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Archive for May, 2009
Tuning up TuneUp
At the end of January I purchased a copy of TuneUp to assist me with the arduous task of adding missing album art to music tracks and also cleaning up various MP3 tags. The software works well, though I often find the TuneUp sidebar a bit obtrusive in the way it simply pushed iTunes out of the way when it launches. But the software does what it’s supposed to.
There have been a few updates to the version I initially installed, but last week’s update was the first one to kill TuneUp. After the update had been installed, no access to the application seemed possible. Not even a reinstallation solved the issue of a white sidebar with a constantly-twhirling progress icon.
I attempted a first uninstallation and subsequent reinstallation with little success. Then, I downloaded the latest version and tried again. No go. As a last resort, I once again navigated to the location of the uninstaller (it can be found in the directory /Users/<user name>/Library/Log).
Instead of running it with the default selections for removal, I clicked Select All.
I’m still a bit nervous about all the /usr/local/lib content I selected for removal, but so far I haven’t experienced any issues with Mac OS X and any applications. I rebooted, then launched the TuneUp installer again.
The TuneUp installation is quick and painless. When I launched iTunes, I was pleased to see that the content in the application had been restored. The new version looks slick.
If you’ve had a similar issue with the latest issue of TuneUp on Mac OS X, this fix may help you too.
Star Trek
I love science fiction as much as anyone. Probably more than anyone. Funny that I’ve never latched onto the whole Star Trek thing, however. Never. Star Wars was cool, and still is. Star Trek was always a show with guys sitting on chairs pretending to be in a spaceship, and not really pretending very well either. Worse still, pretending to be in a spaceship that was under attack, being shaken about. That’s sort of what Star Trek was to me.
The hype surrounding the new Star Trek movie and the great reviews I read prompted me to go along and see what the fuss is about. I’m afraid to say that Star Trek in 2009 is pretty much what it was in the early 1980′s: guys standing around in a pretend spaceship, pretending to be bumped about. J.J. Abrams tries hard to breathe new life into the old franchise. His reboot of the series by bringing up the possibility of an alternate reality opens the door for many sequels, which there will be, based on the many positive reviews out there. For me, time travel tales don’t work. They especially can’t work when a character in one reality meets up with himself in another. That blows the story for me.
There was an obvious requirement to showcase an original Trek cast member in the new Trek incarnation. Nimoy as an old Spock has that honour, meeting up with a younger version of himself towards the end of the movie. By that time, we’ve seen a wildly reckless James T. Kirk drive a vintage Corvette like a maniac, being beaten up by Starfleet Academy recruits, cheat himself through the Kobayashi Maru test and climb onboard the USS Enterprise to aid the threatened planet of Vulcan even though he’s been grounded. Those feats are peanuts compared to the other hi-jinks Kirk gets up to, making Star Trek a dead ringer for movies like Agent XXX.
Carbon copies of the well-known crew are introduced too, of course: Uhura, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov. Spock appears twice, in a young and an older body. They try too hard to be what the original characters were.
There’s plenty of action, good special f/x and an ingenious reboot of an old favourite. As someone who’s never been a Star Trek fan, there’s little to commend the movie, however. I was somewhat disappointed that the hype didn’t quite materialize in what I saw…
Rand Airshow
3 years ago
by manfred
in Life in South Africa
Yesterday’s Rand Airshow took place in rather cool and windy Johannesburg weather, but flying conditions couldn’t have been more perfect: not a cloud in the sky meant that spectators, and there were a lot of them, got to see some interesting aircraft. The ZAR 50 entrance fee for the day was a bargain given the programme lineup. I arrived at the Rand Airport at just after ten and by then a 2km line of cars was waiting to get into the parking areas. Even though there was a record turnout, ticket sales at the gates were efficient and quick and there was very little time lost in queuing and getting onto the airfield.
Armed with my camera and a liquid refreshment now and then, the day passed very quickly. Here are a couple of snaps (once I get through the RAW conversion process, I’ll post a few more to the Flickr account). Click on the photos for a larger version. They are rather large, so you may have to be patient waiting for each to load.
SAA Cargo with a slow fly-by and bump and run:
Whilst I’m quite impressed with some of the photographs I managed to shoot, there’s no getting around the fact that the professionals use some impressive equipment to capture impressive shots:
Lens envy 
Johnie Smith preparing for take-off in his Slick 360.
Chipmunk. One of three in their aerial display.
