Mostly awesome

This is an annoying problem. Occasionally I could fix it by rebooting, but the problem always returned.

Finally, I fixed it with:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Updates

EyeTV expects you to pay for a subscription to keep the TV guide up to date. The free alternative (using the DVB guide) is perfectly adequate, but suffers from a major flaw: it doesn’t update automatically. This makes EyeTV somewhat useless as an unattended TV server.

Fortunately, there’s a solution. You can use AppleScript to send EyeTV the (complicated) series of keystrokes to update the TV guide each night. The resulting script required a bit of experimentation to get it completely reliable and only works with the latest version (v3.6.9 at the time of writing). For other versions, you might need to tweak the keystrokes slightly.

First of all, you must enable accessibility scripting in macOS, otherwise the scripting engine can’t control the GUI.

Next, open up Script Editor and paste in the following commands:

tell application "EyeTV" to activate try tell application "System Events" tell process "EyeTV" keystroke "p" using control down delay 5 keystroke "g" using command down delay 5 click pop up button 1 of window "EyeTV Programs" delay 10 click menu item "Update DVB Program Guide" delay 300 keystroke "w" using command down delay 5 keystroke "o" using command down delay 5 key code 53 using command down delay 5 end tell end tell end try try tell application "EyeTV" hide programs_window enter full screen pause end tell end try

Test it by pressing the play button in Script Editor. EyeTV should update the EPG guide and the script should complete without errors. Now save the script in ~/Library/Scripts as "Update EyeTV EPG.scpt".

To automate the script, just invoke it with a launchd script. Here’s a sample:

<key>Debug</key> <true/> <key>Disabled</key> <false/> <key>Label</key> <string>com.paul.eyetv</string> <key>LowPriorityIO</key> <true/> <Program> /usr/bin/osascript <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> osascript <string>/Users/paul/Library/Scripts/Update EyeTV EPG.scpt</string> </array> <key>StartCalendarInterval</key> <dict> <key>Hour</key> <integer>3</integer> <key>Minute</key> <integer>0</integer> </dict> <key>StandardOutPath</key> <string>/Users/paul/Library/Logs/eyetv_epg.log</string> <key>StandardErrorPath</key> <string>/Users/paul/Library/Logs/eyetv_epg.log</string>

You’ll need to change the paths in the script to point to your own home directory. Save the resulting file to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.eyetv.plist.

Now load it into launchd with:

sudo launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.eyetv.plist

I’ve been using Plex for years and it’s always been hopeless with music collections: random cover art, missing tracks and mangled compilations. iTunes, on the other hand, makes a reasonable job of it and it’s still my primary music library.

However, Plex offers the killer feature of remote streaming of my media collection - and does it far better than iTunes Match or Apple Music (or whatever its called now). I know that the Plex team have been working hard on improved music handling, but to date I hadn’t seen any improvement.

The solution is to delete the music library in Plex, then re-create the library with the new “Import for iTunes” and “Use embedded tags” features checked. Initially, things didn’t look too promising (lots of missing cover art), but after a day or so, it seems that Plex has successfully imported my 25,000 track library and (most importantly) kept my metadata intact.

Here’s how I did it (from Plex/Web):

Clear existing library with Music > Edit, click Delete Library

Create new library with Add > Music, click Next

Point to your existing iTunes library folder, click Next

Leave “Create a basic music library” selected (unless you have PlexPass), click Next

On the next screen, make sure “Import from iTunes” and “Use embedded tags” are both checked and leave the rest of the settings (Plex Music Scanner, Last.fm agent) as they are

Now click Add Library and leave it to process the files

My iPhone 5S was becoming increasingly reluctant to charge. I tried another cable, which improved things for a while but eventually that started playing up. Finally, I found I couldn’t charge the phone at all.

I figured the port had got some dirt in it, so I tried cleaning it out with a toothpick and blew the debris clear with an air can. Unfortunately, that just made it worse!

On closer inspection, I found what was wrong: in the corners of the port was a layer of accumulated crud that had become absolutely solid - presumably a result of being compressed each time the Lightning cable is inserted. This stopped the plug from being fully inserted

Removing it required the use of a thin, sharp metal screwdriver to break up the muck so it could be removed (see pic, below). Once that was done, the port worked perfectly again.

