Mark Dalton

I am not quite sure when this option crept into iTunes, but boy am I glad it did. I like to keep my iTunes library tidy and save disk space by deleting PodCasts after I have listened to them and am sure that I will not need to refer to them again. However from time to time I do remove one that I need to refer to.

Now in the past you had to CTRL + Click the little disclosure triangle to the left of the podcast a number of times which would then download the list of past episodes. However the team over at Apple must have the same OCD habits as me, as they have introduced a handy little right click option “Show all available episodes” that does exactly what that CTRL + Click trick did. Cool!

The second week of the year back at work started out a little better than the first. To start with I had a train ticket so didn”t need to go through the Monday morning hell of queuing up, and the trains were also running fairly smoothly with delays of only a few minutes here and there. All went well until it snowed again on Tuesday night and I couldn”t get the car out on Wednesday morning. This was a major pain in the butt as I had ordered something online, which I”ll come on to, that was due to be delivered on the Wednesday that I needed urgently but also because I hadn”t been shopping. Luckily I have access to all the work systems from home so could get on and after a several attempts on Wednesday afternoon I managed to get the car freed up. Thursday I was able to slip and slide my way to the train station and make it into the office. Thursday and Friday were busy but uneventful thankfully and I managed to successfully retrieve my package. Friday night it rained and for the first time since Christmas I was able to see my drive way. Saturday I was able to escape and get some shopping done before meeting up with some friends for a couple of beers (read hungover this morning).

So today is a house day! The chores done I can get on with catching up with the paperwork, first task my 2009 Tax Filing, oh the joy. That done and with the next major task being the ironing, which is Sunday evening in front of the TV job, I decided to get on with sorting out a couple of issues that had popped up during the week.

Now when working at home I often fire up iTunes as I find working in complete silence a little weird. Now since buying a Drobo and DroboShare I have been playing around with using it for both file storage and as a backup device. Now to cut a long story short I had copied my iTunes library over to it and all seemed to be going well. Well, Tuesday evening while catching up with email on opening iTunes I was told met with a default iTunes library screen. After a little messing around I found that iTunes kept telling me the Library file was damaged and it had created a new one. It wasn”t until I looked at the Drobo I found one of the drives was showing as failed. Now I didn’t have any spare ones so as quick as a flash I ordered two spares. Now what puzzled me was that the Drobo is supposed to handle a failed drive without any data issues. Mmmm interesting.

As I couldn’t get into the office on Wednesday and had selected the office as the delivery location for the drives I had to wait until Thursday to pick them up and until Thursday night to replace the failed drive. Imagine what I said when I plugged in a new drive and it went through the motions only to also show up as failed. So I dropped a line to Drobo Support. They came back to me on Friday suggesting I follow the following article, which I did as well as some other basic trouble shooting tips.

These tips basically involved testing to see if the fault followed the disk or if the slot was the issue, so they had me remove the failed drive and swap the other drives around to see if the fault followed the drive. Now this was interesting in as much as SLOT 1 was showing the failed drive but if I move the drive from SLOT 2 to SLOT 1 all three drives showed as good. However if I either inserted the failed drive from SLOT 1 or a new drive into SLOT two, the drive in SLOT 1 (which was the one I had moved from SLOT 2) showed as failed.

I tried moving drives around and inserting new drives in the vacant SLOT but what every I tried the drive in SLOT 1 showed as failed when all four bays were populated. So I emailed Drobo Support with the results Friday evening. Now it would appear that Drobo don’t do weekend support as I haven’t had anything more from them, but I needed to play a little more. So today I (having a full backup of all the data) reset the Drobo with the original four drives and recreated the volumes and formatted all the drives. Thus far all four are showing online and good so I am none the wiser as to what the issue is / was, but am loathed to trust it at this point. I will be testing it out a little more but look forward to Drobo”s next response, especially as I was on the verge of ordering another one to use with my Mac Mini Media centre.

Wow what a week! The moment I set foot in the office on Monday I knew it was going to be one of those crazy weeks, and I wasn’t let down. After my catch up last weekend I decided that I wasn’t going to fall behind again so went back to carrying my MacBook Air. I must say that its surprising how much I get done during the train journey and with things so busy at work it’s nice to get things done while I am still in the frame of mind to do so, meaning that when I get home I can relax.