As though residents of Gauteng don’t get to see enough crime, the aerial wing of the Police force went through the motions of showing spectactors how they track down and (sometimes) catch criminals.
The Xtra 300.
Gabriel Wings aerobatic team.
One of the more daring aerobatics performed on the day: a Harvard in pursuit of a helicopter.
ZU-TEE is a familiar site to visitors of the Rand Airport. The final display ended around 16:00.
All round, a highly interesting and entertaining event. Mark next year’s Rand Airshow in your diary now!
Rand Airport Air Show on Sunday
3 years ago
by manfred
in Life in South Africa
There’s an air show planned for this Sunday at the Rand Airport near Germiston in Johannesburg. It’s been poorly publicized, with only a few posters up on some main roads and the official web site provides very little information.
The Rand Airport is a hub of activity at all times and having the opportunity to visit an air show is not to be missed. Here’s what is planned for the air display:
- Mass Radial Display
- Boeing 737 Display
- Skydiving
- Zlin 50 Aerobatic Display
- SA Police Airwing
- Snake Microlight Formation Team
- Flying Lions Harvard’s Formation Aerobatics
- Wesbank Wizards Pitts Specials
- SAAF Silver Falcons Aerobatic Team
- Starlight Helicopters Display
- Twin Comanche Display
- Gabriel Wings Aerobatic Team
- Bush Flying Display
- Henley Air Helicopters
- Yak-52 Formation Display
- Vans RV 7 Aerobatics
- Mazda Aerobatic Team
- Gabriel Truck Top Landing
- Harvard Solo Aerobatics
- Henley Helicopters Display
- Northwest Eagles Aerobatic Team
- Slick 350 Aerobatics
- “Zutee” L39 Jet Aerobatics
- Extra Monoplane Aerobatics
- Albatross Formation Display
Adults pay ZAR 50, kids ZAR 20 to enter. The Rand Airport website detailing the air show is here. Bring along a camera!
iPhone on a RoadTrip
3 years ago
by manfred
in iPod/iPhone
I constantly listen to audio books and podcasts whilst driving. That’s the only way to maintain a bit of sanity. The arrival of the iPhone a few weeks ago urged me to check out some solutions that would offer in-car charging and possibly FM transmission capabilities. Though my primary device for listening to media is still the 32GB iPod Touch, there’s no reason to be device-specific and I went out looking for a suitable gadget that would fit both the iPod and the iPhone.
On that note, just one comment: it is likely that any accessory one purchases for a current iPod generation will cease to provide its full functionality to subsequent product generations. That’s something that irritates me no end, and generally seems to affect charging of the new device. The reason for this is Apple‘s inability to maintain a standard for the pin-outs on the iPod dock connector – when plugging a newer iPod into an older accessory, the “This accessory does not support charging” message is displayed. It’s an obvious ploy to keep manufacturers of accessory products in a cycle of constant evolution with regard to their products, but its a costly exercise for the consumer.
As always when I look for iPod accessories, my attention turned to Griffin. That company makes many sensible and useful products to enhance the iPod experience, though their products are by no means cheap. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, I settled on the RoadTrip FM transmitter. The device consists of a short, bendable gooseneck supporting an iPod cradle on one end and a cigarette lighter plug on the other.
For the cradle, a whole collection of iPod adapters is provided, each of which fits neatly and snuggly on top of the connector. A display indicates FM frequencies and various options.
I can attest to the RoadTrip‘s ability to securely hold both the iPod Touch and the heavier iPhone as I travel on a rather bumpy dirt road every day. There is hardly a possibility that the device will fall from the cradle. As with the Logitech Pure-Fi Dream, making out the markings on the black plastic cradle adapters that indicate which iPod each one fits on is rather difficult – the moulded indicator on the adapter is not always easy to make out. Generally, this shouldn’t be an issue if only one device is to be used with the RoadTrip, but I tend to swap the Touch and iPhone every now and then and need to identify the cradle adapter reliably. A minor gripe, but something that manufacturers may want to address by providing a more visible marking. Maybe it’s my eyesight?
