glassdog

Perfection

Lance Arthur — 2008-10-21T20:51:10-08:00

And... genius.

Visualizations

Lance Arthur — 2008-09-09T15:24:28-08:00

iTunes 8 was released to the world today, and included in its myriad upgrades and changes -- but not even mentioned by Sir Steve in his presentation, sadly -- is a new visualizer that looks suspiciously familiar to yours truly.

At any rate, for those of you out there who enjoy staring at swirling globes of light, dancing ribbons and gaseous nebulae all waltzing together in loving harmony to your music of choice, I thought I'd let you know how to get the most out of iTunes Visualizer.

Plus, I'll let you in on the Super Secret Undocumented option! Whee, you're special!

When you start it up, it dances and flings and sparkles, but you can also control some of the aspects of it if you want to.

To open the options menu, click ? on your keyboard. In the upper left, a magical menu appears with a few options:

M - Change mode
P - Change palette
I - Display track info
C - Toggle auto-cycle (on by default)
F - Toggle freeze mode
N - Toggle nebula mode
L - Toggle camera lock

Here's what they mean, though you can discover these yourself with a little experimentation.

The visualizer uses globes of gravity around which smaller sparkles and clouds of gas and ribbons swirl and dance. C is on by default, so the visualizer will Cycle through all the modes continuously as long as that's on. If you find a specific mode you like (by hitting M) hitting C again turns off auto-cycling.

The different Modes (M) alter the appearance of these pieces. Keep hitting M to get them all.

The palette also follows the auto-cycle mode, but you can change the palette yourself if you don't like the one you're looking at by hitting P.

Track info (I) is self-explanatory, I assume.

Freeze mode (F) will stop the action immediately, but the camera (P.O.V.) will continue to circle the frozen tableau unless you also lock the camera in place with L.

Nebula mode is what adds the swirling clouds that emit from the gravity globes. On older computers that may, shall we say, lack modern graphic cards, turning this off may speed everything up and stop any jitters you may be experiencing.

But, if you want to see what your computer can do on its own, hit E. This is the secret Extreme mode that sends the nebulae into overdrive, and the particle effects at full screen on a slower computer will cause it to cough and hack and get a terrible, terrible headache.

Death to IE6

Lance Arthur — 2008-08-27T14:06:53-08:00

I'm in the midst of exploring redesigns to all my personal sites for a number of reasons, chiefly that it's been quite a while since the last one and that the current design has one or two "show stopper" problems that I simply didn't consider when creating the design.

What I'm hoping to do is to keep the aspects of the design that I think work, discard the ones that don't, simplify everything a great deal and... drop support for Internet Explorer 6.

It isn't an exaggeration to state that I loathe IE6. It is a 7-year-old browser and it shows. Its support of current web technologies and capabilities is, to be kind, lacking, and I find that in my freelance work the one browser I am constantly adjusting for and making exceptions for is that one. IE7 isn't altogether perfect, and I look forward to IE8 now in public beta, but IE6 is a disaster of enormous proportions and deserves to die.

37Signals began to drop support for IE6 in its many tools starting this month. Salesforce is going to continue to support IE6, but any new interface tools and capabilities won't work. Looking around the web, I note that usage of IE6 is still at a minimum of 25% and goes all the way up to 50%, the larger numbers mainly at those sites used primarily by large corporations that rely on a centralized tech department to move its users up to IE7, and it just hasn't happened in the two years since it became available.

I know my site has a very tiny audience and I also know that most of you are using Firefox and Safari rather than any flavor of Internet Explorer, so there's no need to poke you in the ribs to please remind you that it's past time to update your browser. But for the rest of you, if you're still using IE6, I can guaran-damn-tee you that when the redesign hits, you're going to be slightly unhappy campers.

If you're using IE6, please update/upgrade/change to something else ASAP. If you're on windows, I recommend Firefox. Frankly, if you're on a Mac, I also recommend Firefox. Although Safari does a lot of things right, the whole "Flash makes my browser freeze up," no matter who is to blame, is a headache that can be easily avoided.

The Film Library Project: Part Three

Lance Arthur — 2008-08-21T10:59:44-08:00

This past weekend I achieved a minor milestone: all my DVDs — every film from Airplane to Young Frankenstein and every television episode from "Absolutely Fabulous" to "Strangers With Candy" — have been ripped from their silver disc prisons and enshrined on a 1 terabyte hard drive, using up precisely 706,153,332,736 bytes of data storage. I can now use my Logitech Harmony One universal remote to access the Apple tv and scan through every film or tv episode and watch them in Dolby 5.1 surround sound (for those encoded as such) on my 42" high definition television.

I can also stream any movie or program via iTunes wirelessly over my 802.11n home network to any other computer in my apartment (being just the one MacBook Pro sitting on my work desk) and play "Find the Fish" with Monty Python's Meaning of Life while coding and design web sites for clients.

I can rent DVDs from my local store and rip the ones I like to my library. I can await receiving one the 145 movies and tv shows I added to my Netflix cue to arrive and add those, too. Every Thin Man film. The complete "Extras." Curse of the Golden Flower. Every Kurasawa film. "Cowboy Bebop," the complete sessions in 5.1.

It's kind of amazing.

]]> Creating a digital video library presents a few new worries as well. What if the hard drive fails? Should I buy another huge drive just to back everything up? Is that overkill? Maybe it's more cost effective to just load it all up to Amazon's S3 service? At 15¢ per Gig per month, it'll cost me $108 a month, so that's... silly. Another drive is about $400, so that's something to consider in time. Not right now, though.

As the library grows, the lack of a good, easy to maneuver Apple tv interface grows more acute. I can break them down by genre, but it's still just a big long list of titles to scan. I've only got around 160 movies (and the same number of individual TV episodes) right now, but that's going to grow fast.

And unlike CDs, there's no album cover art to download, so the thumbnails for every movie tend to be freeze frames of studio logos or blackness. iTunes just grabs the first thing it sees about 10 seconds into a program. Not a lot to go on from that. And, yes, you can add artwork for every film if you want to go hunt them down and manually add them, but at the moment I'm not inclined to do that.

On the plus side, iTunes keeps track of any film's progress as I'm watching, so if I have to stop or pause or watch something else, when I come back it always asks if I want to resume where I left off or start from the beginning.

Having access to everything via my home network is also incredibly cool and convenient. And of course it'll multicast, so if there's something playing from the library in the living room on the big screen, I can still watch something on my computer in the bedroom.

That said, I'm also having one small, but irritating, problem. Front Row on my MacBook Pro in the office/bedroom can't see the iTunes shared library. This is the same MacBook Pro that can stream movies and everything else from that library, so why Front Row refuses to see it is a quandary. Of course, I can watch the movies from iTunes full screen on the monitor, but it would just be nice to be able to lie in bed with the little white computer remote in my hand and run everything via Front Row, which is like a mini Apple tv on its own.

But all in all, this is a very agreeable way to manage the wealth of digital entertainment we all deal with. I can even download TiVo broadcasts onto my Apple equipment using Toast Titanium. Pity TiVo doesn't provide an easy method one doesn't have to pay extra for, but I suppose that when we leave Windows behind (gladly) there will always be a few inconvenient bumps in the road.

I phoned up Comcast this morning and cancelled all my premium channels, a savings of $50 a month. I had the Premier Tier package, meaning I had every premium channel they offered, but after considering all my other options and how infrequently I found myself watching those channels anymore, it made no sense to keep them. If I want to see Weeds or Sopranos or whatever other shows they come up with, they all end up as DVDs or on the iTunes store as downloadables anyway. And obviously any films I want to see end up on iTunes or as DVDs or Blu-rays long before they end up on cable, so where's the advantage?

