Tag Archives: tips & tricks

Sharing Files Across Multiple Devices Part 1: Dropbox

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I use several different applications for storing and accessing files across the different devices I use: Mac and Windows computers, iPhone, iPod Touch, sometimes Linux, occasionally Android, formerly Blackberry. Today I want to tell you about Dropbox:

 Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, documents, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox on any device will automatically synchronize to ALL of your devices where you have installed it: computers, smartphones, iPod Touch, and also to your account on their website. In addition you can designate certain folders or files to share with other people by giving them a link address. If you lose or crash your computer the files will still be in on their site to restore.

Here are some ways I use Dropbox:

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Minimize Options For Misconnecting Stage Gear

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Unless your band is performing at a very high-level venue, you are usually lucky to get a brief line check – you jump on stage, plug into the sound system for the first time at the start of your set, and the sound person give you a thumbs-up that he has a signal from you – before you start to play, let alone a full sound check.

So if you don’t get that thumbs-up, your band starts losing time from your set while you and the engineer try to figure out the problem in your signal chain! While you can’t always prevent an issue caused by sudden gear failure, you can avoid issues caused by misconnections…

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Teaching Cats (and Dogs) To Close Doors

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Okay, that title is a bit misleading – this is more like “teaching doors to close behind cats and dogs.” :-)

Do you have an animal in your house that knows how to bang open a door from one room to the next? If you are trying to keep the air-conditioning in or cold drafts out it’s annoying when they barge through and leave the door swinging wide open (think of showering in a steamy bathroom in winter, when BAMM! there’s a cat wanting your attention followed by a blast of cold air…).

Here’s a simple trick to mitigate that problem:

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Tip/Warning: Long File Names in Bandcamp (and Other Zipped Downloads)

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I recently purchased a new album as a zipped download from the site Bandcamp.com to my Windows PC at work (because the network connection there has a much bigger “pipe” than at home). The zipped file contained eight MP3 files which when extracted should have gone into a folder with the name of the band and the album title.

I clicked to “extract all’ the files, and the program did so… until it reached the eighth and final track. At that point it failed and gave me the error message:

I tried again and got the same error, “Path too long”. After some research I determined what was wrong and how to work around it, plus told the band – they fixed it so that other buyers will not have this problem:

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