Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

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Control iTunes using Keyboard Shortcuts

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

At home I use iTunes on my Macbook to listen to music, and I’ve become a regular user of the keyboard shortcuts for controlling playback (pause/resume, previous track, next track, volume, etc). At work I can listen to my iTunes library using my portable drive, but as I’m using Windows and have a basic keyboard I don’t have these dedicated keys to control my music. This is frustrating because there’s even more need for this quick control at work, especially pausing the current song when my attention is required.

A few quick Google searches helped me to solve this issue using a small application called iTunes Hotkeys. You’ll need the free .NET framework before it’ll work but it sits in the system tray and responds to keyboard shortcuts such as (pause). It’s not quite a one key solution but it doesn’t take long for the shortcuts to become second nature. It will even launch iTunes for you if it’s not already running.

I’ve added a shortcut to Hotkeys on my desktop and assigned a keyboard shortcut to launch it. I could have it in Startup but I wont always want iTunes launching when I switch the workstation on.

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Posted in Free resources, Software, Tips | No Comments »

Configuring an iTunes Backup & Archive Solution

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Since I bought my Macbook primarily for my media, I’ve been thinking about how I want to backup and archive my iTunes library. I’ve come up with a solution that works right for me, and once I’m moved and have set up a network in the new flat I’ll be able to make the finishing touches. This solution gives me a backup locally and remotely in a few simple steps.

First, I have bought a 320GB Western Digital Passport. I have set up an rsync that effectively mirrors my main iTunes library onto the external drive, which covers a “local” backup. I have also set up a seperate iTunes library on the drive, called ‘iTunes Archive’. To this I move the TV shows purchased through iTunes that I’ve watched, which means I can remove them from my main library and frees up space on my Mac.

For remote backup, I have an account with Mozy. Unfortunately Mozy don’t currently offer archiving so once something is removed from my Mac (or PC) it’s also removed from my Mozy backup. To solve this I will set up an rsync from my Mac to my PC that mirrors my iTunes library except the TV Shows and Movies folders, which will be a straight copy (no mirroring). This will mean that the PC will effectively have an archive of all of these items. This archive will then be uploaded to Mozy on the next run. Perfect!

The only concerns I can think of are:

  • If I make purchases on my PC rather than my Mac (not likely but possible of course)
  • until I have the rsync set up with the PC I have to make sure I have my ‘iTunes Archive’ on my Mac as well as the external drive (not a problem as I’m not too low on space yet).

I’m hoping that Apple announce improvements to iTunes at the upcoming WWDC in June, such as better management of TV Shows and Movies and perhaps a proper iTunes Server solution. By the way I am loving my Macbook Pro, and also really pleased with the WD Passport and can’t recommend either of them enough!

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Posted in Backups, Hardware, Software, Tips | 2 Comments »

Trying out Ecto

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

Okay so I don’t update very often, but I do now have a Macbook Pro and I was wondering if downloading and trying out Ecto would encourage me to blog more. I’m also considering making this site more of a personal blog rather than a technical one. The techie posts will still appear because I find them useful (and hope others do too) but they wont be the only posts to appear.

I’m not sure if I mentioned before but I turned down the rather tempting job offer in Florida and am now working for a large Internet Service Provider as a member of the QA team. In a weeks time I am moving out of my flat in London down to Kent to live with Pam. An exciting time, but I will certainly miss living in the city, and seeing this view every night from the balcony.

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Posted in Software | 2 Comments »

BlackICE slips up

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Back when I was studying for my Security+ qualification my lecturer introduced me to BlackICE, which he rated highly as an intrusion detection system. Recently I wanted to improve the security of my PC and so I looked into getting a copy. First I found it difficult to determine who now owns BlackICE, as it seems that IBM at some point must have bought the software. Anyway, after downloading and installing it I immediately experienced issues with it - I couldn’t successfully add exceptions to rules, and more importantly it was unable to accurately report if it was running or not! Most annoying of all was that once I had decided that I’d had enough I couldn’t uninstall it! Fortunately this appears to be a common issue, and IBM provide a tool that will forcibly remove all traces of the application. Now I start from scratch and am looking for a decide IDS/firewall application that isn’t bloatware like Norton/McAfee. Any suggestions?

Posted in Security, Software | No Comments »

Stop means “stop” and Eject means “eject”

Saturday, December 1st, 2007


(photo credit - jonbro)

I can get angry. Angry at a major lack of innovation in the computer industry. Sure, we have our terabyte hard drives, 100″ screens, and quad core CPUs, but still our operating systems and hardware fail to respond to simple commands in a timely manner. I’m talking about stopping and ejecting when the computer is confused.