Sometimes the designers of electronic equipment make truly baffling design choices. Here is a low cost, neat-looking AirPlay speaker I bought very cheaply online.

The speaker itself works well enough, but is ruined by some bizarre software choices:

It puts itself to sleep after only 5 minutes of idle time - and disappears from your network

You then have to physically press the power button on the back to wake it up again

After you wake it up, it reconnects to wifi and emits a loud, shrill, high-frequency “BEEP”.

Even a quiet “ding” would be superfluous (as there’s a blue light that also indicates wifi connection) and quite why it needs to sleep after only 5 minutes is beyond me, as this renders the convenience of Airplay redundant. I can’t believe it is supposed to work this way. Perhaps it’s running some sort of testing firmware?

Anyway, I think I have eventually found a way to stop the stupid thing dozing off. Pinging it doesn’t work, connecting to the internal web server doesn’t work. The only thing that seems to stop it falling asleep is to stream music at it. So I created a 1 second, silent mp3 file and tried streaming that every minute. Amazingly, this seems to work! An added bonus is that this doesn’t seem to get in the way of normal use i.e. it’ll just ignore the mp3 “pings” if it’s already playing something.

The challenge is to automate this in a script. On the face of it, this should be simple enough. For example, you can use curl to AirPlay an .mp3 file over RTSP  like this:

curl -s -X PUT --data-binary silent.mp3 -H 'Connection: keep-alive' -H 'User-Agent: MediaControl/1.0' -H 'X-Apple-Transition: None' -H 'Content-Type:' -H 'Accept:' -H 'Host:' -H 'Expect:' rtsp://<hostname>.local:<port>

Just replace <hostname> and <port> with those of the speaker. Easy enough? Well, it would be, only the $@*! thing changes the listening port every half hour or so for no apparent reason whatsoever! 

Grr.

So, for my next trick: how on earth to find out what port it is listening on? You can use Bonjour to query it, but unfortunately the command line tool dns-sd is hopeless for scripting purposes.

Eventually I found a way to do it in Python using the pybonjour module. I cobbled together a grotty Python script to return the current port and then piped this into the command line above. It works! Yay! Unfortunately the script is too horrific/embarrassing to post here, but if I ever get around to cleaning it up then I guess I might put it up.

I decided to replace the wheel bearings on my ageing 1993 Ducati 750SS. You would have thought it would be easy enough, but it turns out that the bearings are difficult or expensive to get from Ducati.

Not to worry, the bearings are standard parts you can get from most bearing stockists. The tricky part is getting exactly the right ones. Not every parts list seems to have them right and the rear wheel bearings are a very unusual size. If you have the same bike as me (with the early alloy swingarm and 17mm rear spindle), the parts you need are:

Front

2x SKF 63032RSHC3 (17x47x14mm)

Rear

2x SKF 622032RS1C3 (17x40x16mm) for the wheel hub

2x SKF 60052RSHC3 (25x47x12mm) for the sprocket carrier

Note the speedo drive sealing ring on the front wheel is completely unavailable anywhere at the moment. To remove it, I warmed the hub gently with a hair dryer then drifted the bearing out from the other side. This pushed the seal out easily and it came out fully intact. 

One of the many (ongoing) irritations with iTunes is that it sometimes splits albums into two - even when the album info is identical.

The solution is fairly straightforward:

Select the tracks in both albums

Open the info dialog with ⌘ + i

Change the album title to something else

Click OK

Open the info dialog again with ⌘ + i

Change the album title back again

Click OK

My iPad started to suffer from extreme lag - not just a bit slow, but freezing-completely-for-10-seconds slow. I tried the usual suggestions to reboot, clear the caches, etc that you find on the web, but they made no difference.

It turns out that my iPad was getting low on storage space.

I don’t know how iOS handles this situation, but my guess is that it automatically reduces the swap file size to free up storage space, causing extreme slow running.

I used to use http://www.tvguide.co.uk/iphone to look up UK TV listings. Unfortunately that mobile site has now gone and I find the main page of http://www.tvguide.co.uk almost unusable with all the adverts and clutter.

