I meant to blog this when rtyler and I found it the other night. He come into #Mono complaining that NAnt - delivered with Mono - wasn’t working at ALL on OS X. We spent a lot of time looking around and it came down to pkg-config.

The pkg-config shipped with mono isn’t the one being run by default. So it can’t find the .pc files in a relative path. It took a bit longer than it should’ve to find the solution, partly because I wasn’t overly verbose about the man page referencing PKG_CONFIG_PATH and I wasn’t setting it properly.

Anywho, it’s all over on his blog here.

Work is draining my soul

Obviously I wasn’t the only one having this issue. But after a little research I’ve found a thread with some answers and two solutions.

The apparent cause is with mp3s “…encoded to 56 kb mono @ 44.1 kHz sampling rate…”. Converting these to AAC will supposedly solve the problem. But since it then knocks the files out of your podcast section in iTunes, it’s not really valid. This also explains why my AAC podcasts didn’t seem to have a problem.

Solution 1 - Roll back to 1.1.1.
I don’t know if I like this solution because, since Apple has had all their iPod updater download links redirect to the latest, you’ll have to go to a third party site to download the downloader (the link can be found in the thread about half way down). I’m not keen on getting things like this from other sites.

Solution 2 - Set the EQ to spoken word.
This seems to be a solid solution for folks. I haven’t tried this yet - listening to The Distillers at the moment. But it appears to work. Since most of what I listen to is podcasts I guess this’ll work fine. But Apple really should address this issue.

I guess that kinda blows my conspiracy theory that Apple was trying to nudge us into buying the new generation of Nanos. Or does it?

Well, I thumb my nose at my detractors. MonoCast 1.0 is out now in a number of different formats (mp3, AAC, and ogg). Head on over to www.mono-cast.com to check out the show.

It’s a little light this first time around because I don’t have any interviews or extended project reviews. A little listener input will help fill it in as well.

More polish for the next version is in the works. And it’ll be a weekly podcast out every wednesday night.

Hopefully I’ll have the gear together to get some interviews at the Mono Developer’s Conference.

Be sure to check out the contact information and join the forums to comment.

Later

People might ask, “Rev, how is the podcasting thing coming?”. And I think the following quote sums it up:

“GIVE IT UP! IM TIRED OF IT! GO WRITE SOME FUCKING CODE OR SOMETHING!
arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh”

Obviously people are behind me.

Of all the things that go on at work that make me want to just walk out of there.. the email I just got from my boss was particularly annoying.

The subject: be careful of what you support?

And it has a link to a report on the firfox exploit.

Almost as annoying as the guy who walks around work going “OPEN SORES!!!!” all the time.

Why are the people I work with so rabid about hating Open Source? Why do I still work there?

Edit: Why do I care?

Well, the MacBook is back. I guess now I get to keep working with it and see if any more problems come up. This screen is so bright I just can’t get over how clear it is.

My father-in-law bought an iMac today and he loves it. I guess everyone is switching.

So, I don’t want to say I’m manic about checking things like package tracking and such. But now, for some reason. When I try and connect to the repairstatus page at apple from my IP I get connection refused. Hrmm.

But the last thing I saw was that the repair was finished and it was on it’s way back to the local Apple store. Hurray!

The iPod still stutters and all attempts to revert to the 1.1.2 firmware failed. I did notice that I downloaded MacCast - the AAC version - and it seemed to play without any stuttering. Yet other podcasts stutter. And never in the same place twice. I’ll rewind just after a stutter and it’s not there. So it’s not so much a bad recording as… well.. lord knows what it is.

So, I’m not the only one having issues with firmware 1.2 causing stutters in my podcast play back. So I thought, no problem. I’ll restore to factory settings. Well, no.. it just nuked all my content and restored it to 1.2. Well crap on me. It still doesn’t play worth a damn. Stuttering every 5 minutes or more often.

I’ve tried grabbing old firmware updates so I could get it back to 1.1.x. And of course it won’t let me. It tells me to use iTunes. And that only gets me 1.2.

Apple is slowly moving to my bad side with my MacBook in the shop and my Nano horribly screwed up.

Very unhappy. You hear that Apple?! UN-HAPPY!

Took the MacBook in on Monday and they didn’t even bother playing with it. They pulled up the paper work and scheduled it to go to the “depot” to get the motherboard and heatsinks swapped out.

I’ve heard on line that it’s believed that a wire running next to or over the heatsinks will actually have the insulation melt off of it during extrememly hot times. Then at any point later on the exposed wire can short the whole thing out and cause the shutdown. I suppose that makes sense as I had run it pretty hot for extended times but my shutdowns seemed to occuring randomly and not at times of high use.

Anywho. The guy said 5-7 days and the paperwork said 7-10. *shrug* I just want my MacBook back.

Also, I updated the firmware on my Nano today and noticed that it stutters now while listening to podcasts. Woop. Maybe I should let it finish figuring out the gapless play. Or maybe I should reset the thing. Likely when I get my MacBook back I’ll reset it and format it for Mac.