richardirvine.com

Category: geek

  • Clickity clack, proper typing’s back

    Apple’s Extended II Keyboards and their ‘proper’ clicking keystrokes are back, thanks to Griffin’s iMate ABD – USB converter.  Coveted by the likes of Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber, they feel very different to mushy, modern keyboards. Think more electric typewriter.

    Apple Extended Keyboard II

    Good examples go on Ebay for big money, but I got one of the coveted model M3501s off Trademe for NZD$1, and a slightly cleaner one from Macnut, a ‘highly recommended A+++ would trade again’ trader if ever there was one, for NZD$12. It looks fantastic next to my iMac, it feels good to have this logo back.

    My setup

    It feels ‘right’, and the din suggests an air of effortless productivity. I’m missing the volume up and down keys and extra USB slot of my old keyboard, but it’s fully worth it. Next project – making a cardboard template for those keyboard shortcut guides.

    Link: Low End Mac on the Extended II.

  • Simple guide to burning an .AVI to DVD in OS X 10.4.11

    Here’s how I burn .avi files to DVD. For a guide to why this guide exists, scroll down. You can click the pictures to make them bigger.

    1. Get ffmpegx. It’s free and marvelous. Install and follow all the instructions.

    2. Open your .avi and set it to convert to .mov. I accepted all the default settings, seems fine. Push encode. Wait while it does its thing. You can queue up multiple files and leave them overnight if you’ve got heaps to do.

    Screen.jpg

    3. You’ll now have a file with a ‘.avi.ff.mov’ suffix. You’re halfway there.

    4. Open Toast (I’m using Titanium 9). You could use iDVD, but Toast is heaps faster (and iDVD’s had its’ chance as far as I’m concerned).

    5. Choose the video submenu and DVD / Video disc.

    6. Drag your ‘.avi.ff.mov’ file into the burn area. You can drag multiple files if you’re burning a TV series. Insert a blank DVD (or burn an image) and hit the big ‘burn’ button.

    screen2.jpg

    7. The file will encode for a few minutes, then burn for a few minutes.

    8. Viola. You now have a DVD you can play in a DVD player.

    Why?
    I’ve been trying to perform this seemingly simple task (I’ve got a DVD burner. I’ve got .AVIs. WHY WON”T YOU WORK?) for weeks now.

    I had early success with iDVD, then it all turned to custard, with my cool side-loading DVD slot ejecting blank disc after blank disc.

    After MUCH messing around with free downloads and other stuff that didn’t work, here’s what worked for me. I’m using an intel iMAC with OS X 10.4.11. Good luck.

  • Bloody focus

    You should read Merlin Mann’s Better post. It’s a superior articulation of my goal this year: to contribute more and consume less. I’m the world’s best procrastinator. I also love the net. That’s a very, very dangerous combination, and I’m trying to redress the balance.

    I have this blog and sportreview.net.nz – I do them because I want to improve my writing, make cartoons, it’s a lot of fun, and because you never know what opportunities will come. I get a lot out of it, and I think (hope) my sites are getting better.

    With a new baby my time is a lot more valuable than it used to be – I’ve got stuff I want to get done – and not much time to do it. I really want to crack on at work, too. So all you non-blog digital activity – it’s time for a review based on a) what I get out and b)time suck factor

    RSS reader – My ideal RSS feed is a post every other day or week or even month, as long as it’s one I want to READ. That’s your barrier to entry, team. Rands in Repose is pretty much the model. I’ve had times when my reader is showing over 500 items – not going to happen. Public Address, 43 Folders, the Onion and AV Club stay. Out go Boing Boing (overrated) and Wired (I’ll just read the magazine online from now on, thanks) and all Gawker blogs, except Lifehacker’s top posts feed. Every other link blog is cut, except Jason Kottke and Waxy links, I like their signal to interesting ratio. Stays (with drastic spring clean).

    Facebook. With auto-decline of invitations, and blocking alerts and noisy people, you can be on Facebook quite stealthily and take advantage of its’ best feature – keeping up with people. On notice.

    Twitter. Deleted account – Yeah I tried it for a couple of months, but I still DON’T SEE THE POINT! Gone.

    Last.fm. Low maintenance. Plug in ipod and scrobble tunes. Check stats. That’s a useful tool (when it works). Stays.

    Del.icio.us. Invaluable. Low maintenance. Stays.

    Flickr. The best photo sharing site – and I’m kinda committed. It’s easy to use, so it stays.

    Next step goals would be having a crack at writing fiction – and more *actual emails*. Proper one to one emails are becoming as rare as letters. There’ll always be a place in my life for really some solid fucking around on the ‘net – it’ll just be a little more focused.