It has now been a couple of weeks now since I upgraded all of my machines to Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). While Snow Leopard isn’t revolutionary I must say that I have found that all my machines are a little snappier. The MacBook Air is probably the machine I notice it on the most as this is the one that travels with me. The first thing I have found is the speed at which it comes back from sleep mode and secondly the speed of the Time Machine / Time Capsule backups, especially important as quite a bit of data can change while I am on the move. Other than that I can’t say anything has particularly impressed me, but for the £25 upgrade fee I am happy with the improvements made. On the MacBook Pro and iMac I can’t say I have really noticed any difference as both are high end machines, but the real test will probably be the next Final Cut Pro project I have. What I can say however is that to date I haven’t experienced any problems, bar a few applications that are awaiting compatibility upgrades.

With the Snow Leopard upgrade also came the upgrade to iTune 9. Now there were some much trumpeted improvements but the one that really stands out for me is iTunes Home Sharing, which allows me to finally copy my music between my machines legally.

Well today I am going to catch up with my PodCasts while catching up with some paperwork, and then tidy up the house. Tomorrow I need to sort out the weeds that are over taking the drive way and the garden which is just going wild again.

I purchased my Apple TV going through Heathrow Airport early last year as I wanted to be able to listen to my Music, Podcasts, and Audio Books, via my TV.

I was on my way back to my apartment in Gurgaon, India at the time and the apartment was comfortable but pretty basic if I am honest. I wanted to be able to chill out on the couch with a very expensive bottle of imported vino and listen to what was going on in my other world.

Returning to the UK however I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it and it ended up in the bedroom. I did start out falling asleep to music but before long it just started to gather dust. No way to treat a shiny white box!

I had the Mac Mini downstairs hooked up to the 42″ LCD which was supposed to act as an Apple TV and some, but I found myself playing with the Mac more than listening / watching any content. So there was only one thing to do!

I moved the Apple TV downstairs and was immediately frustrated. I mean Mac Mini +Keyboard +mouse meant surfing, meant tweaking, meant…….Hold on! I sit on the sofa to absorb content! No, I sit on the sofa to absorb my content, the stuff that I want to listen to or watch. I do it in some way’s to get away from sitting in front of keyboards.

So I decided to explore a little more, like you do! The first thing I really noticed was how cool it was listening to my tunes while taking a look over my photo library. I then moved on to my home video’s and really started to understand what this device did for me.

It was a couple of days later I actually sat down and juggled the various remote controls (Project?). I finally figured out that the 900+ channels I have had nothing showing that I wanted to watch. As I juggled the remotes I found I was left with the Apple TV remote in my hands.

I then decided to move to the next level and rented a movie via iTunes. I was a little apprehensive to start with but decided to give it ago. Luckily I have a fast Internet connection (22 Mbps) and by the time I had made myself something to eat the movie had downloaded. It was a great experience and better still I didn’t need to return any DVD’s.

A few day’s later I found myself in the same position, really must think why I am paying for Sky. This time I decided to buy a movie. “Get Smart” was the chosen title and I opted for the standard definition version. Once again a very smooth experience and I liked the fact that I didn’t have to find a home for yet another DVD.

It was a couple of day’s later when I was upstairs in my study that it really hit me. I was downloading another album via iTunes and clicked on the Movies listing. There it was. The movie that I had purchased via my TV. I clicked play and the movie immediately started to play on my MacBook Pro and the sound started blaring out of my Bose Companion 5 speakers. Awesome! I went back to the iTunes store and purchased “Taken” in High Definition to watch that evening, and it immediately started downloading and I went back to my inbox.

That evening as I sat down in front of the TV I didn’t even bother to check what was on Sky. I switched to the Apple TV and selected My Movies. There it was, just sitting there waiting for me.

Since then I have purchased a couple more titles and the Skins TV Series as I had watched the first two episodes but it’s on to late for a school night.

All in all I have really started to appreciate my Apple TV but I would warn others that if you have a slow Internet connection your experience may not be as smooth. I did make the mistake on one occasion of trying to download a movie while my off site backup was running and it was painful. Why I had my backup’s starting at 6pm however is a different story and something I have since resolved.

I would like to see the next version of the Apple TV include PVR functionality, but am not sure it that is a realistic expectation given the iTunes store model, but you can but hope. I can also see myself needing to invest in more external storage if I continue down this path as the movie titles aren’t exactly small, and am going to have to find an unlimited offsite backup plan that doesn’t involve remortgaging the house to fund, as backing up to external disks is not totally bullet proof and I don’t really want to turn the house into a mini data-center.