Therein ends my tale. I'm digitized, libraried and networked. I can access any film or TV show with a few remote control clicks and watch them from my television or computer. Everything fits on a small, quiet metal brick tucked into my entertainment center and I can add more space any time I want or need to.

Voila!

The Film Library Project: Part Two

Lance Arthur — 2008-07-28T10:02:13-08:00

It's been a few weeks so I thought I'd let you know how things are progressing and what I've learned in this process so far.

Ripping over 300 DVDs consisting of both films and television show episodes takes a 1-for-1 rip-to-program length amount of time on my Mac mini. That means that a 2-hour film takes about 2 hours to get from disc to drive, and then I need to add it to iTunes and annotate the entry so it ends up being sorted correctly (more on that later) so this isn't at all like ripping your CD collection, which flies by in comparison but also means you're constantly feeding your disk drive when ripping music, and ripping video is a set it and go about your daily routine and check on it in two hours. I work from home so I have time to do that. Most people, probably not so much. So if you go this route, it will pay you to realize that it may take weeks or months to get a big collection off the silver discs.
Handbrake has some really nice features built-in, particularly support for 5.1 Dolby Digital audio, but you have to make sure you're ripping the correct version of your material to your iTunes library or you'll end up wasting a lot of time.

I was ripping everything using the normal mode, which is .MP4, but typically of Apple they decided to support .MP4 only sporadically and prefer video with an .M4V on the end. Sometimes you can simply alter the file type in the Info panel and it'll work, but not always and there have been occasionas when I had to discard a ripped file and re-rip it using .M4V. Simply be aware of what you're ripping before you rip it.
Secondly, always check the video aspect ratio output by clicking on the "Picture Settings..." button. This opens a new window and you can cycle through a few screen captures that show exactly what your finished video will look like. Weirdly, not every film uses the exact same settings for anamorphic (16x9) presentations. Handbrake lets you adjust the edges pixel-by-pixel, or you can select "Strict" and that usually works, but make sure you check this or you could end up with a widescreen movie presented in squishscreen fashion. Handbrake doesn't always recognize the correct settings automatically.
Also check the audio setting every time. There are several audio tracks on DVDs, and on older ones the Dolby 5.1 setting isn't the default. If the DVD has a Dolby AC3 5.1 setting, you also have to change the codec dropdown in Handbrake from "AVC/H.264 Video / AVC + AC3 Audio" to "AVC/H.264 Video / AC3 Audio" which will pass-through the Dolby 5.1 encoded audio so that's what you end up with on your file, otherwise you could end up with Dolby Digital 2-channel, which isn't bad but certainly 5 channels and a dedicated subwoofer are better than stereo.

A commenter asked in the first part of this article about the choice in audio/video receivers. And there are a lot of them. How did I settle on my Denon 3808? Firstly, I have been using Denon equipment as the platform for my audio/video set-up for a very long time (this is my third Denon, and I upgrade about every 6 years, depending on the changing audio climate) so I looked at them as my first choice, holding up their price and features as the tent pole around which any other equipment would need to contend.

I looked at Sony, Pioneer Elite and Onkyo equipment, mostly because at the time of purchase they were the only ones supporting Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio, the newest 7-channel pure digital standards used in Blu-ray discs. It came down to Onkyo versus Denon. The Onkyo had a distinct price advantage, but commenters in some of the audio forums around the web, particularly the AVS Forum, said that the Onkyo was running very hot (not a good sign) and that it had some clicking issues. The Denon was also suffering some faults, mainly in its support for internet radio. Since I rarely if ever listen to internet radio stations, and the Denon came equipped with an Ethernet port for firmware downloads directly from the manufacturer (plus my positive history with the brand, though it may be considered overpriced by some) I opted to stick with what I knew.

Since my purchase, Denon has introduced their new line of equipment for 2009 and lots of the high-end features have migrated downward, so you can pick up a very nicely outfitted receiver for half the cost of what I paid. My advice is to look around, read some forums (the AVS forum is very helpful and nearly noise-free) go listen to them in-person and keep an eye looking ahead, because the digital age is inserting many, many new wrinkles in the world of audio and video, and it'll be important for whatever equipment you buy now to have the ability to be easily updated or upgraded going forward. For example, Denon will be releasing new software for 3808 (and other high-end model) owners that will install Audissey's new Dynamic Volume feature this October(ish) via the web-enabled firmware distribution method. I'll pay around $100 and my receiver gets even flashier and more useful, without having to go out and replace the whole thing.
One thing I have replaced is the external drive array. The LaCie mini drives, though they match aesthetically with the mini's footprint and have been working flawlessly, proved to be just too loud for use as video archives. The fan on the Mini is loud enough, but adding two more to it was too much. They were huffing and puffing away every minute of the day, and watching anything at night, when you need the sound dimmed a bit for the sake of your apartment neighbors and thin walls, proved to be a nuisance.

I've replaced them with a single fanless 1-terabyte "G-Drive" from G-Technology here in California. It's not without its own shortcomings (why, for example, did they install a 1,000-watt bulb in the LED socket to show that the drive is working? but a little strip of electrical tape resolves that problem) but it's nearly silent, comes in a very solid aluminum housing, is pre-formatted for Macs and is robust enough to keep grinding away as I simultaneously rip more DVDs and watch my library every night. They're affordable at $379 for 1 terabyte (and I've gone through half of one of those already and I'm only at the M's), come with Firewire 400 to give a slight edge on transfer rates to the Mini, and they run at a fast 7200RPM.

As mentioned, I'm up to the M's (Monsters Inc. and the Matrix trilogy) in my library and have been enjoying some old DVDs I frankly forgot I even owned. Getting access through the Apple TV interface makes it all much easier to find and scan, and I can jump in and out of films, moving through the chapters just like a DVD, without switching discs or fumbling with cases.

So far, so good.

Mousequest

Lance Arthur — 2008-07-09T15:06:05-08:00

When I moved from Windows to Mac (and I'm one of those cited in the study that blames Vista for that switch) one of my worries was about finding a good mouse. I know, sounds silly, but having checked around for suitable Apple-friendly input objects, I found that Windows had a lot more choices than Mac did.

After some trial and error, and the purchase of not one, not two, but five different mice, I think I've finally found the right combination of ergonomics, button choices, attractiveness, and non-buggy operation. Before I jump to my conclusion, I'll provide the path that got me to The Perfect Mouse.

]]> I started out with a keyboard/mouse combo from Logitech, the Cordless Desktop S530 which has been designed specifically for Macs and is Logitech's only non-Windows keyboard-mouse combo. As it is, they only offer one other Mac-capable desktop, while offering ten Windows solutions. So you can see that we're already off to a poor start.

The S530 is a great choice for anyone switching from Windows to a Mac, because the layout of the buttons, particularly the backspace and delete buttons, is exactly like a Windows keyboard. The accompanying mouse has a nice feel and the whole thing is done up in shiny white and matte silver so it fits right it with any Apple hardware.

Ultimately, I abandoned the keyboard for one reason only: Logitech's support for its Mac drivers is woefully inept. Once I moved over to Leopard, the S530 started acting peculiarly, and even after a "Leopard compatibility update," it just wasn't worth the aggravation.

