Gmail contact picture problem

I've been having a problem in Gmail where my contact picture was not being saved. It would be there for the session, but if I changed computers or browsers my contact picture would be reset to an old photo that I don't even remember uploading.

Searching for answers yielded nothing but I finally figured something out. I clicked the "older version" link in Gmail. Once in the older version I deleted my contact picture and reuploaded a new one. I saved the new photo and when I went back to the "newer version" all seems fine.

Gmail must have an issue in the "newer version" even though it doesn't seem all that new. I hope this helps someone.

UPDATE: This is not a permanent fix. After a day or so my contact picture was deleted again. C'mon Gmail.

Real Life Twitter

This video says it all.

There is no such thing as unbiased News

Are you a CNN person or a FoxNews person? Either way, you're not really getting real unbiased news. Instead of experienced journalists giving us news, we get biased "infotainment" these days. Different networks target different audiences and bring the biased news they feel their audience wants to hear. In the old days real reporters went out and investigated stories, then came back and told us what they found. These days, a pretty face reads stories they think we want to hear off a teleprompter, and the broadcast includes lots of music, flashy graphics, and so-called news alerts. CNN and MSNBC are definitely left of center, while FoxNews is definitely right of center.

It used to be that conservatives felt that mainstream media was biased to the left. They were probably right as most journalists are left of center, but they were just slightly left of center. Since the arrival of FoxNews, other networks have drifted further left to distinguish themselves from Fox, and Fox has drifted to the right. Now, nobody is in the middle.

I find that FoxNews is less biased than other networks for the simple fact that they present both sides even though most of the hosts are right of center. On other networks, the hosts are left of center and they don't provide any opposing view.

What I find troubling about Fox is the way they package the news with music. Since when do we need music for news? I'm so sick of FoxNews Alerts too because they keep running them over and over as if some major piece of news is breaking. Instead it's usually something silly like a car chase, or the arrest of a murder suspect, or something else supposedly tantalizing.

So where do we turn? How can we get nothing but the facts? The simple truth is we can't. Until things change dramatically we'll have to take everything we see on Television with a grain of salt. Someone needs to give us the straight up news and stop giving us what they think we want to hear. That cannot happen because the sad truth is the job of media is not to give us news. Their job is to sell advertising and in order to do that they need to be as popular as they can be.

Firefox + Yahoo Mail = Problems

For the past few weeks I've been having problems with Firefox. I thought it was a Flash issue so I uninstalled and reinstalled Flash. All seemed well, but now every time I go to Yahoo Mail Firefox is sluggish and draggy until I quit and restart it. If I don't visit Yahoo Mail I'm fine. Weird.

Jack Kemp - What a Good Guy

Jack Kemp was such a great guy that it's hard to find anyone who didn't like him. You can find people who argued with him, but everyone liked Jack Kemp. He was just a nice guy.

I didn't know Mr. Kemp, but I did share an elevator with him once in Orlando. He was speaking with several young people in front of the elevator while my brother and I waited for the same elevator. He was exactly the same in person and the guy you see on TV. He was electric and animated and it seemed like there was a spotlight on him. Perhaps it was just the white hair and his pressed white shirt and bright blue tie. Whatever it was, he was unique.

I had no idea he was sick and his death came as such a shock. I'll simply say, we need more people in the world like Jack Kemp.

Arlen Specter should retire

Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party is troubling because he is only looking out for himself. Doesn't anyone care that our politicians only care about themselves, and not the people they represent?

Mr. Specter is 79 years old and has been in the senate a very long time. Why not just retire? I was on a flight with Mr. Specter from Philadelphia to Chicago last year and I was shocked at how old he looked. On TV he looks good, but in the airport he walked very slowly and was hunched over like an old man. Why can't he just let go and retire? Ego, lust for power, and greed come to mind. In any other profession people would expect him to retire but in politics, we accept just about anything.

