@TWSheppard@twit.social
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

TWSheppard

@TWSheppard@twit.social

Tom Sheppard was born in a maple syrup mine in northern Alberta while his mother vacationed in Saskatchewan. His father denied being an alien until the day he was repatriated to his home planet.

Currently, Tom is a retired techie who is very popular with family and friends who need tech support. What they don't know is that he can't keep up with how crappy tech is getting. He is a destroyer of software. If he hasn't tested it, it hasn't been tested.

He hates computers—but don't we all?

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

TWSheppard, to plex
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

has sooo many bugs. I tried to build a smart playlist that lists movies not watched in 5 years. It doesn't just match the LAST watched date like it's supposed to, it matches ANY watched date. And there's no hope of it getting fixed because, like Apple, "Plex doesn't fix bugs!"

TWSheppard, (edited )
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@jann My favourite is that for music tracks they had to expend effort to consolidate the individual track genres into an album genre. But they didn’t put the genre in the database for the track, just the album. So an album with mixed genres shows up in a smart playlist for ANY genre in the album. I would not have made that design decision.

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@jann That’s like the Jethro Tull album, Living in the Past, that’s all rock except for one Christmas song. So Plex has album genres for rock and Christmas. So all the album’s tracks appear in a “smart” playlist of Christmas music. They clearly don’t use their own product for listening to music.

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@bhcompy @jann Thanks. I notice I can now create an advanced filter using "Track Genre" but when I try to do that it won't let me enter anything into the selection box. It says "No options".

In the metadata_items table of the database I noticed that when they added support for track genres, they didn't extract the genres from the track ID3 tags so it looks like I'll have to delete all my music and re-import (assuming it will populate genres properly then) or write a script to do it myself.

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@bhcompy @jann When I edit a music track using Plex's interface, the only tag it allows for music tracks is "Mood". I can't figure out how I'm supposed to enter track genres other than editing the database.

The only mention of track genres in the 1.40.0.7998 release of Feb 14 is: "(Music) Store track genres and add filtering options"

It's nice they added filtering options but that's not useful if we can't add track genres short of editing the database.

A Plex edit screen for music track tags showing only the option to enter Moods.

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@bhcompy @jann I'm running the same version as you but I'm not offered track genres.

From the web interface if I click the wrench (settings) icon, it shows me I'm using Plex Web Version 4.125.1. Do you have the same?

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@bhcompy @jann Bizarre. I would have thought the same server version would use the same web version, but something is strange. I'm running the server on macOS Catalina. What OS are you using? Perhaps versions are not kept in sync across platforms?

TWSheppard, to Ottawa
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

Now that I'm riding a brand new expensive e-bike instead of my 46-year old 10-speed, I've noticed the dearth of bike racks at stores I'd like to ride to in (Stittsville).

With the old bike I'd just lock the wheel and nobody in their right mind would steal it—it prevented the kids from taking a joy ride.

But the e-bike needs to be locked to an immovable object to prevent someone from tossing it in their truck and speeding off in a few seconds.

Bike friendly is more than bike lanes.

TWSheppard, to random
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

One of the most difficult problems in computer programming, apparently, is updating existing displayed content based on the creation of a filter. When I block a user in Ivory, their posts remain depending on what level I’m at.

In NewsBlur, telling it I don’t want to see content from a site removes that story, but another story in the timeline remains.

Come on folks, it’s trivial to refilter the whole timeline. I find this lack of excellence disheartening.

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

I think I’m going to have to find a new Mastodon client. Ivory just isn’t cutting it. In addition to what I previously posted in this thread, Ivory also does not block posts from a user I’ve blocked if some other user posts a link to the blocked user’s post. That’s just absurd.

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@jann My subscription renews next January and unless I see useful developments worthy of renewing, I’ll hunt around for a different client. The problem with forcing your customers into a subscription model is that there’s an implied promise to continually offer value. I’m not seeing the value but that doesn’t mean others aren’t.

I’ve made some suggestions that haven’t been implemented so I guess the developer and I have different priorities, which is fine. Just don’t expect my renewal.

TWSheppard, to ChatGPT
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

ChatGPT or its successors are going to kill Google search.

I was searching for what I thought was a reasonably easy thing and the first 5 results were Google pushing YouTube videos. No—NO!—I do not want to watch some dumb video to find a simple answer. After the first result were 4 alternate searches. There were no solutions on the 1st page of results. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Using the exact query with ChatGPT and it returned a conversational reply telling me exactly what I needed to do.

TWSheppard, to random
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

I use mobile and used the in-app purchase to remove ads and get access to a shortcut menu. Worked fine for years. After the latest update ads now overlay the shortcut menu. Is this a bug or enshitification?

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

Turns out that Fongo has joined the enshitification march and ad removal has changed to a subscription service with no notice, no warning in the update release notes, and no grandfathering existing customers. Are there any decent companies left?

