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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

What sort of cockamamie question is that?



California - Home of Apple!

You will not be astonished to learn that it takes a very, very long time indeed to transfer 18,000 songs from an iPod to iTunes. And – (why is it always like this) anytime the software –which is called ‘Senuti’ has a problem it asks you want you want to do.

i.e. ‘I have been unable to copy a song called ‘The Sheik from Scrubby Creek’ what do you want me to do?

The options are Cancel (close the program) or Ignore

Close the program? What sort of an option is that? What would be the point of that? What sort of cockamamie question is that?

Doesn’t the fact that I started you on the Herculean task of copying 18,000 songs give you a clue as to my intentions? Forget about that song – I will live without it – when I get stuck I can whistle it - move on!

The problem of course – as anyone who has ever done anything like this will know – is that it stops everything while it waits for an answer. So if you have popped off downstairs to watch the cricket for an hour or so and come back thinking that it must almost be done you discover that it has not budged a millimetre because it is waiting to hear what you want to do about ‘The Sheik from Scrubby Creek’.

This software developers revenge for having to do their lousy and difficult job is to force the users to sit there and watch the program go through every excruciating process as the blue line creeps excruciatingly slowly towards the finish line like a stoned snail crawling through marmalade.

As a variation sometimes they make the software hang. It says it is doing things but you just know it is not and there is absolutely nothing you can do about. Well – you can stop it and start again – but what would be the point of that – so usually you just have to sit there for a while until the programmers inbuilt ‘tension building pause’ has come to an end - and then it will come back to life and start beavering away – or crash.

My favourite of all time is when an excruciatingly slow software programs grinds through endless processes and eventually finishes. Up pops an error message saying something like ‘there was an error in Spangle #54679 which prevented the program from completing its job. Please run the program again’.

But why? You will get the same error message next time. I don’t think software programmers ever use their own programs. Like people who design automated telephone answering services never have to call their own companies to get the excruciating message.

“Welcome – we don’t give a flying fuck about you and that is why we are going to make you go through an excruciating menu of meaningless questions and numbers until we finally connect you with a complete nincompoop who will have no idea what you are talking about and will promise that someone will call you back but you both know that will never happen and when you call again you will never find that person because they left the company five minutes after taking your call and if we don’t like you (and we don’t) we will either cut you off or hang up on you – whichever comes first”

But it’s done. All my songs are now in the iMac iTunes files (with the exception of The Sheik from Scrubby Creek and some others).

I was so please with this I decided to sync my iPhone with my new iMac and succeeded only in deleting all the contact details from my iPhone. If I used to call you and email you but no longer do so – now you know why. As far as my iPhone is concerned you do not exist – and no I did not have a back up – that is what I was trying to do.

I have sent pleading emails out asking for contact information.

This is the tip of the iceberg. I am sure that there are many other ways I can make my files TARFU.

Cate has asked how long it will be before I get all the Furshlugginer files transferred. I have advised her that at the current rate of progress I am looking at 2013 – about April 23 I think.

13 comments:

  1. You should have hired a moving company to transfer those files!
    They would have wrapped every single song in vergin newsprint and hand-carried them all onto your new Mac! ;-)

    P.S.:
    Are you going to give as a You-Tube link for that song or do we have to search for it ourselves?

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  2. Anyone can see those Apples are second hand... Check the logo, who would buy an apple that someone has taken a bite of?

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  3. I've tracked down two copies of the lost performance here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zUx6YGt7rE
    And here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWfFFMcfEt4&NR=1

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  4. `like a stoned snail crawling through marmalade'

    love it!

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  5. Click here to appreciate this musical masterpiece from Down Under. The music is straight out of Mozart, while the lyrics are frankly Shakespearean. But there's a risk in putting this kind of stuff onto a powerful Macintosh, as it might interfere with the operating system and/or the machine's famous "core". Fragile human brains, too, could be attacked by Chad Morgan's song. But I hope that Badger will be happy once again, now that his old Aussie friend has been brought back to the fold.

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  6. My darling, my sweet, my precious .. have you tried resynching your iPhone with your old Windowns PC to get the information back on to the iPhone? PK says you will have already taken the Windows PC out to the rubbish by now, but I do not think you will have. In the meantime, I will send you some Contact details to fill the void.

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  7. I wondered why you never call me anymore...

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  8. Phillip: In my humble opinion, it's possible that transferring archives of all kinds from your old PC to your Macintosh is not necessarily the most urgent and worthwhile task that you should be carrying out at present. For the moment, your new machine is in a pristine state, free of all forms of corrupt software and data. You should take advantage of this lovely moment of purity to establish a profound relationship with the new computer… instead of immediately clogging its arteries with tons of ancient stuff. You can survive for a few weeks without your thousands of songs and old files, while you explore the virgin machine, and get yourself organized. For example: Have you started to create a set of well-named basic folders in your Documents directory, so that you'll be able to store things away neatly as soon as they come into existence? If you don't do this from the outset, then your Macintosh desktop will soon be transformed into a huge bloody mess, where you can no longer find anything. Have you decided upon a sound backup strategy? Have you started to get to know the Pages tool, for writing? Have you started to look into the ideal tool to use for handling photos in the context of Vienna for Dummies? Are you in fact using the Macintosh already to create posts for your blog? (If so, then congratulations!) Many questions come to mind, and I'm a little alarmed to find you lamenting the absence of an ancient song…

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  9. Thanks you all so much for your help and kind words. William is of course quite right - I do not need all that old junk and the stuff that I am transferring is just going into an 'old junk' file because I know I will need some of it soonish.

    The music is a different matter because unless I transfer this I cannot sync my iPods with iTunes - and need to download new music I buy into the iMac.

    I am indeed creating a very tidy file system.
    I have a sound backup strategy and will report on this.

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  10. having seen badger use his files in situ i can confirm that he does indeed have an extremely comprehensive file system. although some might say too comprehensive as some times it takes him 28 clicks to get to one photo in a sub-folder say;
    photos/badgersphotos/canon500d/2009/jantojune/may/daytime/am/flashoff/indoors/loungeroom/mondays/cats/blackcats/muffin/sleeping/curledupinball/tailtotheleft/

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  11. Congratulations on getting there in the end!

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