MAC Tips!

So today I decided it was time to find out how to take the music from my iPod and get it on my computer. A few months ago my Mac PowerBook died and I had to do a fresh OS install. First time in the 8 years i have owned the machine. When I did this install I lost a lot of music. A lot of things I collected on my two iPods over the course of the years and only had backed up on my old PowerBook and not my newer MacBook Pro. So today I set out to get that music back. And I did!

So I started knowing there were some programs I could buy out there then I scratched my brain and thought "There has got to be a free one as well."


So I did a super fast Google search and the first one that popped up was an article from Mac World DOT com. And wouldn't you know, IT WORKED!


I used the Mac method. I really didn't even read the PC one because well, I don't own one. I am actually copying my music to my work computer now (Mac Pro), so I can stop bringing and forgetting my iPod at work. Tomorrow I transfer my other iPod.

The main tool that this walk though had me use is called TinkerTool. I like this program a lot. I mean I really like this program a lot. It allows you to see hidden or "invisible" folders and files on you computer. And that is just what the music folder is on your iPod, invisible. Apple just makes it that way so the average user can not rip music back from your iPod, well really from other peoples iPods. They do not want you to "Steal" music. As the Mac World article states, he sees more people trying to get their music back after a computer crash than trying to steal music from someone else's iPod. And that is exactly what I was trying to do.

Most of my music was ripped from my CD's I bought years ago. And well they went the way the CD has been travailing..... lost in the waist land. So I either had to buy the same music again, which is not very frugal, or get it back from a device I payed hundreds of dollars to own. So I went with the latter, and am very satisfied.

Now I also noticed another little problem at work today. I was running out of hard drive space!

So if you use TimeMachine on OSX 10.5 or 10.6 watch your hard drive space. I noticed to day that I only had 15 gigs left on my second hard drive. Now I have a lot of video and audio because, well I am a video editor. But that is all spread out over there massive amount of hard drive space I have in this machine and across my network. So when I saw I only had 15 gigs left after only 5 months of having this machine I got worried. Of course after poking around I saw a folder labeled "Backups.backupb" and low and behold there were piles of files in there! My main hard drive was backed on there up sense June! Over 250 gigs worth at this point! And there are more files still deleting!

The folder wasn't even visible until I got Tinker Tool earlier today to get songs form my iPod. So I made it visible and I was able to see all the back up files. To make this worse, you can not edit the amount of saves, intervals of saves or how long the backed up files stay on your drive in the TimeMachine settings. But you can go out and download this nifty tool that lets you customize time machine. It's called TimeMachineScheduler.

I'll let you know how well it works in a few days after I am running it. It allowed me to set up how many times a day the computer backs itself up by setting the intervals in between the backups. It also allowed me to not back up between certain hours of the day. And seeing how this is a work machine and I am not using it between 5 p.m. and 8:30 a.m. it will not back up during those times.

OK, it is almost time to get out of here for the day. I wanted to share the two tips I learned today. I hope someone out there can find them useful.

That is all, carry on.

ok enough of this rant. i figured i am in a Mac help mood today, so i figured i would give out some more tips i learned today.

Epic Car Fails and the Mondays!

Car fail number one.



I would like to see this drive parallel park. That could be fun to see, as long as The Meepers, The Egg and Mildred were no where around. Moving on to epic fail number 2.



Amazing skills.

Now if we can get these all over, we will not longer need to worry about user error!


But "Aint no machine gonna park The Meepers." How am I going to let some crazy contraption take away the best ride I have even owned. Now a guard robot sure. That's cool. Something like this maybe.

Now The Meepers will be safe! And have company when I am at work, taking Amy to lunch or running an errand.

Well I must say, I have a case of the Mondays. I really do not want to be at work today. The day is going by fast enough, but I still want to leave right now. I feel like using some PTO time, but my better judgment tells me to hang in there. There is only a few hours left in this day.

Well 3 actually. I needed to take a break from doing a training video. It is so riveting, I do not want to shit my brain.

