The computing stuff rant thread

[Pingu]

The files are all local, accessed by Logitech Media Server (Squeezebox). They were already tagged when I bought them and I added genre with MP3Tag. There is only one version of each of the files in the relevant folder and they all live in the same album sub-folder.

It's odd that one version of the album has the same track twice and that track also appears on the other version of the album 

[Pickled Onion]

You probably need to ryegrass (wow auto carrot) retag them. A case difference might be obvious, an extra space or non printing character less so. MP3Tag might even see them as the same but LMS can be annoyingly pernickity.

The splitting of albums where there are guest artists on some tracks is incredibly irritating. It’s an Album for Pete’s sake, the maker of it designed it to be played together and in this order! You either have to change the artist or tag it Various Artists, neither of which is correct.  Classical music is even worse, movements of the same piece get split up because the soloist is credited, and anyway who looks for music by Random Hungarian Cellist rather than Mozart (found under W of course)? Clearly none of the people designing tagging ever thought anyone would want to play anything other than rock/pop.

[Pingu]

Well, I have fixed the problem it seems:

1) Unzipped the files to this lapdog (they'd been downloaded there from Bandcamp)
b) Changed the tags to what I wanted with MP3Tag
iii) Copied the files to the relevant folders on the muzak pooter
D) Renamed the files to my muzak file name system
5) Did a rescan with LMS

Previously the tag changes were done on the muzak pooter.

 

[ian]

That automatic reloading of pages that are using too much whatever, it's annoying and stupid Safari, so fucking stop it or I'll reload you.

[Mr Larrington]

This seems to be a common feature of fondleslab browsers.  And eventually causes the thing to give up and say “this page cannot be displayed”.  Most common on news webby SCIENCE sites containing so many shitverts that:

• the article you're trying to read is confined to a postage-stamp sized segment, and
• the barrage of shit is so intense that the browser is overwhelmed

It's not big, it’s not clever and it makes us punters leery about using your sites at all.  Yes, Reach plc, I do mean you.  Your business model is flawed.  Sort it out you muppets.

[ian]

Basically, you fill in half a form and the page reloads. With a blank form. Brilliant.

Yeah, shitty websites, but how about you tell me, dear Safari what you think, and let me make the decision to reload it? Twatbadger.

[grams]

The splitting of albums where there are guest artists on some tracks is incredibly irritating. It’s an Album for Pete’s sake, the maker of it designed it to be played together and in this order! You either have to change the artist or tag it Various Artists, neither of which is correct.

There’s a field called “Album Artist” that exists solely to solve this problem. Set those all to the same thing and you can use the “Artist” tag however you like.

[Tim Hall]

The splitting of albums where there are guest artists on some tracks is incredibly irritating. It’s an Album for Pete’s sake, the maker of it designed it to be played together and in this order! You either have to change the artist or tag it Various Artists, neither of which is correct.

There’s a field called “Album Artist” that exists solely to solve this problem. Set those all to the same thing and you can use the “Artist” tag however you like.

Ooh. That's my Very Useful Thing I learned Today.  Thanks.

(heads off to edit lots and lots of tags)

[Jaded]

Power wobbles tripped a Circuit Breaker. More importantly it fried my router.

So the only Internets I have is tethered to my phone. Oh well. The good news is that AAISP will send out a new router, but the bad news is that it is a Bank Holiday weekend...

[Diver300]

Power wobbles tripped a Circuit Breaker. More importantly it fried my router.

So the only Internets I have is tethered to my phone. Oh well. The good news is that AAISP will send out a new router, but the bad news is that it is a Bank Holiday weekend...

Power wobbles are far more likely to fry a router power supply than a router.

Power supplies from other routers may well work. As long as the voltage or the other adaptor is the same*, and the current rating is the same or larger (you might get away with a bit smaller) then it's certainly worth a shot.

*Polarity is important as well. Some strange ones have the centre negative, but most have the centre positive.

[Kim]

Also, being fried by a power wobble is often just a case of "thing that's been running continually for ages has deteriorated to the point it can't start up properly, and has finally been switched off".

[Jaded]

On the Zyxel router I'm getting LAN activity, and a red (outside)World icon, and the nice people at AAISP have done line tests. I cannot check that the phone line is ok because VOIP...


I do have a loverly power supply with lots of different plugs and variable power output settings, but haven't had to use it in this instance.

[Kim]

Can you log in to the router's admin interface?  The LAN blinkenlights are likely to work even if the main processor isn't.

[Jaded]

Thanks, I’ll check that next. Off to eat and complain…

[Pingu]

Moved house. Plugged in router and old-desktop-computer-music-storage-thingummy, and Devil's radio, network and interwebs work immediately. OK, had to reboot the router to get Mrs P's tablet to talk to the interwebs and do Chromecast. Squeezebox Boom powers up and plays said music nae bother.

