Category Archives: Sad

Music Videos and new iOS

I love my music videos. I have hundreds of them.

I like to play them on the TV at home. I do this using my iPhone and my Apple TV connected to my TV (via Sony amp). The problem is I’ve been putting off upgrading my iPhone’s operating system for ages. I finally did it recently, and the next time I went to play my music videos on the TV I couldn’t.

It seems it removed the ability of the music player to play music videos (ok, still plays them, but not landscape, transmitted to airplay devices).

Now the iPad has had this problem for ages. You can listen to the music videos in the music player, but if you want to watch them, you,have to go to the video player. Now the video player is useless for so embody with hundreds of music videos. You can’t play them in shuffle mode, only telling it to play one, then selecting the next and telling it to play and so on. Also you can’t sort my artist or playlists or anything useful like the music player did.

Well I spend ages reading and searching for a solution.

There seemed to be no solution from apple, there response was just that the feature was removed, basically “suck eggs” as far as I can tell, so I had to go looking for an app to restore the functionally.

What I found was MusicVideoPlayer. It pretty much does what was lost.

It has a few problems that I have found with respect to Airplay, but if you just want to view your music videos on your iPad or iPhone’s screen, it’s what you really need.

If you are wishing to view using airplay, then like I said, I ran into a few problems. Below is a copy of a post I’m going to post on the support forums, so hopefully the airplay problems have a solution, and then I’d be giving it a 4 or 4.5 star rating.

– – – – – –

Hi, brought your app the other day. Works fantastically on the iPhone and iPad’s screen, but I’m having some problems with using it over Airplay (to an Apple TV).

On the iPhone when using airplay the phone keeps timing out and locking itself after the normal amount of time, as the app doesn’t stop it from going to sleep. When it goes to sleep it stops sending video to the Apple TV, though it does start sending audio.

On the iPad it very frequently ends at the end of a video (yes I have shuffle on). When you swipe up, the iPad screen that comes up indicates that the music is paused, but the indicator on the app says the music is playing (though the time position is stopped at the end of the video). Pressing the pause button on the app starts it up again. So for some reason it’s status is going out of sync with what the iPad thinks the playing condition is in.

Is this a known problem, and is their a solution?

Thanks.

Taking a fall

Tuesday night when I got out of the shower there were two missed calls from my mother on my phone.

I tried to call her on and off for quarter of an hour, before I finally have up and went to check Facebook I case there was anything I’d missed.

There was a post from an aunt that my grandma had taken a fall, was in hospital and was going to have surgery for a broken hip between 3pm and 7.30pm.

That sounds like a pretty long time for surgery when your 86, so naturally I was worried, but there was soon a update on Facebook saying she came out of it well.

I finally managed to get hold of mum and got more of the story.

Naturally I was worried about grandma. It was about 8pm by now. I rang the evening operations for work (that’s the guy who gets the work phone at home all might after the office closes), and told him what had happened and I really wanted to go up to Christchurch (we live in Dunedin) to see her.

Ops said just go, he’d start ringing around and find cover for my (6.45am) shift.

So half an hour latter myself and my wife were on the road.

There was no use showing up at Christchurch hospital after midnight, so we crashed at an aunts on the way up, started off the next morning, and got there inside visiting hours.

Another aunt was there and just left as we got in.

We chatted with her for about an hour. We managed to get back to,our car park opposite the hospital with just one minute to spare.

She seemed in good spirits, so that was good.

After that it was time to drive home.

We got home about 6.30pm I think. I had a nap, as even though it was early, long distance driving seems to take it out of you.

So she is doing well, and here I am back at work, sitting at my bus stop, waiting for departing time.

Life’s a lemon and I want my money back

Annoyed!

My float is down $50 in $5 notes. Either I cashed my float last night, or I left my notes on the drivers table.

May have done it last night, or maybe this afternoon.

Last night was routine enough. This afternoon on the other hand was rushed. Once I signed in and read my duty, I had to do a bus change. This means wandering around the yard, looking for a particular parked up bus, start up it up, fill out logbook for it, and then drive it to the changeover bus stop. In this case right out side depo, but just behind the bus exit, which means you have to drive the bus right around the block to get to the right place.

No extra time, so didn’t really have time to get there. Making things worst, I also had to get some more 10c pieces for my float as I was out. I probably took the notes out then. Either way, I’m down on cash, and annoyed about it 🙁

Slack and books

Been pretty lazy recently. While this is the third post today, there has been a big gap before the previous bunch of posts.

Not sure why, but it seems today I’m back from my lazy streak.