Keyboard-wise, I went with Apple's own slim and sexy aluminum keyboard and moved over to Microsoft for a mouse, which I had heard through the grapevine would prove to be more robust and happy living on OS X.

Perusing Microsoft's hardware site proved a bit difficult at first since they don't seem all that excited about promoting someone else's platform. So figuring out which mice would be supported on OS X was a hunt-and-peck frustration, but I eventually found the Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 that I selected based mostly on three criteria: its model number suggested it was the most recent mouse available, it was wireless, and it was "man-sized."

I started using it and after about a week I determined that it sucked, mostly because it's a Bluetooth mouse. Something about Bluetooth sucks, and that something is "almost everything." It was constantly cutting out, fluttering all over the screen, and woulnd not awaken my computer no matter how I flung it about. It also came with a fairly huge recharging station that I though I'd like, but decided that in real life usage it was stupid.

But I was thinking perhaps that it was just Bluetooth that sucked, because otherwise the Microsoft Mouse had it all over the Logitech solution, even Microsoft's Intellipoint drivers were much better and more stable than Logitech's Control Center. It may have been an illusion, but it was a worthwhile one.

I went back to MS again and looked a bit more and decided to get a bit radical in my mouse choice and bought a Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000, which was, one assumes, 2000 times less good than the 8000, but it didn't use Bluetooth and it was "designed to conform to your hand in its most relaxed position."

This is one weird-ass mouse. You kind of have to see it to believe it. It's bulky, it's ergonomic, it's tilted, and it's designed to feel natural - hence the name. And, admittedly, this was my mouse of choice.

For about three weeks. What shot it down? Well, its USB dongle is ludicrously huge. Ridiculously so. I have no idea why it needs such a huge, mouse-sized wireless dongle, or why, in fact, for such a huge dongle, it had to be placed within a foot or two of it or the signal would fail. I lived with that for all it's complete stupidity and ugliness because the mouse felt good and worked well. Then its design flaw made itself known in no uncertain terms, and it was something I doubt Microsoft could have ever tested for.

I live in San Francisco, and we have the temperate climes that allows me to work, on most days, with my windows wide open. Meaning everything gets a fine coating of city dust. Add to that the presence of a kitty cat who dearly loves to shed her fur anywhere and everywhere and suddenly there are loose particles laying about looking for something to cling to.

Microsoft, for probably no reason whatsoever, attached one of their stickers describing the mouse's capabilities and serial number and branding and whatnot right next to the little circular window where the laser's beam peeks out to figure out where it is. The sticker had just enough sticky on its edges to capture whatever it came in contact with, including kitty cat hairs.

Any time my cursor started jumping around randomly and appearing suddenly at the opposite edge of the screen, I knew my mouse had a hair in its eyes. It couldn't see where it was going, couldn't get a clear view of things, and this started happening more and more often. So much so, that I had to abandon mouse #3.

Where to next? I'd given Microsoft two chances and Logitech's software still sucked (according to posts in their help forums from angry and saddened Mac users) so I decided to go back to the source and give Apple's Might Mouse a try.

Okay, so, others have asked this over and over but I just need to add my voice to the dissent and ask why in God's name can't Apple make a decent mouse? Every mouse they've ever produced is a joke. They're a computer maker! One must imagine that in their headquarters building, someone must be using a mouse, and presumably they favor their own mice, unless they've graduated to a special place where they just think at the screen and it does what they wish. If so, please release that version of OS X post haste so we may all enjoy its benefits.

The Mighty Mouse must be someone's idea of a joke. No one who's used this thing for more than a week can possibly tell me they prefer it over any other mouse available It's just awful. Truly a terrible product, made more so by the fact that its manufacturer does nothing but make products that make using computers better. The Mighty Mouse is an anti-input device.

I was in agony. I'm at my computer for hours every day. I'm a mouse guy. I don't go in for keyboard shortcuts unless they're Cntl-C, Cntl-V or Cntl-X. Cut and paste, baby, that's all I need.

I decided to give Logitech another try because I actually already had another mouse they made with the rather long-winded name of VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks. This was truly a thing of beauty. It's small, it's fast, it's sleek, its USB dongle is smaller than a nickel, and if one didn't bother loading any Logitech software, it ran fine as-is. Because I only used it when I was on the road, I didn't mind it's small footprint or lack of special effects. But for day to day use, in my large manly hand, it was a bit awkward.

I went back to Logitech and discovered, much to my happiness, that they had finally updated their Mac software to version 2.6 (apparently skipping 2.5 entirely) and it was getting high marks. So I took the plunge and bought the Rolls Royce of mice, the Logitech MX Revolution. Logitech describes it as "the world's most advanced mouse," which is really saying something since they already offer 14 other mice to choose from.

It is, however, $100. For a mouse. So for $100, just how good is it?

Friends, this is a very, very good mouse.

Firstly, Logitech seems to have solved all the problems that existed in its Control Center software. Version 2.6 (which you'll probably have to download from their site and if you're using a Logitech mouse on OS X right now, I'd advise you to go get it) runs without incident or accident and performs mousely legerdemain on your desktop.

Scrolling: Microsoft mice scroll wheels start out sticky and firm and slowly soften to mushy and abused. Logitech scroll wheels (at least on my VX Nano and MX Revolution) have two different scrolling methods. One is the usual step-by-step scroll where you tell the OS how much each step should scroll, from line-by-line to page-by-page. The other is a free-running speed scroller that just goes and goes and doesn't stop at all, so when you need to get to the bottom fast, it'll get there. The cool thing about the Revolution is that it'll do either... or both. So it'll start out with incremental scrolls, but if you really get going it switches to free scrolling. This is controlled via the Logitech software.

More buttons: Mice nowadays have 17 buttons. You can program them to open apps, or answer e-mail, or explode. The Revolution has the usual left and right buttons on top, plus two more mini thumb buttons along the left edge, plus yet another button called the Thumb Wheel that looks like a side-mounted scroll wheel except it rocks instead of rolls. It comes set-up so that rocking the wheel brings up the Dashboard, and pressing the wheel shows all open apps. You can change those settings to anything else you want to.

Extremely wireless: The Revolution's USB dongle (fuck Bluetooth!) doubles as its recharger, so it's not small. The mouse recharges on its end instead of lying flat, like Microsoft's mouse, and you can sit the thing back a ways on your desk, behind your monitor, out of the way so your workspace remains relatively uncluttered and "Apple-like."

Laser tracking: So far, so flawless. I doubt there are differences between one laser's accuracy versus another's, but it sure feels like there is. And Logitech only puts one sticker on the bottom of its mouse (to Microsoft's 3) and it's far enough from the laser's window that only the most strident cat hair is going to get stuck in there. It also appears that the sticker's depression is slightly larger that the sticker, where Microsoft's 1-to-1 sticker to sticker depression sizing meant that the sticker could be slightly out of its depression, and suddenly one has stickiness where stickiness should not be.

Weird what's important sometimes, isn't it? Sticker placement on a mouse's underside. Who knew?

The Revolution can be had in various places for less than its suggested retail price, but beware of buying one of Amazon's "reconditioned" models. I gave one of those a shot because saving $60 seemed like a good deal. What I ended up with was an unusable mouse that refused to do anything mouse-like at all, so I guess you really do get what you pay for.

The Film Library Project: Part One

Lance Arthur — 2008-07-01T14:20:10-08:00

Some time ago, I decided that it was dumb and a waste of space to keep my library of around 300 DVDs in their plastic boxes stacked on shelves inside two rather large cabinets. So I purchased a Sony 400-disc DVD jukebox, transferred all the silver discs into it and discarded all the boxes and booklets, leaving me with a simple way to manage, sort and view my movies and TV shows on DVDs.

