iTunes, TV Shows and Apple TV

iTunes vexes me. For better or for worse, we’re an Apple household and own an Apple TV, so I’m kind of stuck with iTunes for managing my media files.

My wife and I have also purchased a significant amount of DVDs over the years, which I ripped to iTunes using the trusty old Handbrake (love you, Handbrake!). These DVDs include a lot of TV shows, such as Doctor Who and Magnum PI.

My workflow has always been: rip via Handbrake, then import into iTunes by dragging the m4v files onto the iTunes window. By default, the TV shows don’t have any metadata (no proper titles, descriptions, episode numbers, or artwork), and iTunes automatically files them under Movies. This means they’ll show up in Apple TV with no description, no preview picture (such as DVD box art), and no sequence information.

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Setting OS X Desktop Picture Based on Time of Day

I recently changed jobs (Hello, FireEye!) and was issued a new MacBook Air. I spend a lot of time looking at the screen and was getting bored with the supplied desktop pictures. I also start work very early most days (7am-ish), and thought it would be nice to have a desktop picture that matches the [...]

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Flash support is increasingly a minefield

Back in 2011, I mentioned that Microsoft was about to halt development of the Silverlight plugin, that Flash mobile was being discontinued, and that Adobe recommended HTML5 for enterprise RIA development instead of Flex, which was being open-sourced. My post was a little long-winded, but the short version was: whoa, the times-are-a-changin’, it’s getting dangerous to [...]

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