Me and my Mac

Posts Tagged ‘rubbish’

MKV must be the worst video container ever :(

So i got this huge storage unit lately and am getting some movies to it. HD movies to be precise. With 5.1 sound and all that. It’s nice. But why does everyone want to put that stuff in MKV dammit. Use a real format like proper Mpeg (2 or 4) or h.264 encoded Mov. And not some dumb container which isn’t even a format by itself but just harnesses Mpeg or whatever format the movie is in. It brings only misery and frustration to the table.

So now i have to load every movie, wait almost 10 minutes for it to cache strip out all the MKV rubbish and crappy titles, names and whatever else the movie doesn’t need and save it as a proper format.

I’m sure it works fine in some players… But c’mon how many players are there? If you save it in a decent format, say Mpeg or even high quality Mov it will be much better playable and more importantly can be previewed from Explorer and Finder and doesn’t have to be cached. So it plays instantly.

Grrr!

So it seems spam defeated my countermeasure :(

The plugin i used has been defeated and let’s through a whole bunch of spam.

The internet is doomed, and so is mankind! Akismet is upon you! Grr!

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS… Heck no!

Geez, all night i’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong. The liveCD won’t book properly. It logs me in, hangs and again requires me to login. It’s a loop.
When i install Ubuntu directly it seems fine, installs. And on first boot requires me to log in, hangs, and asks again for my login.

Fine, broken distro/download… reassuring, but fret not! I still had Ubuntu 7.04. So i installed that. It booted fine. 224 updates. Installed those with the intention to run “apt-get dist-upgrade” (or whatever upgrades the distro these days) right after it. All went fine until the kernel updates were done. I had to reboot for that, naturally, and Ubuntu wouldn’t boot because my harddrive had bad blocks. Running fsck failed because of all he badness on my disk.

Further examination of the disk in another computer told me there are NO bad blocks and linux lied to me… Anyway, putting the disk back in it’s own case i tried to boot again, it booted. Miraculously. But since all updates were now installed it would not let me log in… Turns out Fedora died on me because of bad blocks a few days ago… I am investigating things here.

Linux, again, turns out to be utter rubbish!

Earlier, when i was still using this thing for a PC (well over 8 months ago) i ran Ubuntu 7.04 just fine on it. And Fedora too. Well, if some updates in Ubuntu break everything. Fuck all! It’s another distribution for me. Fedora being the logical choice since i know that one also.

email doesn’t sync to iphone and back? wth^

BoohoO! This is stupid!

i can haz blootooth mouze?

Why are they extinct? It’s so unfair! i don’t want a RF dongle on my precious laptop!!
Give me back my Logitech MX1000 Bluetooth!

GRRRR!

so yea… The damn thing finally broke last night. I tossed it of the table and wouldn’t lit it’s led or charge. That combined with the lousy charger which almost never worked i decided not even to bother and throw the mouse away, it was aging anyway. And went on to buy a new Bluetooth mouse today. No such luck would come to me.

People seem to be obsessed with RF and it’s stupid sluggish slow way of working. RF is sooooo 1991. Why not use a proper Bluetooth connection. Something a computer actually has built-in these days, well macs anyway, and some PC laptops do, sometimes…

The only bluetooth mouse i found was one from Trust. A cheap brand i won’t even touch the packaging of. It was a whopping 29 euros and has “laser technology with precision pointing array for extra high definition positioning” or some other high tech rubbish. Also it was very small, not even covering the palm of my hand…

All other mice were just “wireless” which practically means RF on “fast 2.4Ghz frequencies for noise free connections”. I don’t know about you, but 2.4Ghz is bound the be trouble… Wifi uses it, DECT phones do too, Wireless TV receivers and even Microwaves all mess about with that frequency and thus most likely will interfere with each other at some point. Especially since everyone uses it…

My search continues!
Any “formed-to-your-hand” Bluetooth mouse that is larger than average. Like the Logitech MX1000 or MX510 is good to consider i guess.

AdRotate 0.7.1

Small update here…

The adding of tables didn’t work well with the $wpdb class. This is now fixed.

More information:
http://meandmymac.net/plugins/adrotate/

Download:
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/adrotate.0.7.1.zip

Death to all news sites reviewing iPhone and related crap!

I’m so tired of reading about every fucking app released on the App Store… How about some real news again. Reviewing scrabble and restaurant finders all week without reporting anything exciting just won’t cut it!
And every mac-”news” site does it! 5 days straight now.

Damn right the App Store is amazing! We get it, move on! Die in a hole! Geez. There are maybe a 1000 apps in the store. Stop reviewing them all!! It’s not news, not a rumor and not worth it! Get a life!

Rather write an in depth report on how sucky telecom providers are treating customers who want the damn iPhone and cannot get it due to unfair or plain stupid Terms of service and idiotic agreements. Now that would be something new to write about… yeah TUAW and Macworld and Ars (and the rest!). You suck lately!!

Syncing 2 Macs, what a pain!

So today for the second time i dove in the internet to find a proper way to keep certain things synchronized on my Macbook Pro and iMac. This seems an impossible dream as the software is either very (in my eyes) expensive/incomplete/stupid or otherwise not what i want.

So to start with iCal (calendars):
So i’ve tried Spanning Sync, it’s ok… But requires google calendar to get things done. And a proper license is $65… Too much. Other than that i had no trouble using it.

I’ve also looked into BusySync, which requires a $25 license… Per computer, wtf? yea! what’s the point if you have to buy it twice for 1 user. Thats just stupid. However, their Bonjour sync works nice! So it’s too expensive but not really out of the question. They should really rethink their sales strategy… And introduce a “home user” thing that allows 2 computers. Their Google sync brought me frustration and anger. I won’t be using that if i get BusySync.

There is some lame bunch of scripts called GCALDeamon, which, again, requires Google calender. Just the sheer amount of time and terminal madness to get it working scared me away. It’s too linux, in fact. There is no Mac software. Just some *edited* Linux distribution. I thought it was awkward and silly. Then i saw the manual and i quickly closed the browser…

Then there is of course Apples solution, dotmac… But damn! $99 for a bit of LAN Only synchronizing per year is nuts. Also i don’t see why i would need internet to sync 2 macs which are maybe 1 feet apart. Seems illogical. For that reason BusySync might be my savior… But 2 licenses. Bah…

Syncing 2 iTunes libraries…
Don’t kid yourself! There is no proper tool for it. And backup/sync apps that can keep 2 folders in sync are weird too because of the new files not being added to iTunes. Just moving files around isn’t gonna cut it… They need to be added to the iTunes library as well. The only app i could find last week (i forgot the name) was some 4 year old thing for OS 10.3. Bah, i say!
I know, i know. It’s all the fault of the record companies. But i bought most of the music or just downloaded it and i want to listen to it. Even if i bought it it’s mine! And i’m (everyone else too!) getting my way anyway, so don’t make it hard and just allow me to sync my library to computers i authorize via iTunes.

Synchronizing your contacts:
This is a lot easier. But still lacks in many ways. Most solutions require Google contacts. What the fuck is up with everyone using Google… Geez, piss off! Macs have this super great and awesome thing called Bonjour, why not use that a bit more to keep things in sync. Or use P2P synchronizing for all i care. Why does Google have to be in between of everything!
Anyway, Also here. no real solution other than SpanningSync (comes in version 2) or Apples AddressBook, google syncing option.

Conclusion:
You would have thought that in the wondrous world of macs there would be a more proper solution for people having multiple macs. Now i’m either stuck with Google or with half assed software that’s either outdated or not working at all (Except for BusySync).