prostheticHead.Network

Me with my just updated iPod

I had not used my iPod for almost 6 months and after next weekend I have a reason to use my iPod again but I had a problem. I have in that time of iPod neglect dumped iTunes as my music player/manager so I had no way of getting my new songs onto it without major hassles and flaky foobar plugins.

I decided it was time to give Rockbox another go. I had previously used Rockbox a while ago and did not like it and had a lot of random problems but I have to say Rockbox has changed a lot since then. What I was most impressed with was how easy it was to setup now. Simply download the automated setup, connect the iPod to your computer and you are away.

The defult GUI of Rockbox is well to put it bluntly crap compared to the original firmware and even with skins dose not improve that much. Any issues with the GUI though go out the window when you can finaly play Ogg media files and Doom on your iPod.

I recomend giving Rockbox another swing and seeing if the new version 3 fixes any problem you had with the older versions. If you have never heard of Rockbox but wish to dump iTunes for any of the much better music players/managers avalable have a look into Rockbox 3 it just may make you like your old iPod again!

Rockbox can be downloaded from the Rockbox website

Today bored at work I noticed a service on my laptop running called ##Id_String2.6844F930_1628_4223_B5CC_5BB94B879762## what is this I thought, my first idea was it could be something bad like a virus or some malware why else would it have such a nonsense name. Opening the properties of the service I then noticed it was Apples Bonjour Service but I had no Apple programs on my computer anymore why would some strangely named service be still running on my PC?

Turns out this service is what seems to make iTunes network sharing of songs work and replaced the old iTunes Helper process and if you have recently uninstalled iTunes (like I had) it may still be running on your PC too.

To get rid of it is simple although not just a matter of uninstalling it like it should be.

1. First open CMD and type in “C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe” -remove
   if you are running 64 bit windows it will be in “C:\Program Files (x86)\Bonjour”
2. Open the folder C:\Program Files\Bonjour\ in windows explorer and rename the file mdnsNSP.dll to mdnsNSP.old
3. restart your PC
4. delete the C:\Program Files\Bonjour\ folder

Why this service isnt just removed automaticly when you uninstall iTunes is beyond me but thats Apple for you.

I worked out a very cool feature of Facebook today, Emailing photos to your Facebook profile.

I get free emails on my mobile phone plan so I wondered if there was a way of sending photos to my account using an email like Picasa Web Albums allows. After a bit of hunting I workout there is an option to do this is very easy to setup.

First send an Email with a photo attached to “mobile@facebook.com”. After about 1 minute you will recive an email back from Facebook instructing you to goto http://facebook.com/mobile to claim your phone using the supplyed code. Enter the code into the page and thats it you can now email photos to your profile.