Go Go Gadget Dock

I’ve heard people grumble about the OS X Dock’s behavior before, but today I had my first real problem with it, the “Finder” item in the dock removed itself from the dock and planted itself on the desktop, but it was completely non-functional and couldn’t be dragged back to the dock. Killing the dock fixed the problem.

iTunes 4.9

I have been listening to a few different podcasts for awhile now, but the overall workflow of getting them onto my iPod has always been annoying. First of all, there was lots of software to automatically download podcasts, but none of them seemed to have the ability to get the file onto my iPod (and remove it once it’s been listened to). Some of them could add the tracks to my iTunes library, but since I have too much music to make much out of the “Library Syncing” in iTunes, this didn’t really accomplish much for me. Enter iTunes 4.9, which makes the whole process much more bearable. First of all, it provides a whole new top-level category in iTunes which makes it very easy to find my podcasts. Second, and most importantly, it can sync podcasts to my iPod seperately from everything else, so all I have to do is connect my iPod to my computer and everything else is taken care of for me.

There are a few annoyances, though. First of all, I have set iTunes to delete podcasts I’ve listened to off the iPod. Unfortunately, their interpretation of “listened to” really equates to “began listening to”, and if you play the first second of a file, it marks it as played and deletes it the next time you sync. Also, my iPod has been locking up lately, as it did before, requiring a hard reset (which loses my current position in what I was listening to in the process). Those issues aside, this had made the whole podcasting experience for me far more bearable.

And just in case you are interested in what podcasts I’m listening to:

Collapsing New Buildings

Talk about an esoteric bug. If you are listening to an AAC Audiobook (m4b) on an iPod Photo, and pause it, and let it fall asleep (or put it to sleep manually), when you try and wake it up, it will be frozen, and requires a reset. But this only happens if you initially navigated to the file via the “Audiobook” main menu entry or a smart playlist. If you Navigate “Music -> Genres -> Audiobooks -> etc..>” then the iPod doesn’t lock up and everything is hunky dory.

Oh glorious weekend, lay thine free time upon me

Spent alot of time working on various things today… I got a bug report for the beta of AliveJournal that I floated yesterday, but I can’t reproduce it for the life of me. I also just noticed that the picture names are being returned alphabetically from the server now, so I have to figure out how to determine which one is the default one….

I am going to wrap up a few loose ends, call Chris and say goodnight, and then go to bed (listening to Huey).

Found it!

I finally found the “Hang on LJ Transaction” bug in the AliveJournal code. There is a class ResponseBlockManager that does a really good job of busting the server responses into a hashtable-like gizzer. The class was written by the original author, and is super-useful. Unfortunately there was an assumption in there that would occasionally cause a buffer to get scrogged.

Anyway, I am positive that the “Hang on Login” and the “Writer doesn’t clear after submission” bugs are now squashed…. I am going to package up a fixed version now.. (I also made the “Clear” button actually do something in the WriterWIndow… :P

Further Back & Faster

I’ve had alot of busy lately, whether it’s for class, work, or fun. Most of the fun stuff has gotten far too low of a priority, but I don’t see that changing in the next few weeks (with the deadline at work, and the projects for class, and all). It is cool, however, that I am not tied to hours that are set in stone for work though… It is nice to be able to work whenever I find time (even if that means 1 am).

The aforementioned bug from a few days ago turned out to be no big deal. Somewhere in between betas a config file was lost. Most of the testers had the file from a previous beta release, but since I reinstalled everything a few weeks ago, and I started with the latest beta, I didn’t get the file, and therefore my machine was wide open. It has been corrected.

I have to pee.

Take us to Defcon 2

Ok, I understand the concept of Beta Testing and all, but every once in awhile you get a bug that really shakes the shit out of you. Today I discovered a bug in a product I am testing, and it was a fairly serious security bug. This is a product I have been testing for several months, and to think that my machine has been fairly wide-open that time is frightening.

Oh well, the bug has been reported, and hopefully we will be able to track it down soon. Luckily, this product isn’t public, or it would be some serious egg on the face of the company.