Available now from iTunes, June 28, is Replay, the latest album from The Outfield. It's got that classic album sound...soaring vocals from Tony, catchy pop hooks from John, and distinctive percussion provided by Alan. The trio is at the top of their game again, now if John can just lick cancer for a second time, maybe they'll cross the pond to the US and I (ok, we) can see them in concert for the first time since 1986.
In the meantime, winamp is just pumping out the tunes!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
My iPhone 3GS is now a 32Gb iPod Touch
Well, the cell radio inside my 23-month old iPhone 3GS has finally failed, after 2+ months of increasingly erratic behavior. This effectively turns my iPhone into an iPod Touch, which is fine, since everything else, including the Wi-Fi, on the unit still works just fine. I did not purchase an Apple Care package for it, since you don't expect a $300 phone to completely fail within 2 years, so there are no repair options available Since I have a Blue Mikey 2.0 microphone attachment for exceptional recording, I'll be holding onto this unit for the foreseeable future.
I popped the SIM card out, and it still turns on and brings up the home screen, so I suspect I'm not going to have to do anything else to it to keep using it as an iPod.
I am, however, relegated to trying to get my old Motorola flip phone back in service...assuming the batter will hold a charge. If not, I'm off to eBay to pick up an old used phone to hold me over till upgrade time arrives. I AM NOT looking forward to texting on an old numeric keypad once again!
We are moving to Verizon from AT&T, since they now have the iPhone, and our contract is up in only 5 more weeks, but I don't want to settle for the iPhone 4 when the 5 is rumored to be available no later than September. My wife's 3GS is still going strong...well as strong as can be had on the AT&T network. So we will, most likely, be waiting until the iPhone 5 is available before making the move to Verizon. I'm eyeing either a 4G Android handset (Thunderbolt), the HP Pre 3 running Web OS, or the iPhone 5. I haven't decided, but after 4 years of iPhone life, I'm ready to look at different options.
I popped the SIM card out, and it still turns on and brings up the home screen, so I suspect I'm not going to have to do anything else to it to keep using it as an iPod.
I am, however, relegated to trying to get my old Motorola flip phone back in service...assuming the batter will hold a charge. If not, I'm off to eBay to pick up an old used phone to hold me over till upgrade time arrives. I AM NOT looking forward to texting on an old numeric keypad once again!
We are moving to Verizon from AT&T, since they now have the iPhone, and our contract is up in only 5 more weeks, but I don't want to settle for the iPhone 4 when the 5 is rumored to be available no later than September. My wife's 3GS is still going strong...well as strong as can be had on the AT&T network. So we will, most likely, be waiting until the iPhone 5 is available before making the move to Verizon. I'm eyeing either a 4G Android handset (Thunderbolt), the HP Pre 3 running Web OS, or the iPhone 5. I haven't decided, but after 4 years of iPhone life, I'm ready to look at different options.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
iTunes decided to stop recognizing my iPhone after the 10.2.2 version update....here's how to fix it
Well, hopefully Apple monitors the Discussion Forums because more than a few of us have experienced a rather hopeless situation where, following the update to iTunes version 10.2.2, it decides to stop recognizing the iPhone.
I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, and my iPhone 3GS is on 4.3.2. I accepted the "recommended" update one time recently when I ran iTunes, and the next time I tried to sync my iPhone, iTunes did not recognize it. I was able to pull the pictures off it, no problem, but could not do anything with it in iTunes.
Thankfully there is a solution, albiet not a very straightforward one. If you have updated iTunes to version 10.2.2 (or even 10.2.1 apparently) and your iPhone 3G, 3GS, or 4 no longer shows up when you connect it to your computer, here's what you can do to fix it. The steps are outlined (kind of) in this Apple discussion forum post. I followed the instructions there, but ended up with an error that there is already a newer version of AppleMobileDeviceSupport installed, so I had to improvise a bit. Here are those steps:
1. Uninstall all Apple applications through the Control Panel. My list included iTunes, Bonjour, and Apple Application Support, and Apple Mobile Device Support (AMDS). For some reason, AMDS was not listed in mine, and yet, he is the problem.
