Step 1: Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]

1. Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”
3. Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
   diskpart
   list disk
   The number of your USB drive will listed. You’ll need this for the next step.  I’ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.
4. Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number “1” with the number of your disk below.
   select disk 1
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=NTFS quick
   assign
   exit
   When that is done you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.

Perfect Boiled Eggs

Posted by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, October 9, 2009 at 11:45 AM

Read about how I developed these recipes in The Food Lab: Perfect Boiled Eggs.

Soft Boiled Eggs

Ingredients

3 quarts water
1-6 large eggs

Procedure

1. Bring water to a simmer in a medium pot. Reduce heat until water is barely quivering. Gently lower eggs into water with slotted spoon or strainer (do not drop eggs into water, or they might crack).

2. Cook for exactly 6 minutes, then remove eggs with slotted spoon, and serve.

Hard Boiled Eggs

Note: If you have a particularly strong burner, a very thin-walled pot, or live at high altitudes or in a very cold or hot environment, initial volume of water may need to be adjusted. Once you figure out the specific volume for your location, use that same volume every time.

Ingredients

1.5 quarts cool water
1-6 large eggs

Procedure

Place eggs and water in saucepot. Place over high heat and bring to a bare simmer. Immediately shut off burner and wait at least ten minutes. Peel eggs under cool running water, and serve.

I’ve just found an amazing free way to remove broken songs from iTunes.  I have over 30k tracks in my music collection, so finding all broken songs i.e. those that have a ‘!’ mark next to them is nigh on impossible.  With this clever little trick you can create a new playlist showing all the broken links that you can then either delete, re-import or find on another source….

1. Create a New Smart playlist called ‘All Songs’: Create a rule like ‘Artist is NOT ‘123456789‘ – whatever you choose make sure there is no artist with that name
   
2. Now make a regular playlist called (create playlist shortcut: CTRL+N) ‘All Live Songs’
3. Now create a second smart playlist called ‘Missing Songs‘ with the following rules: ‘Playlist is All Songs’ and ‘Playlist is not All Live Songs’
4. Then select all your tracks in the All Songs playlist and drag them to the empty ‘All Live Songs’ playlist.
5. When you copied all the songs to the empty All Live Songs playlist, only the live songs were copied.

So, if you go back to the Missing Songs playlist that is showing songs that are in All Songs which includes the missing songs, but are not in the All Live Songs playlist which doesn’t include the missing songs, then all that’s left in the Missing Songs playlist are the broken songs!

Update (thanks Paulsuk): To delete the matched files, hold down Shift (or, on a Mac, Option) while deleting.

Thanks to Thilak for an excellent tip.  Definitely my favourite one for a long time.