Then I went Mac. The Apple platform is more suitable to digital media storage than Windows. It just is. Believe me, I tried it both ways and the whole Windows Media solution sucks. They layered too much crap over it all, and even though it will record and store television broadcasts, I'm too tied to my TiVo to have ever abandoned it, particularly after succumbing to Comcast's attempt at digital TV recording in Hi-Def which capital-S Sucked.

Initially I tried to copy my DVD library to a Mac mini with 750Gb of attached external drive space, but that mini simply wasn't up to the task. Using Handbrake to extract a 2-hour film from disc to drive took all night long. Plus, Handbrake previously had some bugs that chopped off the final few seconds of a film (not a big deal when talking about end credits, quite a big deal when talking about the 2-disc Lord of the Rings extended editions) and it wouldn't support Dolby Digital tracks in 5.1 arrays. And even if it did, the Mac mini didn't have a Dolby license to be able to interpret it into 5.1 tracks.

The advent of Apple tv 2.0 has altered the landscape considerably.

]]> I already had all my music sequestered on the Mac mini external dives (which I named glassdog.media in my glassdog network) and was enjoying the ease with which I could share my entire music library -- currently consisting of 12,000 tracks on over 1,000 albums covering 40.2 days of continuous music streaming -- on my laptop in my bedroom as well as my hi-fi set-up in the living room. I could even, if I chose, plug in another Airport Express in any room I wanted to and use it as another hub on the glassdog.network to stream music into another room, all from a centrally located music hub discretely housed on the cute little mini in the living room.

When I started trying to transfer my DVD library, I ran into the aforementioned problems. They weren't necessarily huge problems, but they were annoying nonetheless, so I stopped trying to use my mini as an all-in-one digital media hub and kept using the Sony Jukebox, even though its interface wasn't nearly as clean and simple to use as Front Row to figure out what was where.

I purchased an Apple tv after Robert, my boyfriend (for those not keeping up) purchased his own and had remarked that he was using it "more than (he) thought" to download rented movies from iTunes. The Apple tv has a few distinct advantages over a plain and simple mini when you want to stream digital entertainment, and a couple of drawbacks as well.

Apple tv Advantages:

HDMI out

Dolby Digital support

HD rentals via iTunes

Apple tv Disadvantages:

Limited storage capacity

No keyboard or mouse support

No DVD/Blu-ray or any other media drive

No access to the operating system

Dead USB port

In essence, Apple tv is a hobbled Mac mini, but it's the only mechanism that will get you 720p video from the iTunes store, and it's the only way to get Dolby 5.1 tracks from your digital library to your amp.

Luckily, the Apple tv can see and share iTunes libraries. So now all I had to do was rip all my movies and television episodes from my 300+ DVD discs to my Mac mini's iTunes library and then share that with the Apple tv.

Also luckily, Handbrake 0.9.2 fixed several existing problems and added support for Dolby Digital tracks via AC3, so now there was a way to retain all 5.1 channels off a DVD film and get those individual tracks interpreted by the A/V amp, thereby losing absolutely nothing in the transfer from media to file.

The added advantage of keeping my music on the Mac mini is that with two further pieces of software offered by Nullriver (Connect360 and MediaLink) I can also stream music to both my Xbox 360 and my Playstation 3, though the PS3 is limited in its handling of that music. On my Xbox, I can pull up any song, album or playlist and stream it in-game, replacing whatever thundering death metal the game designers licensed with my own gay-brained equivalent. On the PS3, I can listen to the music as long as that's all I'm doing. Seemingly, and stupidly, one has to physically copy the music to the PS3's own drive in order for it to do anything else with it.

So if you have a library of films and music currently held hostage in several different places, and you have several hundred dollars lying about looking for a reason to help the economy along, here's my set-up for having a single media server housing all music and video that allows you to stream any of that anywhere you want it.

I'm linking to the Apple store for "one-stop shopping" but most (all?) of these are available at Amazon for probably a little bit cheaper, and if you live in California you won't pay sales tax on any Amazon purchases (until you claim the purchases on your state taxes, of course).

Apple tv ($229, but often available refurbed for $199)
Mac mini ($599 but sometimes (not too often) available refurbed for $499)
Remember, this is a fully functioning computer, so once it's hooked up to your A/V set-up, you can surf the web, write emails, chat, and pretty much anything you do with any other computer.
HDMI cable ($20 -- and don't spend any more than that, you don't need to.)
An HDMI-capable A/V receiver. Mine is a Denon 3808ci, which is over $1000, but there are plenty of good alternatives, some for less than $400. Choosing an A/V receiver is worthy of an article unto itself, so I won't go into that much detail here.
A wide screen LCD or Plasma display. I'd probably shoot my wad on this if you haven't already taken the plunge. Prices are falling, but budget between $1500 and $2000 for a good bordering on great flat screen. Panasonic and Pioneer for plasmas, Sony, Samsung and Toshiba for LCD. Plasmas generally offer deeper blacks, while LCDs will suck slightly less energy and may cost less in the long run.
Additional external storage. I use the LaCie Mini HD 500Gb Hub because it fits right under the mini's footprint, but you may like the looks of the Western Digital My Book Studio line, which are created to compliment the Apple silver-and-white look. The My Book Studio comes in 1Tb and 2Tb models which should store just about anything you want to cram into them.
If you're going to hook the Mac mini directly to your A/V setup, you'll also need a DVI cable, a digital audio cable, a keyboard and a mouse. The mini has Bluetooth built-in, so any Bluetooth keyboard and mouse will work, but I elected to stay inside the Apple look-n-feel and got me the wireless keyboard and the somewhat stupidly designed Mighty Mouse. I use the mini infrequently as a stand-alone computer so they do the job admirably, plus they're small and easy to hide away in my component cabinet.
Handbrake is the software I use to rip movies from DVDs. It has an easy to understand front-end to select the various audio tracks (each DVD comes with several) and the optional captioning (for your foreign language films, because no one likes a dubbed movie, do they?) and supports just about every format you might want, from MP4 to Apple tv to iPod and iPhone.

Getting all my digital media into a media server has made almost everything about watching films and TV and listening to music less about figuring out where it is and how to get to it, and more about deciding what the hell I'm going to watch now that it's all readily and easily available.

Now, all I need to do is back it all up. There's just never enough hard drive space, is there?

I Made This

Lance Arthur — 2008-04-09T16:09:36-08:00

My Apartment in 1 Minute 8 Seconds from glassdog on Vimeo.

Blu-Ray Über Alles!

Lance Arthur — 2008-02-19T12:46:32-08:00

So, Toshiba has given up the ghost, thrown in the towel, jumped the shark and called it a day. HD DVD is dead, officially. Blu-Ray is the de facto winner in the Hi-Def format stakes. So can you finally buy a Blu-Ray player without regret?

Well, yes and no. Blu-Ray is still an evolving standard. As such, a player you buy today may or may not support discs you buy in the future, which sucks but there it is.

