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Items of Note:
Please head on over and nominate The Geekcast for the podcast awards at http://www.podcastawards.com
Don’t forget that The Geekcast will be returning to its roots and podcasting twice a week! The secondary show each week will feature new episodes of The Geekcast in a ‘classic’ style. The show will be more hardcore tech-oriented and feature some notable guests along with fantastic discussion of what’s going on in the tech world. Look for two episodes of The Geekcast to hit your podcatcher next week.
There’s still time to enter our contest! Win a copy of the movie Mind Meld! We have two copies of the movie Mind Meld to give away via iTunes. The contest begins today and ends on Wednesday, November 4th! To enter, send an e-mail to geekcast@gmail.com with your name, e-mail address and home town.
“Tailored to the most hard-core Star Trek fans, Mind Meld gets you up close and personal with the stars of the original television series. Its premise? Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner sitting together and having a quiet, earthy chat about old times. There isn’t much new information about the show–though old cast resentments are addressed–but viewers learn a great deal about the personal lives of everyone’s favorite spacemen. The two discuss the pressures of filming a weekly show and the difficulties of maintaining one’s dignity as an actor while wearing pointy ears. The personalities of both men shine through and it becomes obvious why they were cast as they were; Nimoy really is more thoughtful and reserved, while Shatner is extroverted and showy. The best part of Mind Meld is witnessing the genuine fondness the two men share for each other. It’s clear that they really were (and are) best friends, even when the cameras stopped rolling.” –Ali Davis
This contest is only open to U.S. residents and you must have existing iTunes account.
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Geek This Week:
Aaron:
I ran down memory lane as I heard that Yahoo is closing Geocities on October 26th. Now I haven’t been to the site in forever but it reminded me that I still have my old page there that covered the TV series Sliders. Geocities was a place that helped me learn HTML and it’s an integral part to the early beginnings of the internet. I’ll be sure to log in for one last time and download all the files so they aren’t lost for all time.
Thinking of changing my current backup scheme to a different setup. I currently use Time Machine with two drives, one of which I keep off-site. I currently swap the drives once every 5-6 months and then I also have Backup copy my documents & vital files to MobileMe. I’ve heard a lot lately about Time Machine not being as reliable as Apple would have us think, so this combined with the recent Sidekick data fail makes has me re-thinking my backup scheme. I’m looking into Carbon Copy Cloner and also Super Duper but I also need offsite backup. Any suggestions?
Gozer:
Had a brief hands on with the new PSP Go. Really awesome device. Really small and sleek. Maybe Sony should have come out with this from the get go. I like the fact that all your games would be on the hard drive or a memory stick instead of UMD’s. But it’s a little too late. Not that I play a lot of my old UMD’s but I cannot justify buying a device that is $250 and that can’t play your library of UMD’s! If they did decide to do some sort of UMD conversion then yes, I would consider buying a PSP Go.
Played some ODST and Beatles Rock Band. ODST feels like Halo 3 but darker. Was not impressed. Wanted to like it but it didn’t grab me. I did enjoy Halo 3 until Modern Warfare came out. I have heard firefight is good but i think it is stupid that the only way to get in a game is through people on your friends list. Can’t just jump into random games.
Beatles Rock Band: Played some with my parents who are tremendous Beatles fans. My wife and I played guitar and bass and my dad sang. We did a good 8 songs in the story mode and it takes you on this journey of how the Beatles started out. The funny thing was that as we were going through the story mode my parents were making comments about the pictures and the videos. We got up to an early level where the Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan show. Pretty cool bonding experience with my parents even though they tried to get me to listen to The Beatles and I wound up listening to Wu Tang and Cypress Hill.
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Tech and Gaming News:
T-Mobile announces Sidekick data “almost certainly has been lost”
Well, this is shaping up to be one of the biggest disasters in the history of cloud computing, and certainly the largest blow to Danger and the Sidekick platform: T-Mobile’s now reporting that personal data stored on Sidekicks has “almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.” They’re still looking for a way to recover it, but they’re not giving users a lot of hope — meanwhile, servers are still on the fritz and customers are being advised not to let their devices power down because anything that’s still on there will be lost the next time the device is turned on. Another communique is promised from T-Mobile on Monday to give everyone a status update on the recovery efforts, but at this point, it’s not looking good at all.
Update: Apparently T-Mobile has paused the sale of new Sidekicks, as all models are now listed as “temporarily out of stock” on the company’s site. Additionally, a warning as been added to the post on T-Mobile’s forum which reads: “Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.” Scary stuff, Sidekickers.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/10/t-mobile-we-probably-lost-all-your-sidekick-data/
Facebook/Twitter XBL Update Coming Nov. 17 in UK
Microsoft announced that Facebook and Twitter integration would be coming to Xbox Live way back at E3 in June, but we’ve yet to get a specific date for when to expect it. And, well, we still don’t have one for North America — but we do for the U.K.! The official U.K. Xbox site now lists the update for November 17 (via Joystiq).
