Under OS X I wanted two things to happen every day. Firstly I wanted iTunes to download my podcasts before I woke - during the off-peak download quota offered by my ISP. And secondly I wanted EyeTV to delete the recordings it had made the day before, as those recordings would have already been exported to iTunes.

Using CronniX to edit the crontab file (which I find easier than using "crontab -e"):

iTunes actually doesn't need to be told to launch, after receiving the updateAllPodcasts command it launches and behaves as expected. Unfortunately EyeTV isn't as well behaved. I've included the same commands for iTunes as a matter of completeness. Note that "> /dev/null 2>&1" sends the output from cron to the big unix blackhole, else you'll receive e-mails everyday telling you if the jobs were completed successfully.

If your iPod is attached you can have iTunes complete a sync by issuing the AppleScript command update.

For example:

If your goal is to allow the currently downloading podcasts to be copied to your iPod you best allow some time for this to happen:

That's 10 minutes. I'm lucky to have a fairly fat pipe. You may have to allow more time.

My little brother (pictured) and I were upgrading and repairing a number of computers this afternoon. The resulting mess was so impressive I just had to snap this photograph. Fortunately we had the bulk of this cleaned up before Mum arrived home a few hours later.

Whilst I always clean install major OS releases I never bother with point updates, allowing Software Update take care of it. The 10.5.2 update for Leopard is the first update that made me consider that the paranoid practices of those who don't trust Software Update may not be completely unfounded.

After allowing Software Update to bring the system to 10.5.2, iCal lost the URLs to where my calendars where published and iSync would fail to launch. I'm still using the iSync conduit for Palm, so that may have been the reason for my troubles.

Replacing the missing URLs was annoying but easy to do. Fixing iSync involved downloading the 10.5.2 Combo Updater and applying it to the already updated system. As described in this forum:

The combo updater is found at:

I have no idea why this worked, but iSync is again working as it should.

I like the feeling of "having done right" when I return my trolley as directed. I was so lucky as this trolley return was right behind my parking space.