I already own an HDTV LCD from Westinghouse (that, unfortunately, suffers from some HDMI 1080p bugs that produce blue sparkles whenever I send those signals to it) and just upgraded to a new Denon 3808ci that supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio for lossless 7.1 surround, so I'm mostly set to start watching Blu-Ray movies. After some due diligence, I have ordered the Panasonic DMP-BD30K, the first stand-alone player to fully support Blu-Ray 1.1, the "final standard profile," the main benefit of which is BD-J (Blu-Ray Disc Java) for picture-in-picture video playback, meaning you can do things like compare two different versions of scene, or watch the director give his commentary in addition to listening to it.

For what that's worth to you.

Why didn't I buy the PS3, which is pretty much what anyone recommends when considering a Blu-Ray player? Two reasons, mainly. First, it's really noisy. Not as noisy as an Xbox 360, but noisy enough that watching quiet passages in a movie would be hampered by my knowledge of that annoying fan noise coming from somewhere. Secondly, the PS3 uses Bluetooth to receive remote control commands rather than infrared, so you're forced to either use the game controller to figure out how to watch a movie, or buy their cheap plastic Bluetooth remote instead of being able to simply program your handy-dandy universal remote, which I find ludicrous.

If you're thinking of getting a Blu-Ray player, and those two idiosyncrasies don't seem like a bother, the PS3 is kind of a no-brainer. It has an Ethernet port on it so Sony can send it regular updates to comply with the evolving changes in the Blu-Ray standard, and it has copious internal memory so anything you want to download as part of the upcoming 2.0 standard (mostly involving online toys like "play a video game based on Alien vs. Predator against your friends! (who also own a 2.0 compliant Blu-Ray player)") will be able to find space.

Or, simply wait until around June when Panasonic issues the DMP-BD50, the upgraded and likely more expensive version of the BD30 that will include 2.0 support natively.

I'll let you know, once I have the Panny 30 plugged in, whether it's worth the trouble.

A High Definition Choice

Lance Arthur — 2008-01-05T14:18:13-08:00

I am an early adopter, when I can afford it. As such, I have experienced my own personal disappointments when a format or platform I selected under-performs in the market and is judged a failure by every measurement except quality, because I think I usually judge these things rationally and after a good deal of research about which is the better option.

Those of us with big digital monitors for our home entertainment centers, AKA the living room TV, know that there are two competing platforms to replace DVDs for high-def video on a little silver disk. They both offer similar audio and video quality, and use exactly the same read/write method to pull the copious amounts of data off the platters for delivery to your screen and speakers.

Until recently, the major differentiations have been "We're bigger!" and "We're cheaper!", and historically the "We're cheaper!" camp usually wins the contest, because the general public can't be bothered about the details and what it comes down to, in the end, looking at a side-by-side comparison is "If I can get the same picture and the same sound for less, why would I buy the other box?" The good tech-heads at c|net have assembled an excellent table that accurately demonstrates the similarities between the competing standards, and the differences are minor.

The battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray has been going on now for more than two years. Attempts to rectify the differences in the two camps and provide a single, undisputed, optimized standard fell apart in 2005 and since then we've been faced with making a decision.

]]> I didn't make one. First off, I own about 300 DVD disks and the idea of replacing even half of those with a new format that might not last wasn't very attractive. Secondly, I was in no hurry to do so because it seemed to me that the cost of the players was prohibitive, and there were reports of problems -- particularly with Blu-Ray -- getting movies to just show up, let alone getting all the new special interactive features functioning. Thirdly, I have a DVD jukebox that holds all my DVDs, so I can just scan through an on-screen menu and select a movie to watch without bothering with boxes and disk changing, and a single-disk player didn't fill the convenience factor. Sony has since come out with a not-inconspiculous multi-disk tower, but it currently retails for $3,500 and I'm not in the financial position to spend more on a video player than I did on all my other A/V eqipment combined.

Lastly, and most importantly, I wasn't content to make a judgment for either platform while the other existed. It's weird to me that there are camps on both sides with religious convictions about their format of choice. I can almost understand the PS3 vs. Xbox churches, since the companies behind those consoles are both capable of eliciting strong emotional responses both positive and negative. And in a way, the hi-def video platforms are similarly divided, since Microsoft is backing Toshiba's HD-DVD format, while Blu-Ray was developed by Sony. And there are certainly extended circumstances surrounding a preference for either that goes beyond mere titles, however I must admit that I prefer HD-DVD as a format name more than Blu-Ray, which sounds like it was cooked up by a marketing department bent on selling some sci-fi inspired laser pistol or a way for Dr. Evil to destroy the moon.

One big sticking point between the two is the use of Digital Rights Management software, or DRM. In particular, Blu-Ray discs institute a layer of content protection over and above what's currently on an HD-DVD disc called BD+. I won't bore you with the details (available here) but suffice it to say that the anti-Blu-Ray fanboys feel that Sony has gone overboard in their use of copy protection, which is hardly surprising since they're a major content provider, and in some cases the DRM has caused players to refuse to play discs -- that's how good it is at protecting itself.

Another lessor consideration is how much data a disc will hold when used on your home computer. A standard single-layer DVD-R disc will hold 4.7 GB, and a dual-layer holds 8.5 GB. Blank HD-DVDs will hold 15 GB or 30 GB (or up to 45 GB on prototype triple-layer discs) and a Blu-Ray disc can manage 25 GB or 50 GB, with a proposed 100 GB quad-layer disc in prototype stages. Not only does that mean you can squeeze more onto a Blu-Ray disc, it means that the content is likely to be 100% hi-def, including all that useless additional content you watch once and never watch again.

The last mitigating circumstances concerns what you can get for each competing platform, because motion picture studios have been picking sides on their own about which format to release for. Until recently, the balance was about 50-50, with Paramount, Universal and Dreamworks on the HD-DVD side, and Sony (MGM/Columbia Tri-Star), Disney (Touchstone/Miramax), 20th Century Fox and Lions Gate in Blu-Ray's church. Warner Bros had decided to ride the fence until a clear winner emerged. That was an important decision since Warners commands 18%-20% of DVD sales in the U.S. all by itself.

On Friday, Warners announced it would cease releasing content on HD-DVD in favor of Blu-Ray beginning in May -- a decision that shifts the content balance to 70% Blu-Ray.

In word: Ouch.

The other option that's going to be rising from the depths is the same one that is, with gathering speed, killing off the Compact Disc as a method of housing digital music. Downloadable content is the dark cousin in the corner that the studios would rather have put away than deal with at all, but it's an unavoidable eventuality. Grabbing a movie is a much larger proposition than ripping an album off a CD, or downloading a group of MP3s from a friend. We're talking Gigs of data rather than Megs, plus the multiple soundtracks and embedded subtitles and all manner of other complimentary data that a DVD or hi-def disc allows. There are several unanswered questions regarding this option, and most are unanswered simply because no one is really doing it right, yet.

I've just started using Handbreak on my Mac Mini to rip movies off my collection of DVDs to a concatenated disc array. It's kind of like a RAID, which is combining two or more hard drives into one big one with striped or mirrored data, though in the case of concatenated drives it's merely a software solution that makes multiple drives look like a single one rather than act like one, the advantage being that you can add more drives to the array whenever you want to without losing the data that's already written to the other ones. The quality of the movies is about equal to what my up-converting DVD player can achieve on its own, and I use Front Row along with iTunes to manage my movies just like it manages my music. It's actually a more elegant and simpler method than the DVD jukebox's rather limited menuing system, but it's not without its drawbacks. For one thing, my poor little Mac Mini struggles to encode the movies with its slow Intel single-core processor in less than about 12 hours per title, and a 2+ hour .MP4 film ends up occupying about 1.8 GB. I figure downloading a similarly sized file would take much less time, unless one were to attempt to grab a Torrent of someone else's ripped DVD in which case it would likely take days or weeks to get one file downloaded what with Comcast's torrent throttling, not to mention the innate illegality of such an option.