The closest thing we’ve gotten to a release date for this update in North America was when Microsoft recently told MTV Multiplayer that a public beta would be begin “middle-towards-end of October.” So if the full service launches November 17 here as well (or thereabouts), that would make for a public beta of about one month. That sounds about right, we suppose, but we’ll just have to wait and see what Microsoft actually has planned. But now we come to the hard question: Does anyone really care that much about accessing Facebook and Twitter on their Xbox 360?
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3176436
Apple: Major Snow Leopard Bug Said To Delete User Data
It has been said that Apple’s new OS, 10.6 Snow Leopard, can wipe out all user data for the administrator account. It can be triggered — not every time — by logging in to the Guest account and then back in to the admin account. Some users are reporting that all settings have been reset and most data is gone. The article links to a number of Apple forum threads up to a month old bemoaning the problem. MacFixIt suggests disabling login on the Guest account and, if you need that functionality, creating a non-administrative account named something like Visitor. (The Guest account is special in that its settings are wiped clean after logout.) CNet reports that Apple has acknowledged the bug and is working on a fix.
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/09/10/12/2259228/Major-Snow-Leopard-Bug-Said-To-Delete-User-Data
Toys R Us 3:2 Sale starts today tuesday
It’s another buy-two, get the third free bonanza, this time offered by Toys R Us. But it covers their entire game catalog – consoles, handhelds, everything. The flyer says you can pick from 800 games.
The sale will last the entire week. It doesn’t sound like it coves pre-orders, but I could be wrong. It also looks like it covers accessories, priced up to $100, and so points cards are covered by that too. But that probably means you have to buy two accessories and get a third free, not mix-and-match games and accessories. Definitely ask your local Toys R Us when planning your strategy.
If you’re hanging on what third title to pick, some good advice is to just get a second copy of a brand-new game for free and use it as tradebait for store credit later or flip it on half.com. Either way, they’re giving away games. Don’t waste the pick.
http://kotaku.com/5378763/toys-r-us-begins-big-32-sale-tomorrow
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Test a Geek:
1) Uncharted 2 is out! What is the name of the developer of this popular game? A: Naughty Dog
2) What cartoon character is on the cover of playboy right now? A: Marge Simpson
3) What does BIOS stand for? A: Basic input output system
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How To: How to restore Lost home folder after logging in as guest in Snow Leopard
As we spoke about in the News segment, people are losing access to their main accounts when dealing with guest accounts on Snow Leopard. The data for these accounts is not gone but it is not accessible. Apple has a discussion at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2165835&tstart=15 but if you have a working backup, a restore may be the better way to go.
In several cases, people have accidentally logged in to their guest accounts and upon logging out and back into their normal accounts have found their data missing. This problem seems to be occurring with people who have had the guest account enabled for log-in before upgrading to Snow Leopard. After the upgrade, some problem with the account configuration can result in a non-guest account being cleared and reset the same way guest accounts are reset upon logout.
If you do not need the guest account, just disable it. If you have the lost home folder problem, you will need to have a backup of your data. Here are the ways to restore your home folder from a backup:
Immediately restore the entire system
If this problem just occurred, and you have Time Machine running all the time, you should be able to restore your whole system installation to the most recent backup (within the hour). To do this, follow these steps:
Boot from the Snow Leopard DVD (hold “C” at start-up with the disk in the drive).
Select your language and choose “Restore from Backup” from the “Utilities” menu.
Follow the onscreen instructions and be sure to select the most recent backup from the list of available restore points.
Click “Restore” and wait for the procedure to complete (may take an hour or two).
After this process is completed, try disabling and re-enabling the guest account.
Restore the home folder
You can restore the lost home folder from a backup without restoring the full system.
To do this, follow these instructions:
Create a new admin account in the “Accounts” system preferences (new name, new password).
Log out, and log into the new account.
Go to the /Macintosh HD/Users/ directory in the Finder and invoke Time Machine.
Navigate back in time to where you can see the most recent intact home folder that was lost.
Select and restore that folder to the Users directory using the “Restore” button.
(Skip the following steps for the alternative method below.)
Go back to the Accounts system preferences and right-click the account with the lost home folder, and choose “Advanced Options.”
Next to the “Home directory” field click “Choose” and select the restored home folder.
Click “OK” and save the changes, and then log out of the new admin account.
Log into the old account.
An additional step to this is to ensure the old account is working properly. After step five above, where you restore the folder to the Users directory, follow these steps instead of the remainder of the steps in the above procedure:
Go to the Accounts system preferences and delete the old account.
Use the “+” sign to create a new account, giving it the same short and long names as the previous one, with the same password.
If the system claims an old home folder exists with that name, select the option to use that folder.
Check that the new account is using the old home folder by right-clicking it and in the “Advanced Options” check the home directory path (changing it as described above if it is different than that of the restored home folder).
Log out and log back into the newly created account to test it.
This alternative procedure will ensure the old account is refreshed and started new, but keeping the data in it preserved. This will give it new user and group IDs, along with other unique identifier numbers that may have been in conflict with the “guest” account, resulting in the lost home folder upon logout of the guest account.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10356505-263.html?tag=mncol;txt
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Open Source Software: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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The Geek’s View: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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