I just can't help myself...

So I've been sat here for the last few hours, "organising" an assortment of files on my computer. I've been going through and creating new folders, moving files around, renaming stuff to make more sense and generally "tidying up". I had loads of individual files just thrown into my "documents" folder and it was starting to get unweildy, and I didn't know what was in there. Despite the fact that OSX's wonderful "Spotlight" search feature makes it a doddle to find stuff, I felt like I needed to get a handle on what I had, and where it was.

After doing all that, I decided to start on a few iTunes files to make sure they were organised sensibly too - particularly the ones that I've bought from the iTMS store. I cannot stand it when things are all categorised using different conventions - it makes things really untidy. Again, iTunes itself does a pretty good job of organising things for you but occasionally it does things wrong. Well, maybe not "wrong" per se, but certainly not the way I'd do it. Particularly the way it handles compilation albums does my head it, so I take matters into my own hands for those.

Whilst going through, I then noticed that virtually every track you buy on iTunes has different metadata embedded in it - I think it depends on the record label, but some tracks have the bare minimum, some are stuffed to the gunnels with irrelevant bits and pieces. So, me being me, I've had to go through and standardise things a bit. You'd think this was easy wouldn't you? But I've come up against all sorts of headaches - there's a lot of hidden data in some of those files and it's a bitch to get to. But eventually I've managed to go through and wipe a lot of the unnecessary stuff, and then complete the more important bits.

A few weeks back, when Apple announced that they were making the entire iTunes Music Store 256kbps non-DRM files, they offered the option of upgrading your existing purchases for 20p a track to change them from 128kbps DRM-protected tracks to the new non-DRM higher bit rate ones. I was quite pleased about this (I hated the 5-burn limit on those tracks more than anything) so I duly clicked the "upgrade" button and prepared to take a hit for about a tenner's worth of non-DRM goodness. However, things are never that simple. Seven of my purchased tracks are not yet available in the new format, so they're still the 128kbps versions. That's annoying me immensely, as you can imagine. Apple reckon they'll soon be available to upgrade too, but I don't know when.

This has presented me with another issue though. Now I have these new shiny versions in 256kbps, but I've ripped the rest of my library as 128kbps and that means THEY NO LONGER MATCH.

I'm quite convinced I can't/won't hear the difference between the two bit rates, but knowing that they ARE different makes me uneasy. I'm seriously considering reripping my CDs at 256kbps now. You see, this is why I'd never be able to get rid of my CD collection in favour of digital versions - there's too much to go wrong in the virtual world. One day, (Apple heresy coming up here...) there will be no iTunes. Then what will we all do?

And then I got to thinking - why am I bothering with all this? Why don't I just leave stuff alone? I've come to the conclusion that I have some kind of computer-related OCD. I need help. Seriously.

Download gMail Mobile app v2.0 for Nokia/Symbian

If, like me, you've been wrestling with your Nokia Symbian S60 smartphone trying to get it to download the new gMail Mobile 2.0 app via your phone's browser (which is a well-documented issue), I'd suggest heading here and downloading it straight to your computer instead. Then you can bluetooth or sync it to your phone directly and Robert's your mother's brother. For some reason Google doesn't want you to do it like this, but it's so much quicker and easier than doing it the "proper" way.

And whilst I'm dispensing advice, I've just discovered Foxmarks, a Firefox add-on which keeps your bookmarks synced across multiple machines. Just what I've been looking for! And if you want to try it out, they've just released betas for Internet Explorer (why would you be using that?!) and Safari too.

Thanks for the memory

This morning, I received the 2GB RAM kit that I ordered, and I've just installed it in my iMac. Now - those of you that have been around for a while (you know who you are) - will remember back in 2005 when I got myself worked up into a frenzy the last time I installed new RAM into my machine. I did have just the 512MB that came pre-installed, so when I found out that optimal performance was to be gained from having two matching RAM modules I bought another one to boost things to 1GB and hopefully unlock the wonders of the mythical "128-bit pipeline".

Now when I had just 512MB, Terminal reported this:
phil-laceys-imac-g5:~ Phil$ ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n memory -S | grep ram-
| "ram-layout-architecture" = <00000002>
| "ram-bus-width" = <00000040>

Then, when I went up to 1GB, I got this:
phil-laceys-imac-g5:~ Phil$ ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n memory -S | grep ram-
| "ram-layout-architecture" = <00000002>
| "ram-bus-width" = <00000080>

At the time, I really couldn't work out whether this meant I was using the 128-bit pipe or not - the bus width had changed, but not the architecture value. But more RAM is always good regardless, so I was happy. Things nipped along quite nicely.

