Installation did not go smoothly mostly because of the disappointing internal error reporting capabilities implanted in TorrentFlux. The logs and error messages should be more precise like the ones printed in the Apache logs. From the searches I did on the interwebs, I seem to have bumped in an easy to fix, though still much too common issue.

If QManager is not running (PID: ‘nothing’ in the admin logs) or if the torrents do not download, make sure all the paths in TorrentFlux’s configuration do not have spaces in them. That goes for the download directory and for the paths to the multiple BitTornado files. Obviously, make sure you installed the prerequisites like Python and Curl and double check you php config also.

If you had already added torrents to the queue, you may have to delete and add them back using the web interface. This is because the path will have changed without TorrentFlux noticing.

My friend has a iPod that stopped playing the mp3s it holds. The proprietary Mac and Microsoft software he normally uses, like the obvious iTunes or other iPod rippers of sorts, did not recognize his iPod either.

I had a huntch Ubuntu would have something to offer to save his music collection. While I was expecting to have to do a few console tricks, turns out the included media software read and fetched the mp3s off his iPod without any problems.

The only thing we haven’t tried yet was to actually try and ‘reset’ the iPod using the open source platform. My guess is that while I could get his mp3s back, we were going to have to return the songs to the iPod using iTunes in the end.

Because the process of saving the files on my Ubuntu box, sending them over to my Mac and re-include them to the freshly wipe iPod through iTunes would have been too lenghty, my friend wanted to try a few other things first. At least now we have a back up solution, though.

Feels good to be a nerd with social skills.

You do have to let it go at some point though: just like one chooses to trust a local merchant won’t duplicate your credit card while scanning it, you have to expect websites to treat your private information respectfully.

Amazon just sent me an alert saying another user tried to make purchases with my credit card, which they had previously linked with my account over there. I didn’t expect them to actually make proactive checks like these and was pleasantly surprised.

I have yet to understand when my card information was harvested and if transactions were made on other websites, but at least Amazon’s suspition will be noticed by my credit card provider.

Totally awesome.

Now, I know I could be posting this news because there’s still 2 hours left before the show starts… but I know people don’t care about what I need to report so I just won’t be doing anything about it.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo

I had the preconceived notion that BootCamp doesn’t spoof Microsoft’s installer into thinking there is only one hard-drive of the manually allocated space, nor does BootCamp somehow manages to protect OSX’s files using special user file rights. Windows Setup found 3 partitions (wtf?) that I went on deleting carelessly. This is really my fault in a obvious lack of attention to what I was doing.

Fortunately, I’m the happy owner of Time Capsule and Leopard so my whole Mac was backed up to the minute. Thing is, in all the excitement that comes with mistakingly wiping off your drive, I had forgot I could use that backup.

In a nice implementation of their solution, Apple noticed I had a Time Capsule running during Leopard’s installation process and asked me to use the backup it had found. Things went very smoothly afterwards. After a long wait, all my stuff was back where it had been before my mistake. I had to change the file system from NTFS to whatever Mac uses previously though.

Apart for it not working wirelessly with my Xbox 360 (which in the end is Microsoft’s fault) and sometimes having connection hiccups I really only have good words for my Time Capsule.