Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Changes to comments
I've changed the Blogger comments settings. Anyone can comment now, there's no longer a requirement to register with Blogger. All comments have to be approved for now, but I'll see how much junk I get. Maybe the very annoying OCR Turing test (type distorted letters) will suffice to limit spam. (I dislike that test intensely since screen readers for visually impaired persons can't pass it.)
Creating a hard drive installer for OS X
macosxhints - Create a hard-drive based OS X installer
Read the comments, it sounds like there's a simpler approach.
Read the comments, it sounds like there's a simpler approach.
Extended Desktop for OS X: Screen Spanning Doctor
I just read a great report of using Screen Spanning Doctor with a 20" iMac like mine. I suspect one would need to disable it if running Aperture, but it would be neat buy a Dell LCD (beware major quality & support issues with this and other Dell produts) and share the Dell between my XP box and my iMac.
If I do that, I'll update this post.
If I do that, I'll update this post.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Playlist's top iPod products 2005
Playlist: Plays of the Year Awards has a very nice summary of iPod products. It even included a few I didn't know, like Senuti for extracting tunes from an iPod.
Hardware VPN - the cost effective solution
I've been periodically looking into various solutions for doing remote maintenance for my mother through firewalls, etc. It fiinally occurred to me that I might just as well implement a hardware VPN solution.
I've no idea if this D-Link DI-824VUP device is any good (ie reliable). It is impressive, however, that it includes VPN services, stateful packet inspection, 802.11g wireless, a print server and a microwave oven in a single package -- for about $120. A simpler device without wireless is about $60. So for $200 I could permanently link my mother's network to my own.
Why would I do this - besides doing maintenance remotely? So she can install a Squeezebox client to my music server ...
Update 1/5/06: From a comment below I found this summary of windows remote control options. I should also mention one I rather fancy - FogCreek CoPilot. The same comment also included a great link to Gibson's podcasts on security. I'm a Gibson fan, and the podcast list also includes transcripts. I may work these into my morning commute -- the very first podcasts I've bothered with.
I must say, I'm glad I enabled anonymous posts!
PS. In editing this post I accidentally made it transiently vanish. Sorry.
I've no idea if this D-Link DI-824VUP device is any good (ie reliable). It is impressive, however, that it includes VPN services, stateful packet inspection, 802.11g wireless, a print server and a microwave oven in a single package -- for about $120. A simpler device without wireless is about $60. So for $200 I could permanently link my mother's network to my own.
Why would I do this - besides doing maintenance remotely? So she can install a Squeezebox client to my music server ...
Update 1/5/06: From a comment below I found this summary of windows remote control options. I should also mention one I rather fancy - FogCreek CoPilot. The same comment also included a great link to Gibson's podcasts on security. I'm a Gibson fan, and the podcast list also includes transcripts. I may work these into my morning commute -- the very first podcasts I've bothered with.
I must say, I'm glad I enabled anonymous posts!
PS. In editing this post I accidentally made it transiently vanish. Sorry.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Copying DVDs: DVD2One
Shrek won't play on my aging iBook. It starts skipping about half-way through. Looks like my the original drive (read CD or DVD, burn nothing) has trouble with dual-layer DVDs. I also know it won't read a Tiger DVD (also dual-layer).
This is a problem when entertaining the kids on long flights.
I used Mac The Ripper (author site is gone, versiontracker still has it) to copy the DVD to my iMac drive, then tried DVD2one.com to create a compressed version that could be burned to a single layer DVD-R. It sort of worked; after burning the drive didn't show up in the Finder (10.4) and I had to eject using Disk Utility. I was able to insert and play however -- but it looks quite ugly. Too bad!
I'll have to decide whether to put a new drive in the G3 or (more sensibly) buy something newer. Alas the days of playing DVDs on a laptop may be numbered; the movie houses hate us doing that. I refuse to carry yet another device, so we may have to make do with old movie and I may need to learn more about the dark side.
This is a problem when entertaining the kids on long flights.
I used Mac The Ripper (author site is gone, versiontracker still has it) to copy the DVD to my iMac drive, then tried DVD2one.com to create a compressed version that could be burned to a single layer DVD-R. It sort of worked; after burning the drive didn't show up in the Finder (10.4) and I had to eject using Disk Utility. I was able to insert and play however -- but it looks quite ugly. Too bad!
I'll have to decide whether to put a new drive in the G3 or (more sensibly) buy something newer. Alas the days of playing DVDs on a laptop may be numbered; the movie houses hate us doing that. I refuse to carry yet another device, so we may have to make do with old movie and I may need to learn more about the dark side.
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