01.19.08
Oh Hai!
01.05.08
Just for the record
Until I recently rebooted in order to load up some OS updates, my PowerBook’s uptime reached a new high of 132 days, 17 hours. That is all.
01.02.08
16:9 Test Card / Test Pattern
Over the last few days, i worked on getting our living room television to display properly from the Mac Mini. The adventure (as boring as it was is documented on my site as: Test Pattern for Wide-screen Displays:
Getting the right aspect ratio to your home theater display.
So a couple years after getting a 27″ LCD display, I finally got fed up with the poor scaling options the display had. There aren’t many options for widescreen source material until we switch to digital cable, so most of the TV we watch is standard definition (SD). If you watch SD, 4:3 video on any display for a few weeks or a month you’ll end up burning-in the center of the screen, leaving the wide left and right margins darker with a very definite demarcation line when you finally start watching widescreen (16:9) content.
Read the full article: 16:9 Test Card / Test Pattern
12.14.07
CatNip for Mac OS X
CatNip is a program which, while running, detects “cat-like typing” and locks the keyboard, usually in under a half second. Optionally, CatNip will fade your desktop and display a warning message to your cat (which is of dubious value, since if your cat can read, your cat can probably type, too).
For some reason, this has become an important part of my software toolbox…
12.06.07
e-Ghia Joyride
Each year I end up revisiting this post from the Electric Vehicle Archive for October 2000:
“I was in 2nd gear as I eased my foot to the floor, taking us right to the adhesion limits of the tires as we cornered through the bend in the road.”
John Bryan’s post is a continuing inspiration for a goal that will come one day.
11.19.07
Newton as art
From Pixelgirlshop Presents Fine Art & Handmade Goods:
Mini version of the painting of the Newton Apple Cynthia received as a gift from a very special nerd. Limited edition prints mounted on wood, signed and handpainted with stellar bronze paint by the artist herself. Looks awesome hanging on any tech-savvy person’s wall!
10.27.07
AnnualCreditReport
I just set up an iCal event to remind me to request a free annual credit report every 4 months from each of the three Credit Reporting companies: Experian, Equifax, TransUnion.
AnnualCreditReport.com : the official site to help consumers to obtain their free credit report.
I set the event to repeat annually 20 times, with an e-mail alert, and included the above URL in the mail so as to not get confused as to which is the real Credit Report request site. I wish they would have registered it as a .gov site. Those are a lot harder to spoof.
09.16.07
HDTV on the Mac in Portland
So I got the $100 rebate from Apple for my iPhone and added that to a small monetary gift I got recently to purchase the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid which I had on my wish list for a while. The device receives HDTV signals and passes them to a Mac and works pretty well.
The one piece missing from the package is an antenna. A simple $20 antenna gets a good solid signal. Given the location of our TV, facing west out through our westward-facing windows out to the West Hills where the TV broadcast antennas are at, we could have gone with the even cheaper $10 model. Remember, in most cities, HDTV broadcasts use the UHF band, and any UHF antenna can be use. (There’s no need to get an HD-specific antenna so don’t over spend in this arena.)
The biggest problem with our setup is that the Mac Mini only has the base 512MB of RAM. Until an upgrade, a few of the highest quality channels stutter. KGW seems to be pushing out a full 1080p signal, which I think is overwhelming the RAM buffer. Whereas the KOIN and KATU feeds are at 720p and the Mini keeps up with them pretty well.
The reason I’m most interested in Over The Air (OTA) HDTV is that our analog cable signal gets horrible crosstalk and ghosting. With a lack of insulated coaxial wiring, local channels are bad to really bad. Now we can see them really in clear, sharp high quality. Next to getting Digital Cable, this is the best way to get these channels.
09.08.07
DVD to iTunes and TiVo using Mac OS X
The latest process:
1) I’ve saved my DVDs using MacTheRipper (For discs that are tough for Handbrake to handle.)
2) Recoded them to .m4v (MPEG-4) with Handbrake (great for iTunes. Handbrake also automagically runs the file through MetaX to gather more info.)
3) Converted the the .m4v’s to .mpg (MPEG-2) via Tivoizer. (I had to really look hard to find a copy of Tivoizer on the web. If you’re looking for it and want a copy, send me an e-mail. It’s just a GUI wrapper to FFmpeg, but it makes it easy to set and forget.)
4) Holding down Option while opening up the TiVo Desktop system preference shows the Videos tab for sharing them from the Mac to TiVo. (This step only needs to be done once, the first time.)
5) Drop the .mpg file into the folder that’s set in the TiVo Desktop Video tab preferences.
6) After a while, the TiVo Desktop software processes the video and creates a *.properties file
7) The .properties file can be edited by hand in a text editor to reflect the Title and such that you want the TiVo to show. (Note that the TiVo Desktop software uses the first part of the filenames to associate the .properties and the .mpeg files. The “title” property in the .properties file does not have to use the exact filename as the source file, so it can be edited to your heart’s content.)
As TiVo is the main way that Amy and I watch TV, this is the best way we have to integrate what used to be a separate video source (DVD Player, PlayStation 2, LasedrDisc, or Mac Mini) which require another remote control to operate. Now everything we have, video-wise, is accessible via TiVo’s interface. Now I’ve just got to get Miro to drop stuff into the proper folder after converting the incoming videos to MPEG-2.
09.02.07
USL Live on Mac OS X – Fixing poor video streaming
The following was sent via the USL Live Contact Us form. I’m guessing they won’t get to this until after the season is over, but in case any one wants to know how to get great video from their service on the Mac, read on.
Dear USL Live,
There is a lack of information regarding the set up for Macs to get the best playback on your site and in your Help section. At this point, most of the people I’ve talked to think that it’s impossible to watch USL Live on a Mac. The problem is, they (and your web site) is missing a critical setting that makes USL Live work on a Mac.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add a section to your FAQs on both of these pages:
You need to add a paragraph that says something like the following:
For the best viewing experience on Mac OS X using the Flip4Mac WMV plug-in, you will need to set the following option in the System Preference Panel.
- Click on the Apple Menu in the upper-left hand corner.
- Select the System Preferences from the Apple Menu.
- In the System Preferences, look for the Flip4Mac WMV icon at the bottom of the window, in the “Other” section. Click on that Flip4Mac WMV icon.
- Click on the “Player” tab at the top of the Flip4Mac preference pane.
- Make sure that there is a check in the checkbox next to “Create Streaming Movies”.
- Close the System Preferences. (No restart is necessary.)
This setting controls how the software treats streamed video (like USL Live). The default method (when the box is not checked) causes Flip4Mac to access the stream without a buffer and without adjusting the video playback to accommodate the speed of your connection.
With this setting activated, Flip4Mac will now perform like a champ, displaying even full screen video with quality on par to the playback on the PC side of things.
In fact, while watching the Portland Timbers (as they defeated the Carolina Railhawks to reclaim first place in the USL First Division) at Slabtown with a contingent of the Timbers Army, the 4 or 5 people gathered around my PowerBook at the back of the bar got to watch the game a full 60 seconds ahead of the other group watching it via a PC laptop.
The amount of buffering that the Mac was doing vs. the amount of buffering on the PC side is the only thing I can think of that would cause this variance. Not that I’m complaining mind you, but when Amy and I started celebrating the Bryan Jordan goal in the 80th minute, I think the rest of the Army was wondering what the hell was going on over in our corner. The goal 50 or 60 seconds later on their screen probably made our whoops and hollers seem like a spoiler. Sorry guys!