money from the content of others (including me).

I've previously written about RSS and Copyright before. That discussion revolved around Bloglines and their re-publication versus consumption of content. I didn't have a big problem with Bloglines back then (and I still don't) because they were trying to provide a service and were not profiting from the content alone.

Contrast that to an AdSense campaign running on the same page as my stolen content. That is profiting from my content, and I won't stand for it.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 509); »

I don't know where I got them all - some I wrote myself - but most can probably found at macscripter.net.

Add to iPod Shuffle - No longer works now that iTunes 7 doesn't keep your Shuffle listed once it's ejected. Did just what the title says it did in iTunes 6.

Erik is Listening To… - Created output like "Erik is listening to "Strong Enough" by Sheryl Crow from the album "iTunes Originals - Sheryl Crow" (2006). Erik has rated this song 4.0 stars and last played this song Tuesday, May 30, 2006 7:45:38 am." I sometimes posted this in my AIM away message, emails, or whatever. Not often.

More below…

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 390); »

Using the script posted yesterday in the comments along with Marc Friedenberg's "Find Songs Without Artwork" script have let me finish my album art quest. Yes, I am done. In fact, I have only a few files left without album art… and they're the cover booklets (PDF or Flash-based .mov files) you sometimes get from iTunes. So, every song file now has the proper art.

I've disabled "download artwork" in iTunes and, so long as I can remember the very simple task of getting artwork whenever I buy a new CD (obviously not from iTunes), I'll be set.

I said it last year, and I'll say it again: Bill Cowher is the weak link on the Pittsburgh Steelers. Bill Cowher's insistence that rookies can't play (Willie Reid, for one). Bill Cowher's insistence that people like Ricardo Colclough belong in the NFL (when clearly they do not). Bill Cowher's second-quarter turtling. Bill Cowher's lack of insistence not to get the tight end more involved in the games as more than blockers. The list goes on.

The Bengals were absolutely dominated on Sunday, yet the Steelers lost. I blame one fellow: Bill Cowher. Close seconds go out to Ben Roethlisberger for his poor passing and decision making, Ricardo for having hands resembling granite, and LeBeau for the softy second-quarter D.

I like iTunes ability to download artwork. I wish I could select a bunch of tracks and say "copy artwork to ID3 tag" or "embed artwork." I don't like having a folder full of small, unusually named files that contain album artwork (~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/Download/A22946F3CF4847ED/13/10/14, anyone?).

I want to embed the album covers I've downloaded inside my song files and get rid of the entire "Album Artwork" folder. And no, I don't want to go through ten steps per album to do it, particularly since I have no way of easily telling what artwork is already embedded and what is not. Sorry.

Any suggestions?

I'm sitting downstairs on my 12" PowerBook. I've mounted via file sharing a disk on my G5 upstairs. The transfer of 400 MB of pictures was going to take about 40 minutes (after a minute of waiting). I unchecked "Use Interference Robustness" on my PowerBook and the estimate dropped to seven minutes. I waited a minute and turned it back on again - the rate at which the transfer came through slowed once again. Turn it off, it sped up.

Substantially.

Have there been any studies done on how much AirPort's Interference Robustness slows down file transfers?

P.S. Turning it off on the G5 resulted in a similarly substantial gain. I ran another transfer just for the heck of it. I'll test this theory with just one (the PowerBook) using interference robustness versus none using it and post times in the comments.

Only one turns up: the MySQL pref pane. I've disabled it (and downloaded the Intel version of the MySQL installer). Ho hum. I wonder why they haven't managed to make a Universal version? All it does is sent a terminal command via a button (I believe).

I wonder if my MySQL databases will be copied over with the Migration Assistant. Hmm… guess I'll find out.

My Mac Pro, despite being "out for delivery" as of 5:26am, is still not here. I'm getting tired of waiting. It's literally been half a day at this point. Then again, since I won't really set anything up before Monday or so, I don't care too much.

Question: Will the Wii fail with dedicated gamers?

My Answer: Some at slashdot seem to think so. I don't. I think, as one of the early posters said, that gamers want a break from the same-old. Combined with the new appeal the Wii will have with non-gamers (read: my wife and others like her), and I think Nintendo is on to something.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Do you have any interest in the Ryder Cup?

My Answer: Naturally I do!

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Currently, my G5-to-Mac Pro upgrade plans are as follows:

1. De-authorize G5 for iTunes.
2. Back up main hard disk to second 250 GB disk in G5.
3. Install 250 GB disk as third disk in Mac Pro.
4. Use Tiger migration assistant to copy everything (apps, user files, settings, etc.) to primary Mac Pro drive (of two 500 GB drives).
5. Reformat 250 GB drive to use as Windows drive (still not sure - Boot Camp or Parallels?).

I was worried about whether I'd automatically get software updates for certain Apple products (Soundtrack Pro), but now I remember: I have to pay for the Universal updates to those apps. Grrrrr. So I'll do that now.

Has anyone used the migration/setup assistant to transfer files from an old Mac or hard drive to a new one? Does it work nicely?

P.S. It does not appear that I can get my Final Cut Studio universal upgrade by calling Apple. I have to mail in my discs. How long will that freakin' take?!?!