I want to get tattooed pretty bad. I need Amy to work on my next tattoo. If you do not know how this ties into this post, don't worry, in time I will explain. Or I can explain now. Amy is going to make me a robot tattoo, and this post talks about robots. There is more, but that will stay a secret until the tattoo is on me.

Oh and if you do not want to click the link here is the video. It's crappy because someone just filmed their TV, but it was the only real clip I could find with 2 minutes worth of searching.



Now wasn't that 18 seconds of your life? You're right! It was.

now here is your last few moments of Zen before you are done reading this here blog post!



That is all, carry on.

Oprah is a whore!

The Office!

Look it is Micheal, Dwight and Andy!


PARKOUR! OK, OK here is The Office clip.



I changed the YouTube clip to the one from NBC. Sorry if the commercial plays first. I figured NBC would eventually kill the YouTube clip, so I went right to the source. And I think the commercial is only like 10 seconds long or so.

Hardcore Parkour! You have got to love Andy. Anger management and all. Pretty good character, and he can play a mean banjo. Though we left The Bog right before he played. It was to crazy in there. After Kevin gave me a beer, I drank it and bailed.


OK, now that we took care of that where do we go? Well I know where I am going later, but not right now. So lets talk about later. Here is a picture (don't worry it all relates).

Yes The Office maze! We will be entering this here maze later on tonight. I am not sure if we will be going into Jim or Dwight. We will most likely not go into the "Scary" maze, whom ever that will be. The "Scary" maze is basically high school kids employed by the farm to jump out and scare you. Not very frightening, more annoying, so we go to the other maze. And we are not going to have a repeat of last year.

Last year it rained and snowed all day. So the maze was wet and muddy (it is suppose to rain today, but sitting in a windowless office I don't know how that is working out. I guess I'll pee soon and find out.) and the Enter/Exit signs were pretty much ruined. See they opted to make cheap signs by jsut printing them out from a color deskjet printer and stapling them to a wood pole saying either "Enter" or "Exit."

This would be all fine and dandy if we were not living in the North East. I know this is s very temperate climate, oh wait.... it isn't. So the signs got ruined by the rain and snow. The paper flopped over a bit and the color ran. Combine that with it was dark and at night, we couldn't read them.

So we went in the exit of the maze. I will say we did go into the correct maze, because they enter from two different sides of the ticket booth. This was last years maze:

We went into Obama. There are clues along the way to point you into the right direction. They were about Obama's life and his election platform. Good thing we had Morgan, because he got them all right. Bad thing we went into the exit because the clues kept pointing us to the way we had just come from. So yes they were correct, but we were confused.

So on we went without the clues. Eventually finding our way out of the maze about an hour later. When we finally found this mysterious exit I happened to notice a sign. Remember those signs I was talking about earlier? Ya one of them. Well I could make out part of the word "Enter." We had just exited from this way. Hmmmm.

So we went through the maze backwards. Made it harder for sure, confused the hell out of us for sure, but we made it out alive and didn't freeze to death. After I told the rest of the group what happen, the clues made a whole lot more sense to us.

In case you didn't pick up on it, did you figure out how this all relates? I saw a Parkour video this morning and it reminded me of The Office episode, then I remembered that tonight we were going to the corn maze and it was an Office theme this year. And BAM! It all comes together.

And now I will leave you with this. It is totally unrelated, but so damn funny.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

That is all, carry on.

NEW HEADER!

OK, so I was busy today and I couldn't write a real blog. But I took a few minutes to make a new header for the blog. What do you think? I like it a lot. I went with the animations I was working on, and made a Meepers one!

I enjoy it, and I may make an animation that write on The Meepers, for fun as well. Stay tuned!

That is all, carry on.

Blog IDEA!

So I am sitting here trying to think about a blog idea. And well, I don't have one. So I figure I'll just start typing and see what happens. And I think I have an IDEA!

So last night Amy and I were watching Dirty Jobs. As I turned on the Discovery Channel, Mike Rowe was turning his head. And I caught a glimpse of of something and yelled out "Contour HD!" Of course Amy looked at me like I was on drugs, but a few minutes later I found out I was right and I explained my outburst to her. This is what I am talking about..
You may not know this, but this is the same camera that The Meepers and I choose to make or videos with. You can view them by clicking this blue text here, or check out our newest video below.



