As of today, version 1.5.1 of Name My TV Series has become available for Windows, MacOSX and Linux (32- and 64-bit).
This release fixes a minor bug and adds Retina support for Mac users.
Feel free leave a comment at the Rename your TV Series Files article, where you can also download the latest version.
Alright, this was the problem I ran into …
I have two XBox 360’s; an old Phat one and a new XBox 360E (looked better next to my Xbox One and was for $149 on sale at the time). On both I had the same DLC (Downloadable Content).
On the old one however, the harddrive died, so I replaced it with a new one (cheap 500Gb from AliExpress).
Now normally you can re-download the DLC content onto the new disk, but there are reasons why you’d rather do it this way …
For one, my Internet connection is horrendously slow, so downloading 34 games was not an option – I gave up after having it sit there, downloading content for more than 48 hours and quite often failing.
A possible other reason: The DLC you paid for is no longer available.
Yet another reason (for me): You moved to another country and the DLC is no longer available for that region, yet you still have the DLC on your other XBox 360.
You could also use this method to make a backup of your XBox 360’s hard drive, just in case it dies in the future.
All methods I have found online refer to a special cable you can purchase, or hooking up the drives to your PC. The latter is not always practical, especially when you’re only using laptops and do not have a SATA to USB adapter.
Anyhow, in this method we COPY the content, unlike what the XBox 360 likes to do. It standard MOVES content so it can reside on only one device or drive. Or can it …?
The only thing needed for this process is a USB drive or stick and of course access to a XBox 360 or two.
Note : This method will not allow you to illegally copy DLC from a buddy to your XBox 360, and that is not the intended of this article any way. You will need to be using the same XBox Live account on the other XBox 360, otherwise you will have to transfer the license.
ApplePi-Baker, the application I developed for Mac OS X user that like to work with the Raspberry Pi, is now available in version 1.7.3. This version (hopefully) addresses the “stuck after entering sudo password” problem.
Additionally, the option to make a backup of a read-only drive has been resolved as well and Retina mode can now be enabled. Hopefully this happens automatically, but in case it doesn’t, please execute the following from a Terminal window:
defaults write com.tweaking4all.PiBaker AppleMagnifiedMode -bool no
Thanks to Slash (Nuno) for his prompt help testing the new version.
As usual: Download it from the original article where you can also leave feedback.
Some of you may have read my article on how to Dual Boot Windows 8.x and Ubuntu 14.x … which works great, but what if you want to undo this; remove Ubuntu Dual Boot and remove the boot manager?
For example when you’ve decided that running Ubuntu from a USB stick is sufficient, or maybe run Ubuntu in a virtual machine with VMWare, Parallels, or VirtualBox. Or maybe you’re selling your computer and the new owner has no desire to have a Dual Boot on their “new” PC?
In this article I’ll show you how to remove the Dual Boot. I’m doing this based on the way I have installed Dual Boot, but it will very likely work for installations that have not followed my article. No additional tools are needed, like special applications, a repair or recovery CD or a live USB stick.
Do keep in mind though that this article is based on a computer that has a UEFI “BIOS” and not an old regular BIOS.
It has been quite a while … but here it finally is, the new version of AVI FourCC Fix!
The changes have not been dramatically, but a few cosmetic changes, a few minor bug fixes and the direct support for the newer “q264” format by QNAP made it worthwhile doing it.
Note that clicking the QNAP fix buttons will now right away select the right codec FourCC’s and apply them.
For Mac users: Drag and drop on the main form now works too.
Read the “FourCC Changer” and the “Playback or Conversion of QNAP Surveillance Video Recordings” articles for more details and download.
Of course: You can find the file(s) also on the Downloads Page.
As of today, version 1.5.0 of Name My TV Series has become available for Windows, MacOSX and Linux (32- and 64-bit).
This release adds a few new features and bug fixes.
– Bug fix for episodes >99 (bug 010 instead of 001)
– Added %E2 to auto grow leading zero’s when episode count >99
– Update TheTVDB logo
– Mac: Drag and Drop on Application works now as well.
– Bug fix: Drag and Drop RMVB files allowed
– Bug fix: Clear after rename now functional
– Registry data format changed to reflect new options
– Bug fix in Preferences: Update example string working again.
