my parents were in a situation where they were using several user accounts on the computer, but wanted to share the iTunes library across all the accounts. this posed some problems, and I hacked in a workaround, where iTunes stored all the music in the same folder, but it wasn’t elegant, and it didn’t work quite right.

they recently had some computer issues which forced them to reformat their hard drive (ok, fine, forced ME to reformat their hard drive), and they again wanted to share the same iTunes library. so while thinking over how I could more easily get their iTunes library to work across multiple accounts, and be more elegant than the solution I tried last time, I realized that the same solution could possibly work for me.

the solution that I realized for my parents computer and their multiple accounts is as follows:  on a *nix system, there is a thing you can do called a link (more precisely, a symbolic link), where one location actually points to another location. for instance if I had a directory at /bin which has a symlink pointing to it at /home/usr/bin, when I go to /home/usr/bin, I’m actually getting the contents of /bin, but the computer thinks I’m getting /home/usr/bin. a bit confusing i know, but trust me, it’s cool and extremely useful.

if you are using windows, windows doesn’t have symlinks per se, but if you’re using the NTFS file system (and if you’re on anything above win 2000, you should be), there is an almost identical thing you can do called a junction. and it’s made easier by downloading a small utility called NTFS Link.  with this, you can point any empty folder to any other folder on the computer, and when you navigate to that folder, the contents inside are actually in another location on the computer. this gave me an idea…

iTunes has a horrible habit of wanting to store it’s data files in the documents folder of the user. this poses a problem for trying to use the same library for multiple accounts, as each account has it’s own documents folder. what I did, was created a new folder in the root of the C: drive called “iTunes”, and created another folder inside that folder called “__iTunes Data” (the underscores are to keep it near the top of the folder when sorted).  I then opened iTunes with one of the accounts on the computer, which created the folder \My Documents\My Music\iTunes. I then closed iTunes, and moved the contents of that folder into the __iTunes Data folder I just created. after that, I right clicked on the now empty \My Music\iTunes folder and symlinked it to the __iTunes Data folder. now, iTunes goes looking for it’s data in the \My Documents\My Music\iTunes folder, but it’s actually looking in the C:\iTunes\__iTunes Data folder, but it has no idea. I then get into iTunes, and set the advanced preferences and change my iTunes Music Folder location to C:\iTunes.

mission accomplished. iTunes now thinks that it’s accessing it’s data in the documents folder, when really it’s in a different location (__iTunes Data), which can easily be linked to from all the other iTunes “accounts”.  just do the same thing for the other accounts, make a junction from \My Documents\My Music\iTunes to C:\iTunes\__iTunes Data, and set your library location in iTunes to point to C:\iTunes, and everybody is now using the same library. one thing to make sure you set, is while you’re setting the Music Library location, also check “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library” this keeps everything nice and tidy, and when one account adds music, it gets copied into the iTunes music folder, and all the other accounts can access it as well.

now on to how this helped me…  I realized that, while this works perfectly for multiple accounts on the same computer, my problem is a bit different. I have only one account, and all of my data is on an external hard drive, including my library data files. so what did I do?  I set up iTunes exactly as I had set up the iTunes for my parents, except that I then emptied out and linked the C:\iTunes folder to the location of my external hard drive library (which is at G:\Music\Benjam’s Music).  so now I have a perfectly functioning iTunes library, with no import required, and to top it off, when I need to wipe my hard drive again, I just set this up as it is now on the “new” computer, and it will behave as if it had never changed. all I might have to change is where C:\iTunes is pointing to.

here are those instructions again, in a nice easy-to-follow list (this only works with NTFS on XP, although if you have another method of creating symlinks in your system (which Vista does, google “mklink”), that would work as well):

1. download and install NTFS Link
2. download and install, or update iTunes
3. create a folder in the root of your C drive called iTunes (or whatever)
4. [Optional step] right click on your new folder and link to the location of your iTunes music
5. create a folder inside C:\iTunes called __iTunes (or whatever)
6. [Skip this step if you have an existing library] open iTunes once (this creates the \My Music\iTunes directory and creates some initial files in there)
7. go to the iTunes preferences, and the Advanced tab, and set the location for the iTunes Music Library to C:\iTunes
8. check both of the boxes below that, save, and close iTunes
9. move all the files in \My Music\iTunes into C:\iTunes\__iTunes
10. alt click on \My Music\iTunes and NTFS link that to C:\iTunes\__iTunes
11. open iTunes, add your music, enjoy

(this also works with pre-existing libraries, just move your music into the C:\iTunes folder, and move your \My Music\iTunes data into the __iTunes folder, and iTunes will see it like nothing changed)

the international earth rotation and reference systems service (IERS) has announced that a leap second will be added at the end of 2008, making 2008 one second longer than it should be.

so either start your countdown at 11, or end your countdown at -1, either way…

enjoy the extra long year!  (it has both a leap day, and a leap second)

nope. try again.

