Liking the Look of the Speck FitFolio
I’m liking the look of this Speck FitFolio case for the full-sized iPad. Good enough reviews at Amazon
Life
Belkin Dot Cover No More?
My experiences with Belkin cases have been good thus far, so I went with another one. This time, I got a Belkin Dot cover with stand for my Dwellable iPad Mini. But now, looking on Belkin’s web site, I don’t see this case offered. I guess it’s no more. Still though, it’s more than a decent case.
The Dot cover is not too heavy but provides sufficient protection to the front and back of your iPad Mini. For awhile, I doubted the magnetic auto-wake trigger of this case, but it is there. Open the cover, and the Mini awakens. The magnetic clasp not only keeps the cover securely closed but strengthens the cover’s structure when open for viewing. I like the overall feel of the cover’s material, providing enough grippy texture.
There are two minuses with this case though small. The stand only works in landscape orientation. If you want to stand up the Mini in portait orientation, you’re going to have to lean it on something. I’ve seen other cases where the iPad can swivel in the stand, but with the low profile of this case, this feature isn’t offered. Secondly, I can’t easily adjust the volume buttons or mute switch. There’s just not enough space for my finger to fit in the recess of the case. No biggie, just humbug.
For the overall cost of the Belkin Dot case, I can’t complain with what I got.
Once You Go Black
Was it Wesley Snipes that uttered that phrase on Passenger 57? In any case, I’ll see if that mantra holds true for beds, specifically the Simmons Beautyrest Black series.
Taken Out by a Preference File
With a pile of old MiniDV tapes, I wanted to extract the video to my Mac using a Canon Vixia HV30 camcorder. Connected via FireWire, the camera showed up in iMovie 11 but refused to import any of the video. The video would playback on the camcorder screen, but iMovie only showed a blue screen during import.
I found one suggestion to change the output of the HV30 since the recorded format was older, non-HDV video. While the camcorder is disconnected, you can change the camcorder’s output, and the recommendation was “DV lock.” Sadly, that didn’t fix the problem.
Then I came across this post with a fix of deleting iMovie’s preference file. The article says to delete:
username/library/preferences/com.apple.imovie8.plist
But I couldn’t find that exact file. I did, however, find com.apple.iMovieApp.plist and com.apple.iMovieApp.plist.lockfile in ~/Library/Preferences. I dragged both out of the folder to my desktop and launched iMovie which generated a new preference file.
Can you believe this worked? The import video in iMovie 11 now behaves as expected. I can control the camcorder over FireWire and during import, I can see the playback on the camcorder screen and in iMovie. Who knew that one corrupt preference file could cause that much trouble?!
A Tribute to Ron Bright
After the last performance of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the cast (along with special guests) sang a tribute to Ron Bright. This was probably my first play watched at the Ron Bright Theatre at Castle High School, and I could definitely feel the love, respect, and admiration for Mr. Bright from patrons and performers alike.
Sorry, the video is from my iPhone since I didn’t have any other gear with me.
Was I Hacked?
My heart sank when I visited my blog only to see a simple message of “It works!” That wasn’t right. Since WordPress has been under attack recently, I thought I had been hacked.
Doing some quick Google searches didn’t correlate hacks to “It works” but rather a misconfiguration with Apache. Still though, I didn’t make any changes so what was going on?
Fortunately, Dreamhost has their Live Chat tech support (for certain plans anyways) and after a few minutes, the problem was fixed. There was a misconfiguration that the tech took care of. Not sure why this happened in the first place, but I’m glad there was someone to help troubleshoot.
Looking Up the Effects of Vog
I know I’m getting old since I’m looking up the effects of vog. I don’t recall being affected in my younger years, but recently I’ve noticed coincidental throat issues when vog levels are high.
Getting old…
What Does Peanut Butter Crunch Pancakes Look Like?
Looking at the specials menu for Sunday, April 21, what does peanut butter crunch pancakes with a marmalade topping look like?
A short stack looks like this!
The taste was interesting, not my favorite though. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the marmalade topping, instead wanted more peanut butter flavor.
One Team Hat in Grey
At the Iolani Fair, I picked up the last One Team hat in grey. Still had the hat in red or black, but I thought the grey provided the most contrast.
Making SharePoint Print, Part 2
So adding some javascript to add a Print button to SharePoint was easy enough. But did you notice the print out is in a minuscule 8-point font? The older generation of team mates are complaining about this. Of course, there’s a fix by adding a print.css style sheet.
But then you need to learn about SharePoint Master Pages, editing, and applying new Master Pages in SharePoint Designer. Oh wait, the bigger text font isn’t enough? Need to hide other display elements like headers and buttons? Then you need to further customize the print.css file. You might as well start referencing the W3C Cascading Style Sheet 2.1 specification.
Now how do I get rid of that blank first page that keeps printing out?!?!
SharePoint Hurts
My eyes hurt from looking at my computer screen for so long. My head hurts from having to figure out SharePoint. My wrist hurts from using my trackball and trackpad so much. My arm and elbow hurts from staying in a prolonged position while zipping the cursor between virtual machines. My back hurts from sitting for long periods while investigating SharePoint fixes. My throat hurts from explaining the ribbon interface to person after person.
So yes, SharePoint hurts.
Good Deal on an LG Washer
Since it was a return, you could get it for around $986 (less than $1000). From reviews on Home Depot, this washer is rated at 4.7 out of 5 stars after 261 reviews. This model was rated #3 in Consumer Reports in February 2013. Unfortunately, the matching dryer was already sold. And who knows, by this time, the washer might not be around either.
We were so close in getting this unit, but the extra capacity of the WM4070 won out. Our loss, your gain.