iTunes to iPhone: move music without syncing

How do you get music from your PC to an iPhone you don't necessarily want to sync with? Apple makes this impossible, but somebody found a back door!

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19470407

(Go down to the comment by "karissafrey".)

In iTunes create a playlist with the music you want to download, then change the autodownload playlist to your new one, then choose autosync. This worked perfectly for me! Yay! No changes besides the one I wanted. 

Reverse Turing Test

You're probably familiar with the Turing test where a computer (AI) is said to have reached a certain level of advancement when it can fool a human being into thinking that it is a human being. It's more complicated than that but you get the general idea.

Well I came across the opposite problem today. How do I convince human beings that I am not a computer? Specifically I'd like to offer my friends a download but I don't want them to think that it's robotic spam message or a phishing attempt.

How do I assure them that it's really me writing the email? So many facts about us are widely available on the Internet. What piece of information or shared experience do I and my friends have in common that is not known? I honestly can't think of anything.

The best alternative I've been able to come up with so far is to let them see that the download is being offered from my own domain and the URL has not been tampered with.

Phone As PC

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/ubuntu-store-apps-wont-work-across-mobile-and-desktop-in-14-04/#p3

It's not the main thrust of the article, but "Phone As A PC" does get a mention. I think this should be the hottest trend going, not wearable computing. My iPhone has always been faster than any work PC I have ever been assigned, with the exception of the latest. And apps and games on the iPhone seem to run better than on my strongest gaming machines at home, with less problems and gotchas.

So as more and more folks get smartphones, why not make them a substitute for their desktop PC? They already can work with monitors and keyboard and mice in a limited fashion. Just make such extensions easier and more useful. Enable phones to use external storage devices, and even printers.

There were some Android phones, I think from Motorola, that had a desktop mode, that were shown at CES two years ago. doesn't seem like they took off. But clearly this trend has far more usefulness than a watch that tells you when your phone has a text.

Imagine being able to sit down at any PC station, and get your stuff - your programs, your data, without having to mess with virtualization. I can imagine it, and I want it.

Can’t raise fold-down rear seat on 2010 Ford Escape because of stuck middle seat belt retractor

Ok quick break from tech to report on a known car problem and the fix. I have a 2010 Ford Escape, and put the bigger side of the 40/60 split rear seat down to fit a table in the rear. When I went to raise it back up, it wouldn’t move more than an inch or two.

After some investigation I determined the problem was that the middle seat belt, which actually retracts into the top of the seat, had retracted completely and then locked up, stuck.

I spent some time trying various things to get it to let go. I even had half the material off the seat so I could see up to the area where the retractor was mounted. Nothing I tried did anything but make it tighter.

I turned to the Internet, and found out this is a known problem with these Fords and perhaps other models going back several years. Argh! For instance, http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=60783 

Then I found a site that seemed to have some solid advice - http://www.fixya.com/cars/t6637034-ford_escape_middle_rear_seat . This turned out to be fix for me.

Basically take out the 6 bolts holding the seat backs down (2 on each side and 2 in the middle). Then you can get to the Torx bolt that bolts the seat belt to the floor. Then take out the 60 part of the seat back completely, turn it right side up, click in the latch on the side, and the seat belt should retract normally with a couple of pulls. Then just put everything back together the way it was.

Save yourself wasted time trying other methods. They are right when they say this is the only way that works. And once you figure it out, it’s not that hard. Good thing, because I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be doing this again and again.

Configuring Windows Updates. 0% Complete. Please do not power off or unplug your machine. Installing update 1 of 5.

I get this type of message all the time on shutting down and it hangs my laptop. Something in Windows Update gets stuck. A lot.

Here’s a couple of the fixes I’ve used semi- (temporarily) successfully:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358
• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/troubleshoot-problems-with-installing-updates

Ios7 Game Center won't go away

I play Scrabble on my iPad and iPhone, mostly with my family through Facebook, which is a blast. One day a year or so ago I somehow hooked Scrabble up to Apple's "Game Center". Almost instantly this turned into a pain in the neck with popups and logins and messages every time I tried to play Scrabble. What was worse is the dialog that would ask every time I opened Scrabble if I wanted to disable Scrabble from Game Center (something along those lines). I would answer yes yet it kept coming up every time. 

This continued into iOS 7. There are new ways to remove Scrabble from Game Center. But the changes somehow reverse themselves every restart. We'll I've finally figured out a way to at least stop it from bothering me, with the help of the following link:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19594549#19594549

Basically it's as simple as logging out of Game Center and then disabling all the possible options in Notification Center for Game Center. This of course affects a lot more than Scrabble. A price I'm willing to pay until Apple fixes Game Center. 

Feeding Twitter

I just noticed that my blog posts haven't been making their way from Blogger through Friendfeed to Twitter since October 2012. (It's now March 2013.) Bummer! All the setup looks good and the posts are making it to Friendfeed so the problem is somewhere between Friendfeed and Twitter. I went ahead and set up Twitterfeed (from the blog direct to Twitter). We'll see how that goes.

Migrated Outlook, blocked senders list gone

I just upgraded machines, and from Outlook 2010 to Outlook 2013. One quick tip for anyone else doing this - don't forget to export your blocked senders list BEFORE you move your .pst file from the old pc to new. It turns out, as best I can tell, that the lists are email account name specific. This means unless you name your new account the same (which I am guessing I did not), that the old list will be stranded and Outlook will start a new blank one (argh).

Dial Back The Crazy

I was about to give Paul Thurrott the crown for inventing this 4 word gem for his blog post http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/dialing-back-crazy-windows-8, but a quick Google search reveals it’s been around awhile… https://www.google.com/search?q=dial+back+the+crazy . Still, what a sound byte!

IOS Garageband tips

Here’s a couple of things I wish I had known earlier…

• Turn off velocity sensitity to fix snare drum volume issue.

• Turn the bar count to automatic for a section so that it doesn’t cut you off at 8 when recording with a mic.

• Shake to get the undo button to come up.

And an issue with my preferred guitar input, the iRig, and GarageBand on the iPad 3:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3836528?start=0&tstart=0

It doesn’t sound like there is a fix, so it may be necessary to abandon the iRig – here are some alternatives mentioned:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MobileIn/
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/stealthplug/