Yes, I am being a post whore with my videos. Can you blame me? I mean, they are amazing after all.

Speaking of this video, I have gotten two compliments on the bag I am wearing in the video. You can see it on the few shots of me. The two people thought it was a Chrome bag. I guess Chrome is so popular these days that they are the new standard for messenger bags. I hope they do not go the route of Timbuk2 did (The last huge explosion and major brand name in mess bags). Timbuk2 got so popular they had to outsource to other counties. They all use to be made in-house in SF, now most are made over seas, and the bags can be had cheap and at many online retailers.

Though the quality is still good, I feel the brand is tarnished from their outsourcing. This outsourcing also lead to a lack in innovation, which is why I believe Chrome, as well as many other brands are now leading this industry. And yes, it is now an industry. There are far to many manufacturers now, and bag suppliers for it to me a niche market.

Where Chrome took a look at what makes a bag better and improved, Timbuk2 just went with old reliable. They work great for every day life such as the office or campus. But for a bike, scooter or any two wheel commuter they fail. They are still a standard "Box" design and the strap is not conducive to a riding position. The bag tends to roll up under itself and bunch up on your back, not comfy at all. And the edges of the bag, once broken in, bow out, allowing water and elements to enter the bag.

Chrome, R.E. Load, Seagull, PAC, Blaq..... the list goes on and on, have all taken a look at these issues an came out with some amazing products!

Any way, the bag in the video is not a Chrome bag, it is in fact a R.E. Load bag. The Deluxe Currier to be specific. Great bag, but it has it's downfalls. The major one being the strap. All though it is super heavy duty and will last for ever, or at least until 2012 (or longer if I can get into Balloon Boy's fathers underground bunker), it lacks on the go adjustability. I know I covered all of this in my review of my bags page, but I hadn't had a chance to really get down and dirt with the R.E. Load at that point. So there you have it, the strap rules! And it sucks! It could also use a little more padding on he shoulder strap.

With Chrome becoming a house hold name, I have been looking into Cycling backpacks, and I keep coming back to Chrome. They make the most amazing bag, and I have covered this ground here before, the Warsaw. Great looking bag, very versatile, but also very large. For the working messenger, that is great, for me and The Meepers, not so great. Good thing they are making the Kirov! To bad it is not out yet, or sold out immediately, because I have been scoping that bag for a while, and it always says "Sold Out." I read a review, and it lacks the laptop sleeve of the Warsaw, but it does not mention the pockets. Thought the lap top sleeve would be great, it is not necessary, where all those beautiful pockets are. I guess only time will tell, or Chrome will tell me. I emailed them.

Well while I was typing this here blog post I got an email back from Chrome. The Kirov is not out until December. This gives me time to count my pennies, come to think of it, I think I will save my change and see how much I can save by the end of the year, and use that to buy a bag. The email went on to tell me that the bag will be exactly like the Warsaw, just smaller! Perfect! That is what I am looking for. I did email them one more time. I mentioned the review in Wired and how they said there was no lap top sleeve. So I went a head and asked if there will be a sleeve in the production version of this bag. Now I wait for their reply.

OK next on my radar today is this here picture!
My hair is creepy and long and I kind of wish I didn't cut it. But short hair is so much easier. And easier is what I am looking for in the morning. Especially sense it is now dark when I wake up and I feel like I am getting up in the middle of the night. My brain does not work right away. In fact sometimes I get a little wobbly walking down the hallway. In retrospect it is funny. When it is happening it pisses me off. I feel like I am drunk, without the fun part of drinking the beer.

Anyway, that is a great picture of me. Nice and creepy.

That is all, carry on.

Which one is better? Swinging light:


Or still light?


Both are got The Meepers seal of approval.

4 Broken Acoustic Strings in an Hour?

Chris is on his 4th broken string in about 2 hours. Good thing this is a live show he is getting paid for. I still think you are boss Chris!