Squeezebox Duet, wtf are you? Didn't you get the ruddy memo? Gah 

[Jaded]

New router arrived, plugged in, worked.

Thanks AAISP

[Mr Larrington]

Shit I don’t need at two o'clock in the fucking morning part 28948: NAS throwing a wobbler in the middle of the Super-Giant Monthly Backup of Important Stuffs and refusing to reconnect after a reboot.  Thankfully it woke up after powering it off and on again and the S-GMBoIS is cunningly wrought to restart where it left off, although it’s still got to plough through about a hundred thousand directories before it can actually start copying files again

[Pickled Onion]

...about a hundred thousand directories before it can actually start copying files again

What are you storing, the Gaia star map?

[ian]

I'm also often wondering what diabolical IT operation Señor Larrers is running. Maybe the NSA have outsourced or he's running his own dark global surveillance operation. He probably has a Chloe in there with him, tasking satellites.

[Pingu]

Moved house. Plugged in router and old-desktop-computer-music-storage-thingummy, and Devil's radio, network and interwebs work immediately. OK, had to reboot the router to get Mrs P's tablet to talk to the interwebs and do Chromecast. Squeezebox Boom powers up and plays said music nae bother.

Squeezebox Duet, wtf are you? Didn't you get the ruddy memo? Gah 

It's working now. It goes to show that repeating the same action over and over until you get the desired outcome does work 

[Mr Larrington]

...about a hundred thousand directories before it can actually start copying files again

What are you storing, the Gaia star map?

Deconstructing the data files for SCS Software's truck simulator games gives more than 20000 directories per game.  Some of the bigger game mods are of similar complexity.  If I were ruthless enough I'd delete the unpacked mods once I've finished fiddling with them, but it's a faff and everyone keeps telling us that “storage is cheap”.

[Feanor]

IMAP. How hard can it be?

I am the custodian of the digital estate of my late FiL.
Basically, custodian of his laptop, the files thereon and his e-mails.
I provided the laptop, and did all the set-up a couple of years age when his old one died; and have all the passwords etc.
So the task is delegated to me.

The only thing I needed to do was to take an archive of his e-mails, as he only ever used his ISP (sky) webmail.
Once the sky account is closed, all the webmail will go away.
So my plan is simply to install Thunderbird, connect over IMAP, and sync it all to local storage.

Right.
All the IMAP settings for Sky are easily available on the Internet.
And they are all wrong.

Authentication failures all round.
They say: Username = full sky e-mail address; p/w = your sky ID password.
Sounds reasonable.
But wrong.
I can sign into webmail with these credentials, but not IMAP.

Took several hours of googling to come across a forum post in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet which said:
"Have you tried to create the 'special' 'App Password' on this hidden page?"

WTF is an 'App Password'?
Well, it means 'e-mail App', ie not-webmail.
Yes, indeed. The IMAP password is not the same as the sky ID password used for webmail.
Create this magic password, enter it, and Thunderbirds are Go!

Armed with this knowledge, I now know what's going on.
Sky out-sourced their e-mail operations to Yahoo! some years ago.
The IMAP servers you connect to are not sky, they are Yahoo!
To allow authentication, sky don't want to share their customer passwords with Yahoo!, so they use a thing called OAuth.
Basically, sky users need to use the stupidly-hidden page to generate a 16-character token password which is linked to their account.
Then, their IMAP client needs to supply this as a password to Yahoo!, which will in turn present this token to sky to authenticate the user.

Is this documented anywhere on the sky web-pages?
Is it fuck.

<smiles blankly, and waves arm> Welcome! Just enter your Sky ID Password!
No!

[Mr Larrington]

Yahoo is a law unto itself when it comes to playing nicely, or at all, with Thunderbird.  Yahoo would really rather you didn’t use a third-party e-mail program at all because they are bastards made of piss.

[Kim]

Nobody wants you to use IMAP, because they are either:

a) In the business of making you view shitverts (Every free webmail provider in existence)
2) In the business of fucking up email with their own proprietary nonsense for fun and profit (Microsoft)
iii) In the business of selling you pushed packets, and therefore keen for you to push as many superfluous ones as possible (Every ISP/telco since RedHotAnt)
IV) Allergic to following RFCs (The authors of Thunderbollocks)

Yahoo! are, however:

† Bastards made of piss

[Feanor]

Le sigh.
IMAP, again.

Mrs F uses Outhouse on her lapdog to access our home e-mail over IMAP, and has for years.
She recently set up an iThing to do the same.
All fine.

Only just noticed that the Sent Items don't seem to be synchronised between devices.
Why, of course they are not.
They are using different IMAP folder names: Sent Items, Sent Mail, Sent Stuff, Sent Shit.

Why-o-why can't IMAP clients take a look at the folder structure already existing on the server, and make a semi-intelligent guess at the appropriate folder names for things like Sent Stuff and Deleted Crap rather than just dumping a new folder of their own?

All fixed now.
Sigh.