Tommy Peters' Bicycles

Elementary to most, but scanning artwork at 600 rather than 300 dpi causes Front Row to display grainy covers at Song level, although they are perfect at Album level. At 300 dpi, the covers comes out clear at both levels. Cheers, Tommy

Smart-Update scheduled weekly SuperDuper! in operation When I heard the name, I thought it was cheesy, but because the blogosphere is of praise for this Mac utility, I procured SuperDuper! and cloned a 1TB Western Digital Studio of ‘re-directed’ iTunes data to a 1TB Western Digital Home gifted by my brother Alex, who insisted the library be backed up. ‘Re-directed’ data in a external is void of Coverflows and Metadata, hence I figured cloning, rather than backing up via Time Machine was an expedient, if not the only route to data recovery, given the marriage between raw data in an external and metadata in the internal is unique in the way iTunes is structured. Recently, I accidentally erased the Studio. I fainted when 696 gigabytes vanished before my eyes. It was negligence on my part clicking the icon on Disk Utility when attempting to erase another drive. I never thought I would have to call up the clone for insurance. To address the issue, I re-erased the Studio, re-named...

Step 5. Trash the 'iTunes Music' folder and empty the bin Step 4. Consolidate Library. Step 3 . Change Location to external drive. Step 2 . Copy 3 folders to the external drive. Step 1 . Erase external to Mac OS Journaled on a GUID Partition Re-posted on The Star (Citizen's Blog) Managing a large cache of iTunes data within the internal hard-drive of my Mac had always been an awkward game of musical chairs , given I had more data than the drive could hold. By musical chairs I mean, when I have finished with a batch of movies, I would take them out of the ‘almost full’ internal drive and import the next ‘unwatched’ batch. Then I came across a tutorial on ‘Re-directing iTunes to an external’ by Michael Manna of T4 Productions. The guru is crisp, clipped and to the point. End result - I have almost 1000G of Movies, Music, Podcasts and Audio-Books on...

Posted below is 'silent' tutorial I made on installing iLife 09 on my MacBook Pro. The Unibody was purchased November 2008 before the release of 09. I made the vid to hone the procedure on the screencaster (Varasoft's Screenflow) rather than the tutorial itself. Anyone who believes there is a slicker screencaster out there, please weigh in. In regard to 09, its features are amazing, meaning it provides more 'spoons' for the 'uninitiated' but few in the cult shun ' spoons' in preference for 'old school'. Alex Peters is one who swears by 07. Well, if you are nearer the kernel, you will. Darwin upon which the OSX is based is the least mentioned feature in Apple literature, yet the most significant. But that is another story. This is the first in the series of Mac oriented videos I intend to promote, perhaps with music the next time around, so stay tuned. Cheers, Tommy Peters Post Script: A question was posed to me by a college student. Wil...

Earlier on this blog, I identified four categories of Mac users ( re-posted below ), and recently came across a fifth; a unique group of switchers. W eigh in if you belong to either. Brickbats, as usual, are welcome. Using a Mac got me wondering why users embrace it with such passion given that 90% of enterprise is Windows. I identified four categories of Mac users. The one who has not experienced the pitfalls of Windows belongs to the first . This category is pretty rare. He is ‘Born into Mac’ and as a result, his naiveté wards off criticism of Windows. He defends it even. For instance, with childlike curiosity, BIM taps the ‘Windows’ key and is startled by the pop up. In an un-patronizing way, he finds it ‘innovative’ or at the least strangely different and even harbors doubts about the authenticity of Tiger when Vista looks somewhat similar. The second is ‘Born into Windows’ who stumbles on the history of Jobs and Gates. BIW conducts an independent read and identifies the...

Mac Edition - with a single USB Home Edition - replete with hubs Mac Edition - on the shelf since early March Rather than update the manuals on Mac HFS+ formatting for its existing models which come replete with Firewire, Sata and USB hubs, why did Western Digital spoon-feed Mac users with a Mac Edition and pitch it at the value-end of a so-called new series offering no hubs but a single USB connection. As it is, the range of its external drives is diverse, if not confusing, and the recent entry joins its Windows-oriented Essential, Studio, Home, Office, Mirror and Passport. My point is, the existing range can be Mac-oriented in minutes, besides the single USB value-end 1TB Mac Edition has less bang-for-buck than the mid-range 1TB Home which comes with two Firewire 400s, one Sata and one USB hub; and to rub it further, it costs less than its single USB Mac brother. Most Mac users are aware of the risk in using a Windows platform for large amounts of data, therefore, all West...

Preamble:- 8.48am February 21 st 2009 saw the demise of Ming, a confidante, companion, friend and a bundle of joy to Alex Peters, not to mention, Flo, Dian, Carol and those his life touched. Ming the entertainer de-stressed anyone who laid eyes on him and girls in particular just loved to cuddle the pocket dynamo. He did not have a 'business end' and given the pain he endured, he was still all 'fun'. He succumbed to cancer but not before thumbing his nose at kemo several years. His resilience was amazing. He hung on as long as he could. The video posted below is Alex’s labor of love for his dear Mingy. I sense dread in the impending storm. Mingy paused. “Would you face it alone! You see, I have no fear of ponies, none at all. I know them and they me” . You look bushed, your voice, tired. Your effort was more daunting than thought, wasn't it! That is because I am complex, born and bred. Just look at me and you thought I was a thoroughbred mutt? ...

Paper Replay transfer in progress 2G and 1G units - Firmware update pending MacWorld 2009 recently accorded The Best of Show Award to Livescribe’s Pulse SmartPen and I wonder if this honor prompted Livescribe to develop the driver for Mac’s OSX, which was in Beta since December 2008. Version 1.0 was finally released early March 2009 and it has been welcome news for Mac users of this intuitive instrument. The 30 minute download revealed the same powerful word search in the Windows version, that recognize words in bad hand-writing but whether the Mac version of Vision Objects’ MyScript, that converts fowl-scratches to digital text, will be made available is left to be seen. In any case, Jim Marggraff of Livescribe and his team must be heralded for releasing the full driver for the benefit of Mac users, a tiny volume of PC users, just over a year after the launch of the Java based pen for the Windows platform. Cheers, Tommy

Rosenthal's flowchart Finishing-up the assembly Re-posted in The Star (Citizen's Blog) Many of us who own laptops depend on a cooling pad to keep heat in check. My old Dell was no different although it was not experiencing the dreaded thermal overload . While shopping for a pad, a college student told me that these marketing-gimmicks address the symptom rather the cause. The sweet-young-thing confidently said, when you troubleshoot a hot laptop, you first make sure the blowers and heat-sink are whistle clean and if that does not help, they should be speed-checked and replaced if necessary. Not fully trusting her technical knowledge, I addressed the net and found a laptop-overheating Flowchart by Morris Rosenthal with a box at the bottom that appeared to confirm my friend’s advice. Stripping the Dell was in order and I actually found the blowers and vents clogged. A chinese art brush and a hand held-vacuum unit were helpful in removing a whole lot of ‘grey ash a...