| Published | Actual | |
| Birmingham New Street | 07:10 | 07:10 |
| London Euston | 08:30 | 09:06 |
After a recent iTunes update, I have had problems receiving the Answer me This podcast, this caused much consternation as it’s one of my favourite podcasts.
Part way through trying to figure out what was wrong I became conscious of the problem solving order and techniques that I was applying, this is something I’ve noticed before and I find it quite interesting. Broadly speaking, problem solving is my job, whether that be a piece of code to fix a bug, a solution design or a full blown system architecture, all of these solve a problem in some way. When I have a problem to solve I usually draw on knowledge and experience to create a number of hypotheses which I can test, one by one, until I have an answer; if all are unsuccessful then I will resort to searching to see if there are any resolutions out there.
I usually base the order of testing on the order that I understand things to happen or on the order of obviousness, for example if a computer doesn’t turn on I’d check it plugged in, check the power lead with another computer, check the PSU in the computer, check motherboard, check components etc. Each time I test a hypothesis there will be one of three results, success, fail or perceived improvement. Based on the previous flow, if computer is not plugged in plug it in and turn it on - success, if the computer was plugged in but the lead doesn’t work on my computer or another computer this is a perceived improvement and the fuse or lead can be changed, if it still doesn’t work continue testing, after testing all likely power related components search the net for the answer.
So, coming back to the iTunes issues here is the rough running order followed to fix the problem:
- Check link still active - Right click podcast in iTunes and elect to ‘
Copy podcast URL’, paste this into a browser and follow link - RSS feed was contacted and list of podcasts could be retrieved.
- Check content available - Clicking one of the links that comes up in the feed, doing this worked so proved that the link, content and ability to get the media from the site were ok.
- Unsubscribe and subscribe - Right click podcast and elect to ‘
Unsubscribe podcast’ then ‘Subscribe podcast’ - at this point I could subscribe but the podcast list did not update and no new shows delivered
- Check other podcasts work - Check that content is delivered from other feeds, unsubscribe/subscribe another feed, all other feeds appeared to work
- Sign up to new podcasts - Look through iTunes and subscribe to a test feed. At this point I happened to click on The Collings and Herrin Podcasts which showed as a podcast I could not subscribe to, finally I could look for trends. After a couple of minutes of screen gazing the answer leapt out, ‘
Explicit’, this little tag was the thing that the broken feeds had in common and what the subscribable feeds had missing.
Now I was certain that the upgrade of iTunes had reset or done something to stop only explicit content so I performed A quick check of the parental controls (‘Edit> Preferences> Parental’), this showed that I had been restricted to content suitable for those up to the age of 14 and the ‘Restrict Explicit Content’ checkbox was ticked, after unticking this box normal service was resumed and I could once again receive answer me this.
Since resolving this issue I have had to revisit these settings but at least I know exactly where to look and what the problem is now.
