Rick's Picks (weekly)

• Snap!Japan - Japan Marine Day's Imperial Roots

  The third Monday in July is "Marine Day" here in Japan, called "Umi no Hi" (海の日) in Japanese. It was established in 1996, a few years into my life in Japan. It's common knowledge that the day marks the return of the Emperor Meiji from a boat trip. More specifically, it's the day of his return to Yokohama port in Meiji 9 (1876), from a royal light-house inspection tour to the northernmost prefectures, on a Scottish-built schooner called the "Meiji Maru".

  tags: umi, no, hi, marine, day, japan

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• blog:Cogley - Twitter Meishi Generator from @faa

  Twitter user @faa has created a "Twitter Meishi Generator", or, "TMG", which you can use to create a Twitter business card with your last tweet or bio, a QR code of your URL, in an assortment of delightful colors. Click the image to see an annotated version of this Twitter Tool.

  tags: @faa, rick, cogley, twitter, meishi, generator, business, card

• Snap!Japan - Kenkoshindan Health Check

  My wife and I did our yearly "kenkoshindan" health check via our insurance provider the other day. If you are on the national insurance plan or one of the big alternative providers, you're supposed to get this kenkoshindan once a year. My wife and my secretary at work badgered me into submission, so I finally took the plunge and got the big one-day "ningen dock" (人間ドック, and kind of like "human dry-dock" in its meaning). So What's this Ningen Dock? Glad you asked. Being over 40 (ok, ok, I'm 43), this time I signed up for the standard ningen dock set, instead of the wimpy blood and urine test only. Once you get to the center, after NOT eating breakfast, they give you a nice top/bottom to change into, so you to to a locker room, strip to your skivvies and put that on. It's not a paper gown like you might see at an ER, but a proper outfit much like pajamas. The arms were short and the bottoms were held up by a drawstring. They include socks too, in case you wear the ones with the holes (like me!) on the big day.

  tags: kenkoshindan, health, check, japan

• blog:Cogley - Shared iTunes Music Storage

  My family has a shared iMac G5 running Leopard OS X 10.5.7 and iTunes 8.2 (both the latest as of 13 July 2009), and recently I noticed we were running low on disk space, so I did some digging via du at the command line. I found that we were eating space by ingesting CDs into iTunes, which would get copied to our respective local user folders. After a little research, I found the Apple KB article that describes how to have a single storage location for music, so I set that up and made some other discoveries in the process. I thought I'd share how I did it.

  tags: productivity, itunes, shared, library, music

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twitter Meishi Generator from @faa

Twitter user @faa has created a "Twitter Meishi Generator", or, "TMG", which you can use to create a Twitter business card with your last tweet or bio, a QR code of your URL, in an assortment of delightful colors. Click the image to see an annotated version of this Twitter Tool.

So, How Does One Actually Create a Meishi from the TMG?

Never fear. Here's how to use the Twitter Meishi Generator:

1. Visit the Twitter Meishi Generator.
2. Enter your Twitter user name.
3. Choose what to put in the meishi's callout - your last tweet, your bio, or none.
4. Click the radio button next to the color you desire.
5. Click the "meishi wo tsukuru" button.
6. Behold your sparkly-new meishi.
7. Click the "Download Large PNG" button. (Don't worry, it's not so large).
8. Forward this post to your friends!

Faa used the free M+1P+IPAG font to generate the meishi's font, and is generating the QR codes via the Google Chart API. Thanks, Faa, very cool!

Shared iTunes Music Storage

My family has a shared iMac G5 running Leopard OS X 10.5.7 and iTunes 8.2 (both the latest as of 13 July 2009), and recently I noticed we were running low on disk space, so I did some digging via du at the command line. I found that we were eating space by ingesting CDs into iTunes, which would get copied to our respective local user folders.

After a little research, I found the Apple KB article that describes how to have a single storage location for music, so I set that up and made some other discoveries in the process. I thought I'd share how I did it.