Mr. Specter admits that he was about to lose a Republican primary race so he simply switched parties to save his own butt. Joe Lieberman did a similar thing last year when he switched to become an independent. Why do the American people put up with this kind of behavior? We need to stop electing people on celebrity and popularity. We need to elect leaders with skills. We've already elected a President based on celebrity and now we have an ex-Senator as President, an ex-Senator as Vice President, and an ex-First Lady who became an ex-Senator as Secretary of State. What have all these senators brought us? A big mess. We need people who have actually run something to lead our government. Instead we just settle on a popularity contest.

Oh well, Arlen Specter is just another example of a politician looking out for himself. I have an idea for all the politicians out there. Get a real job like the rest of us.

Best political cartoon ever?

Someone sent this to me in an email. It speaks for itself.

Obama agrees with Bush after blasting him in the campaign

What can I say, Obama is just like every other politician. He's full of it. After blasting President Bush and accusing him of "undermined the Constitution," President Obama now realizes that President Bush was correct in keeping the secrets around the Terrorist Surveillance program and is fighting the same lawsuit that President Bush fought. What does this prove? It proves that we cannot trust what candidates say in a campaign. Obama did not have all the facts in the campaign yet he chose to blast Bush for things he now agrees with. He took cheap shots at Bush for political gain.

Read the article for the particulars, but the bottom line is we need to stop electing people based on celebrity, and what they say in a campaign. We need to elect people who have a record of accomplishments. Most Senators don't have to run anything so they don't make good managers. We need to elect someone who has done something like run a state, or a military department, or a small or large business. Someone who knows what they are doing.

Whether you are conservative or liberal, please vote for people based on a record of accomplishments and not celebrity or campaign rhetoric.

[ Related Link ]

A Few Things Mac Should Do Like Windows

I know what you're thinking. "Are you crazy? Mac is so much better than Windows." That may be true, but there are a few things that I wish my Mac could do the way Windows does it.

1. Alt + Tab
I really miss my Alt + Tab keystrokes in Windows. I got it to work on my Mac with a third party program called Witch, but it should be built in to the OS. You can do a Command + Tab in Mac OS X, but that doesn't bring up a program that may be running but is minimized to the Dock.

2. Apple Menu as Start Menu
Wasn't there an Apple Menu in the old Mac OS's that acted like the Windows Start Menu? Sometimes I want to be able to launch a program from a menu and not from the Dock. I downloaded a program called Butler to make it happen, but again it should be built into the OS.

3. Menus appear in Window
I don't like the way Mac has one master menu at the top of the screen that changes as you change applications. I think it makes much more sense to have a menu in each window.

4. Ability to Move the Apple Menu
This may be possible, but I don't know of a way to do it What if I want the menu on the bottom of the screen? I don't, but somebody might want that.

5. Stop relying on applications like iPhoto
I prefer to browser my pictures in the Finder window and not in iPhoto. I can do that on my Mac, but if I'm trying to import a photo into an iMovie project I can't just grab it from a folder. I have to import it into iPhoto first. That's lame.

6. Write to NTFS drives natively
I really wish Mac would support writing to NTFS drives more easily. I can write to them with a third party hack, or by placing the drive on my network but it would be much easier to be able to plug in an external drive and write to it.

7. Permanently delete files without the trash
There is no easy way to delete a file from your desktop (or anywhere else) without first placing it in the Trash. I like to keep some files in Trash in case I need them, but other large files I want to delete immediately. There's no easy way to do it on the Mac. The way I do it now is to drop it on the Shredder, but that takes awhile. I also launch Terminal and type the command:

rm -f -r

and then drag the file that I want into the Terminal window. That gets rid of the file but it shouldn't be that difficult. Holding Shift +Del in Windows gets rid of the file immediately.

8. Delete Key
I don't like that there is no delete key in Mac. Holding down Function with the Delete key works, but that's an extra stroke that would be made easier with a delete key.

9. Clicking in the address bar of an Internet browser
I don't like the way Mac selects text in my Internet browser. In Windows, if I click in the address field the entire field is selected automatically so I can simply type a new address. I Mac, I click in the address field and the cursor is at the beginning of the line. A double-click then selects what Mac perceives to be a word and I have to triple click to get the whole thing selected. Lame.

