iCalamity

In the wake of last week's release of Mac OS X 10.5.3, the Apple Discussions forums have been flooded with myriad threads related to innumerable iCal problems! I can concur that the latest Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard update wiped all my iCal calendars, following a .mac sync, and replaced these with empty duplicates!

Thankfully I had a usable backup from which to restore all my calendars! This is my suggested workaround:

*Uncheck iCal sync (System Preferences/.mac)
*Delete this folder: ~/Library/Calendars
*Restore all iCal settings via your backup plan

Hey presto! A working copy of iCal. Your mileage may vary, but I hope that this simple tip will help some (if not all) affected users. Further to this, I'm seriously considering purchasing Time Capsule 1TB at the conclusion of WWDC 2008!

shop@Panasonic

For my birthday, last Wednesday, I received a Panasonic DMR-EZ47:

*2-in1 DVD & VHS Combi
*Full HD 1080p Up-Conversion
*DVB-T Tuner and 7 Day EPG
*HDMI with VIERA Link
*Super Multi Format - Record and Play ALL DVD Formats
*Super Easy GUI
*Dual Layer Compatible
*16X - R Compatible
*DV-in
*MP3, JPEG from -R
*500 Line LP Mode
*1 Sec Quick Start and Record
*VHS to DVD Refresh Dubbing

Ultimately, I decided that a built-in HDD was overkill! As it was my birthday, the sales person made the recorder multi-region and included a HDMI cable/DVD-R pack gratis! That puts shop@Panasonic on a par with the Sony Centre for customer service.

My various College and University video productions will be transfered from VHS to iTunes via this paradigm:

VHS > DVD > HandBrake > iMovie > iTunes!

Next month Apple will start shipping Time Capsule 1TB and my pre-order is in! Review to follow.

Have a great weekend... I'll be clearing out clutter from the garage! It's surprising how much junk gets accumulated!

Time Capsule Craft

Of all the announcements during Steve Jobs' Macworld Keynote, the all-new Time Capsule is, for me, the most enticing!

MacBook Air looks, at face value, to be style over substance and I can't justify £1200 (or more) for an expensive paper weight! In a couple of years I'll be eating my words! After all Steve Jobs foresaw, and accelerated, the demise of the 3½-inch floppy disc with the advent of the original iMac! However, £199 for a 500GB wireless hard drive/Wi-Fi base station, that works seamlessly with Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, is a worthwhile investment!

With the introduction of iTunes HD movie rentals, has Apple put the final nail in the coffin of the optical format wars? Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying "Clearly, Blu-ray won, but in the new world order of instant online movie rentals, in HD, no one will care about what format is where."

iTunes HD movies are only encoded in 720p and do not contain a PCM, Dolby TrueHD, or DTS-HD Master Audio track at this time. For now Blu-ray remains my preferred HD medium!