It is done. And it’s not a brick. To say that I am relieved is an understatement.
Archive for the 'Tech' Category Page 3 of 5
The Mac version of VLC Media Player now has native support for the Apple Remote. W00t. All that’s missing is the ability to customise what each button does. I’m not too sure about the fast forward skip time, whether it gets it from “medium jump length” or just makes it up. I tried changing jump lengths with inconclusive results! Not sure about DVD menus either. Here is a funky diagram I made of the controls.
I was just checking out my new Virgin Mobile service, and discovered an intriguing feature called DUI. Yes, it is what you think. Quoth the website:
Don’t dial Under the Influence!
Incoherent calls to exes, bosses and partners could be a thing of the past as Virgin Mobile urges you to get tighter with the right posse.
Dial 333 plus a phone number you don’t want to call when drunk e.g. 333 0431 123456.
Virgin Mobile then stops all calls to that number (e.g. 0431 123456) by blacklisting it until 6am the following morning from your phone.
To undo the action in an emergency dial 333CLEAR (33325327).
When blacklisting the number dial the number exactly as it appears in your mobile contacts book
*hic* Howsz szmany… *hic* numbershzz can I… *hic* blacklist?
But wait, there’s more:
Stuck in a disastrous date? Small talk and uncomfortable silences galore? Wish you were anywhere but there? Don’t want to make a scene? Fear not – now you can dial 767 (SOS) and hang up without saying a word and then Virgin Mobile will call you back a minute later with a perfect excuse to get you out of there. We’ll even talk you through what to say.
The SOS RINGâ„¢ is the perfect excuse to get out of that disastrous date without causing a scene.
These two features are clearly signs of the pending apocalypse.
This occurred to me recently: Google have a unique opportunity to write an AI that can pass the Turing Test. All they would have to do is write some fancy algorithm to parse all the data from Google Talk logs. There would of course be the small issue of personal information people type into chats, but surely complete loss of privacy is a small price to pay when the potential rewards are so great. Seriously, people. It would be a computer you could TALK TO!
Sadly, this post isn’t about the New Years kind of resolutions, but rather the kind that generally hangs out on TVs and the like. While reading up on the Wii’s (alleged) technical specs, the Wikipedia page managed to clear up some things about resolutions on the Wii. There are 3 TV types to choose from in the Wii settings menu; 50Hz (576i), 60Hz (480i), and EDTV/HDTV (480p). Without a component cable, the third option is greyed out. But the first two options are ambiguous and probably confusing to some.
When I first started up Super Mario Galaxy, I was greeted with a message asking me to switch the Wii to 60Hz mode for better graphics (not its exact words but the message has gone now, and I forget). I tried it for a while but have switched back as I’m convinced it’s all a complete load of weapons-grade balonium. My first argument for not using 60Hz mode is the lower resolution. Last time I checked, 480 was still less than 576. But then it occurred to me that lowering the res could plausibly increase graphics performance on Wii games as they would have less work to do. But in 60Hz mode (on my povo CRT anyway) the quality is visibly poorer with the whole screen looking very obviously interlaced.
But the Wikipedia page lists the modes as: 480p (PAL/NTSC), 480i (NTSC) or 576i (PAL/SECAM). For a while I thought PAL-60 was NTSC but its not, its just PAL with higher refresh rate.
So now I want to know when Super Smash Bros. Melee asks you to select 60Hz or 50Hz, can anyone actually quantify the reduced graphics lag in 60Hz mode, or is it just one giant placebo? I also suspect that when played on the Wii, it will ignore the choice at this screen, preferring the setting chosen in the Wii menu, but I can’t confirm this.
Laugh if you want, but there is a product I have wanted that as far as I know doesn’t exist. But if it did, I would buy it. I want a set of rubber dust plugs to fill up the ports I rarely use on my MacBook Pro, e.g. Firewire, Ethernet. I know this is a really pedantic idea and I’m not that precious about my MacBook Pro. But I do think there is a market for it, and I wish someone would hurry up and invent it.
As I was chowing down on some Apple crumble the other day, I found myself musing on some of the aspects of Mac OS X Leopard that have impressed me in recent weeks.
TV Out That JustWorks(TM)
Given that watching stuff through TV-Out is one of the primary uses of my MBP, I consider this pretty darn important. OK so it cost $41 to get the TV adaptor, but it’s totally worth it. Set up the TV as an additional display, switch to PAL, turn on overscan (who wouldn’t?), drag VLC onto the other screen, maximize and hit play. That’s it. The quality is absolutely superb and it shits all over my old HP’s TV-out. Colours are vibrant, and the display doesn’t go to sleep half way through the video (though that may be VLC’s doing, I’m not sure). The adaptor has dual outputs; composite and s-video so that’s also a plus.