2. Reboot your computer
3. Download the latest version of iTunes, 10.2.2 (at the time of this post) from Apple, making sure to select the correct installer, 32-bit or 64-bit, for your Windows version.
4. Download iTunes version 10.0.1 (all versions between these 2 seems to have the same version of AMDS) from Old Apps
5. Download UniExtract from Legroom Software
6. Install UniExtract
7. Right-click each (one at a time, of course) of the iTunes programs you downloaded, and select "UniExtract to SubDir". This will create 2 new folders, named the same as the program name, containing the individually extracted installation packages.
8. Go to the new folder for version 1022 and delete file AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi (if you are using a 32-bit version of windows, the filename will probably be AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi)
9. Go to the new folder for version 1001 and COPY file AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi to the folder for version 1022.
10. Now that the AMDS package has been replaced, it's time to reinstall iTunes v10.2.2.
11. Go back to the new folder for version 10.2.2 and double-click iTunes.msi (or iTunes64.msi). Install as usual.
That should do it. When I did this, even though I had already been on version 10.2.2 for a couple of weeks, the first time it ran, it did a database conversion, further proving that the automatic update process was incomplete from before.
So, it remains to be seen if further updates to iTunes will fix this problem, or if some of us will be left out in the cold, required to manually replace the AMDS package each time before updating to the newest version of iTunes. Only time will tell.
Many thanks to Apple Forum member "ra1larson" for figuring all of this out and sharing with the rest of us how to work around Apple's software pitfalls.
I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, and my iPhone 3GS is on 4.3.2. I accepted the "recommended" update one time recently when I ran iTunes, and the next time I tried to sync my iPhone, iTunes did not recognize it. I was able to pull the pictures off it, no problem, but could not do anything with it in iTunes.
Thankfully there is a solution, albiet not a very straightforward one. If you have updated iTunes to version 10.2.2 (or even 10.2.1 apparently) and your iPhone 3G, 3GS, or 4 no longer shows up when you connect it to your computer, here's what you can do to fix it. The steps are outlined (kind of) in this Apple discussion forum post. I followed the instructions there, but ended up with an error that there is already a newer version of AppleMobileDeviceSupport installed, so I had to improvise a bit. Here are those steps:
1. Uninstall all Apple applications through the Control Panel. My list included iTunes, Bonjour, and Apple Application Support, and Apple Mobile Device Support (AMDS). For some reason, AMDS was not listed in mine, and yet, he is the problem.
2. Reboot your computer
3. Download the latest version of iTunes, 10.2.2 (at the time of this post) from Apple, making sure to select the correct installer, 32-bit or 64-bit, for your Windows version.
4. Download iTunes version 10.0.1 (all versions between these 2 seems to have the same version of AMDS) from Old Apps
5. Download UniExtract from Legroom Software
6. Install UniExtract
7. Right-click each (one at a time, of course) of the iTunes programs you downloaded, and select "UniExtract to SubDir". This will create 2 new folders, named the same as the program name, containing the individually extracted installation packages.
8. Go to the new folder for version 1022 and delete file AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi (if you are using a 32-bit version of windows, the filename will probably be AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi)
9. Go to the new folder for version 1001 and COPY file AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi to the folder for version 1022.
10. Now that the AMDS package has been replaced, it's time to reinstall iTunes v10.2.2.
11. Go back to the new folder for version 10.2.2 and double-click iTunes.msi (or iTunes64.msi). Install as usual.
That should do it. When I did this, even though I had already been on version 10.2.2 for a couple of weeks, the first time it ran, it did a database conversion, further proving that the automatic update process was incomplete from before.
So, it remains to be seen if further updates to iTunes will fix this problem, or if some of us will be left out in the cold, required to manually replace the AMDS package each time before updating to the newest version of iTunes. Only time will tell.