It’s happened to everyone. You’ve put a scratched up CD in the drive, and the CD drive decides to whir the disc around at high speed to figure out what’s up. All fine so far. Then you press eject and… more times than not, the drive will keep spinning the CD, freeze up the computer, and generally make your life a misery. Eject should mean.. spin down and eject that disc now.

Even worse is when the disc starts out okay, you begin to copy a file across from it, but then it hits trouble. Rather than being able to press the stop or cancel button and get an immediate resolution, it’s more common to have it freeze up your operating system (or at least the shell aspect of it, on the Mac Finder will freeze but other apps run okay) but still not actually “stop”.

What’s up with all of this? Make stuff happen when we tell it to happen.

Posted in Error messages, Hardware, Software | 1 Comment »

Urchin 6 is installed

Friday, November 16th, 2007

I managed to get Urchin 6 installed on my machine. The MySQL database needs to exist before you run the installation. Providing an account with enough privileges to create the database is not enough. I have now run into another problem with the Slave Scheduler service, which refuses to start. The Urchin team are aware of this problem as it has been reported by several beta testers but are currently unable to replicate the problem.

Posted in Analytics, Error messages, Software | No Comments »

Google look set to (finally) release Urchin 6

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

About 2 years ago I was asked to review the available analytics tools and propose one to purchase for use with a web based application. At the time I looked into the free options (like AWStats), the mid-range options (like Urchin), and the damn expensive options (like WebTrends). As cost was an issue but so was customisation I proposed Urchin, which combined impressive reports with what seemed like enough flexibility to be customised for our needs.

Something else Urchin had going for it was the (then) recent purchase by Google. I saw this as promising for future releases, and almost immediately Google introduced Google Analytics - a free version of Urchin where the statistics are gathered by javascript and hosted by Google.

My boss went ahead and purchased the base Urchin license and over the following few weeks I taught myself how to customise the reports to suit our needs. Ultimately we decided that we would produce our own log format (previously we were using Apache logs) and Urchin was also very well suited for these needs - this is just one of the reasons we needed Urchin Software over the Google Analytics approach. Learning how to configure Urchin wasn’t always easy, and the help text is fairly limited - Google seem to have adopted a model that’s growing in popularity where you can purchase support and also the expertise often needed for custom solutions.

Anyway all was going well, however while Google have been regularly improving their free online solution the software version (still called Urchin) was going stale. The improved flash reports in Google Analytics were showing up the dated SVG reports in Urchin, and several of the cool new reports were just not available.

Finally this looks like it’s about to change, with Google releasing a beta version of Urchin 6. They’ve simplified the cost structure (meaning it’s more expensive for anyone wanting the basics, but cheaper for anyone wanting all the extra modules such as load balancing, funnels, etc) but apart from that I’m yet to find out what’s changed. I have managed to get hold of the beta but it’s currently not installing - there seems to be an issue with MySQL that I can probably solve myself.

I will be sure to report my findings here once I manage to get it working!

Posted in Analytics, Software | No Comments »

Complete Twitter

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

Yesterday before my meeting I decided to sign up to Twitter. I’m not sure how long I’ll use it for as I haven’t yet found a client that I like but for the time being you can read my tweets here.

Posted in Communication, Software | No Comments »

Twice

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

I’ll be posting twice today because yesterday was the first time since launching the site that there wasn’t a post on weekday! I’m hoping two posts today will make up for it, but I will seperate them by a few hours. Today I wanted to post about Apple’s new Leopard operating system… From the reviews I have read there’s very few things negative to say about the upgrade from Tiger, and of these few things most are visual and probably easily rectified in the near future.

This version of the Mac OS will be the first I use, as I haven’t got my Mac yet. I decided earlier this year that I would wait until Leopard was out before buying my Macbook. It worked out well as I was expecting a bit of extra cash around the same time. For various reasons I’m not getting the cash until January, and it has been rumoured that the Macbook Pro line gets updated early in the new year so I’m going to hold out again - but it’s not far off!

Better Late Than Vista
A Leopard flavoured DaveToon from Blogography.

Update: I could give you my excuses, but I wont. I didn’t post a second time and will try to make up for this by bringing you uninterrupted service whilst I am in Florida next week!

Posted in Software | No Comments »

Run Ubuntu Linux from a USB pen drive

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

I recently purchased a 4GB SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drive, and decided to try running Linux on it. I’ve not succeeded yet, as Linux always seems to come up with challenges for me, but the guides over at PenDriveLinux are a great place to start. It’d be even better if they explained each step as I’d find it easier to learn rather than just follow instructions. I think the issue I’ve currently got is with hardware compatibility, but I’ll keep trying and let you know how I get on.

Posted in Gadgets, Hardware, Links, Software | No Comments »

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