– Alternating Season colors in the complete episode list
– Alternating Season colors in Rename Scheme
– Bug fix: Windows storing temp images in application directory causes errors
– Bug Fix: German/French (non-Latin) Characters under Windows
– Bug Fix: Weird characters causing invalid integer error
– Bug fix: Shows that count with years now work properly
– Bug Fix: odd sorting, rewritten sorting routine from scratch
– Added %EC for using a total/sequential count of episodes.
– Default sort order is Airdate. Optional “DVD” sort order (check “DVD” and click “Get Episodes”)
– Broken Google search EPGuide fixed
– Handle 403 error from TheTVDB
I’m aware that more bugs/feature requests might be out there, feel free leave a comment at the Rename your TV Series Files article.
Back in the day, when Firewire was a standard for any Mac, we could use Firewire to directly connect one Mac to another and transfer files at a very respectable speed – the so called “Target Disk Mode” or “IP over Firewire”.
This did not only help us in sharing files between 2 Mac’s, it even allowed you to boot one Mac from the DVD or CDRom drive on the other Mac, which is great when you have only one Mac with a CD or DVD drive.
Unfortunately, Firewire has gone out of the graces of Apple and has been replaced with Thunderbolt (and USB 3.x), and the trick to connect 2 Mac to each other over a Firewire cable have been lost and forgotten.
Please keep in mind, in case you’re having old Mac’s that have Firewire: this works exactly the same as with FireWire, you’d just use a Firewire cable instead. The firewire trick works under Windows as well (see this old WeetHet.nl Article).
In this article, I’ll show you how you can have a very fast data transfer between two Mac’s, using a Thunderbolt cable.
You probably will not need this every day, and I admit that goes for me as well. Today however I needed this: screen recording things I’d be doing on my iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod).
In the past we’d need to JailBreak our iOS device, but with the arrival of Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) and iOS 8, we can do this straight on our Mac without any extra tools or tricks – just with the build-in tools from Mac OS X and iOS, in this case QuickTime.
In this article I’ll show you how you can make a screen recording (make a video of the screen of your iOS device) with a well hidden feature of QuickTime.
ApplePi-Baker, the application I developed for Mac OS X user that like to work with the Raspberry Pi, is now available in version 1.7, compatible with (at least) Mac OS X 10.11 beta 3 (El Capitan).
With ApplePi-Baker, you can write an IMG file to an SD-Card, prepare an SD-Card for NOOBS use, and make a backup of an SD-Card.
This new version adds compatibility for El Capitan (Mac OS X 10.11), support for identifying SD Cards that have been inserted in READ-ONLY mode, some improved device information, and an improved Sudo password entry dialog.
Unfortunately, doing compression while reading/writing prevents me from using the authentication dialog provided by Apple, and I had to resort to SUDO usage. On all my Mac’s this did not present a problem, but you, the user, need to be part of the Admin user group for this to work. I’m unsure if this is done by default or not. If users run into issues with this, please report it in the comments (here on the ApplePi-Baker article).
For this reason v1.5.1 will remain available in the downloads – for those users that run into a problem.
See the ApplePi-Baker article or the Downloads Page for download and details.
Also: many many thanks to the people that did a generous donation to support my work, it’s highly appreciated!
Enjoy 
Some of you might have read one or the other article at Tweaking4All, related to moving Audio and/or Video files to your beloved iOS device (iPod, iPad or iPhone) without the use of iTunes. Not many of us like iTunes, and that includes me.
As a response to one of these articles, one of the Tweaking4All visitors recommended WALTR, a new application available for the Mac OS X and Windows platform, which allows copying music, ringtones and video files to your iOS device without iTunes.
As usual, I was pretty skeptical as we have all seen too many of these “miracle apps”, especially when they are not free.
WALTR is not free either and initially, $29.95 sounds pretty steep for such an application, but I promise you: it’s worth it! It makes transferring audio and video to your iOS super fast and super simple.
So if you frequently want to transfer audio and/or video files to your iOS device, then I can highly recommend this application!
If you want to do it only once or twice, then at least consider using the free trial version.
