New wheels

2011 Masi Speciale

This is the coolest bike I found after starting to search for one in earnest. Picked it up at Arizona Bicycle Experts. There are some custom / by hand frame builders that put together some fantastic stuff, but those are *way* outta my price range. Got it under MSRP since it is an older model, but I’ll still be paying for it for a while. These things is expensive. I actually went in to look at aluminum Masi’s, but this one fit and I’m glad it did.

Before jumping in the water I got my road bike toes wet on an aluminum Schwinn Empire from Wal-Mart. Not a bad bike on the cheap. Not a great one, either, since the components are all pressed steel not machined aluminum. Took quite a bit of tweaking to get it rideable. Although you could easily get your monies worth out of it, it never felt… I dunno, permanent I suppose. The Masi does. Could be that having years of experience with a quality steel frame helped me develop a bias.

Now to get my fat ass out there more often. The main reason for starting on this was to lose some weight and get in better shape. Hopefully even commute to work this summer. Used to love the road bike I had as a young teenager, so I’m looking forward to it.

MTB conversion

In my quest for a better street bike I can either spend a few hundred on a used better model bike or a new low end model bike. Or I can convert my aging, better model MTB, a 19″ 1992 Trek 930 hardtail.

Tires were 1.95 knobbed, now 1.5 road tires. Makes for a noticeably stiffer ride. Though it actually seems harder to pedal. Since I’m as out of shape as I’ve ever been I cannot rely on this assessment.

Chainrings (110BCD) can be replaced with some slightly larger ones. Outer chainring is already 48t, but I can fit a 54t on it. They really do need to be replaced as it is, so why not go a little more road worthy? Sugino makes a set that will increase the outer and granny gear, letting me keep my crank and derailer.

Handlebar (upright) will likely not be replaced with a drop bar since I would need to replace the stem as it’s a one-piece high rise, but an aerobar might help.

In the end I’m still torn because I’d be making a workable tank of an MTB into a Frankenstein road bike that never will be one. At this point, I think stopping at tires is enough.

iTunes Content Rating strings

Re: http://sourceforge.net/projects/atomicparsley/forums/forum/514419/topic/1687885?message=4206988

United States (01)

    Not Rated    mpaa||0|

    G            mpaa|G|100|

    PG           mpaa|PG|200|

    PG-13        mpaa|PG-13|300|

    R            mpaa|R|400|

    NC-17        mpaa|NC-17|500|

    Unrated      mpaa|UNRATED|900|

    Not Rated    us-tv||0|

    TV-Y         us-tv|TV-Y|100|

    TV-Y7        us-tv|TV-Y7|200|

    TV-G         us-tv|TV-G|300|

    TV-PG        us-tv|TV-PG|400|

    TV-14        us-tv|TV-14|500|

    TV-MA        us-tv|TV-MA|600|

    Unrated      us-tv|UNRATED|900|

These alone (added using a hex editor) are not enough by themselves to get iTunes to see the rating. Not sure at all what is missing.

iPhoto ’11 is a PITA to use

Photo metadata. Keywords, description / caption:

ExifRenamer (have)

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ingestamatic/id476718466?mt=12

Straight-up iPhoto competitors:

http://www.kavasoft.com/Shoebox/ [This has gone the way of the cloud. Boo!]

http://www.lynapp.com/index.html

[added 2015-01-23]
http://www.pixa-app.com

Too bad UPnP / DLNA is such a shambles. Network photo streaming is where iPhoto has [had] them all beat… so long as you connect via OS X, iOS, or TV. [Sharing iPhoto to iPhoto has been removed. You’re supposed to rely on iCloud photostream sharing. This “solution” is ass.]

Save list of folder contents

[UPDATE] Revisited this one and made it a little nicer. It is faster and gives a total count of directories and files, skips invisibles (but you can undo that), and doesn’t error on item names longer than 31 characters. Confirmed to run on 10.4, YMMV.

This AppleScript will create a file containing a tree style list of all files inside the chosen directory and save that list in a file created in that directory. The list file will include the path of the listed directory as well as the date and time it was saved and a tally of me bananas… er, folders and files under the starting directory.

The default directory in the choose dialog is the folder of the Finder’s frontmost window unless there are no Finder windows. In which case the default is the Desktop folder.

It does not follow aliases (not sure about symlinks) and will indicate an alias by placing ” [alias]” behind the file name.

This is actually a modified version of a script that’s been around the web for years.

-- http://strawhousepig.net/

set fileList to ""
set d_count to 0
set f_count to 0
global fileList, d_count, f_count

on listFolder(f, s)
  list folder f as alias without invisibles
  repeat with i in the result
    set finfo to (info for alias (f & i))
    if folder of finfo then
      set d_count to d_count + 1
      set fileList to fileList & s & i & "/" & return
      listFolder(f & i & ":", s & "    ")
    else
      if alias of finfo then
        set f_count to f_count + 1
        set fileList to fileList & s & i & " [alias]" & return
      else
        set f_count to f_count + 1
        set fileList to fileList & s & i & return
      end if
    end if
  end repeat
  return {fileList, d_count, f_count}
end listFolder

try
  tell application "Finder" to set cwd to (POSIX path of (folder of window 1 as string)) as POSIX file
on error
  set cwd to path to desktop folder
end try
set theFolder to (choose folder "Select a folder to list:" default location cwd) as string

--This will get the name of the folder for use in the name of the generated file
set folderName to name of (info for (theFolder as alias))

--This will get the Unix style path of the folder for info purposes inside the file itself
set folderPath to POSIX path of theFolder

set infoList to listFolder(theFolder, "")
set fileList to "# File list of: " & folderPath & " on " & (current date) & return & item 2 of infoList & " folders and " & item 3 of infoList & " files total." & return & return & item 1 of infoList

set listFile to ((theFolder) as text) & "!File list of this folder (" & folderName & ")" & (do shell script "date "+ %Y-%m-%d %H%M"") & ".txt"

tell application "Finder"
  set newFile to (open for access file listFile with write permission)
  set eof newFile to 0
  write fileList to newFile
  close access newFile
  open listFile as alias
end tell

iPhoto import from folders AppleScript

Preface: Having upgraded my phone (Nokia N8) firmware to “Belle” — whatever version that is, the Nokia Multimedia Transfer application no longer imports photos to iPhoto.* Tragic because the camera is the sole reason I bought this phone. Ordinarily this would not be a problem since the phone uses a “DCIM” folder at the drive root and can store images with 8 character names (5 of which you set yourself). But not every photo app does store them there or with a “proper” name. Even though there exists an “Images” folder in the drive root that I know gets used, Mass Storage.app does not access it. Could be another naming convention similar to DCF

This is an AppleScript to get around this limitation, and to allow (in my case at least) the importing of camera files named by date. In short you choose which folders you want this script to tell iPhoto to import from and can be used with any folder(s), no specific device required.

Notable: Uses ‘defaults’ to store and load folder paths in a property list (.plist) file.
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