25,000 Pics in iPhoto with Thousands of Duplicates

About 3 years ago my hard drive crashed.  On top of that, my backup software was partially working, so I had to piece together a lot of files and folders.  I sent my hard drive into a repair company that charged about $1,000 to extract the data.  Fortunately, they pulled out most of the files.  Unfortunately, a lot of the files were duplicates and even worse, the files were renamed to unrecognizable numbers, i.e. 111.pdf, 112.pdf, 113.pdf, etc.  As you can imagine, it took hours and days to get everything re-organized.  I dumped all of my photos into my iPhoto library.  While I was psyched to have not lost my pictures, I soon realized that my iPhoto library had mushroomed to over 25,000 pictures.  I finally got around to calling AppleCare tech support and they said that they do not have any remedies for this, however they did say that some people have used Duplicate Annihilator with some degree of success.  I downloaded the software and paid the $7.95.  Turns out this was a great investment.  I was able to extract about 8,000 duplicates from my library.  Even more exciting was that I was able to regain over 8 gigs of hard drive space!!  Great job to Brattoo Propaganda Software.  Thank you!

Google is Watching!

Curious to know what Google is monitoring?  Here is a link to a web site that will explain how they use your information: www.google.com/ads/preferences

Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems

Top 5 things you should know about driving on Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO)

Hard Drive Swap and Spotlight is Not Working

If you have recently swapped out your hard drive on your Apple computer, or ventured into hyper-speed with SSD upgrade (highly recommended), you may have noticed that your spotlight search is no longer working, or partially working.

The solution is simple... just REBUILD your spotlight database. The quick way to do it is:

1. go to system preferences
2. choose spotlight
3. click on "privacy"
4. click on the "+" sign at the bottom
5. add your entire hard drive
6. quit system preferences (you may want to restart at this point)
7. re-launch spotlight preferences in your system preferences into the privacy pane
8. click on the "-" minus sign and REMOVE your hard drive from privacy
9. close system preferences

At this point, if you go to search on spotlight, you will notice something that looks like this:

This means that spotlight is rebuilding your searching database and reindexing.  This worked great for me and I hope you have similar success.

Good luck.

Are you in the top 1%? You may be surprised...

If your household income is $384,000 or higher, you are in the top 1% of earners in the United States according to the New York Times. Check out this link to see where you fit in:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html?ref=business

or view the entire article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/business/the-1-percent-paint-a-more-nuanced-portrait-of-the-rich.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Mac Mail for Heavy Users

Are you using Apple's Mail program on your Mac? If so, you may remember how fast the program ran when it first started. If you don't keep your folders small, then you may run into problems. After calling Apple support, I found out that it is recommended to keep less than 2,000 emails in your folders. I deleted about 25,000 emails and now my mail program is working so much better. It has stopped crashing and everything is working great. It took some time to delete the files out of the folders because once the emails were moved to trash, I had to empty the trash and the Mail program would choke on large trash dumps. It required force quitting a couple times when I tried to delete to many emails at once. Eventually I got through it all and now Mail is working great and so much faster.

SIRI Command List

There is a great list of SIRI commands at this web site; and I have extracted part of the list below:

Calendars
Adding Events

• Set up a meeting at 9
• Set up a meeting with Michael at 9
• Meet with Lisa at noon
• Set up a meeting about hiring tomorrow at 9am
• New appointment with Susan Park Friday at 3
• Schedule a planning meeting at 8:30 today in the boardroom

Changing events

• Move my 3pm meeting to 4:30
• Reschedule my appointment with Dr. Manning to next Monday at 9am
• Add Lisa to my meeting with Jason
• Cancel the budget review meeting

Asking about events

• What does the rest of my day look like?
• What’s on my calendar for Friday?
• When is my next appointment?
• When am I meeting with Michael?
• Where is my next meeting?

Alarms
Setting Alarms

• Wake me up tomorrow at 7am
• Set an alarm for 6:30am
• Wake me up in 8 hours
• Change my 6:30 alarm to 6:45
• Turn off my 6:30 alarm
• Delete my 7:30 alarm

Checking the Clock

• What time is it?
• What time is it in Berlin?
• What is today’s date?
• What’s the date this Saturday?