Many thanks to Apple Forum member "ra1larson" for figuring all of this out and sharing with the rest of us how to work around Apple's software pitfalls.
Friday, March 18, 2011
No Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 for me....yet
I've decided against the upgrade to VideoStudio X4 for now. In the few days I used it, I didn't really see any benefit over the X3 and X2 combo that I have now....certainly not another $50 worth, which would essentially have put my upgrade at $100. I'll wait for another sale at Corel that includes the PaintShop Pro upgrade (I currently have X2) as well as VS X4, hopefully for around $70 or $80.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Corel VideoStudio X4...less than a month after I buy X3? Crap!
As luck would have it, Corel released VideoStudio X4 within a month after I upgraded from X2 to X3 for $40. Hmmm....maybe that's why the upgrade was so cheap!
I've now downloaded the free 30-day trial version of X4 to see how it performs when I run it through it's paces. I called Corel support and they told me my only option was to by a Tech Upgrade for $50, which gives me a full box copy and a new license, so I can put X3 on a different computer. It might be worth it...we'll see.
I'm currently capturing some more VH1 Behind the Music episodes with the capture option, so I'll see how that goes. My initial impressions aren't really that different than X3 in terms of rendering speed. The fact that the DVD disk creation has been integrated back into the program instead of relying on MovieFactory 7 SE might just be reason enough to plunk down the cash (that and the extra license). No doubt I will one day have a laptop that can handle video editing, and it would be nice to have an app available to install on it.
I've now downloaded the free 30-day trial version of X4 to see how it performs when I run it through it's paces. I called Corel support and they told me my only option was to by a Tech Upgrade for $50, which gives me a full box copy and a new license, so I can put X3 on a different computer. It might be worth it...we'll see.
I'm currently capturing some more VH1 Behind the Music episodes with the capture option, so I'll see how that goes. My initial impressions aren't really that different than X3 in terms of rendering speed. The fact that the DVD disk creation has been integrated back into the program instead of relying on MovieFactory 7 SE might just be reason enough to plunk down the cash (that and the extra license). No doubt I will one day have a laptop that can handle video editing, and it would be nice to have an app available to install on it.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Where are all these .event files coming from? The answer is "Corel" and how to stop it (kind of)!
OK, so I was TOTALLY excited to finally upgrade my Corel VideoStudio (Video Studio) to version Pro X3. After all, I'm running Windows 7 with a 4 core processor with hyper-threading, and the new version would take advantage of all that horsepower! YEAH!
So I bought the upgrade on a great price from Corel online. I did the "disk in mail" option because I expected to get a new manual, but no dice on the manual...that's OK, I have the manual from X2, so it will probably work.
So the installation also came with a new utility called DVD Factory Pro 2010, which has backup capability. I thought I could use the backup utility to burn data DVD's, since I want to get away from using Roxio (although I still use the lightscribe label creator). So I ran DVD Factory Pro 2010, and it immediately started scanning my system for media files. WHOA! I have TBs of data, and I didn't want that happening, but there was no way to stop this thing short of killing it in Task Manager. I killed it and thought, I'll never run that again.
Well, a short time later, I noticed this file with an extension of .event in one of my folders. Hmmm, I wonder where that came from. I then started noticing them everywhere..picture folders AND music folders. The ONLY thing that had changed was the installation of VideoStudio X3, so I had a pretty good idea where they were coming from, and this article at Corel proved it.
Well, I deleted all the .event files in my music folders. The next day my daughter had a DVD project for me to do, and so I ran DVD Factory Pro 2010 to try and create the DVD. It didn't work so well (I ended up using MovieFactory 7 SE), but the next day I noticed more of the .event files being created in NEW music folders I was creating.
I knew there had to be a monitor process of some sort running in the background, but Task Manager didn't show any such process with Corel in the description. I checked for a "service", but there was none that matched the description.
