A new release of Parallels for Mac is out (RC2, Build 3150). It adds USB 2.0 support, a full-featured virtual CD/DVD drive and Coherence (the ability to run a Windows app without having to see Windows). For recent switchers, there’s a new “Transporter RC2” bundled in as well—this lets you migrate an existing Windows installation into a Parallels Virtual machine.
WordPress 2.1 breaks ecto
If you use ecto to manage your WordPress blog, you might have noticed that ecto quit working with the release of WordPress 2.1. I found mention of a “fix” out on the net so you can either wait until WordPress makes the correction (no ETA on this one) or do it yourself:
xlmrpc.php
line 978-982 probably looks like this:
$categories[] = array(
'categoryName' => get_cat_name($catid),
'categoryId' => $catid,
'isPrimary' => $isPrimary
);
change it to this:
$categories[] = array(
'categoryName' => get_cat_name($catid),
'categoryId' => (string)$catid,
'isPrimary' => $isPrimary
);
It should start working again…
Nerdiversion
Made a small tech breakthrough recently—creating a ringtone for my Razr from a song in my iTunes library. Why? I could say it’s because my daughter told me the ring of my phone was so lame but I’m used to ignoring that sort of abuse. The official reason is I wanted to experiment with Bluetooth on my laptop and a Bluetooth-enabled phone was what I had handy.
iTunes to Ringtone
The two pieces you need are WireTapPro ($19) (or Audio Hijack Pro ($32)) and a sound editor like Audacity (open source) or Fission ($32). I used WireTapPro (a utility for capturing your mac’s audio output and sending it to a file).
Step by step:
- Launch WireTapPro and configure it to capture audio output as a mono mp3, sampling bitrate of 22.050.
- Select a name and location for the resulting output file.
- Launch iTunes.
- Cue up the song you want and just before you reach the part you want to capture hit the “record” button on WireTapPro.
- Let the song play for about 30 seconds (that’s as long as most phones will ring)
- Hit the “stop” button on WireTapPro
- Optional: Use Audacity (or Fission) to edit the file WireTapPro created. Chances are you didn’t hit the precise beginning or end of the snippet you wanted to capture. Either of these utilities help you remove unwanted lead-in or lead-out.
Moving this mp3 file to your phone is a function of your phone’s BlueTooth configuration choices but it’s pretty much a simple file transfer.
One other tip: You can use this method on songs in your personal iTunes library or troll the iTunes music store and sample from the preview snippets they offer for every song in the store.