The Xbox 360 can accomodate video rentals, including 720p HD versions, but it's impractical. For one thing, obviously, you download to the 360's hard drive and need to use the 360 to view them. As a game console, it's fabulous. As a movie player, it's a bit, well, awkward. For one thing, using a 360 controller as a remote isn't exactly ergonomic.

Amazon Unbox allows me to download movies to my TiVo, but again I run into more than a few downsides, chiefly that I want to use my precious hard drive space (which has only limited expandability) to record hi-def television, and not as a storage method for standard definition movies.

What I'm really longing for (still) is The MBEN I detailed back in 2004 and which I prognosticated that we would not see until 2014. Here we are a third of the way into that period and I don't think we're too much closer to the event. Standing in the way, I thought, was technology. But the real challenge to simple, fast, easy access to all digital media via one smart box is more likely to be copyright management and digital handshaking. The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) was supposed to resolve that problem, but my personal experience with it is that it's only exacerbating it.

It seems to me that while trying to protect their own content, studios and record labels are managing to destroy it.

But getting back to my hi-def meanderings, and after way too much ditch-digging I'm finally getting to the bedrock of this post, which is to say that given the current environment and realities concerning available content and support, I'm going to say that Blu-Ray wins, much to my surprise. Sony's track record for creating new "standards" isn't exactly stellar, and they fail mostly for the same reasons: Priced too high, media too closed, outside support lacking or non-existent.

I'm still not ready to put my money where my mouth is. The Blu-Ray spec is still in the process of evolving and one player may not be able to do what another player can, not to mention that the best player out there is the PS3 and I am unconvinced that it's worth my money to purchase one when I wouldn't be likely to actually use it enough to account for the amount of space it takes up on my equipemnt shelves. Perhaps when LittleBigPlanet appears, or when New Line decides to release the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition trilogy in 1080p I'll take the plunge, but at least I can now be reasonably confident that my high definition platform of choice is the one that's going to be VHS, rather than Beta.

What's Up, Apple?

Lance Arthur — 2008-01-01T18:15:54-08:00

Now that I've traded in my dirty old Windows box for a shiny matte silver Macbook Pro, I've become one of those sycophantic Apple cultists dredging the rumors sites for every drop of hardware and software news I can swallow.

With MacWorld 2008 coming up in two weeks and Uncle Steve giving one of his patent-pending "One more thing" keynote speeches to kick off the event, I've come up with the following list of potential product updates, upgrades and introductions for Apple.

]]> Macbook Pro super portable notebook
Chances of appearance: 90%

Almost every site and prognosticator by now has dredged up some evidence that Apple is going to introduce a small, lightweight, high-end notebook that will likely not include an optical disc reader to save space, and include a smallish LED-backlit LCD screen. No one's said anything about the keyboard, far as I know, which remains the one hindrance as far as I'm concerned about any smaller than small notebook. Chicklet keys are no one's friend, and the removal or "reimagining" of the digital 10-key spread has been historically problematic.

In addition to ejecting the CD/DVD reader/writer, it's been suggested that the internal memory will be entirely Flash-based rather than using the usual hard drive, helping to further reduce weight in addition to making battery life last for a North American transcontinental flight. While I find the idea very agreeable and sexy, I tend to doubt that it's practical from an expense-to-development ratio to rely solely on Flash memory while alternative laptops can offer huge hard drives with little extra overhead.

Redesigned Macbooks and/or Macbook Pros
Chances of appearance: 80%

Credence has been added to this possibility based on MacRumor's recent revelation that this is exactly what's coming. Adding fuel to the fire, the current MacBook Pro design is now almost exactly two years old (having been introduced at MacWorld 2006) with little having been done to keep it fresh and new other than processor upgrades and the addition of LED-backlit screens on the 15" version earlier this year.

The current MacBook is slightly younger, birthed in May 2006, and still incredibly popular. Still, the plastic shell of the iMac was recently jetisoned in favor of a curved aluminum casing ala the Cinema Displays (now almost three years old!) so why not make the whole family line adhere to the same 'ecologically friendly' designs?

Mac Mini replacement, AKA the Mac nano
Chances of appearance: 70%

This rumor has been hanging around for months, with some sites suggesting that a pre-Christmas introduction was likely. The Mac Mini is one of my favorite computers. I hooked mine up to my 42" HDTV and added in a big-ass external hard drive from LaCie in matching dimensions and design and it sits under the AirPort (old version, non-Gigabit) and holds my entire iTunes library. I recently downloaded Handbreak and am in the slow, laborious process of ripping several of the 300+ DVDs I have so that I can use the Mac Mini as my digital entertainment server of choice.

The redesigned Mac nano is said to be somewhat different in appearance to the current Mini, though with everything in the Apple line turning into aluminum-clad rounded edges like the Mini, I can't see it altering too much. I imagine it becoming much slimmer, and if I had my druthers I'd make it little more than an engine for the uses I'm already putting my Mini to, with much improved video capabilities and a heavy-duty processor and ditch the hard drive in the central unit in favor of stacking hard drive units to store as much digital entertainment as one might want or need.

In effect, ditch the AppleTV, make the Mac nano an HDMI-capable digital living room server with modular add-ons to increase memory as needed.

AppleTV update
Chances of appearance: 50%

I think most people who expect an AppleTV update are wishful thinking. There's virtually no evidence to support that Apple has any interest in improving this still-born, unlamented piece of awkward hardware, and Steve himself hasn't been exactly overflowing in his excitement over the slim little box.

On the other hand, the set-top box market has been "set to explode" for years, now, with everyone predicting that getting control of your TV and what you show on it is the Holy Grail of every consumer electronics company out there, including Sony, Microsoft, Samsung, Philips and Motorola.

I think it unlikely that we'll see anything new and exciting in the form of an AppleTV, unless the company realigns this product and the Mini into an amalgam of digital server and small computer and retires the Mini name in favor of TV.

And there's another reason to believe that the AppleTV is far from deadsville...

iTunes 8.0 HD
Chances of appearance: 70%

This is just my own blue-sky prediction, based on a couple of reports earlier this year that Apple is prepping a major iTunes upgrade to support movie rentals via the iTunes Store and the availability of high definition versions (probably 720p) of those films, particularly from Disney/Pixar and Fox.

The New York Times already reported that Apple has an agreement in place for 20th Century Fox to begin offering film rentals online, and they'll need something to easily support that capability that ties in with Apple's overall strategy for living room domination via Front Row, which is now standard on everything that has Leopard loaded onto it. Front Row is probably the most elegant and easy entertainment library management interface out there, and so far Apple has done very little to play up its superiority, probably because there's virtually no competition. It's also such a nacent field that most people (i.e. non-TiVo owners) will have a hard time getting the concept of managing their digital entertainment.

iTunes 7 was released in September 2006 and although it was a 'major release' it actually contained very little in upgraded capabilities, other than a new iPod manager interface and an album art-based browser. iTunes 8 needs to support high definition media to make way for the expected introduction of high-def movies for sale or rent. Microsoft already offers hi-def rentals via Xbox Live -- you think Steve's really going to sit still for that?

