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Category Archives: The Tool Box
Aperature Library Could Not Be Opened
After much research about the right photo organization tool to use, I decided to download Apple’s Aperture v3′s 30-day trial version before investing the $200 to buy it. Right away it installed flawlessly and allowed me to create a library on my Western Digital (MyBookWorld II Edition) network drive. Yippee! I spent the next 4 hours importing my images, also located on my WD drive, into the library and naming faces. I was very pleased. Then life got in the way and I couldn’t return to Aperture for about a week. That’s when IT happened. I launched Aperture and got the message “There was an error opening the database for the library ‘<file path and name of library>’. The library could not be opened because the file system of the library’s volume is unsupported.” Excuse me?!? All I did was walk away from it for a week and all of a sudden my WD drive is unsupported? When I tried to create another library onto the same network drive, I got the message that the drive wasn’t in a supported format. Huh? Didn’t it just create one on it about a week ago? <sigh> Back to googling the forums again…for … Continue reading
Solution to iMac’s Finder “Connection Failed”
As a Mac newbie I was immediately impressed with how polite and professional the AppleCare reps are. However, polite professionalism notwithstanding, what really makes me a satisfied customer is actually having my problem resolved. Apple missed an easy opportunity on that one today. Here’s my situation: Our household experienced a 3-second brown-out last week. It took my 27″ iMac down as well as my network-attached Western Digital drive (MyWorldBook Edition II). The WD drive choked with a strange lighting sequence on the front of it and I couldn’t manually reset it via the Power Button so I had to disconnect the power cord then connect it back in. Upon rebooting both the iMac and the WD drive, I was able to see the WD drive in Finder’s Shared devices list. However, when I clicked on it, it said “Connection Failed”. Yet, when I did Go -> Connect to Server and reconnected the device, I was able to access the drive and everything on it. Still, any application that I launched after that (eg. iPhoto, Word, etc.) that needed access to a file on the WD drive, I would get the same “Connection Failed” message and would have to reconnect AGAIN. … Continue reading
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Use Shelfari for Your Kid’s Reading Log & Inspire Them to Read More!
If you’re looking for a neat way to keep track of the books your kids are reading (or have read) and to inspire them to read more, Shelfari is a great online resource for this purpose! Last year, I got turned on to this online social networking site for bookworms, where you can share what you’re reading with your friends and, in turn, see what they’re reading. It’s fabulous! I get so many great recommendations for books from my friends and, likewise, get to see the not-so-nice reviews of other books! If someone, on or off Shelfari, recommends a book to read I very simply add it to my “Plan to Read” queue. I never run out of recommendations! After a few months of using it, I got the idea to create an account for my elementary age son and started tracking the books he was reading. Previously, we kept track of his reading with a good-old fashioned pen-and-paper reading log but it was sloppy, with ripped pages, and not very pretty to look at. Shelfari is very pretty, displays covers of books on your virtual “shelf”, is convenient and easy to use, and keeps track of how many books … Continue reading
2-Minute Fix for HP’s “Print Cartridge Error”
NOTE: Please do not email me or leave a comment requesting me to send you this fix. The fix is NOT mine so I cannot send it to you. This post simply links you to the developer where you can email him directly and request him to send you his fix. Another clever fellow was recently added to my hero list. He wrote some code to fix the annoying “Print Cartridge Error” that HP printers display whenever the ink cartridges have met their expiration date. This happens to those individuals who prefer to use the same ink cartridge to refill their ink supply for pennies rather than drop a bundle of cash on new cartridges, and it also happens to those individuals who use their printer infrequently and/or buys a lot of cartridges on eBay and stockpiles them. I spent days Googling and trying all the convoluted attempts to “fake” the printer into thinking it’s an earlier point in time to no avail. I was ready to tear the darn box apart to find that elusive battery when I stumbled upon said hero on some now-forgotten forum. I emailed the chap and he promptly mailed me his fix. It literally … Continue reading
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The 60-Second Fix to “Can’t Connect to iTunes Store” Issue
Suddenly and without warning I was unable to connect to the iTunes Store from my Vista home computer. It just hung there in the “Loading…” phase. I could access the iTunes Store from each of the other computers in my house but that didn’t help me any. How utterly annoying to lose access to the iTunes Store, podcasts, album artwork, etc. from the only computer in my house on which I keep my iTunes library…and for no apparent reason. For DAYS I tried every conceivable internet suggestion to resolve the problem including: modifying router settings, anti-virus settings, firewall settings, iTunes settings, browser settings, uninstalling, re-installing, rebooting, doing a system restore…to no avail. And Apple’s website was pathetically useless. Then some tech-head, aka “My Hero”, offered this 60-second solution from an online forum: delete the iTunes preferences file in two places. Here’s how: 1. Close iTunes. 2. Delete the iTunesPrefs.xml file from C:Users+user name+AppDataRoamingApple ComputeriTunes. 3. Delete the iTunesPrefs.xml file from C:Users+user name+AppDataLocalApple ComputeriTunes. 4. Launch iTunes & follow the setup prompts. Voilà! I be iTunes happy again!
The MobileMe Syncing Blues
Apple’s MobileMe service is a beautiful thing. For $100/year, all my contacts, emails, calendars and browser bookmarks are completely and instantly synchronized on any PC I happen to be running Microsoft Outlook on, as well as on my iPhone. And it’s worked splendidly for almost the past year that I’ve been using it. That is, until most recently when suddenly and inexplicably I started to receive the following error message during the automatic sync process: “Calendars could not be synced due to inconsistent data.” This was annoying when it first happened to my Vista desktop but I soon learned that the problem does not discriminate operating systems as it also spread to my XP desktop and then finally to my Vista laptop. Now all 3 of my PCs could no longer sync Calendars with MobileMe (it’s my understanding that this problem could also happen with Contacts). Forget any help from Apple. Unless you own a Mac, you can’t speak to anyone or even chat with anyone that could help. The various technical forums offered no viable solutions as each one of the suggestions I tried failed miserably including blowing away my Outlook Calendar completely and trying to sync down from the MobileMe cloud. … Continue reading
