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Heat Wave by Richard Castle

smanke@maclive.net — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:10:00 CST

Back for the second season, ABC's Castle is one of this seasons prime-time shows that I am most interested in. Season 1 was compelling and sure to interest fans of Nathan Fillion. Many will remember Fillion from his role as Malcolm Reynolds on the classic but short lived Firefly series. Needless to say, Fillion's roll as crime author Richard Castle plays to the actors strengths and makes for an amusing series.

So, here's why I find this show interesting enough to warrant a post. The shows main character, Richard Castle, successful author who decides to kill off the character that made him famous. The plot explains that Castle is bored writing about the character because he knows him inside out. He wants to create a new character.

Castle spends some time with the NYPD and finds inspiration for a new character. He pulls some strings at the NYPD and the Mayors office and get assigned as a consultant to a detective on which he plans to based his new character. The new character, Nikki Heat, is based on NYPD detective Kate Beckett. Wikipedia has some interesting background on the characters.

At the beginning of season 1, Castle kills off the lead character that supposedly made him a house hold name and risks his career with a new book. He starts investigating strange cases with Beckett. Shortly into season 2, Castle is about to release the first book based on the Nikki Heat character. This is the part that I find fascinating.

In this weeks upcoming episode Castle's book is supposed to hit fictional store shelves within the show. But in real life, a physical copy of the book is also hitting book stores. In fact Amazon.com is offering both a hard cover version of the book as well as a copy of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader. And, just to be clear, the book is being published in real life. Further more, its being published under the author name of the fictional character, Richard Castle!

Watch MKV Files on the Xbox 360 the Easy Way

smanke@maclive.net — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:10:00 CST

I was talking with my neighbor the other day and he was going on about his disappointment that while it was easy to watch Divx and Xvid movies over the network on his Xbox 360, there is no support for MKV files he had downloaded. Each video he had was a 720p or 1080p high definition download. And if he wanted to watch the video on his 360, he had to transcode the video to Xvid before he could watch it in his living room. This was taking him 8-12 hours to transcode even on his high end Mac.

I did some digging and found an obscure reference in a forum indicating that the transcoding wasn't really necessary after all as long as you had QuickTime Pro and used the correct settings. It turns out that the QuickTime export for MP4 has an option in its video settings to allow "Video Passthrough". This lets us open a MKV file in QuickTime Player 7 and export the video out to MP4 (Xvid really) in a fraction of the time it takes to transcode the video...

Windows 7 and the Rootkit

smanke@maclive.net — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:05:00 CST

I have to say that I have been very impressed with Windows 7. I downloaded the RC 1 build the morning it was released to the masses. I installed it on my MacBook Pro using Boot Camp the following day. It was fast, visually very impressive, and really put a smile on my face. Since that time, I have been working full time on my Mac but I roll over to Windows whenever possible to see how things are working on the other side of the street.

I installed Office 2007, Hamachi, Firefox, and Dropbox. The usual core applications I like to keep handy. Prior to all of this, of course, I installed Kaspersky Antivirus. It was the first antivirus to catch my eye offering actual support (though preliminary as it is listed as a technical preview) for Windows 7. I was impressed that the system didn't seem unduly bogged down by the AV solution and off I went...

Keep Your Computers In Sync with DropBox

smanke@maclive.net — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:05:00 CST

All computer users that routinely accesses more than one computer in the course of their normal routine share the same pain. Keeping all of the files we need available to us at all times is nothing short of maddening. I might have a spreadsheet I was working on all afternoon on my desktop computer, but when I grab my laptop and run out the door to meet a client I only have access to a version that is 2 days old. Or I might have a series of files on my laptop that I need to work on. But when I left my laptop at the office, there is no way I can access them from home...

Proximity Locking With Bluetooth

smanke@maclive.net — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:05:00 CST

Here's one I've been wanting for a long time. I think it would be great to pair my cell phone with my computer and have the computer screen lock each time my phone leaves Bluetooth range. Seems like a great security feature given the prevalence of cell phones these days.

To the best of my knowledge there are no Mac applications to facilitate this right now. Fee apps or otherwise. I read about one possibility a while back that was a series of scripts. But when I played with it, it just didn't work correctly. Over at phoenixfreeze.com, it looks we might have a solution on the way. Right now their product only supports Windows XP and Vista. But according to the FAQ section, Mac support is planned.

Daniel Suarez: Daemon

smanke@maclive.net — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:04:00 CST

I really enjoyed this book. The story was interesting, and largely plausible if you really understand the technology being employed. Plus, being someone who is technically aware, I thought the author did an amazing job of employing current internet based concepts to build a story that is simply a great read.

The story centers around a massively multi-player game analogous to WoW (World of Warcraft). The developer of the game dies before the story begins. When he dies, it triggers hidden code in the game that runs as a distributed daemon service on a botnet spread across the planet. Without giving the plot away, the story is extremely engaging and uses social engineering, security exploits, spiders, and the internet to take a really fresh look at what could really happen to our world if current technologies were properly manipulated.