Maybe you’re like me, and you’re migrating something from MySQL over to PostgreSQL. Maybe, like me, you’re swearing a great deal and experiencing high blood pressure, too.
(Or maybe not.)
I’ve seen numerous threads that just tell you how you can change all your code to use Postgres’s epoch_something_something_aint_nobody_got_time_fo_dat() function instead, but epic hero Janusz Slota has a better way. He shows you how to, rather easily, make it possible to run those functions in PG without having to change a thing.
In iTunes 10, you could skip to the next/previous track when Repeat One was turned on. In 11, they assume that by “skip ahead”, you really mean “rewind this track”.
This really bothers some people. Do not judge us, we have our reasons!
And here’s one way to fix it.
It took some work, but I finally came up with some AppleScript to handle this. Basically, we’re checking to see if Repeat One is on. If it is, we quickly disable it, skip to the next (or previous) track, and then turn it back on. Apple borked the old way of doing this (same with shuffle), so we’re using menu bar items instead.
-- This script lets you skip songs in iTunes 11 even if repeat one is on
tell application "System Events"
tell process "iTunes"
-- Find out if repeat one is on
-- This finds out if the menu item is checked
set isRepeatOneOn to (value of attribute "AXMenuItemMarkChar" of menu item 3 of menu 1 of menu item "Repeat" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1 as string) ≠ ""
if isRepeatOneOn is true then
-- Set repeat to ALL
click menu item 2 of menu 1 of menu item "Repeat" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1
-- Skip to previous track...
click menu item "Previous" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1
-- Need this, or the next step happens too fast
delay 0.1
-- Reactivate Repeat One
click menu item 3 of menu 1 of menu item "Repeat" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1
else
-- Just skip to previous track
click menu item "Previous" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Controls" of menu bar 1
end if
end tell
end tell
You can copy/paste that, or you can just download the script files here.
There’s one script for skip ahead, and one for skip back.
Wait—how do I use these?
Valid question. They’re not all that useful, really—unless you assign them to hotkeys.
iTunes 11 is out, and most people seem to think it’s great. You and I are different, however. We hate it and we have our reasons. (Mine happens to be the inability to skip tracks while Repeat One is on. Yup, deal-breaker for me. UPDATE: Fixed that!) So let’s downgrade.
First, you’ll need a backup of your iTunes Library.itl file, found under ~/Music/iTunes. Fortunately, I backed my library up right before installing iTunes 11. Note that any new songs, apps, etc. that you may have added since installing 11 will need to be replaced. In my case, I used the “Date Added” feature in iTunes to find which files I had added since November 28, and copied those out into a separate folder. When the downgrade was complete, I simply copied them back in.
2. Delete iTunes. There are different ways to do this. One is to use an app called AppZapper. The method that worked for me was this: Open Terminal.app and run these commands:
killall iTunes
killall "iTunes Helper"
sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app/
That last one will need your password and will probably take a minute or so.
3. Now we have to reinstall iTunes 10.7 using an app called Pacifist (shareware, free). Download Pacifist and run it.
4. Choose the Open Package option. Browse to the iTunes 10.7 dmg file.
5. Select the “Contents of Install iTunes.pkg” file, and from the top left of the window, choose Install.
6. Every time Pacifist tells you a file already exists, make sure you check the “always” box and choose Replace. This should happen around three or four times.
7. You’re almost done. Before running iTunes again, make sure you have recovered your “iTunes Library.itl” from a pre-iTunes-11 backup. After that, you should be good to go.
Some people have reported getting a -42408 error after downgrading, but I didn’t have any problem with it using this method on Mountain Lion. You can still get around that error by holding Option when opening iTunes, though some find they have to do it every time. If that happens and gets tiring, try reinstalling again, but as ever, your actual mileage may vary!
Though the other day, some guy managed to spell it Aeryn. Points for uniqueness!
