Schinckel.net

I updated to iTunes 6.0.2, and looky what I found: Now, the trick is that it needs to be exactly 10, 30, 50, 70 or 90 in order to be a half-star. A rating of 75 will still appear to be three stars. I think this is a bug. I’ve written some code that does it better:

 1     property star : «data utxt2605» as Unicode text
 2     property half : «data utxt00BD» as Unicode text
 3     property quarter : «data utxt00BC» as Unicode text
 4     property threeq : «data utxt00BE» as Unicode text
 5     
 6     on myRating(theRating)
 7      set theResult to ""
 8      repeat 5 times
 9          if theRating > 20 then
10              set theResult to theResult & star
11          else if theRating > 15 then
12              set theResult to theResult & threeq
13          else if theRating > 10 then
14              set theResult to theResult & half
15          else if theRating > 5 then
16              set theResult to theResult & quarter
17          end if
18          set theRating to theRating - 20
19      end repeat
20      return theResult
21     end myRating

I’m currently using this to get the ratings data to add to my blog posts: at the moment it’s a FastScript that just inserts the data via the clipboard, but when Blogsome gets XMLRPC working again, it will be an ecto script.

It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me • Billy Joel • Greatest Hits ★★¼

Invisibilia I’m going to do one of these!

I Guess We’ll Just Have To Adjust: The Creatures In His Head Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous video games…

Fall On Me • R.E.M. • The Best Of R.E.M. ★★

I’ve spent a bit of time working on getting some plugins working under Blogsome. In particular, TineMCE-Wordpress and WYSI-Wordpress. Neither of them worked too well, and they both just removed the Quicktags. I’ve also downloaded the TinyMCE source: I may implement a subset of that in a single file, and get that working with Blogsome. I also tried getting the Gravatar plugin to work, but this fails, as the Post Editor seems to screw up the tags, putting in a close tag. And self-closing the tag fails. <gravatar matt@schinckel.net> becomes <gravatar matt@schinckel.net></gravatar> And <gravatar matt@schinckel.net /> gets changed into <img class=“postgrav” src=“wp-content/gravatars/blank_gravatar.png” alt=“a gravatar image”> by the plugin, not what it should look like. Which, by the way, isn’t Valid XHTML! Note: these are not installed on the actual Blogsome server, but a Test one.

The More I See You • Chris Montez • Room Service ★★

The last few days has seen extreme weather in Adelaide. 42°C for 4 days in a row. And this at the time we decided to:

• Chop down the 13 Cypress Pines along the side fence.
• Remove the old air-conditioner and brick up the cavity.
• Knock down the old greenhouse.

Mum and Dad were up from Naracoorte to help us – Dad manned the chainsaw and they brought with them a 14" × 6" trailer, which we loaded up with Cypress offcuts. We kept the trunks, as they are pretty straight, and we’ll use them for garden beds. Anyway, we got all of that done – and a lot of it in shorter time than anticipated. The cutting down of the trees only took about 4 hours, which is lucky, as we may not have completed it otherwise. It was so damn hot. I took a heap of pictures. One day I’ll get around to posting some more.

I’ve just converted an Audio Book to AAC – I’m ashamed to say it’s The Da Vinci Code, but, well… Anyway, I was a bit peeved that it doesn’t show up as an Audiobook when you use the search feature of iTunes. And none of the tips I came across seemed to fix it:

• Rename the file so it’s .m4b instead of .m4a
• Use the Make Bookmarkable script from Doug’s AppleScripts
• Set the Type Code to “M4B ”

Then I read this, at macintouch (iPod: File Management):

If I remember correctly, an iTunes audio book is little more than a renamed AAC file. The steps necessary for making your own are pretty simple:

1. Convert the file to AAC format (if it isn’t already)
2. Make sure it’s not in the iTunes library. (Otherwise iTunes may not recognize the change.)
3. Set the file type to “M4B ” if you’re on a Mac (only necessary if you’re using a Mac)
4. Rename the file to have an “.m4b” extension
5. Add it back to the iTunes library

Look at #2. That does the trick. Now, I just need to see if the Join Together and Chapterize script will ever finish…

I have data in my Apple Address Book, that I’d like to merge into a Word Document (or even an AppleWorks one, if it comes to that). However, there only seems to be one way to do that – using a commercial piece of software called Office Power Pack. Which doesn’t seem to be available anymore, other than through a couple of download mirrors. So I downloaded it, just to see what it’s like. And when you go to install it, it asks for a license key. But, if you look inside the Installer.app package, you’ll find the applications that it installs. Double-clicking on one kindly informs you of where it needs to be installed to work. Dragging it there makes it work – although it doesn’t seem to be accesible from a menu within Word. • Having done this, I’m glad I didn’t pay money for this. It is limited to a subset of the Address Book data (no mobile phone, no Related Names fields, which I need), and doesn’t even keep a live query, but exports the data to a text file. Hell, I could have done this with a shell script and contacts. Or some fancy AppleScripting, almost. What I’d like to see is an ODBC connection to the Address Book. Or even better a proper link between Word and the Address Book. Perhaps Pages can do this. I might have to investigate.

I played my first game of representative Touch in about a year yesterday. And I loved it. My team, the Central Scorpions, won by 11-4 over the Wolves. And I scored either 4 or 5 Touchdowns. I think having not played for so long just made me so hungry. And I feasted.

Driving around Wingfield, we came around the corner and saw this huge pile of Metal Rubbish. Just off Eastern Parade. Don’t know how high it was, but it was kinda scary.

My sister and her husband own/train a few horses, and I put a bit on one of them the other day. This is what the ticket looks like: Now, the bit that gets my goat is that second line in the block of four down the bottom.

Please check printed investment details.

Investment. It’s fucking gambling! • Oh, and Master of Disguise didn’t place. So my investment was worth nothing.

Random Acts Of Kindness • Robbie Williams • Intensive Care