Securely fasten the correct adapter on top of the cradle, plug the device into the cigarette lighter socket and adjust. I recently had my iPhone on the RoadTrip, Bluetooth enabled and taking handsfree phone calls via the Garmin nuvi whilst checking that cool little blue blip on Google Maps update my location. It’s almost a car computer…
The RoadTrip features an FM transmitter with a three frequency memory. My frequency of choice in the greater Johannesburg area is still 88.7 and the RoadTrip provides clear, crisp sound without interference to my car’s radio. The RoadTrip does include SmartScan technology which is supposed to determine the best three frequencies for use by the car radio and presets these automatically on the unit. I wasn’t convinced by its findings and stuck to my manual setting. The device in the cradle is charged automatically.
There’s no need to fumble around with the buttons on the iPod or worse still, with the touch interface of the iPhone: the RoadTrip has three hardware buttons that provide rudimentary control over the audio stream: play, pause and skip to next track.
I can’t fault the RoadTrip, other than for its purchase price which is in the region of ZAR 850, a lot of money for an iPod accessory. The gooseneck is solid and stays in position, the cradle holds the iPod very firmly and I consider the sound quality to be as good as is possible for something relying on FM transmission. With an iPhone or iPod Touch in the cradle, you can surf the web, check out Tweetie or email and play a game or two, all the whilst listening to your selected audio. Don’t forget that you’re piloting a car, one of the most dangerous weapons mankind has ever produced, though!
If you’re in the market for a charger/FM transmitter that supports a slew of older iPod models, the RoadTrip may be worth a look.
Harmony for the PS3
3 years ago
by manfred
in Connectivity
My Logitech Harmony remote control is capable of controlling all devices near the LCD, except for the PS3. I had considered purchasing the Sony PS3 remote control, but after seeing this I’m glad I held out: Logitech will begin shipping a special adapter that will interface the products of the Logitech Harmony remote control range with the PS3.
The Harmony adapter is a sleek device that requires a power connection but does not use up any of the PS3‘s USB ports. Instead, the adapter is paired to the PS3 unit as a Bluetooth device. Once the necessary device has been added into the Harmony‘s internal configuration, all PS3 Blu-Ray commands are available through the Harmony remote control. For more information, see the Logitech product information page. The Harmony PS3 adapter will be shipped to Europe and Africa sometime in July.
Virtual XP in Windows 7 RC. Virtually useless.
The Windows 7 RC is humming along quite nicely, and I promise that this will be the last Microsoft post for a while. The additional download of a Virtual XP environment intrigued me enough to download and install it. I can’t quite understand what the purpose of a Virtual PC running XP in Windows 7 can be, but here goes.
First off, it is a requirement that the target machine has a modern Intel processor capable of Virtualization Technology. Most Intel Core Duo‘s or better have this feature, but to be sure I downloaded Intel‘s CPU identification utility. The utility provides a basic overview of the CPU‘s capabilities
and the all-important Yes for the required virtualization support.
With the basic hardware requirement met, I downloaded the first of two files from Microsoft‘s site. Initially, a support package needs to be installed. The installation is quick, but requires a reboot. After the reboot, the system is ready to accept the installation program to complete the setup of Virtual Windows XP.
A few clicks is all it takes. The setup routine basically installs a virtual machine environment, then populates a pre-built disk image containing a functional Windows XP system.
There is no option to enter a user name for the OS, only a password. The name of the user is…User. That should be difficult to forget. Multiple logons are not possible with the free copy of XP Microsoft provides in the virtual PC environment.
Since we are talking about a vulnerable OS inside another vulnerable OS, it may be prudent to permit this XP to check for updates…
Once the setup has completed, you are left with a guest Windows XP system inside a virtual machine running on top of Windows 7. A nice feature is that the host OS drives are available automatically, permitting easy sharing of files from one environment to another. How this affects the overall security of the system as a whole is a totally different question: Windows 7 requires some form of virus protection, as does XP. That means installing anti-virus measures in the guest OS to ensure that no nasties bite the host. Anti-virus is not exactly a performance improver, and we are talking a basic virtual machine here. Extra functions to handle USB devices, power the VM off and send a Ctrl-Alt-Del to the guest OS are accessible from the Virtual PC menu bar.
I can’t see any corporate wanting to upgrade existing systems to Windows 7 only to run legacy applications inside a virtual machine environment. The headaches that would cause, not to mention the wasted administrative effort is simply not worth contemplating. Then, there’s the issue of the guest and host being very interoperable which makes most security types a bit nervous and requires two anti-virus licenses, at the very least. The virtual machine environment is dedicated to the single instance of XP, so it’s unusable for, say, Ubuntu or anything else, for that matter. It’s a lot of software for a simple XP setup that already runs well enough on a low-end desktop.