10. Home Key
I miss the home key. Sometimes I want to select a line of text and in Windows I can hold down Shift + Home to do it. In Mac you can do it with Shift + Command + Arrow Key, but I've found that it doesn't always work. It seems to be application specific and some apps don't support it for some reason.

Default apps reset in Mac OS X Leopard

I noticed my default applications were getting reset in Mac OS X Leopard every time I reboot. It turns out that FileVault has a bug in it which causes all default applications to be reset. I found the answer at the Related Link below.

[ Related Link ]

Deleting files in Mac Trash without permissions

I've had a situation where large files are in my Mac's Trash folder, but I cannot delete it because I do not have sufficient permissions. I tried to create a new folder on my desktop and move the files there but I couldn't do that either. I searched and finally found this snippet from Apple's Support site.


Emptying the Trash

In some circumstances, folders for which you do not have write permission can end up in the Trash; and you will not be able to delete them or the files contained in them. Remember that in Mac OS X there is not a single Trash folder. Instead, each user has a Trash folder in their home directory (named ".Trash"). There is also a Trash folder for the startup volume, and Trash folders for other volumes or disks. When a user throws away a file on a local non-startup volume, the name of the folder on that volume is "/.Trashes/UID", where UID is the user ID number of the user (which may be seen in NetInfo Manager). In either case, all Trash folders are hidden from the user in the Finder. In these situations you can either start up into Mac OS 9 to locate the files and delete them, or you can use the Terminal application. Issues with emptying the Trash are much less likely to occur in Mac OS X 10.2 or later, since the Finder empties the Trash as the root user. However, issues may still occur with files on remote volumes for which your local root user has no special privileges.

Warning: Typographical error or misuse of the "rm -rf" command can result in data loss. Insertion of a space in the wrong place could result in the complete deletion of data on your hard disk, for example. You may wish to copy and paste the commands below into a text editor to verify spacing. Follow these steps to delete Trash for the logged-in user:

1. Open the Terminal application.
2. Type: sudo rm -rf
Note: Type a space after "-rf". The command does not work without the space. Do not press Return until Step 6.
3. Open your Trash.
4. Choose Select All from the Edit menu.
5. Drag all of your Trash into the Terminal window. This causes the Terminal window to automatically fill in the name and location of each item in your Trash.
6. Press Return.

All of the items in your Trash are deleted. As an alternative method, you may execute these commands. The second and third commands will delete Trash belonging to other users. The commands are:

Warning: Typographical error or misuse of the "rm -rf" command can result in data loss. Insertion of a space in the wrong place could result in the complete deletion of data on your hard disk, for example. You may wish to copy and paste the commands below into a text editor to verify spacing.

Important: There is no space between "/" and ".Trash" or ".Trashes" below.

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/
sudo rm -rf /.Trashes/
sudo rm -rf /Volumes//.Trashes/

Note: To end the sudo session, you should either execute the exit command, or log out of Mac OS X and then log back in.

Respectively, this permanently deletes all files in the current user's Trash, the startup volume Trash, and the Trash for other volumes (if any). These commands cannot delete locked files. You have to unlock them first.

Note: The sudo command can be used to temporarily obtain super user status and change permissions on files that otherwise could not be changed. However, it is only available if you are logged in with an administrator account, and it requires an administrator account user password for authentication.

[ Related Link ]

Connecting to my iDisk in Windows XP

I've been using FileZilla lately after FTP Voyager started to give me problems. FileZilla is okay, but it does not support WebDAV. I need WebDAV so I could access my Mac iDisk from my Windows PC but unfortunately not many FTP clients support the WebDAV protocol.

I finally found BitKinex which supports WebDAV quite nicely. It turns out they used to charge for BitKinex but now it is freeware.

Finally a client that allows me to connect to my Mac iDisk from Windows, without using Explorer. This is much faster!