Upon further investigation in Task Manager, I stumbled across processes MLEMonitor and MetadataMgr. I was able to determine that these are the guys responsible for those darn .event files that are cluttering up my music folders. They are easy enough to kill in Task Manager, but you must kill MLEMonitor first, then kill MetadataMgr (otherwise, MLEMonitor will relaunch another instance of MetadataMgr). It even has it's own folder in the Corel program group > Program Files(x86)/Corel/MLE/.
I was also able to confirm that they are ONLY launched when DVD Factory Pro 2010 is run. There does not appear to be any way to configure these scanning processes NOT to run, and the program has no Preferences or Settings options. It appears that they will only scan your configured "Libraries", but since I have 12 folder locations (consisting of over 2TB of data) defined in my Music Library, it's going to scan and monitor them all (hence the reason I was getting .event files in folders I had just created). I looked for a way to deinstall JUST DVD Factory Pro 2010, but it does not show up in the uninstall list, and it appears to only be runnable from inside VideoStudio X3.
I registered as a user in the Corel support forum so I can reply to that thread with the answer on how to stop the .event files from being created, and will also suggest they modify it so that you can turn off the monitoring. Most people probably don't even know they have these .event files because they are hidden, but PowerUsers like me turn off all that hidden crap off in explorer.
So I bought the upgrade on a great price from Corel online. I did the "disk in mail" option because I expected to get a new manual, but no dice on the manual...that's OK, I have the manual from X2, so it will probably work.
So the installation also came with a new utility called DVD Factory Pro 2010, which has backup capability. I thought I could use the backup utility to burn data DVD's, since I want to get away from using Roxio (although I still use the lightscribe label creator). So I ran DVD Factory Pro 2010, and it immediately started scanning my system for media files. WHOA! I have TBs of data, and I didn't want that happening, but there was no way to stop this thing short of killing it in Task Manager. I killed it and thought, I'll never run that again.
Well, a short time later, I noticed this file with an extension of .event in one of my folders. Hmmm, I wonder where that came from. I then started noticing them everywhere..picture folders AND music folders. The ONLY thing that had changed was the installation of VideoStudio X3, so I had a pretty good idea where they were coming from, and this article at Corel proved it.
Well, I deleted all the .event files in my music folders. The next day my daughter had a DVD project for me to do, and so I ran DVD Factory Pro 2010 to try and create the DVD. It didn't work so well (I ended up using MovieFactory 7 SE), but the next day I noticed more of the .event files being created in NEW music folders I was creating.
I knew there had to be a monitor process of some sort running in the background, but Task Manager didn't show any such process with Corel in the description. I checked for a "service", but there was none that matched the description.
Upon further investigation in Task Manager, I stumbled across processes MLEMonitor and MetadataMgr. I was able to determine that these are the guys responsible for those darn .event files that are cluttering up my music folders. They are easy enough to kill in Task Manager, but you must kill MLEMonitor first, then kill MetadataMgr (otherwise, MLEMonitor will relaunch another instance of MetadataMgr). It even has it's own folder in the Corel program group > Program Files(x86)/Corel/MLE/.
I was also able to confirm that they are ONLY launched when DVD Factory Pro 2010 is run. There does not appear to be any way to configure these scanning processes NOT to run, and the program has no Preferences or Settings options. It appears that they will only scan your configured "Libraries", but since I have 12 folder locations (consisting of over 2TB of data) defined in my Music Library, it's going to scan and monitor them all (hence the reason I was getting .event files in folders I had just created). I looked for a way to deinstall JUST DVD Factory Pro 2010, but it does not show up in the uninstall list, and it appears to only be runnable from inside VideoStudio X3.
I registered as a user in the Corel support forum so I can reply to that thread with the answer on how to stop the .event files from being created, and will also suggest they modify it so that you can turn off the monitoring. Most people probably don't even know they have these .event files because they are hidden, but PowerUsers like me turn off all that hidden crap off in explorer.
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