In my opinion, the provision of an XP emulation mode is not a bad thing, but the implementation by way of a complete, separate VM makes no sense: wouldn’t it have been possible to simply provide an XP wrapper in the main OS to run programs that require such support? Overall, I’m a bit confused as to what the Virtual XP thing is all about. Take one free copy of Virtualbox, add as many operating systems as you wish on top of your host OS and you have a much better, more flexible solution. With Virtualbox, the guest OS can be backed up, snapshots created and moved around as an image. That’s not possible with the Microsoft Virtual XP environment.
Connect Magazine
I’m no fan of the Incredible Connection, considering them a last resort only in cases where I can’t order online or where a nearby dealer is unable to provide what I need. But I was intrigued by @Brettski‘s tireless self-promotion on a recent episode of The ZA Tech Show of a new publication he had launched.
Connect is a magazine that is produced in conjunction with Incredible Connection. For that reason, I assume, the magazine title is what it is and copies are on sale only in Incredible Connection stores.
But for all my aversion to Incredible Connection, I was very impressed when I picked up a copy of Connect today. It’s a glossy, high-production value publication that delivers some salient advice and good content. The cover price of ZAR 15 is very reasonable. Within the covers, readers will find reviews of hardware and software together with a few how-to guides. Aimed more at the technophobe than at the technophile, concepts and terminology are explained in basic terms. I like the fact that prices are provided for all reviewed products and also the Perfect Companion section accompanying the reviews.
If Connect is just a marketing paper for Incredible Connection, it’s very well disguised. For a locally-produced magazine, Connect is of a high quality. Check it out.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The first X-Men movie was good, the second interested me very little and I gave the third one a miss. It was with much interest then that I followed opinions and reviews of the much-hyped Wolverine movie, a motion picture focusing on a single character of the mutant superhero team. Hugh Jackman certainly looks the part – his hair styled into those pseudo-ears together with the beard and sharp chin makes him a dead ringer for one of the more popular characters in the Marvel universe. Whether he could hold his own in an origin story was an interesting topic of conversation.
Reviews and opinions range from the hyperbolic to the disappointed. I, for one, think the movie as a whole was well executed and it stays true to the Wolverine backstories I’ve been exposed to. Young James and his half-brother flee home after a violent night in their home sometime in 1845. By virtue of their mutation that enables their bodies to be healed, both James and Victor get enlisted in every armed conflict known to the USA, from the American Civil War to Vietnam. In modern times, Major Stryker enlists them into a team of mutants from which James Logan departs, sickened by the violence the team exhibits. His half-brother is still in the service of Stryker some six years later, when the Major starts hunting down mutants for experimentation and the creation of a super soldier. It is at the hands of Stryker that Logan receives his adamantium skeleton and becomes the Wolverine.
The movie is fast-paced and I enjoyed some of the more exxagerated shots of Jackman on his motorbike, being pursued by a chopper and two Hummers – almost carbon copies of panels one would expect to find in a comic book. Jackman plays his part well, as does most everyone else. A number of other characters from the X-Men universe make an appearance, but they seem to fit in well and aren’t used to simply fill up the running time. Once again I remembered the Weapon X program, something I had completely forgotten about and that’s a graphic novel I need to dig out of my collection.
There was nothing much I disliked about X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To come up with something would be nitpicking. It was an enjoyable spectacle for the comics geek and should appeal to those in the mood for an action picture, too. Though you’ve undoubtedly heard many opinions and made up your own by now, I’ll give you mine: if you enjoy the X-Men mythos to any degree, you’ll want to see this movie.
No more reset of Firefox proxy settings
The installation of the Windows 7 RC and subsequent installation of necessary applications (all of the latest possible version) has eradicated an annoying issue my Firefox browser exhibited: when opening a new window from a link on a landing page, that page would be unable to display any content when a proxy setting had been entered. In fact, clicking on such a link would reset the proxy to “No proxy“, necessitating a visit to the network connections windows to change the the proxy settings in Firefox back to the intended setting.
I’m pleased to announce that the issue has been fixed. I’m assuming that it’s something that was wonky in the Windows 7 Beta, as the Firefox 3.0.10 version had already installed itself while I was running the Beta. A closer look at the error seemed to indicate a reference to the built-in Java virtual machine, but I can’t confirm that as the source of the problem.
Nice to be able to navigate the Interwebs once again as they was intended 
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