Wow. I can’t wait to see video from the La Princesse event in Liverpool

I use iTunes to manage podcasts. I typically delete the podcasts after I’ve listened to them. This is fine for most episodes, but every once in a while I want to refer to one again later. The default behavior of iTunes is to remove the podcast from the list on deletion. I would prefer that it revert to un-downloaded with a “get” button. I’d peered at the context menu over and over again, willing an option to be there but no. Refresh seemed like a candidate, but it only checks to see if there is a new episode since you last checked and does not “refresh” the list. The only way I knew to get the whole list back was to unsubscribe and then resubscribe. This has the unfortunate side effect of requiring you to delete and reacquire any podcasts you haven’t gotten to yet.

It turns out there is a way around this. Hoist the list by clicking on the triangle to the left of the show title. Then hold down the option key while clicking it again to expand the list. iTunes will refresh the entire list for you. Yay!

I need to remember the option key more often. I get decent results when I am wishing that an app would do something different by trying the logically closest command or button again with the option key down.

I was having trouble with importing from my phone to iPhoto. The iPhone would show up in iPhoto, but all the images would appear as empty boxes bounded by dashed lines. Very frustrating. I found a solution here on the Apple Discussion Board. If you are having problems with iPhone showing duplicate or “empty” iPhone try this out:

1. Open Image Capture and then select Devices>Browse Devices… (CMD-B).
2. Uncheck the iPhone(s), however many are there.
3. Unmount and reconnect your iPhone.

It should work as intended. This worked for me the first time out, hopefully it will for you too!

I get a physical pang on longing every time I see images of this city.

Wow do they do it right! I get an email from SmileOnMyMac about once a week with some helpful tips about how to use TextExpander better. It’s not an up-sell or plugging other products. It’s just a concise illustrated series of tips that are leading me deeper into the things the app can do. Thanks guys!

If more companies were like this I wouldn’t uncheck that “receive updates” checkbox so often. Now I should go check out what else they make!

(via yimmyayo)

This is what I think of EVERY time I see someone append “FTW” to something. So when I read “Linux FTW!” it sounds like “Linux, Fuck The World!” in my head.

I’m always a little disappointed when I realize what the author really meant.

http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfront...

Student interest in science is waning. But online, some gamers are using the Scientific Method to beat games. For example World of Warcraft players who compile spreadsheets of data about boss encounters to analyze for patterns and weaknesses and then proposing and testing hypotheses based on that data. Hey it’s science! The first question is whether the same kids who don’t like science in school are doing this at home or if the gamers in question are doing this because they’re already interested in science. The second question is what does this say about science curriculum? I would say that it’s indicative of a failure to make a compelling case to student about why this is important. The answer is not to make “educational” games but to find the opportunities for teaching your subject in the context of the things your students are already interested in.

Dear Candidate/NGO/NPO,

I have specifically told you that I’m interested in supporting your campaign/cause. I have donated in the past and plan to do so again in the future. Please, please, please put a feedback button somewhere in your communications that allows me to say “I get it, you’ve convinced me!” I will support your cause as much as I reasonably can while balancing that against the rest of my life. Please stop emailing me asking for money. It is starting to feel like spam.

Thanks.

We take a lot of photos. At the end of the year I like to drop them all into a movie stop-action style. So far the best way that I’ve found to do this is with iStopMotion but it’s still really frustrating.

For starters, and I find this mystifying, you have to spec the frame rate when you create the movie file. I suspect that the target audience just works at a particular frame rate all the time, and finds this normal. It makes me crazy. Why can’t you load up images as a sequence and then output them at whatever frame-rate you want? Fundamentally any movie is just a stack of still images.

The other drag is that you have to import images at the file level. You can’t just tell iStopMotion to walk through a series of nested folders. Quicktime Pro will let you open an image sequence which almost gets me there. But the images already have to be in the same folder and they need to be named foo_000.jpg, foo_001.jpg, and so on. This means hand editing the file names of 500-2500 images. No thank you! At least iStopMotion doesn’t care what the files are called.

This is exactly the sort of highly repetitive work that computers are supposed to be good at doing. Why can’t I find a better solution?

I have been trying to think of an elegant way to get weightlifting equipment (bars, bumper plates, dumbbells, kettlebells, etc.) to and from local parks for group workouts. Today I came across this cargo bike. 500 kg capacity fixed gear! Hot damn!