I begin to look up information on the file format that the camera uses to record the movies (.MOD), and apparently, nobody supports it. so now, in order to use the file (and subsequently, the camera), I have to either A. use the crappy software that came with the camera (which is slow and difficult), or B. buy some other software (also from the camcorder company, how convenient) that will allow me to convert the movie to some other easier-to-use format.

well, that does it, I’m thoroughly pissed at all software and hardware designers that decide that it’s okay to nickel and dime us by using proprietary file formats that are impossible to use otherwise. even if they don’t want to nickel and dime us, it still sucks when a company tries to “better” the current standards by creating a new format that only their software or hardware uses, and then fail to release the format details so others can use it as well (think MS Word 2007 and the .docx format).  well, at least with that one, OpenOffice.org finally supports it in v3.0, but .odt already existed and is more openly adopted by other word processing software anyway.

anywho…

point is, I doubt seriously that .MOD (which, I found out, is just .MPG with a different extension and some other .MOI files to go with it) was really necessary. why not just use one of the other formats that are already out there and more widely used, why must you create your own?  and if it’s absolutely necessary to create your own, at least release the details so that others may take advantage of your apparent excellence (think .7z files).

and if not, just use a format already available. my current camera records movies in .mov format, and everything I use can read an .mov file, and the pictures are .jpg… easy.

new camcorder… .MOD files… not so much.

NOTE: I finally found a small simple utility to convert my .MOD files to .MPG and set my widescreen marker at the same time: SDCopy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7784908.stm

Done reading?

Now, do yourself a favor and grab one of these:

• Windows
  • Firefox (Highly Recommended)
  • Google Chrome (Also Recommended)
  • Apple Safari
  • Opera
• Mac
  • Firefox (Highly Recommended)
  • Apple Safari
  • Opera
• Linux
  • You’re good, no worries
  • But grab Firefox, just for the heck of it
  • You can also grab Opera, if you want

It talks about linking to a specific time in a YouTube video. I’ll repeat here in case you don’t want to link offsite.

Have you ever recieved links to videos that say something like “It gets really good around 1:47″, or something similar?

Now you can link to a specific moment in that video by putting the time as follows in your link: #t=1m47s

What this does, is when somebody goes to that link, it not only starts at the given time, but it doesn’t buffer all the stuff that comes before it, so you don’t have to wait for the part you’re interested in.

For instance, try the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP1-5uxZffE#t=5m45s (SFW)

That’s just awesome.

So I started looking in my backups folder for a database dump that would have the blog posts in it, and I searched and searched, but could not find the most recent version of it.  I have a coupe older ones, and some really old ones, but not any that were from right before I deleted the blogs.

I don’t know why I didn’t make a backup of them, or if I did, I don’t know why I didn’t keep it in a safe place, but I didn’t.

So I jumped on the wayback machine, and found one more post that I didn’t have in my backup.  I imported the backup into my database at home, installed the version of WordPress I had when the posts were made (also via the wayback machine), and posted that last one that was missing.  Then I installed the latest version of WordPress, made an export file, and imported them into this incarnation.

So now I have posts that go back about 5 years (albeit very sporadically), with the possibility of a few missing that are probably gone for good, unless I happen to find an old dump somewhere that I didn’t know about, but I doubt it…   oh well.

I’m off to make a backup of my site right now, and I’ll label it ‘Keep’, because obviously, the method I have now doesn’t work.

Maybe I should start putting my site backups in Subversion…

Anywho… enjoy the old posts.

the new company decided to move all the websites to new servers and in the process broke just about every one of the thousands of sites hosted on those servers, mine included.  and it doesn’t stop there.  in the past couple of weeks, my site has been off and on more than a newbie dj mixing with cassette tapes.

it seems like every couple of hours the site goes down, only to be back up again (but with limited functionality) the next time i see it.  it’s getting really annoying.  and the support people are not really helping, but it’s not entirely thier fault, because it seems that the errors are not happening everywhere in the country.
anywho…  the whole point of the post is to let everybody know why the site has been being stupid lately.

…and don’t host your site with WebHostPlus.

http://www.iohelix.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2
http://www.iohelix.net/blog/feed

so there ya go, all fixed.

well, i say poo to that. and apparently, others have, too.

that’s when i stumbled upon a couple of sites that help people keep thier anonymity while browsing sites that require a login or registration.

the first is bugmenot.com.  this site is awesome. when you come accross a site that requires you to log in, go to bugmenot.com and enter the base url into the field and click ‘Show Logins’ and it will give you a list of logins for the site. that way, you never have to register for another site again.

but if you really must register for a site and it’s one of the sites that will be sending you a confirmation e-mail so that they know it’s really you, just use pookmail.commintemail.com.
what this site does is pretty cool as well. when you go to sign up for that annoying site that is forcing you to register, just go to mintemail.com, it will automatically store a fresh email address in your clipboard, then enter that email address into the site you are visiting. the mail will be automatically updated and kept for 24 hours, then deleted. you never have to give out your address again, but you still get those important first few emails to the site you’re trying to access.

and for the sites where you may want to come back and be recognized as yourself, but don’t want to use that same password you’ve been using forever, check out the Secure Password Generator or Strong Password Generator.  just set your specs and hit the button and a crytographically strong password is generated at random for you.

so there ya go, no more worries.

there were two rather large drives in a raid span and only one of them can be recognized at a time. sucky.

so i’m running this data recovery software and hoping that not all is lost, but i fear that it is, and if it is, then i’ll have to rebuild the computer and all my lost data from scratch and that will take me at least a week of solid working. not to mention all the little things that you always use but never think about…  i’ll have to find those, too.

stupid computers, but at least my computer at home is being wierd, too