October, 2007

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Purge XP's File Protection Cache

To delete the DLL cache used by Windows file protection, the following command can be used (start > run):

sfc /purgecache

This is useful for effectively disabling file protection (Windows will try to use the XP Install CD if it is in the drive) and also freeing up some space (around 500mb), as the cache makes up a fairly large part of the default XP install.

As a side note: If worst comes to worst, WFP will just ask you to put the Windows XP CD in, so the cache is really only for when Windows wants to be sneaky about replacing files.

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Tags: Windows XP

Safari for Windows

While I'm not a fan of the "It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!" attitude that His Steveness has toward Apple's development of Windows versions of its apps, I was looking forward to trying Safari for Windows because of its famed lightning fast render speeds. Having installed it, I was very impressed. They aren't lying when they say that Safari is one of if not the fastest rendering browsers around. In Beta 3, I was also impressed to see that Apple has greatly improved their standards compliance, with many previously buggy areas of HTML/CSS compatibility being smoothed over. But its not all smooth sailing and I'm sad to report that I've had to switch back to Firefox as my default browser after a mere 3 days of using Safari. "Why?" you might well ask. Well, I can no longer access any pages using Safari due to a strange bug which seems to have completely crippled the whole application. What's going on, Apple? For the purported kings of user-friendliness "unknown error ((null):10061)" is a pretty cryptic error message. After some initial Googling it seems like its not going to be easy to fix either. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the application but to no avail. This is the kind of bug that should not be occurring in a beta release of a piece of software. I can't help but feel that the whole port of Safari to Windows is a little half-arsed if you'll excuse the language.

I think the problem of this Windows port relates to a far wider problem with Apple's development for Windows: its really poorly done. Over the years, Apple has ported another of its most famous applications, iTunes, over to the Windows platform and done an appauling job of it. The problem is their apparent attitude: we're doing this because we have to, so lets not try very hard. iTunes for Windows is now several years old and yet it is still riddled with unforgivable issues:

The default installation on my PC skipped and jumped while any other appication was stressing the CPU. I managed to fix this with some tweaks, but it still happens with higher levels of activity.

The interface locks up constantly. Synchronising your iPod? Frozen UI. Importing songs? Frozen UI. One of the most critical things about user interfaces is that they let the user know what is happening. Nobody wants to see a frozen screen while they hope that whatever they asked for is happening.

And finally, the most annoying feature of Apple software ports: they look like they're running in Mac OS X. Maybe its an attitude problem Apple has, or the applications themselves are having an identity crisis and miss their mother but when you port an application don't take the operating system's UI with you! Both iTunes and Safari stand out in the worst way possible by saying "hey, look, I'm designed for Mac OS!". It's not even a matter of effort - I'm sure the Apple developers had to work very hard to get applications to look like they were running in Mac OS under Windows - its just Apple's we-are-so-superior attitude coming through again.

I have to admit that I'm a reluctant iTunes for Windows user, but I didn't set out to hate the thing. One might argue that it doesn't make sense for Apple to develop first-class applications for their competitors operating systems, however, if you're going to port the application you might as well do it properly! The latest version of MS Office for Mac OS is a great example of how Microsoft seems to have learned their lesson from the previously attrocious ports of their office suite. By developing a poor application for your competitors OS, you don't make them look bad, you make yourself look bad. Apple is known for making very user-friendly, polished applications which makes their failure to achieve this under Windows even more glaring. I can't help but feel continuing in this fashion is only going to alienate users who otherwise would have been happy to use their products.

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Tags: Apple, Windows, Safari, Rant

On Disposing of Computers Properly

I love cleanup days in Sydney, because they're a great opportunity for hoarders like me and my housemates to accumulate massive amounts of junk. There's something really exciting about finding some old piece of hardware in amongst the cassette tapes and cardboard boxes. Naturally for me, the ultimate find on these expeditions is a PC to add to my collection of dinosaurs, so when I spot one I scoop it up fast. Last cleanup day only yeilded one complete PC (although we did manage to collect some exploding power supplies) which seemed unable to POST due to keyboard errors (even with two keyboards attached), but that's not necessariy a bad thing: its always great to have a source for spare parts lying around.