  • Me-ssa load letter

    Check out Fark.com’s best photoshop contest for a while – Star Wars characters in other movies. Probably not dial-up friendly.

  • Style

    I just stuck a 7 out of 10 in The Economist’s Style Quiz.

    In your face, a barely working knowledge of spelling and grammar!

  • Dispatch from Dial-up hell

    I was trying to upgrade OSX when the shit hit the fan. Some big downloads meant I’d teetered over my 10GB cap for the month, and my internet connection, my precious, precious broadband was grounded – back to 56KBps I went. For two weeks. Bloody hell.

    Oh well, we survived for years on Dial-up – surely it’s not THAT bad? I hoped for the best, a kind of digital Walden, a nostalgic return to days of yore.

    Turns out, it’s as much fun as a Gameboy with no batteries.

    You can’t YouTube on Dial-up. You can’t do 23 Firefox tabs in Dial-up. You can’t do a cheeky Bit Torrent on Dial-up. It’s like swimming through shit, if shit took an age to download. Recently, I brazenly asked an older work colleague what working in the 80’s without the internet was like. Now I know.

    330 MB software updates, updates I used to laugh cavalierly at, were now timing out. I started thinking about page sizes. I started thinking about text browsers. I had a better web experience on my PHONE.

    Before, when I read hard-luck stories of people who can’t get broadband where they live, I’d raise an amused eyebrow. Maybe snigger, before popping open another 5 or six browser tabs just for the laugh. Now, I realise these people live in Abu Ghraib. Forget sponsoring a child, we need a Telethon for those lost in 56KBps. 56K? NO WAY.  That kind of thing.

    I’ve got a week to go, I *think* I can make it. I’m starting a list of things to do when I’m full speed again. I’m going to download that update and stand watching the progress bar barrel along, hands on my hips, head back, laughing in an overly hearty manner. I’m going to be me again.

  • Links

    Wired magazine has an oral history of War Games, the film that made me realise Dad’s TRS-80 was capable of more than 10 Print: You are a dick and 20: Goto 10. Possibly. That shit’s *still* really, really funny

    Kubrick nitty gritty fans should take an hour to watch this, or the time-poor should read this article. It seems Kubrick would often phone people out of the blue to work with him, totally freaking them out in the process – there’s more of this kind of thing in this book.

    I’m really enjoying the AV Club‘s Primer series – here’s The Kinks, Springsteen, Pixar, the Cohens, and Steven Spielberg.

    Ooooh, and I’ve decided what kind of car I want now.

  • Not quite the Jesus phone – the Noah phone, maybe?

    Ernie Newman from TUANZ picked up on my iphone alternative.

    By ‘picked up’ I mean publishing the email I sent him.

  • 1001 books and films you must see before you die

    Inspired by Jason Kottke, I’ve been through 1001 books and films you must see before you die and ticked off my reading (28) and viewing (215). It’s fair to say I’ve seen more of the films than read the books on these lists- I tend to read more contemporary lit, and the list focuses more on classics. There’s some glaring ommissions. And while I enjoy Brett Easton Ellis – Glamorama? Hmmm.

    I’ve seen a lot of the films from the 00s, 90s, 80s and 70s, but it trails off fairly dramatically after that – but the list seems pretty fair. If you fancy doing the same, let me know in the comments, I’ve marked my favourites with an ‘*’, just so you know.

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  • Del.icio.us – where to-dos go to die

    I’ve been using Del.icio.us since April 2005, and saved 2200 pages to the site. Recording and tagging my web travels is great, stopping all those wonderful links from slipping into the digital never-never land. Firefox makes link getting really easy, with Apple or Ctrl – click I get a good eight or ten tabs open in no time in a light surfing sesh: Apple-click! Ctrl-click! Apple-click! You should see me go. Then it’s a simple tag – release with the del.icio.us extension. No problem.

    Trouble is, now my Del.icio.us page is more or less a dumping ground for stuff I’m never going to do – I’ve got 605 ‘toreads’, 415 ‘toblogs’ and 95 ‘todos’. There’s even 27 tobuys – unlikely, to say the least. When I do get some web-reading time, I’ve got plenty of material just waiting, and all those links are bloody handy for link-blogging, but still – it’s the digital equivalent of a tire fire.

    Languishing further down there’s loads of tags with one site each, like bobbyfischer, cohenbrothers, gambling, ikkahalso, and nationallampoon (along with bolg, bloggign, and bloggin – mis-spellings are very popular with me).

    What I really need to do is sit down one weekend and re-tag them all properly. But hang on – what kind of douche-hat loser seriously contemplates expending valuable leisure time re-arranging tags for fun? I mean, I saw Revenge Of The Nerds. I keep on expecting a hairy gaggle of Jocks in cardigans with big letters on them to come around the corner and hit me with a keg. Or something.