I had been noticing that the “Other” section of my iPod Touch’s capacity kept expanding in what seemed to be an almost exponential fashion. Looking around the web, I read several times that the “Other” included system files, thumbnails, various cache files etc and that the only way to reign it back into control was to ‘Restore’ the iPod or iPhone.. considering I have all but 5GB of my 64GB touch filled, restore is a long and tedious process which I didn’t particularly want to undertake even though my ‘Other’ had swelled to well over 2GB.

Thinking some more on it last night I though there had to be an easy way for the system to clear these caches. There is a clear internet cache under Settings>Safari but that doesn’t clear everything. Then I figured I’d try shutting it down (Hold down the top button until you see slide to power off) and seeing if a restart would clear things. Sure enough, after the restart I went from 3.6GB free to 5.3GB free. The only change being in the ‘Other’ section. So to bring the ‘Other’ section of your iPod/iPhone capacity down just restart!

Recently we had one of our credit cards compromised. They only managed to get 11.25 out as I check my accounts online weekly (yes I’m anal). They TRIED to get much more out but that was AFTER I had called the cc company and had the card closed for fraud… so they didn’t get far.

While talking to one of the girls who work in the fraud department, I found out that her department has increased dramatically in just the last few months due to the exponential increase in fraud issues.

I don’t typically get on a ‘soapbox’ and preach computer safety – I tend to stay back and let people who know me just ask as I feel people are more open to changing their ways when they ask than when they are preached too – that said, I’ve received several inquiries from clients, family, friends in regards to strange email receipts from amazon, iTunes etc. Please note these are yet another phishing scheme geared to get you to open the email, click on links etc., log into a false look a like site so they have your password infromation… Don’t do it – if you want to check your amazon or iTunes (or any other) account status go to amazon or iTunes (etc.) and log in there don’t bother opening the email unless you know and are expecting the receipts.

iTunes is being especially hit. A quick search on the internet will turn up people who have lost thousands of dollars by fraudsters charging not only their credit card but running up charges on their PayPal. I highly recommend if you have an iTunes account to remove its connections to PayPal and to any credit card and only use gift cards. They can be bought at many places and I know that BJs and Costco sell them at a discount.

Last week I got a very unexpected email telling me I had won an iPod touch during a random drawing from a NAPP member survey. It arrived 5 days later and became the first Apple product I’ve ever owned. I’ve used iMacs before but have a dislike in general of products that are highly proprietary. Thus, my mp3 players of the past have been relatively generic. Ie: no Zunes, no iPods. I’m currently actively using 3 besides the new iPod. I’m going to give a brief rundown of each and then my thoughts on the new iPod.
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Yesterday I arrived home from the SOSA appreciation brunch to find my Adobe CS5 sitting on the doorstop. Quite exciting! I decided to do some ‘clean’ up on the computer before installing as I know i will not need to complete CS4 and CS5 on my system. Went through and uninstalled everything except Photoshop and InDesign CS4 since those two are the ones I use the most and was most concerned about upgrade glitches on – the others I figured CS5 would do the trick. Loaded up CS5 and copied over my preferences.

Alot of the user preferences for adobe products are located in: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Product\Product Version\Language  at least that is basic format.

So if you are like me and have some Grep Find-Change Queries you want to grab the “Find-Change Queries” folder from the previous InDesign folder (C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Version6.0\en_US\) and copy to the new version  – then you don’t have to recreate your saved queries.

Likewise, I copy over my “Snippnets” and “Workspace” from Dreamweaver above format and then Configuration\Snippets and Configuration\Workspace, some custom Save for Web Setting I have in Illustrator and some Photoshop Settings… Makes it easier to get up and running.

Only ‘snag’ I had with the install was when it came to the registration. Like in previous versions, when you register your product you are offered a “complimentary benefit” for registration. CS5′s included the new  AdobeText Font, 30 day trial of Linda.com, 30 day trial to Safary Book, 40% off 2 or more titles from Adobe Classroom in a book series, Phototools standard 2.5, or 2 issues of Layers magazine. In the past they have emailed you a link after you’ve registered. This procedure seems to have changed. What was frustrating is at one point you have the choice of continuing updating your profile or picking your freebie – I went with updating the profile and couldn’t get back to the freebie selection page and never got an email for it. So I tried Adobe Support Chat – TOTALLY USELESS! Finally figured out that if you open Photoshop or one of the others and go to “Help/Complete Update Adobe ID Profile” you can again get the options for the freebie…

This morning I actually got to go in and do some work in Dreamweaver - I just did some minor updates to a couple sites and everything went smoothly. I didn’t play with anything new though I’m looking forward to a couple new features I’ve read about… 

Next was InDesign…  Unforutnately, Extensis has not updated it’s Fusion 2 font activator for CS5. So I had to open Fusion and manually activate the fonts used in the newsletter I was working on. I did get to check out a new feature here that I was looking foward to and that was the span paragraph – works beautifully! Looking forward to working with this new version more!

In regards to the Extensis Font activator – while it would not work in InDesign, moving the ExtensisFontManagementAICS4.aip from the plugin directory in Illustrator CS4 to the plugins directory in CS5 does seem to work. Looking at the InDesign plugins folder, it appears Adobe changed the format of the InDesign plugin which would explain why it doesn’t work there.

One last little note – Acrobat is still the Acrobat 9 that was in the CS4 packages, apparently it did not get an update. It is also interesting that it has it’s own serial separate from the collection.

All in all happy – though I wish I had more time to play with the new features…

Background: Since building the new computer, I have noticed with both the built in soundcard on my ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 and with the Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro there is a noticeable latency problem with the line-in in Windows 7. When I say noticeable it was VERY noticeable by me and drove me crazy. My non-muscial husband on the other hand didn’t notice it until I pointed it out and even then it didn’t bother him… In basic terms it is a time delay experienced in the system such that the audio through the line-in port has a slight delay from the live audio source. Not something I ever experienced with Windows XP.

This weekend it was particularly annoying in that I was trying to play the stereo through speakers outside where my husband and son were working on ripping out some brambles as well as through my computer where I was working on SFLMA.org’s site. Since I could hear both the sound through the outside speakers and my computer the latency issue was driving me insane and I eventually went to wearing headphones.

So this morning I decided I really needed to figure this issue out! From various searches this seems to be a common issue with Vista SP2+ and Windows 7 regardless of the soundcard being used. I found if you change where you activate the Line-In then the latency issue goes away. There are two ways to listen to the line in.

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