So, for the sake of consistency, I tried the terminal report again now I have two matched 1GB sticks in the iMac - just to see what it would say. So we now have:
phil-laceys-imac-g5:~ Phil$ ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n memory -S | grep ram-
| "ram-layout-architecture" = <00000001>
| "ram-bus-width" = <00000080>

Which is different yet again. However, this Apple knowledgebase article would seem to suggest I am now at the very pinnacle of G5 iMac memory nirvana - 2GB of RAM, in a perfectly matched pair, running on the 128-bit pipeline.

That, my friends, is as good as it gets.

Backup your backup

Whilst I have an Apple iMac, my better half still uses a Windows XP-based PC.  Although the ultimate aim is to downsize to just one computer (the Mac) at the moment we're still a two OS family.

Before I saw the Apple Mac light, I was quite invested in PCs. After getting my first one (a 386) as a hand-me-down in my university years, I then bought a brand new Pentium model in 1998. Since then, I've gone through numerous hardware iterations to the cheap and cheerful Dell machine we have now.

I've always been quite thorough with my data backups, and have been very glad of that fact on more than one occasion in the past. However, a peculiar situation reared its head yesterday - and, I hate to say, it was all of my own doing.

Both my Mac and my PC have external hard drives which I use for backups. I tend to keep my old backups, and just create new ones each time until I run out of space and then start deleting the oldest ones to make some room. There were about 4 years' worth of files on my PC backup drive, and I decided that I wanted to copy some of them over to my Mac. They were too big for a memory stick, and the PC doesn't have a DVD writer, so I decided that I'd move the drive from the PC to the Mac and plug it in directly. Both drives have the same power connector and both use USB 2.0, so to save time I left all the cables in situ and just moved the drive.

I unplugged the power supply and USB cable from the Mac backup drive and then set about reconnecting them to the PC drive. I switched the drive on, and then... nothing. Apart from a strange electrical burning smell. Where on earth was that coming from? And why wasn't the drive spinning up?

Now when I said that both drives have the same power connector, that much was indeed true. What I neglected to appreciate was that they use rather diffferent amounts of current. Only 0.2 amps difference, but when a hard drive uses just milliamps that's enough to fry the circuitry.

Needless to say,  I was a bit annoyed with myself. But then I started thinking. Exactly what was on that fried drive? Was there anything that I didn't have a copy of somewhere else? Had I inadvertently created a situation where I had forgotten to backup my backup?

Now I knew there was a lot of stuff on there, but it was difficult to remember exactly what. I decided that if it was possible, I'd need to get the drive working again - if only so I could reassure myself that there was nothing on it that I needed.

So, as always, I asked the internet - and found a YouTube video from some dude who had a very similar problem to my own. He had managed to fix his drive by swapping the logic board from his fried hard disk with one from an old drive he had kicking about.

Unconvinced, I went hunting through all my old computer spares, and found an old Maxtor drive that had been sitting gathering dust. Same make as my crispy drive, but a different model. Still, the logic boards looked similar - despite the differing names printed on some of the chips. I thought it'd be worth a crack.

I carefully removed the board from the knackered disk (which still smelt a bit toasty) and screwed on the (hopefully fully functional) one from my old drive. I then fitted it back into its enclosure and prepared to plug it back in. Click. Whirr. Well, at least it was spinning up now. But would it mount? A few seconds of trepidation... and there it was - F: Backup. Success!

I decided to work quickly as I was certain there was no way my fortune would last long. I quickly scanned through all the files, and established exactly what was there. I picked out a few essentials that I wasn't sure I had elsewhere and copied them over to the main hard disk and out of harm's way. The more files I copied, the more the drive sounded unhealthy, making all sorts of deathly grinding noises and rattles. Clearly, it didn't like my Frankenstein approach to hard drive surgery. Eventually, it gave up entirely and refused to do anything else. But at least I had copied a good chunk of data back to my PC to peruse at my leisure.