Native Display Zoom
Being able to zoom the display using simple shortcut keys or mouse actions is a truly innovative feature. E.g. Ctrl-MouseScroll zooms to the current mouse cursor position, and the zoomed display pans the screen as you move the cursor. Or with the keyboard, Cmd-Opt-8 toggles zoom; zoom in and out with Cmd-Opt-plus and Cmd-Opt-minus respectively; and toggle smoothing with Cmd-Opt-\ (I have it on). This works a treat when watching widescreen videos on my TV through the adaptor. And in truth this feature is why I’m still using VLC to play videos on the Mac. In Media Player Classic, my video player of choice on Windows, you can zoom in and out with 9 and 1 on the numpad, or map to other keys. VLC however, has no such keyboard shortcut so I was forced to watch skinny widescreen videos half the height of my 4:3 TV screen. Then I discovered the OS X built in zoom and literally did a little dance around the loungeroom (watch on YouTube).
Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
Since Ubuntu, I’ve thought this is a feature that really should be built into all OSs. It’s just bloody handy to be able to map functions to keys that make sense to you, not just to the designers of the OS. E.g. I remapped “take screenshot” to Cmd-F7, the key with a little screen icon.
Native Disk Image Support
Mac OS X’s support for disk images has been one of the most impressive features I’ve seen so far in an OS. While I haven’t yet had a chance to explore the imaging support in great depth, certain features stand out. For example, you can download an ISO image and mount it straight on your desktop and have a look at the contents. DMG has become the default Mac archive format as well as being a flexible format used for both hard drive and optical disk images.
The Dashboard & Web Clips
The dashboard has suddenly become useful again with the introduction of web clips, which let you convert sections of web pages into dashboard widgets. Along side traditional widgets for date countdown, Internode usage, Gmail and iSlayer, I have web clips for the Elders weather forecast and latest BOM radar image which removes the hassle of opening a browser, loading the bookmark, etc. It’s just there when you hit F12. The only downside to the dashboard is that widgets can be designed to be any bloody shape under the sun, which sometimes makes it difficult to get a nice looking layout, but for the 5 seconds the dashboard is open, it hardly matters.
The Little Things
There’s loads of other simple innovations in OS X, e.g. when you rename a file with an extension, instead of selecting the entire filename, Finder selects all of the text before the extension so you are not constantly having to retype .jpg or whatever when you rename a bunch of files. Another one is the spotlight search box. Hit Cmd-Space and type the first few letters of the app you want to run and hit enter. It’s like Windows+R on steroids. I also love the Cmd-comma shortcut which brings up program preferences in almost every app.
I had no idea there was such an anti-mouse following out there. But it makes sense really. I blame excessive and probably improper use of the mouse for screwing my whole right side, especially my shoulder and back. I had a theory that it was just due to overall right-hand dominance but I’m not sure that’s the cause. Lately, as soon as I assume the “mouse position” it only takes about 5 minutes for things to get uncomfortable. I’m starting to realise like some others out there, that the mouse is far from being the most ergonomically designed peripheral out there.
I recently switched to a Laser Mouse 6000 but I think it’s actually less ergonomic than my old IntelliMouse which was the best mouse I’ve ever used, but had the unfortunate time induced flaw of spontaneously double clicking when you just single click. I don’t like the Laser Mouse as much because they shrunk the back and forward buttons and moved them away from where my thumb actually is. I used to be able to instantly click the back button and it was greatl mapped to undo in some apps, and to reload in FPS games. But those extra milliseconds of “seek time” have made the smaller back button useless now. OK, so I’m not a hardcore gamer or anything, but it feels easier to reach for the backspace key in Firefox rather than use the puny mouse buttons for “Back”.
A while back, to try and ease my mouse woes, I swapped mouse hands and tried to use the keyboard as much as possible. It was OK for a while, but my productivity is not great left-handed, and I would instinctively switch back to the right hand without even realising it. But there’s another problem with the right handed mouse.
I’ve always thought the standard keyboard is a bit ridiculous for a right-mouse-handed person. I look at it and just think “does not compute.” I know the numpad is on the right because it speeds up numerical data entry if you’re right handed. I much prefer to type numbers on the numpad, especially things like IP addresses. But you want the main alphabet section directly in front of you, but if you do, the numpad and arrows etc. that eat up all your right hand space where the mouse should go. A solution would be a keyboard with a numpad on the left or a detachable numpad that you could put back on the right for extended number crunching.
But alas, the problem of the unergonomic mouse remains. There are some new ones out there, even some sideways ones which might be better. But I don’t really want to shell out $100 or more for a mouse that might be just as crap or worse than my current one. Maybe I should just use the Wiimote, although accuracy could be a problem. (Link note: Cool, but wouldn’t connecting via Bluetooth be simpler?)
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