Apple Cinema Display update
Chances of appearance: 50%

As mentioned, the current designs are almost three years old, but what's needed here isn't a design refresh but a technology upgrade. The Cinema Displays were cutting edge at introduction and still look drop-dead sexy, but there are now a host of 30" LCD competitors and every one of them boast better connectivity options and usually include flash memory readers, while Apple's entries still have a single DVI connector and two each of FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 ports. Contrast that with Dell's upcoming 30" monster, the 3008WFP weighing in with two DVI ports, HDMI, component, S-video, composite, VGA and DisplayPort and a 3,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.

There's certainly room for improvement if Apple wants to recover its pole position in the high-end display race. On the other hand, maybe Apple doesn't care about displays anymore. Witness that the current Apple Store online is hiding the link to their displays a couple of screens down, and doesn't even feature a picture of the Cinema Displays on the store's front page anymore.

P.S. Why not a 36" display?

.Mac Improvements
Chances of appearance: 40%

Apple really thought they had something with .Mac, but so far so not-so-good. It should be an always-on, always-available synching mechanism that ties all your communications into a nice, tidy package so you can manage your GMail and Exchange and Yahoo Mail and POP and IMAP and notes and IMs and iCal all that other two-way stuff you're trying to keep track of, but currently can't. They need to simplify and expand its capabilities so that buying a Mac and getting .Mac means you can use Mac Mail and .Mac as a conduit for your digital communications, much like iTunes is poised to be a conduit for your digital entertainment. Last year they upped the available space for you to store stuff online to share with others. Now they need to make it transparent so you put in where your stuff is, and they help you manage it in one convenient and accessible place.

iPhone refresh
Chances of appearance: 30%

If there's anything iPhone going to happen at MacWorld, it might be a bump in the memory to equal the high-end iPod touch's available 16Gigs. A 3G iPhone isn't in the cards until mid-2008, at the earliest, and the upcoming iPhone SDK is likely to give birth to lots of cool new features riding atop the device's OS without need of a brand new iteration. It's also enjoying a lot of success, so other than another surprise price drop or that memory increase, I think we're all safe with our iPhone purchases without worry of looking like losers with last year's technology.

The Mac Tablet/Macbook touch
Chances of appearance: 10%

I seriously doubt we'll ever see a tablet-based Mac portable simply because there have been Windows-based tablets around for years and how many of you friends or colleagues is sporting one of these write-on twisty screen things? My guess is "not many" or "none." Apple could surprise me with some all-new take on this kind of computer, but the market has so far issued a great big yawn in regards to the need and desire to have one, other than in narrow niches, so hoping for one from Infinite Loop is a bit loopy in itself.

Brand new WiFi-connected handheld computing device of uncertain design or purpose
Chances of appearance: 10%

There have been lots of rumors about Apple's purchases of new Intel processors and little multitouch screens and other hints and suggestions that amount to the possibility of Apple entering into the arena of small handheld computers. My take is that this is where the iPhone is already headed and that we won't see anything groundbreaking or new here.

Almost Inevitable
iPhone 1.1.3, OSX 10.5.2

One web site already has video of iPhone 1.1.3 software running, with new Google Maps capabilities and intro screen bookmarking. An OSX 10.5.2 release candidate is in the wild for testing with over 300 fixes. These are in the stream already so we should see them on or before MacWorld's keynote.

Santa Claus, et al

Lance Arthur — 2007-12-12T17:10:42-08:00

Because nothing says Xmastime to me like robots, Martians and a tiny little Pia Zadora.

"Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" in which Santa Claus conquers the martians:

Slightly more palatable: Mystery Science Theatre 3000 presents: "Santa Claus"

Another Day, Another iPod

Lance Arthur — 2007-09-05T11:40:06-08:00

Apple -- or more precisely, Steve Jobs, announced a complete revamp of their iPod line-up this morning, and as usual they've managed to one-up the competition on all fronts in the battle for your digital pocket, creating new products too sexxay to keep hidden (though too pretty not to fear being mugged for) and dropping the prices at the same time.

I already own a Shuffle, a Nano, and an iPhone. I had an iPod "Classic" (as they're now called) but it died recently, and would not hold a charge no matter how hard I tried to make it do so. It was a v3, I think, pre-video version with a line of buttons along the top and a monochrome screen, so it was horribly out of date and had I pulled it out at SXSW next year, people would have laughed at me derisively and pointed out that I was so behind the times that I shouldn't even be there. So it was time for an upgrade anyway.

The dilemma: which iPod is right for me?

]]> I love my Shuffle. And it didn't change at all, save for a new coat of paint. It's still a relatively cheap $79 for a Gig of music and no way to tell what the hell you're listening to unless you already know. It's like a game to carry around a collection of songs from my collection of over 11,000 and wonder just what will come up next. It keeps a charge forever and it's really durable with its all-metal skin, so it's a keeper.

The Nano isn't seeing as much action as it used to now that I'm no longer going into an office, or working out, or doing much more than sitting on my ass at home managing my new Apple-centric digital lifestyle. The new Nano, dubbed the Phatty in various blogs, is a squat, thin little cracker of a media player that now supports video on a larger screen with a buffed-up interface. My black Nano is now 2 versions behind, an original slim wonder I rewarded to myself when I quit my old full-time job. It was handy to take to the gym and to slip into my pocket for MUNI excursions and bike rides. And though its small memory size had me worried at first and thinking of it as a back-up to my "big iPod," I used it more and more and simply refreshed the songs in its memory, though that does get trying.

The reason I loved the original iPod was that I could (nearly) fit all my music onto it, so I never had to fret that I didn't have that one song I want to listen to right now because it was all on there. But as my song library grew, it outgrew the iPod.

The new iPod Classic swells all the way up to a ginormous 160 Gigs of portable hard drive space -- and that may be its biggest advantage. It's not so much a digital media player anymore, it's a pocket-sized easily managed portable hard drive. You can use it to carry around music and movies and whatever else your heart desires to entertain your head, but all that space also makes it easy to transport files and docs and huge gobs of data, too. And the new design is slimmer than ever and comes in an all-metal case, so it even protects that data better while looking slim and sexy at the same time.

But what's sure to get the attention of the press is the newest iPod in the family, the iPod Touch. It's basically a phoneless iPhone (which is also now $200 less than it was only a couple months back) in a radically slim 8mm thick design. It comes with WiFi built-in for web surfing, and Safari is already there, too. It uses the same form factor as the iPhone with the same screen and the same interface, so it's the iPhone for people who don't want a phone messing up their iPod. It's very lovely, at least on screen since it won't be available to mere mortals to "Touch" for a few weeks yet, but as I already own an iPhone I'm not sure that it's the right iPod for me, no matter how beautiful it is.

So I'm leaning toward a new Classic for my collection. I still like the idea of having every single song available to me at any time no matter where I am, and I like the excess space that a 160Gb drive allows for whatever else I want to stick on there.

I've no doubt that there will be a lot of Apple products underneath Christmas trees at the holiday season this year. There's literally something for everyone in the line-up, and the price points, while still premium, look completely affordable.

I'll see you at the Apple Store. Bring money.

Magnetosphere Beta Available

Lance Arthur — 2007-05-02T14:51:09-08:00

I must admit I'm a little bit jealous of all my friends being suddenly pregnant. I know at least four lady womens who have buns in the oven, and they are all about the "it feels like this!" and "I can't wait until it's out there!" and "I pee a lot!"

Well, I've been living the life of the dude who watches the mommy going through the birth pains thing on my own, sort of, and can now proudly announce the birth of a 319Kb bouncing baby application saddled with the mouth-twisting name of Magnetosphere.