And this, in turn, got me thinking. Those backups - made incrementally, every two or three months - represented little snapshots of my life. This website for example. It has been going, in one form or another, for over five years now. Every time I redesigned the site, there would be a new "index.html" file containing the latest idea I'd had, and overwriting the old one. But there, on that hard disk, were versions of the site long since gone from the realms of the internet. I'd kind of forgotten about them entirely. And the same with my backups of email messages. Sure, the version I have here and now contains everything I deem to be worth keeping, but the backups have all those messages that I've consigned to the great trash can in the ether.

Anyway, the upshot is that the drive actually contained nothing really important that I didn't have saved elsewhere - but I did manage to salvage some little bits of history.

No brainer?

You probably don't need me to mention this again, but I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy. But however beautiful, intuitive and user-friendly their hardware and software is, it still goes out of date. Technology does that unfortunately. You can have the most up-to-date, bleeding edge kit one day, and it's relegated to second-best the next. If there's an upside, it's that Apple kit does stand the test of time. The hardware's built to last and the software gets support for quite some time before its completely obsolete.

As I've mentioned in passing already, my iMac is a G5 Power PC running OSX 10.4 Tiger. Both the hardware and the software were superceded quite some time ago. I've resisted the lure of 10.5 Leopard for some time (so long in fact that I thought I could miss it out entirely and just jump straight to 10.6). This isn't to be though. 10.6 is for Intel processors only, so I've hit the upgrade wall with that one I fear.

I could save up my pennies and opt for a whole new machine preinstalled with 10.6 when it finally arrives, but I think by the time I'd saved up enough we may well be on 10.9 and I'd still be lingering in the unsupported software dark ages in the interim.

So what to do? If I can't afford a whole new machine, and my current one won't run the new OSX, I think my only option is to upgrade this iMac to make it as good as it can be to tide me over until funds allow something better.

So far as I can tell, the best way of me doing this is threefold. 1) Install a great big hard disk - this current one is stuffed to the gunnels, 2) cram in 2GB of RAM and 3) replace Tiger with Leopard. That would take this machine to its technological ceiling - it can't get any better than that.

Something else that came to mind was that my iLife suite is currently the '06 version (and that, in computer terms, is practically prehistoric). Apple have just released iLife '09. I was never tempted by '08, as it never got very good write ups (particularly iMovie 08) and seemed a bit of an incremental update rather than anything genuinely new, so I never felt the need to change. (There was never an '07, in case you were wondering.)

However, this new iLife 09 looks the business. Already people are raving about it, and it does look very tempting. And the best thing? Apple are bundling Leopard, iLife 09 and iWork 09 (their latest productivity package) for £149. If you bought Leopard and iLife separately they would set you back £152. iWork costs £69 on its own. Erm... is that a difficult decision? So I can have the two pieces of software I want for £3 cheaper than buying them separately AND you'll throw in iWork for free? Can I phone a friend?

When I finally get round to this mammoth upgrade, I shall be documenting the process (maybe even with photos) for your delectation. Mind you, I'll probably change my mind six times before then. That's half the fun though. Isn't it?

*** UPDATE 30/01/2009 ***

I've decided to bite the bullet and start the upgrade process, but rather than do it all at once I've opted for the "little by little" approach. I figured that changing the hard drive and upgrading the OS would best be done together, so the logical (and less expensive) first step is to max out the RAM. The iMac can handle 2GB, so that's what I've ordered. The down side is that because PC3200 DDR RAM is a fairly niche market now, the price is comparably high. If I had wanted DDR2, it would be half the price. Typical. Anyway, I've secured myself a shiny new matching pair of Crucial 1GB sticks for £50 and they'll be arriving next week.

OSX Address Book & gMail contacts - import workaround

My OSX Address Book is usually my most up-to-date list of all my contacts. Every so often I iSync my Nokia N73 with it, and my iPod Touch syncs every time I plug it in via iTunes. I also, from time to time import my Address Book into my gMail contacts list as well.

In order to do this - because gMail can't seem to get its head around a native Address Book importer - you need some third party software to export your contacts as a CSV file and then import that into gMail. I have used A to G in the past, but I've recently found AB2CSV which offers more functionality.

However, I came up against a bit of a problem this morning. Every time I tried to import my latest CSV file, I just kept getting an error. Try as I might, gMail was just not playing. So I turned to the internet for help - someone must have cracked this problem. And sure enough, they have, over at Breakitdownblog. Turns out the new "improved" gMail interface is the problem. If you click the link at the top of your gMail window to revert to the "older version", and then try it, your CSV file will import just fine and dandy. How very backward.

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