TWSheppard, to random
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To every app developer whose release notes consist solely of, “Bug fixes and performance improvements” every single time for countless updates, I say, “You suck at coding.”

jann, to random
@jann@twit.social avatar

Note to everyone: If you have a "Trump Country" sticker on the back window of your lifted truck, I am ABSOLUTELY NOT letting you merge in front of me!

Flip me off all you want!

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@jann Careful, you don’t want to get shot.

TWSheppard, to random
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Dear app developers, every time you bury a function another level down, you’re actually costing your users two taps—one to step into the level to access the function, and the second to step out. When you’ve got lots of screen area to play with, minimalism at the cost of ease of use is the wrong tradeoff. I’m looking at you, #ecobee.

https://twit.social/@TWSheppard/110583276266765137

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

Early in the pandemic, our Subaru’s car stereo system died. I checked all the fuses. They were all OK. I did a lot of research online. It seemed like we need to be replaced. Subaru didn’t have the units AND it was going to be thousands of dollars. We just switched to a Bluetooth speaker.

Today we had our suddenly failed air conditioning system repaired and…The stereo system works again. Apparently a relay in the car that is part of the AC electronics also feeds the stereo system.

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@glennf Many years ago I lost my mind and bought a Plymouth Voyager van. As it aged the rear wiper started blowing fuses. I had to disconnect the wiper because the same fuse was used for … get this … the air bags. The idiocy of this design left me in awe.

TWSheppard, to plex
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

I’m trying to watch OTA TV on #Plex for Roku but it keeps crashing. So I switch to Plex on the Apple TV and it keeps stalling and bailing out back to the guide. Switching channels takes 10 seconds.

My ancient copy of EyeTV running on macOS Sierra is vastly more stable. I have 3 tuners connected and it’s capable of showing and recording all 3 simultaneously while playing back a recording on a 2014 Mac mini.

Today’s devs have never seen a quality product so they develop flaky products too.

sezduck, to random
@sezduck@twit.social avatar

#Ivory lists still do not respect the native Mastodon filters. I reported this issue to the @ivory team more than 7 months ago. 😐

This is extremely disappointing. Filters are an extremely important feature, & many of us count on them for our mental wellbeing.

Ivory is a paid subscription-based app. Other apps (many from dev teams of one, some of them free) have had no problem implementing this.

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@sezduck @ivory Maybe I don’t understand how it’s supposed to work, but I’ll mute someone in my home timeline but still see them in the local timeline. They should be muted everywhere immediately.

And since I follow several people from my local server, it’s really a waste of my time to see posts in both timelines. Once I’ve seen it in home, don’t show it in local.

Plus I want a chronological timeline. I’m sure whoever first implemented reverse order did so while coming off a bender.

TWSheppard, to apple
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

macOS Sarcoma's Screen Sharing has decided that when I connect to my main computer that has two screens, the second screen will be black. In addition, the cursor won't move, and I have to fight to get the insertion point into the password box on the login screen. So yeah, about par for Sarcoma—Apple's flakiest OS in ages.

#Apple #macOS #Sonoma #ScreenSharing

jann, to random
@jann@twit.social avatar

Sentences normally contain punctuation. Paragraphs are unreadable without it. Please use it. It's there for a reason!

TWSheppard, (edited )
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@jann Someone once sent me a note without capitalization or punctuation. I replied, “InthefutureifyouexpectmetoreplytoyourmessagesthenpleaseusepropercapitalizationandpunctuationandIinturnwillusespaces.”

jann, to random
@jann@twit.social avatar

Airlines Are Coming for Your Carry-Ons - The Wall Street Journal https://apple.news/ABXUs4sS1S3iBtyzR0xoqtw

TWSheppard,
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

@jann And then our coats, purses, laptops, tablets, …

“I’m sorry, sir, but those pants, shirt, underwear, socks , and shoes are $25 each. No, sir, EACH shoe and EACH sock. Yes, you can travel naked but you’ll have to pay $500 for a seat cover.”

TWSheppard, to apple
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

I've set a yearly reminder to clean up macOS Catastrophe's system logs that Apple's developers never saw fit to do because they invisibly eat up your disk space causing you to run out of disk and be forced to delete stuff you really want or buy a new computer. deep breath

Here are the infinitely growing ones I've found (there are no doubt others):

/var/log/corecaptured.log
/var/log/fsck_apfs.log
/var/log/fsck_hfs.log
/var/log/install.log

#Apple #macOS #Catalina

TWSheppard, to random
@TWSheppard@twit.social avatar

Them: "Hey, how do you like our nifty API? Pretty cool, eh?"

Me: "Mainly, but it would sure be nice if you'd stop returning 'HTTP 500 - Internal Server Error' so often for the exact same command I sent a minute ago."

Them: "Sure, but did you notice how nifty our API is?"

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