Using a Timer

• Set the timer for ten minutes
• Show the timer
• Pause the timer
• Resume
• Reset the timer
• Stop it

Email
Sending Messages

• Email Lisa about the trip
• Email Jennifer about the change in plans
• New email to Susan Park
• Mail Dad about the rent check
• Email Dr. Manning and say I got the forms, thanks
• Mail Lisa and Jason about the party and say I had a great time

Checking Messages

• Check email
• Any new email from Michael today?
• Show new mail about the lease
• Show the email from Lisa yesterday

Responding to Messages

• Reply Dear Susan sorry about the late payment
• Call him at work

Friends
Checking Up on Friends

• Where’s Jason?
• Where is my sister?
• Is my wife at home?
• Where are all my friends?
• Who is here?
• Who is near me?

Maps
Directions

• How do I get home?
• Show 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino California
• Directions to my dad’s work

Local Businesses

• Find coffee near me
• Where is Starbucks?
• Find some burger joints in Baltimore
• Find a gas station within walking distance
• Good Mexican restaurants around here

Messages
Sending Texts

• Tell Susan I’ll be right there
• Send a message to Jason Russell
• Send a message to Lisa saying how about tomorrow
• Tell Jennifer the show was great
• Send a message to Susan on her mobile saying I’ll be late
• Send a message to 408 555 1212
• Text Jason and Lisa where are you?

Reading Texts

• Read my new messages
• Read it again

Replying to Texts

• Reply that’s great news
• Tell him I’ll be there in 10 minutes
• Call her

Music
Playback

• Play The Light of the Sun
• Play Trouble
• Play Taking Back Sunday shuffled
• Play Alicia Keys
• Play some blues
• Play my party mix
• Shuffle my roadtrip playlist
• Play
• Pause
• Skip

Notes
Creating and finding notes

• Note that I spent $12 on lunch
• Note: check out that new Alicia Keys album
• Find my restaurant note
• Create a reading list note
• Add Tom Sawyer to my reading list note

Phone
Phone calls

• Call Jason
• Call Jennifer Wright mobile
• Call Susan on her work phone
• Call 408 555 1212
• Call home
• FaceTime Lisa

Reminders
Requesting reminders

• Remind me to call mom
• Remind me to call my mom when I get home
• Remember to take an umbrella
• Remind me take my medicine at 6am tomorrow
• Remind me to pick up flowers when I leave here
• Remind me when I leave to call Jason
• Remind me to finish the report by 6

Stocks
Checking Stocks

• What’s Apple’s stock price?
• What is Apple’s PE ratio?
• What did Yahoo close at today?
• How is the Nikkei doing?
• How are the markets doing?
• What is the Dow at?

Weather
Checking the Forecast

• What’s the weather for today?
• What’s the weather for tomorrow?
• Will it rain in Cupertino this week?
• Check next week’s forecast for Burlington
• What’s the forecast for this evening?
• How’s the weather in Tampa right now?
• How hot will it be in Palm Springs this weekend?
• What’s the high for Anchorage on Thursday?
• What’s the temperature outside?
• How windy is it out there?
• When is sunrise in Paris?

Websearch
Looking up information

• Search the web for Bora Bora
• Search for vegetarian pasta recipes
• Search the web for best cable plans
• Google the war of 1812
• Search Wikipedia for Abraham Lincoln
• Search for news about the World Cup
• Bing Alicia Keys

Using Wolfram Alpha

• How many calories in a bagel?
• What is an 18% tip on $86.74 for four people?
• Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?
• How long do dogs live?
• What is the Gossamer Condor?
• What’s the square root of 128?
• How many dollars is €45?
• What was the Best Picture of 1983?
• How many days until Christmas?
• How far away is the Sun?
• When is the next solar eclipse?
• Show me the Orion constellation
• What’s the population of Jamaica?
• How high is Mt. Everest?
• How deep is the Atlantic ocean?
• What’s the price of gasoline in Chicago?..