Last month I went to the “Regent 24hr book sale”

More of a tradition than anything. My wife likes it as she reads, and thus buys books.

As for me, I used to like it more, as they used to also sell old records and CDs. I love my music, so I’d spend a while hunting through them.

Now they do that as a different event, and I’ve never made it to it yet.

So the book sale has less of an appeal.

Normally I’ll but a drink, grab and ice cream, and go find a comic book to read while my wife loads up on books. I also get to sit back watch the crowd, and listen to the live bands.

Well normally we go about midnight, but I was a little tired, so we never made it until 5am this time. Completely different and quite disappointing.

There was no live band, the food shop was close, and here was only about thirty people wandering around.

A bit of a letdown really.

Oh well, hopefully next year I’ll get there at midnight, music,snacks, and people.

Crazy me

Things haven’t been to good for me the last two or three weeks.

A few weeks ago I broke down. I started stressing lots and lots, and I guess I had an anxiety attack.

I had to drop out of work early, as my brain was just shutting down.

I went and saw the Doc, and was given some meds and a week off.

A week latter I return to work, and only make one and a half days before it happens and I have to go home again.

Back to the Doc, have my meds doubled, and a couple of more days off.

Now I’m back at work again. It’s only a short shift today and tomorrow. I’m feeling quite nervous, but I think I have it under control. I believe, ok I’m pretty darn sure I’ll make it through today.

Guess I’ll just have to run day to day for a while, but I really hope I can hold it together this time. I don’t want to take any more time off work, I have no sick pay, so I’m just taking leave without pay, and it costs me a fortune every time I have to see the Doc.

Drive time

Sadly on Tuesday the SMART services of one of my hard drives started to spit out doom and gloom. You know the type of messages, failure, data loss, magic smoke, back up now, etc..

Well that sucked, so I went and ordered a new drive from ascent at about 10pm Tuesday. Now come lunchtime Thursday, I drop home between shifts to find a courier card (I always miss them). So after a quick trip down town I now have a box with my end drive in it, so that’s great.

Probably work on it tomorrow. Once the new one is in and taken over all the functions of the old one, it will be time to pull the old one. I don’t actually think it’s that old, so I’ll have to check the purchase date, and if it is still under warranty, grab a copy of all the SMART errors, and send it back.

Guess Friday evening will be a little more busy than I had first planned.

Driving pains

It’s Tuesday, lovely and sunny, so why am I posting under sad?

Well last week, actually 2.15pm, last Tuesday (give or take a few minutes) I injured my hand.

Nothing to major. The wind was terrible last Tuesday. I was aware of this when I got to depot, so I was holding on to the van door strongly when I opened it. Guess not strong enough, as the wind ripped it out of my hand, giving my hand a good yank at the same time.

Fifteen minutes latter it still hurt, so I filled out all the work place injury forms as procedure. After all if I came back with a sore wrist the next day and said I hurt myself at work yesterday, nobody will believe you, so just in case, always follow procedure, report and fill out injury forms when it happens.

Well it wasn’t as minor as I was hoping. Next two days hurt all the time. By Friday it was only hurting when in use and for a while afterwards. Naturally driving means it was in use a lot.

Pretty much did nothing with my wrist during the weekend, so come Monday when it still hurt after 30 minutes of driving, decided, six days now, not gone. See a doc.

Well I saw my doctor this afternoon. Pretty much what I expected, painkillers and anti-inflammatories for a couple of weeks.

Better safe than sorry.

Don’t worry about me, doesn’t hurt much, guess I just like to feel sorry for myself every now and then.

It’ll be gone in a few weeks.

Cold

Man, it’s really cold this morning.

Technically the last day of summer was last Friday, and it rained all day, but this morning is ridiculously cold for this time of year.

I even had to go put my gloves on this morning to drive the bus.

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Do you know hard it is to take a picture of you’re own gloves with a iPad?

Pretty easy actually, but try taking one of you wearing them gets a lot harder. I finally gave up and took them off for the photo.

Actually I’ve had them off a lot since the beginning of this article. I typed everything before the photo yesterday. I figured a little latter I’d take and add a photo. Well now it’s the next day, it’s cold again, and I have finally taken the photo, so now this post gets classified as both sad because it’s cold, and lazy as it took so long to complete.

Wet out

Today’s the last day of summer. Maybe they should have made it yesterday instead, as it’s real wet outside.

So I’m at work, and already wet.

My little weather app on my phone says it’s going to stay wet and cold all day as well.

Suck 🙁