What is it? It's an iTunes visualizer that snaps into your music library and turns all your songs into wildly gyrating points of light that swell and recede and grow tendrils and change color and pretty much make you wish you were high as a kite while you watch it. My boyfriend Robert coded up the bedrock of the thing and his company, The Barbarian Group, fiddled with the plug-inning-ness of it and now you can have it for your very own, whether you're on Windows or Mac.

They launched it yesterday and it was enjoying a little Digg action before the whole HD DVD code blew up in their faces so I was afraid it might get lost in the white noise, so feel free (if you're a fan of it) to spread the link far and wide. It's free!

Have at it!

The Big Fat Open Directory in the Sky

Lance Arthur — 2007-03-07T15:55:12-08:00

My boyfriend, Robert, is very smart and very creative (and, you know, sexy) and makes very beautiful stuff out of pixels and sound. He uses Processing to program up these amazing interactive screen toys that respond to anything they hear, and you can use your keyboard to change the way they interact with those sounds, too.

Lately, he's been building very complicated and extremely processor-intensive media toys that the average -- or even the above-average -- computer has a hard time dealing with in real time, so he sets them up to render overnight and then he creates a Quicktime movie out of the results and has been posting these rather large and rather beautiful creations to his blog, and everything was going along fine and dandy.

Then, suddenly, everyone started to discover what he was doing and wanted to see his art first-hand, so one of his fat bandwidth creations got blogged and delicious'd and linked to from all sorts of places, and all sorts of people were downloading the movies and he was very, very happy.

Until he received his bandwidth bill from his not-so-understanding ISP and discovered how much popularity costs in this new video-centric Web world in which we live.

Luckily for him, there's an answer that all of us can use right now, and it's not a Flash-based video site that compresses your beautiful movies to the point that you can't tell your daughter from your dog.

]]> The answer is really, really simple. In fact, that's what it's called, and it's provided for you by your favorite supserstore, Amazon. It's called Amazon S3 for Simple Storage Solution and if you have an Amazon account, you can have an Amazon S3 account in a matter of minutes, and start to upload your multi-megabyte videos and MP3 podcasts and family portraiture immediately.

The advantages of using Amazon S3 are numerous.

You get unlimited storage space. Unlimited.

The size limit of any single uploaded file is 5Gb. That's Gigs.

You only pay for what you use, and the rates are very affordable. (15¢ per Gig of storage per month, and 20¢ per Gig of data transferred per month, all charged to the same credit card you already use at Amazon)

You can specify which of the files you upload are public and which ones are private.

You can access your stuff from anywhere you can access the web.

Here's what you'll need to make the whole thing simple and easy:

The Firefox Browser, available for all platforms.
S3Fox Organizer, the Firefox S3 plug-in
An Amazon Web Services (AWS) account

And does it really work? Of course it does!

The Firefox browser and plug-in are very simple to get and install. The AWS account is easy to get, but getting the keys you need to access your S3 account are a bit confusing. The service is intended for developers and offers an application programming interface (API) to tie in S3 to web applications and several services are popping up that use S3 to do things like back-up your files for you, or store your iTunes library and so on. Of course, you can do it all yourself, too, with a little effort.

You sign in to your Amazon account using the same login and password you use to buy things, and when you sign up you're signing up for the entire package of services, so if you're so inclined you can use Amazon E-Commerce Services (like setting up your own mini Amazon, assuming you're a programmer) or Alexa Web Services and a couple of others that sound really cool, but which I personally don't understand at all.

You'll need to wait for Amazon to let you know that your account is ready before you can use it. They'll send an email message to your default Amazon email address advising you that your account has been set up, and then you need to go back and log in to gain access to your S3 space.

So anyway, once you've signed up, you need to get the two keys Amazon provides that identifies you and your files within the service. One is public, and one is private. You'll need them both to use anything to access your S3 buckets (directories) and objects (files). Your keys are accessed online after logging in to your AWS account by clicking on the badge that says "Your Web Services Account" which will open a pop-up with some menu choices, and the one you want is "View Access Key Identifiers." Click on that and there they are!

Copy them to something like a text file on your computer so you can cut and paste them into the S3Fox Organizer, which acts like Windows Explorer and allows you to transfer files of any sort to your S3 space.

S3 uses buckets to hold your objects, and you can have up to ~~120~~ 100 buckets and unlimited objects. Bucket names are global, so no one else has the bucket name you're adding to S3, that's why you only get 100. If you have a bucket called "bucket," I couldn't have a bucket called "bucket" because you now 'own' "bucket." S3 is just a great big disk array with a bunch of buckets on the same space. Bucket names are created and 'owned' by s3 users. No 2 bucket names can be the same.

And since you can put everything in a single bucket, there's no need to have a lot of buckets. Unless you want or need 100 buckets. Locally, you can set up folders on your laptop using Jungle Disk (see below) or another S3 utility, but those are virtual folders on your own computer. You're specifying in Jungle Disk which bucket to use for storage -- S3 is just for storage. It doesn't care about organization as long as all buckets are named something different.

If you're setting up one bucket as read-everyone and one as read-you and one as read-user, you'll need 3 buckets. But, again, you also set "read" on files, so the bucket ACL doesn't matter except that you need to make it read-everyone in order for any objects inside it to be read-everyone.

Name your bucket(s) carefully, though. Once you set up a bucket, you can't change it. You can't move objects from one bucket to another (reassign files to another folder) and you can't delete a bucket unless there's nothing in it.

First thing you want to do is add a bucket for your objects and define the access control list (ACL) for the bucket(s) and the object(s). In S3Fox, click on Create Directory (the blue folder icon) and name your bucket something. I called mine "glassdog" because, like, duh. After creating it, click on its name and either right-click it and select "Edit ACL" or click on the Edit ACL icon, which is a pencil on a piece of paper.

You'll see some green checkmarks (meaning yes) and red x's (meaning no) and there'll be 3 green checks next to your name, and the rest (for Everyone and Authenticated Users) will have no access. Simply click on the red X under "Read" for Everyone and the objects you subsequently upload to that bucket will be publicly accessible to anyone.

Next, upload a file or two and repeat the same procedures, changing the ACL for the files within your publicly accessible bucket to be Read by Everyone.

Guess what? You're done! To access the file you uploaded via a web browser (or to create a link on a web page) just use http://s3.amazonaws.com/bucket_name_here/ substituting your own bucket name, obviously, and follow that up with the file name of the object you uploaded and, whoop, there it is!

It's important to note that you cannot delete a bucket if there's anything in it. You have delete all the objects contained in a bucket, and then you can delete empty buckets.

You can now use S3 for all your big file needs and pay for what you use for a lot cheaper than almost any other method -- except for free services like YouTube, that is, but you get what you pay for, right?

Once you have your S3 account, I'd also suggest downloading and installing Jungle Disk, a free utility for Windows or Mac that will create a virtual networked drive on your computer that looks like it's residing on your local computer but is really out on your S3 space. Jungle Disk allows you to treat S3 like another drive so you can drag and drop anything into the buckets you've created, giving you two methods of getting stuff online.

Backup your entire iTunes library or set up a weekly (nightly?) backup on your computer to your Jungle Disk. At 15¢ per Gig, my 60+Gb library of music would cost me $9.00 a month. That's like 3 coffees for state of mind -- plus I can get to it from anywhere.

And that's it! Have fun with your new virtually unlimited storage space and start sharing your high-quality audio and video with your friends and the world.