Weblog of a “Switcher”

One thing I like to do with my iTunes playlists, smart or normal, is to adjust which items are to be played in what order. Most the time, I'm happy with the order that appears when the items are downloaded. However, sometimes, I want to listen to a specific podcast first, or I might want to put a podcast off till the end.

When I attempted to adjust the order by dragging an item in the playlist, I found that my Video Podcasts playlist wouldn't let me do this, my Audio Podcasts let me adjust the order just fine.

Now this baffled me. There was one other time I wasn't able to adjust the order of items in a smart playlist. At that time, I just assumed I wasn't able to adjust the item order in smart playlists back then so I forgot about it. Fast forward to now. I have been adjusting the order of my Audio Playlist without any problems, but I didn't think about the fact that it was a smart playlist.

As you can see, there is a little insert bar that appears when adjusting the order of items in a playlist works.

So I attempted to adjust the order in my Video Podcasts playlist and found it wasn't working.

Here, you can see that no insertion bar appears when dragging an item around in the list.

This made me scratch my head since both are smart playlists. Now, I know I can, in fact, adjust the order in a smart playlist since the Audio Podcasts playlist was working perfectly. I know that the Video Podcasts playlist should work, so what is the difference between the two playlists that made one work and the other not.

I checked the settings in both smart playlist and saw that other than what they are set to display, the rest of the setting are the same. I really couldn't think of anything else that could cause this so I wound up giving up for a few days.

Today, it started bugging me again, so I took a look again. This time I notices something that I hadn't before. The Video Podcasts playlist has a "Name" sort order and the Audio Podcast playlist is sorted by the number column. "Bing" (lightbulb turning on over head) It hits me that if the playlist is not sorted by the first number column, it must not allow that playlist to have it's order changed. I changed the sorting of the playlist to the first column and "presto", I am now able to adjust the playlist order.

So it seems that the only way you can adjust the playlist order of a smart playlist is if it's sorted by the first column (what ever that column is called).

I figured that if I had problems figuring this out, there are probably others out there that are having similar problems and would want to know what the solution is.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: custom order, Few Days, Insertion, iTunes, Playlist, Playlists, smart playlist, Smart Tag, Smart Tags, sort order, Video Podcasts

For quite some time now I have not been able to upgrade my 5th Gen iPod to the latest version of the firmware (1.2.3). I have tried several times to upgrade, but kept getting the following error:

So today, Apple released version 1.3 of the firmware. So I thought maybe now that the software has been updated again, I'll be able to upgrade my iPod. I tried and got the same error.

So, I figured that the problem wasn't the firmware, but something on my computer. So, once again, I headed over to the discussion section of Apple's website and started searching for my error message.

I came across a message that mentioned that he "Enabled disk mode" in the iPod Options section of iTunes. Hmmm, I have Disk mode turned off, I wonder if that is the cause... So I enabled disk mode myself and tried again.

Low and behold, the update worked. So apparently, it's necessary to set your iPod to Disk Mode in order to upgrade it to a newer version of it's firmware. Something that I don't believe I have seen written down anywhere.

I posted this for the same reason as the previous post, so that I'll be able to remember it next time I have to update my iPod.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Apple 1, Discussion Section, Disk Mode, Error Message, Firmware, Hmmm, iPod, iTunes, Options Section, Quite Some Time, Reason, Several Times

Man, this problem has been driving me crazy for quite some time. So let me explain what I have been going through before I describe how I finally found and fixed the problem.

Problem:
So for quite some time, my Mac ran really well. However, sometime down the line, I started noticing that, as I was watching videos in QuickTime, the video would just stop for about 5 seconds. This happened pretty consistently. I tried several things to fix it, but never really found the problem. I switched to my Admin account on my Mac and found that the pause wasn't happening. So, now I was really confused. However, this did tell me that it was something that I had installed that was cause this.

Troubleshooting:
Since my Admin account wasn't pausing, the first thing I tried doing was disabling as many programs that start up when I log in as I could. I pretty much disabled all of them and found the pausing was still present.

I looked at my System Preferences and disabled quite a few "Other" Preference Panes as I could. I really thought that Hazel might have been doing it the way that Preference Pane works, but alas, I still had pausing even after disabling it.

All this was done before Leopard came out. When I got my copy of Leopard, I installed a clean copy on my MacBook and tried an update on my Mac Pro. I noticed some odd problems after the upgrade and decided to wipe the Mac Pro and do a clean install.

After that, the pausing went away of course. I figured it would.

I started installing the tools and programs I usually have on my system and for quite a few months my Leopard install ran great. Then, like with Tiger, I started noticing the annoying pausing again.

So I finally got fed up with the problem and went over to Apple's support discussion forums to see if someone else was seeing this same problem. Thank all the gods that be, that someone else had the same problem. Over the course of a few posts in the topic: OSX 10.5 freezes 5 secs every 5 mins, he described the problem that I was having exactly. I was a little worried at first that the problem wasn't going to be discovered since he wasn't really seeing any responses to his query. Fortunately, he was able to figure out what was happening and posted his solution.

So Mr. Michael Q is my hero here. He found that iStat menus has an option to Monitor S.M.A.R.T. drive that was causing the system to pause. When he disabled this option, the pausing stopped. So, I went into System Preferences and disabled the feature myself, and low and behold, the pausing indeed stop!

This is one Preference Pane that I didn't really disable since I couldn't imagine how a set of tools that monitor the system would cause these pauses. Especially since I also use iStat (the application) to conserve menu bar space.

I actually thought that monitoring S.M.A.R.T drives might cause a problem. I use a program called SMARTReporter and I had disabled that program. Plus there is nothing in iStat menus "Drives" pane that mentions monitoring S.M.A.R.T drives. Oddly enough, the setting for monitoring S.M.A.R.T drives is in the "Temps" pane. S.M.A.R.T drive monitoring doesn't really involve temperatures, it monitors the Hard Disks for possible impending failures.

Solution:
So the solution is to simply disable monitoring S.M.A.R.T drives with iStat menus. If you use this Preference Pane, bring it up, switch to the "Temps" pane and uncheck "Monitor S.M.A.R.T drives".

I wanted to post this account for a couple of reasons. One, to burn the solution into my brain so that if I notice pausing again later, I can fix it quickly instead of scratching my head for weeks. I also want to post this so that there is another location on the web that describes the problem and shows how to fix it.

I really hope that this post finds a person scratching their head looking for a solution like I was.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Admin Account, Apple, Crazy Man, Discussion Forums, Freezes, Hazel, Leopard, Mac, Macbook, Odd Problems, Panes, Preference, Quite Some Time, System Preferences, Tiger, Tools