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iDentify

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iDentify LogoTime was, my media library was populated with lots of files with inconsistent titles, and worse, TV episodes like “Showname_S01E05.mp4”. This is great if you know “episode name -> episode number”, but that usually required me to get online, and look that info up. Worse, DVD’s don’t necessarily have episodes in the same order they were aired (like, Firefly’s DVDs). The thing is, my media collection is rather large, and I REALLY didn’t want to go through and name all the episodes by hand. And it really came to a head when I bought my new AppleTV (Gen 2). So, I did some searching online, and found the answer in a software product called iDentify, by Justin Pulsipher.

One word comes to mind: genius! I could suddenly drop all my TV shows, and movies into the program, and it would look up the title, and cover art online, and rename the file using variables that I set (in my case, “Showname – SxxExx – Episode Title.m4v”. And if you/I wanted, it’d then add them to my iTunes library. It does this all extremely well, and the new version adds a few other nice touches. It adds the ability to name episodes in aired or DVD order (see Firefly comment above), and the ability (thought I haven’t tested it yet) to name files based on DVD numbering. So, using the default Handbrake naming scheme for TV series encodes, iDentify should be able to chew through those and name them appropriately.

My only complaint, and I thought it was something with iDentify, but in fact it’s an Apple issue, is you can’t have colon’s in the filename. I thought that Apple had removed this restriction, but it appears this is not the case. iDentify replaces colon’s with two asterisks. I think I’d prefer just omitting the offending character, but I’d guess there are reasons for not.

The app is extremely easy to use, and with the latest feature improvements (like being able to say which service to use for TV show lookups (I’ve had very mixed results with tagChimp, but TVDB works very well)) it’s a rock solid app. Is it worth the $9.95 that is charged for the file naming feature? Absolutely! Some people have called it crippleware, but that’s a joke. The app works great in it’s free version, it just doesn’t do renaming, which is largely what I wanted. I gladly paid the $9.95, and it is probably worth more than that.

My only real complaint, is the name. Unfortunately, the name is also a commonly used english word (that says what it does). Googling for the app name can be rather difficult because of that. The author is trying to get the app into the Mac App Store, and when that happens, I’d imagine he’ll see a significant boost in sales due to exposure.

If you have a media library (of mp4’s) that you’ve ripped from your DVD collection, and haven’t already named, or filled in metadata info for, I’d highly recommend the application. Download it, use it, love it.

[xrr rating=5/5]

“Server” is a concept, not hardware or software

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Today Apple “announced” Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” Server, and that it will seemingly be an add-on to 10.7 client. It’s basically always been this way, Apple is just finishing the job (for the last server OS X releases, you could effectively upgrade 10.x client to 10.x server by running the server essentials install).

Before we get into the post too much, let me start with an analogy that will lay a bit of the groundwork further on. Go to a restaurant and tell me the difference between your waiter, and the hostess (can’t think of a gender neutral word for this position). The hostess doesn’t bring you your food, they just seat you and maybe bring you water. But, is there really much difference between the two? Could the hostess just as easily wait tables? Or the waiter become the hostess? Sure! Or, they could even be a patron (client) and eat the food given to them by other waiters.

Since the “announcement” (I say it in quotes because basically, all that happened was marketing finally put up a page on the Apple site that acknowledges 10.7 Server will exist, in some form) the two big Apple Server mailing lists (the official one [email protected], and the Mac Enterprise list [email protected]) have been all aflutter with people going apeshit over what is and isn’t listed, the fact that it’s not a separate DVD, etc. Some of this is no doubt left over rage about Apple killing the Xserve, but really, IT people are largely FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) mongers. You think stock brokers/traders are skittish… if half the people on these lists owned any reasonable amount of Apple stock, the price would be in the news more than Linsey Lohan.

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Buckyballs

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BuckyballsA short review this time, as there are many a review online about Buckyballs ((Notice the lack of camelCase. The website for Buckballs lists them with no camelCase, as does the shipping box, however the storage box for said magnets has it capitalized “BuckyBalls”. This might be something they should address.)) but since I just got some from ThinkGeek with some geek points I’ve been building up for a while, and I’ve been spending a good amount of time playing with them for the last few days, I thought I might write a review.

For those that don’t know, Buckyballs are small (5mm) spherical neodymium (N35) magnets. The standard set is plated in chrome, while they also have ones plated in silver, gold, and black nickel (which I’d guess you’d want to avoid should you have a nickel allergy). They’re listed as a desk toy, and all and all, that’s probably a good description, though I think bringing them to work might make actual “work” difficult as they can be a serious time suck. I’ve spent hours playing with them at work… though thankfully not all in a row.

So are they worth it? I’d say yes. $30 is a bit high for something like this, but they are a lot of fun. And whether you get Buckyballs, Zen Magnets, or any of the other brands there are, they’re all basically the same idea. Though it seems Buckyballs are the only ones that have the 4 different finishes.

All and all, the only problem being price, but I’m guessing that’s a function of Neodymium costs, and manufacturing, rather than any huge profits Zoomdoggle is making.

[xrr rating=4.5/5]

UPDATE (10/27/2011): I purchased a 3 pack of colored Buckyballs from Woot.com a few months back, and after playing with them for a while, I can unequivocally say, they suck. The color is just a very thin coating of paint over normal buckyballs which wears off (even when they were new you could see blemishes in the coating), and the tolerance on the balls is pretty crappy. You can easily tell that some balls are not the same size as others because they don’t want to “play nice” when making shapes. Also, as a warning, Buckyballs now makes a package with a 5×5 cube, and extras, rather than the old 6×6 cube. I didn’t realize this when I ordered them, and was disappointed. The price of Neodymium has gone up lately, and I’m pretty sure this is the reasoning for the change. Anyway, my rating on the standard balls that I received before stands. My rating on the non-standard non-chrome balls is below.

[xrr rating=1.5/5]

Some common shapes:
Small Triangle: 6 (make a 6 round, squish the top together, and bottom up)
Larger Triangle: 9 (make a 9 round, squish the top together, and bottom up. Will be hole in middle)
Useful “rounds”: 5, 6, 9
Small “sphere”: 12 5-rounds. Link. Total balls: 60.
Larger “sphere”: 20 9-triangles. Link. Total balls: 180
Cube: Not the easiest thing to make, but the easiest way I’ve found to make the cube is take the long string, and make an “S” then let that fall together into a long strand of 72×3 wide. Then cut that in half to make a 36×6 ribbon. Then simply fold a 6×6 piece of that onto the ribbon, then fold again, and again, and again.