The Day Today

Control iTunes using Keyboard Shortcuts

Dave — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:25:42 +0000

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.

Configuring an iTunes Backup & Archive Solution

Dave — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:08:12 +0000

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!

Packing

Dave — Sun, 11 May 2008 10:09:14 +0000

I can’t put off packing much longer… I now have less than seven days until the move. This morning someone’s coming over to pick up an old PC (sold on eBay because there’s no room for it at the new place) and then I need to start putting more things in boxes. On Wednesday everything is taken, leaving me with only the essentials for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Right now I have an urge to catch up on TV, redesign this blog, or go out and enjoy the sunshine but I need to stay focused - starting with the kitchen! Aarrgh!

Trying out Ecto

Dave — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:23:09 +0000

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.

Creating a single line text file from DOS

Dave — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:31:17 +0000

I recently had the need to write a batch file that wrote a single line of text to a file for processing by an application. I used the DOS command ‘ECHO’ and directed the output to file, however this wasn’t working and after a bit of troubleshooting I discovered that the resulting file couldn’t end with a new line.

At first I thought this could be a DOS/UNIX issue and ran a simple command-line application (DOS2UNIX) to convert my newlines to a format suitable for Unix based machines. Unfortunately this wasn’t good enough and I needed to find a way of removing the new line from my file. Eventually I found another simple application named CHANGE, which allows you to find and replace characters within files from the command line.

As the characters I needed to replace were a space and the carriage return/line feed I needed to be able to specify the characters as bytes. CHANGE.COM is able to do this, so the following command enabled me to remove the trailing new line:

CHANGE MYFILE.TXT 32,13,10 ""

The CHANGE.COM file can be downloaded from here.

Update: I found a Windows Script that will remove the line here, but have instead written a script that replaces the batch file.

Changing the current directory to a UNC path in DOS

Dave — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:00:27 +0000

A useful tip in DOS and for those batch files is how to change the current directory to a network drive. You can use the NET USE command to map a network drive, but that requires knowing an available drive letter… The commands PUSHD and POPD allow you to immediately jump to the UNC path, temporarily mapping the first available drive letter. Use the command as follows:

PUSHD \\SERVERNAME\SHARE

The current directory will be changed to the route directory of a temporarily mapped network drive pointing at the share mentioned in the command. Use POPD on its own to unmap the drive and return to wherever you were before the PUSHD command was used. If you used PUSHD again before POPD then you begin to stack the drive mappings, and you simply POPD for each one of them when you’re done. Run PUSHD without any parameters to see the current details of the stack.

See Microsoft’s support site for the PUSHD command here.

Object Oriented Programming Tutorial

Dave — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:00:06 +0000

As I didn’t do a computer science degree, I skipped object oriented programming basics and although I do a reasonable amount of development work I generally work ‘by example’ and certainly haven’t done any C# or Java. As I have some time on my hands at the moment I decided to check out a very simple and easy to follow tutorial to fill in some gaps in my knowledge. Thanks to a quick search I found this tutorial, which is quick and easy to follow. It’s certainly given me a thirst for more knowledge, but the hardest thing is coming up with a project and deciding on a programming language. I have a friend that has an open-source application so perhaps I’ll try to make sense of that and maybe even contribute!

BlackICE slips up

Dave — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:00:57 +0000

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?

Weekly Web Dev

Dave — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:00:04 +0000

My flatmate (and twice contributor to TheDayToday) has started his own tech blog focusing on web development. He started it in January with some sort of encouragement from his employer - it’s refreshing that companies are acknowledging the existence of weblogs, and the benefits they can have to their staff’s development. Of course there’s also the cynical view that it’s a way to spy on your staff, but I think there’s a responsibility to the blogger to remain somewhat anonymous and to also set some boundaries before you begin writing - don’t dig your own grave! Anyway, he’s got some handy tips and best practices as well as news and reviews. Check it out here.

Finally I have details

Dave — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:21:57 +0000

Well I stopped writing here for a couple of reasons… the poorest one is that the site is blocked by my work network and I can’t be bothered to disconnect the VPN for long enough to write and post an entry. The slightly better reason is that I’ve had a lot on my mind and wanted to post more about my work situation, of which I still had no real details of until yesterday. So my silence is now broken and hopefully I’ll be updating more frequently again.

I’ve had many nights where I haven’t slept much, with my mind full of impossible decisions that I knew one day would need to be made. I’ve discussed it with pretty much anybody that will listen, and have probably made what is initially a shocking and exciting opportunity now sound to my close friends as a boring internal debate. The fact is that it’s still real, and a life changing decision will still need to be made.

Yesterday I finally found out the salary and relocation package, although I don’t have this in writing and still need certain other details before I would be expected to make a choice. Now I have these two important details I can now begin to discuss this more seriously with friends and family (and bore them again).

Clearly the figures they’ve given me aren’t making it an easy decision (too little and I’d stay without hesitation, much more and I’d be stupid not to go) but there are so many other factors - as I’ve discussed in a recent entry.

Today I intend to write a list of pro-Florida things and pro-England things. This is something Andi suggested, and although I initially didn’t like the idea because just writing one word doesn’t show the significance it has on my life, but the more I think about it the more I should probably get these thoughts written down. I might surprise myself and end up making it an easy decision!

I also have several questions to ask my employer: Can I get a short business trip out there before I make a decision to see the area and meet the people? Will they provide a visa for Pam - if she wants one? If things don’t work out, will they help me to get a job within the company back in England? All things that I believe are reasonable requests…

Anyway, I intend to update this blog with details in hope that it might help somebody else in this situation. It’ll certainly make for interesting reading for me in five years time, whichever decision I make!