Wednesday, November 22, 2006

redownloading from iTunes

I found this on another web site - but have pasted it here as I know I will want to refer to it later.

For some unknown reason, I lost a few episodes of a podcast, so iTunes showed them with an exclamation mark and no obvious way to re-download them. Searching the web for a way to make iTunes to re-download them came up with lots of comments about having to unsubscribe and resubscribe. I didn't want to do that, because I still had a bunch of episodes that I wanted to keep, and I didn't want to have to download those again.

After playing with iTunes a bit, I found a pretty simple way to do it. First I clicked the triangle to expand the podcast series and then deleted the missing episodes (the ones with the exclmation) by selecting them and hitting the backspace key. After that, I collapsed the podcast series by clicking the triangle, and then expanded it again while holding the option key (I think it would be shift on Windows), causing iTunes to update the podcast and add back in the episodes I just deleted.

The re-added episodes had the 'Get' buttons again, allowing them to be re-downloaded.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

I've done it

I've done it! After months of searching and searching the internet I managed to sucessfully install OSX on a PC. It loads well and is easy to navigate.

Sadly there is no sound and the network connection wont work. But at leat I can have a play with it. At first glance it looks just like Windows - except for different icons and wording of programs.

I will continue to check it out.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Getting closer

The experiment continues - I'm sure that it will be possible to install OSX somehow.

Reading through several discussion threads there have been quite a few successes proving that it can be done.

I was amazed at a video podcast called HAK.5 where they did it - in episode 2 (they're now up to episode 10). Sadly the tutorial was brief.

Another amazing resource is at http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page where they have heaps of installation guides.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Is it possible

I s it possible to install OSX on a PC?

There seems to be some information on the NET with emulators that may work.

I have found

http://www.emulators.com/

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

http://www.softpear.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://basilisk.cebix.net/

but there may be more

I wish had someone who could help me try out these flavours of emulators

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Playing with my Palm

Some time ago a mate suggested that he wanted to buy a Palm PDA. I had never considered these devices before so I was most interested when he bought a Palm 505 and showed me what he could do with it. My first thoughts were that it was simply a glorified calender & address book - but then I learned there was much more to it. He listens to MP3's with it. He reads book on it. He reads the newspaper on it. He checks movie session times on it. He watches movies & TV shows on it. And it's fun to use!

So I took the plunge a year ago and bought a Palm Tungsten C.

I chose this one because my mate told me that Palm was the standard when it came to a PDA. They invented it and although there were many clones - you couldn't beat a Palm. He felt that the Palm operating system was easier to use and a more stable platform. Also, at the time, this was the only palm that had a keyboard built in and supported wi fi. As my home has wi fi I thought this better than the other models that only had bluetooth.

I really like the Palm I bought. I like the simplicity of the menu, read books and newspapers wherever I am, and am more organised than I ever was with the calender and address book. Reading books is fantastic! It doesn't matter where I am I can take the Palm out and read. Reading paper books relies on having enough light however the Palm is backlit so darker rooms are better.

A simple program that comes with the Palm is Notepad - where I can use the stylus to quickly and simply write whatever I want. So handy when I happen to be somewhere and I don't have a pen and paper nearby - and I just want to note something down.

Like many people I also have a mobile phone with a camera in it. Finding it cumbersome to carry both the phone and Palm everywhere I thought ... if only I could get a phone camera Palm all in one! At that time I saw that Palm were selling the Treo 600 and were about to update it to the Treo 650. Just what I need I thought.

Initial prices for the Treo 650 were $1200 so I waited until they reduced a bit - I eventually bought one from eBay for $665. So exciting. I powered up the Treo, synch'd it with Windows (and upgraded the software), inserted my sim card, took a couple of photos.

After using the treo for a couple of weeks I found:

on a daily basis the Treo would restart itself. At first I thought I had pushed the wrong button but it occurred too often for that. Checking the Palm Treo website revealed that this can occur when there are applications installed that are not fully compatible with the Palm Treo. Having installed all the applications I had on the Palm Tungsten C this told me that the Palm Treo was limited by compatibility issues - something I had assumed would not be the case as I was migrating from Palm to Palm.

I sold the Treo and have now resumed using the Tungsten C. The only sad thing being that the Palm sync software was changed for the Treo and now doesn't work properly with the Tungsten C.

Oh well - maybe it's time for another rebuild?

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Playing with computer bits

So

I thought I would get some of the PC parts in the garage together and see what works and what doesn't.

I have a test PC which I had previously built. AMD 1600+ on a gigabyte motherboard with 260mb SD RAM. I have tested the ram using memtest and found no errors.

So, I put it together with a spare 8 gig Seagate hard drive and a spare Liteon CDRW. BIOS recognizes all the parts so I start installing XP. At the file copying stage I get an error that it couldn't copy a file! I keep pressing enter but it will not go past this point. So ...

I replaced Liteon CDRW for a Sony CDR - same problem

I replaced the Sony CDR for a Ricoh CDRW - same problem

Replaced cable to CD - same problem

Tried different installation CD - same problem

Reset BIOS to default safe settings - same problem

Replaced Seagate hard drive with a Fujitsu 4.3 gig hard drive - same problem

How annoying is this?