When it came to using the hard drive from the aforementioned dinosaur, I simply couldn't resist the urge to rifle through the contents of it like a grab bag of personal data. Maybe I'm just a sick, voyeristic individual, but its a habit I have regardless. This particular hard drive didn't have anything particularly shocking stored within its little steel shell, except for evidence that its previous owner had used it for a very specific purpose: porn. The aged Windows 98 installation aboard this relic from the past was heaving at the seams with diallers and all manner of spam and other such "free porn xxx" related paraphernalia. It also contained various user account details for match-making websites and the owners dialup account, their contact list and numerous other personally identifying marks.

The whole got me thinking that if you're going to throw out a hard drive, you should probably clear the contents from it. This is the second time in recent months that me and my happy housemate hombres have come into a junk computer with a fair bit of personal materials still left onboard. While we're relatively harmless people, it would be quite possible to garner a lot of personal information from a PC or hard drive which hasn't properly been disposed of (i.e. at least formatted). When you throw out a hard drive, you should probably at least format it to get rid of the personal stuff. I'm not talking military grade data destruction here: just don't leave your full name, dialup account details and around 10 adult-friend-finder accounts sitting on there. Most people seem to be under the misconception that when the computer doesn't boot up, the data is lost forever. It seems to me that perhaps that misconception is a little dangerous; you wouldn't thow out all your old tax papers and letters from the bank in big boxes marked "private" without at least shredding them first, so why not do the same for your computer?

Greg later went on to format the hard drive and use it as the temporary base for his new zombie media centre. No local perverts were harmed in the process.

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Tags: Security, Tip, Junk Computer

Update Scripts to Run on Boot

For my own future reference:

update-rc.d  defaults

Name is the name of the script of executable in /etc/init.d/. Executing this command ensures the script will run on startup at every runlevel.

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Tags: Note to Self, Linux

Music Tagging Applications and You

I recently purchased an iPod touch, because I was quite impressed with its software features, screen size, physical size and pretty much everything else about it. One of my favourite features of it is that it can display high-resolution pictures of cover art for my mp3s, which have been loaded in from iTunes. However, while iTunes is capable of automatically downloading the cover art, it seems to be incapable of finding art for large sections of my music collection. I can accept that part of this might be due to the fact that some of the files are older and not tagged correctly, but there also seems to be a lot of missing cover art for albums I've recently purchased and ripped. After investigating a bit, I've found out that this is likely because WMP has incorrectly tagged some of my files or not provided a correct identifier for the CD.

With the aforementioned problem in mind, I decided that there must be an application out there to simply automatically re-tag my collection en-masse (I have way too much music to do it manually). While there are numerous batch tagging applications, they all seem to lack the ability to do what I want specifically, or do it inadequately. So far, the closest I've come is using Magic MP3 Tagger, which is based on MusicBrainz. However, I found even Magic MP3 tagger to be inadequate in several areas, not the least of which being that it is a closed-source product which requires purchasing to activate its full functionality. I also found using it to be difficult when there are numerous files which are not properly tagged. While its main purpose is supposed to be to fill in tags with as little metadata as possible, it can't even seem to search cd databases properly without me making a manual check to make sure that the artist, cd and track names are correct.

Given that there seems to be no decent, free, solution to do what I want, I'm going to try writing my own application. I'm going to be strongly emphasising the batch philosophy, as I feel that micromanagement should be an option, not a requirement, of a piece of software of this nature. The application will have several goals:

- Free alternative to existing solutions
- Performs lookups with as little as one piece of information about the file and presents the user with a list of choices in the absence of a direct match
- Adds all the information necessary for iTunes to look up the correct cover art
- Simple interface oriented around batch processing
- Pluggable components to allow different music databases and additional file types to be added/used in the future

I hope I can achieve these stated goals, because I have found the attempts so far at this kind of software have mostly fallen way short of the mark.

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Tags: Idea, iPod Touch, Music, Tagging, Software