In this article I’ll discuss the Windows version, and will give you a quick overview how to get started, and what it does and does not do, and some tips and tricks that might be helpful. I did write the same article for Mac OS X as well.
Some of you might have read one or the other article at Tweaking4All, related to moving Audio and/or Video files to your beloved iOS device (iPod, iPad or iPhone) without the use of iTunes. Not many of us like iTunes, and that includes me.
As a response to one of these articles, one of the Tweaking4All visitors recommended WALTR, a new application available for the Mac OS X and Windows platform, which allows copying music, ringtones and video files to your iOS device without iTunes.
As usual, I was pretty skeptical as we have all seen too many of these “miracle apps”, especially when they are not free.
WALTR is not free either and initially, $29.95 sounds pretty steep for such an application, but I promise you: it’s worth it! It makes transferring audio and video to your iOS super fast and super simple.
So if you frequently want to transfer audio and/or video files to your iOS device, then I can highly recommend this application!
If you want to do it only once or twice, then at least consider using the free trial version.
In this article I’ll discuss the Mac OS X version, and will give you a quick overview how to get started, and what it does and does not do, and some tips and tricks that might be helpful. I have also written a Windows version of this same article.
In one of my current projects, I’d like to use a few motion or proximity sensors, also known as PIR sensors.
PIR sensors, or Passive Infra Red sensors, can be great for Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects, and can be bought really cheap – I only paid about a dollar per sensors in bundle of 10 PIR sensors from eBay, but you can get them really cheap at places like Amazon or AliExpress as well.
In this short article we will see how we these sensors work, how the can be used, how we can test them, and possible fine tine them a little bit.
No Arduino, Raspberry Pi or anything like that is needed. Just a PIR, a LED, a battery and a resistor.
For those of you who have visited Tweaking4All more often, you might have noticed that I really like Lazarus Pascal. I use it to develop little freeware applications for multiple platforms (if possible), like for Windows, MacOS X and Linux.
So why not on a Raspberry Pi (Raspbian)? Lazarus allows Rapid Application Development in the good old Delphi style which would be ideal for a platform like the Raspberry Pi. Specially since the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B seems to be fast enough as well.
Now me and my brother-in-law (Jean-Pierre) are planning to build an Alarm system based on a Raspberry Pi 2, use a TouchScreen and plenty of sensor. Lazarus Pascal could be ideal for this purpose.
To my disappointment, it took me a lot of time to get Lazarus to run on my new Raspberry Pi 2 Model B … so that’s why I wrote this article, which is basically a compilation of a lot of steps that I found scattered all over the Internet.
If you’re a Mac user, and you’re enjoying the newer MacOS X versions, then you might have noticed that Apple’s own implementation of SMB simply sucks … it just doesn’t work and for a company like Apple to just leave it this way is beyond me.
SMB is a network protocol, commonly know as “Microsoft Windows Network” or Samba, which allows sharing of files and devices over a network. Most of us use this on our Windows computers and theoretically (it seems) MacOS X should support this as well.
For me it’s to share files with family, friends, or to share media files with my XBMC/Kodi setup.
In this article, I’ll show you how to quickly get started with a working Samba implementation, instead of using Apple’s broken implementation – for this we will make use of SMBUp.
I’ve been playing with ambient light for my TV for a while now, as you can see in the “Ambient TV lighting with XBMC Boblight, OpenElec and WS2811/WS2812 LEDs“, to make colorful lights (LEDs) light up matching the video you’re seeing on your TV.
The downside of that project is that it only works for a dedicated HTPC running for example Kodi (XBMC).
But what if I’d like to see this with video from my XBox 360, XBox One, Wii, or … Blu-ray player or cable box?
Besides the fact that we need to grab this video, and all it’s technical complications, we will be running into a copy protection issue called HDCP, a HDMI feature nobody really asked for.
Please note that I’m not writing this article to promote pirating content! This article is solely aimed at using non-HDCP compliant equipment with equipment that seems to require HDCP. So I’m looking at older HDMI LCD/LED/Plasma TV’s, HDMI Projectors, Game Recording (PS3), taking screenshots for documentation and/or articles, and of course my own little project to generate ambient light behind my TV! Please keep this in mind.