• To determine what folder is using what space, you can use the "du" command in the Terminal. After you do a "sudo bash" to set the Terminal to root access, you can do a "cd /Users" and then a "du -hsc *" to check sizes of all the user folders under /Users.
• To find a location where your family's music can be shared, you need either a folder on an external drive or somewhere on the default internal drive. For now, we chose /Users/Shared/Music.
• Confirm where files are located by selecting a song, and pressing cmd-I. In Summary, you'll see the path of the song in the "Where" section.
• Create the Music folder in /Users/Shared and set its permissions so all users can see it. If it is not set already you can do this via the cmd-I "information" interface for the folder, or, using chmod from the Terminal.
• In the first user, change the "iTunes Music Folder Location" in iTunes Preferences, Advanced. Also in Preferences, make sure "Keep iTunes Folder Organized" and "Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to Library" are checked. OK out of Preferences.
• Next do File, Library, Consolidate Library, which copies any files outside the shared library into the library's location, which is now /Users/Shared/Music. This takes a while for large libraries, and will move not only the files from your original iTunes library location, but also any files that you had dragged in from Downloads or the Desktop, for example.
• After consolidation completes, confirm where your song files are located by selecting a song, and pressing cmd-I. In Summary, you'll see the path of the song in the "Where" section. It should now be /Users/Shared/Music or wherever you specified in Preferences.
• Now, you are ready to share with other users, but before you do that, go to iTunes Preferences, Advanced, and turn off "Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to Library", remembering to turn that back on if and when you consolidate again.
• Prove that CDs will add to the right location by importing a CD, and confirming where the song files are located (cmd-I on the song file).
• Log into another user, start iTunes, and repeat the location set, library consolidation process. Import a second CD into this second user's library, and confirm it is saved in /Users/Shared/Music.
• Return to your original user, and to add that CD the second user added to your library, do "File, Add to Library" and choose /Users/Shared/Music. By choosing the root of your library, iTunes will check what has not been added, and add it. Your original user should now be able to find the second user's CD in his or her library.

With this method, each user maintains their own ratings and playlists, but there's a slight delay each time someone adds a CD or downloads from the iTunes Store, because you have to "refresh" the library in File, Add to Library.

I hope this helps someone understand what they have to do to share music amongst family members and avoid eating up disk space. Enjoy!

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• TweakHeadz Lab Electronic Musician's Hangout.

  The site motto says it best: "The #1 Site for Learning about Home and Project Studios."

  tags: tweakheads, studio, electronic, music, sequencer

• blog:Cogley - Japan DVD-HDD Video Recorder Incompatibility

  The other day I was asked by a friend to see a Ken Watanabe TV show we had recorded, because the friend had missed it. A long saga ensued of us trying to give our friend a DVD of the recording we took with our Sharp Aquos DVD / HDD Recorder. You'd think that you would just be able to play such a DVD in any DVD player. Well, you can't. Long story short, in the end we could not provide our friend a DVD with this show on it. At first, when we gave our friend the DVD, she returned it saying it was broken, and that she tried it on her normal DVD player and on her Windows PC. I tried it on a Mac and on a Windows PC, and indeed, it would not play back. I accessed the created DVD as a data disk, and was able to retrieve a 4 GB file with a VRO extension. I found out that VRO is an MPEG-2 format, so I purchased the MPEG-2 playback plugin for QuickTime. After the installation, QuickTime would open the file, but nothing appeared in the QuickTime viewer screen.

  tags: Japan, DVD, HDD, VRO, Recorder, Incompatibility

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Japan DVD-HDD Video Recorder Incompatibility

The other day I was asked by a friend to see a Ken Watanabe TV show we had recorded, because the friend had missed it. A long saga ensued of us trying to give our friend a DVD of the recording we took with our Sharp Aquos DVD / HDD Recorder. You'd think that you would just be able to play such a DVD in any DVD player. Well, you can't. Long story short, in the end we could not provide our friend a DVD with this show on it.

At first, when we gave our friend the DVD, she returned it saying it was broken, and that she tried it on her normal DVD player and on her Windows PC. I tried it on a Mac and on a Windows PC, and indeed, it would not play back.

I accessed the created DVD as a data disk, and was able to retrieve a 4 GB file with a VRO extension. I found out that VRO is an MPEG-2 format, so I purchased the MPEG-2 playback plugin for QuickTime. After the installation, QuickTime would open the file, but nothing appeared in the QuickTime viewer screen.

I tried also the following:

• Renaming the file's extension to VOB or MPG. No difference trying to play it back in DVD Player.
• Viewing the files (.vro, .vob, .mpg) in VLC. Nada.
• Viewing the files in MPEG Streamclip. Nope.
• Viewing the files in MPlayer. Uh uh.
• Burning the file to another DVD via Toast. Sorry, it would not even render.

Well, after lots of tries and googling, in the end I read that Japanese makers protect their VRO files, and while there appear to be ways of modifying the file using a hex editor, I did not want to go there.

There's apparently no easy way to play back a DVD you create on a Sharp Aquos DVD / HDD Recorder on a PC or Mac.

Too bad, and what a waste of an evening.