Update: Since posting this, it has come to my attention that male Erins do, in fact, exist. However, in my part of the world, this is unheard of. Neither I, nor any other of the many Aarons I know, have ever met or even heard of a male Erin. And so, when somehow ~90% of the time people spell our names with an E, it causes the mind to boggle. Or, caused. I have since been enlightened. Male Erins, please accept my apologies. Though I would be interested to find out where you are from if you wouldn’t mind commenting.
The full quote comes from Sebastian Thrun, the tenured Stanford Professor who left in order to begin exploring new teaching methods online.
During the era when universities were born, “the lecture was the most effective way to convey information. We had the industrialization, we had the invention of celluloid, of digital media, and, miraculously, professors today teach exactly the same way they taught a thousand years ago.”
So, among other productivity methods I’ve been trying this month, I also tried the Hipster PDA method, where essentially you use a small stack of index cards with a big clip to keep track of what you need to get done. (Optionally also with the Getting Things Done and 43 Folders philosophies.)
Most people react to this by saying something like, “Seriously? Index cards.” Yes, seriously. You should probably try it out. And I know several people for whom this PDA works very well!
Like this.
But I’m not one of them.
Here’s the thing — after literally years trying to get myself to use paper calendars/planners/notebooks/etc., I finally discovered that if my calendar / organizer can’t beep at me, it effectively doesn’t exist.
While trying out the Hipster PDA, I thought I’d finally give it one more shot. See if that was still true. It is.
Sure, I can carefully put everything I want to do today into a planner. I can schedule that appointment for 12:00. And then life will happen, the dean will have a critical project he needs done by tomorrow, I get deep into the zone working on that, and don’t realize until 5:32 pm that we had an appointment at 12:00. That’s pretty much how my life and my brain work.
Furthermore, when you ask me to bring you a document tonight, I’m filing that away in my memory with 32 other things I’m supposed to remember to do by then. 1-17 more are guaranteed to come along before then. Odds are, I’m not bringing your document tonight. Yes, the hPDA is supposed to remind me — if I’m not so absorbed in thinking about the next problem to give it a few minutes. Throughout my test, I only rarely managed to consult my stack of cards effectively. I’m both an easily distract-able and highly focused individual. (Yes, you can be both.)
My solution, the one I’ve been working on for a few years now since I got my first PDA, is to put everything into my digital calendar(s). Events and appointments are obvious, but I also add everything I need to remember later but probably won’t, like “Start walking to class now or you’ll be late”, “Look over the document that Sarah just handed you”, “Respond to Dana’s email”, etc. For things like that, I take my best guess as to when would be a good time to address that matter. 50% of the time I’m wrong, but the reminder brings it back into my consciousness when it would otherwise be lost. Also, it’s easy to tell the reminders to try again later.
I have two calendars: a Google Calendar for more personal and school things, and an Exchange calendar for work-related things. The beauty here is that both calendars live in the cloud — meaning they’re not saved on something I can drop into the sink and destroy forever. And both my phone and computer connect to them, so I’ll always be reminded.
To make things even easier, this month I started using Easy Calendar for the iPhone. I find it much quicker than the default calendar app to add new items, and to see what’s coming up in the next week. Easy Calendar lets you set a default alert for every new item you add, which is good since I add an alert to every single one.
On my computer, I use the aptly named Remind Me Later app (free), which lets me type in natural language, like “Turn in that awesome assignment tonight at 6″ The app is smart enough to know that by “tonight” I mean October 25th, and that “6″ means 6 p.m., and it automatically puts it into my calendar with a reminder.
Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes it’s enough only that the system bring an item back into my working memory after it’s been pushed out by any number of a dozen things.
Will this system work for you? Quite possibly. Is it the right one for you? Maybe. Hard to say. Could be that the Hipster PDA works better for you, for example. If my experiments with productivity techniques have done anything (besides give me some great ideas and tools), they’ve reminded me that I’m a cognitive bird of a somewhat different color. But then, aren’t we all in our own ways?
In iTunes 10, you could skip to the next/previous track when Repeat One was turned on. In 11, they assume that by “skip ahead”, you really mean “rewind this track”.
Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes it’s enough only that the system bring an item back into my working memory after it’s been pushed out by any number of a dozen things.