You can de-clutter the website with the following userstyle. Just paste the following CSS into your browser’s UserStyle settings for websites matching http://www.tvguide.co.uk/*

*[class=ad-masthead] { display: none ! important } div#divMasthead { display: none ! important } div#top-bar { display: none ! important } div#nav-top { display: none ! important } div#nav-bot { display: none ! important } div#tvnews1 { display: none ! important } div#div-blog-article { display: none ! important } div#footerdivwrapper { display: none ! important } div#sharing-buttons { display: none ! important } div#logo { display: none ! important } div[style*="height:355px"] { display: none ! important } div[style*="height:354px"] { display: none ! important } A:link#latest-news-articles-link { display: none ! important } A:link[HREF*="ads."] IMG { display: none ! important } A:link[HREF*="tvdaily."] IMG { display: none ! important } div[id^="tt-wrapper"], div[id^="tt-mention"], div[id^="tt-container"], div[id^="tt-player"] {display: none !important;} div#video-container, div#vpaid-container, div#vpaid-clickthrough {display: none !important;} div[id^="AdContainer"], div[id^="AdVideoContainer"], div[id^="clickContainer"], div[id^="clickVideoContainer"], div[class^="ad-masthead"], div[id^="google_ads"], div#hb-container {display: none !important;} div[style*="height:84px"] { display: none ! important } div[class="div-epg-channel-progs highlight-container"] {display: none !important;} div#daily-video { display: none ! important } div[class*="celtra"] {display: none !important;}

iPhoto has a strange bug where sometimes videos and movies appear black (but only in slideshows). The videos appear fine in the browser and you can edit them, but during a slideshow you get the first frame and then a black screen.

Fortunately, fixing it is easy:

Quit iPhoto (Cmd + Q)

Hold down the Opt (⌥) and Cmd (⌘) keys and start iPhoto

A repair dialog appears

Check the option “Repair Permissions”

By default, Google will use everything it can to figure out how to target ads: the content of your emails (if you use Gmail), your surfing habits (from Google Analytics web bugs), your search history, etc, etc.

Some people find this useful; personally, I don't as I'm usually searching for things I don't know about, whereas Google's targeting tends to offer me stuff related to what I already know (or already bought). Duh.

Go here: https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads and click on both of the 'Opt out' links near the bottom of the page.

A friend with a Samsung Galaxy S3 was struggling to get his photos onto a Mac. The official methods involving KIES and/or Android File Transfer seem to involve proprietary software and a USB cable. Totally old skool!

Here’s an easy (and free) way to get PhotoStream-style automatic, wireless uploads to a Mac iPhoto from Android.

Get and install Dropbox on both the Mac and Android phone.

Make sure ‘Camera Upload’ is enabled in Dropbox on the phone.

Now you simply need to configure a 'folder action’ to import new photos that arrive in the Camera Uploads folder to iPhoto…

On your Mac, start the 'Automator’ application.

It’ll prompt for the automation type. Choose 'Folder Action’.

A new automator window will appear. Near the top, there’s a box to select 'Folder Action receives files and folders added to…’. Click on that, click 'Other…’ and choose Dropbox / Camera Uploads. Now click 'Choose’.

Now look at the list of actions on the left, find the Photos -> Import Files into iPhoto action and drag it to the empty pane on the right-hand side.

Change the action options from 'Existing album’ to 'New album’ and give your new album a name e.g. 'Uploaded from Dropbox’.

File -> Save… and give the automation a name e.g. 'AutoImportPhotos’

That’s it! Your folder action is now created.

Any photos taken on your Android phone will be automatically uploaded to Dropbox and then imported to iPhoto. Nothing is deleted, so you’ve got a nice automatic backup of your photos on Dropbox and iPhoto should automatically ignore any duplicate photos.

Tip: If you don’t want the import to occur right away, there’s a variation on this trick that will cause iPhoto to do the import next time it is started: instead of the 'Import files into iPhoto’ action, use the 'Copy Finder Items’ action to put the photos into iPhoto’s 'Auto Import’ folder. This folder is hidden by default in the iPhoto library. To find it, you’ll need to go to your iPhoto Library (in ~/Pictures), right-click on 'Show Package Contents’, select the 'Auto Import’ folder and make a shortcut to it with Cmd + T. Now you can select that shortcut in the action properties.

If anything, this method seems to work more reliably than PhotoStream (which has an annoying habit of missing the occasional photo). If you ever need to edit (or remove) the automation, right-click on the Camera Uploads folder in Finder and click on Services -> Folder Actions Setup…