Apple know the iPad is epic fail
April 14th, 2010Converting MKV to MPG on Mac OS X
December 8th, 2009I have found a very useful blog post that someone has written to show how to effectively use mkv2vob on Mac OS X. I have tried this with Snow Leopard and it works great. It requires :
- CrossOver
- Mac OS X
- Windows Script Host 5.6
http://www.mediafire.com/?nkgtwtzzwzj
Visual Basic 6 Runtime SP6
Available here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?nkgtwtzzwzj
mkv2vob
Available here:
http://www.mkv2vob.com/showthread.php?tid=1
Simply create a new bottle in CrossOver that simulates the Win XP os environment. Then install Windows Script Host 5.6 ,Visual Basic 6 Runtime SP6 and mkv2vob to that bottle as unsupported software.
Now when running mkv2vob it should work and converting to MPG should be quick and easy.
That new mac smell
August 12th, 2009Ohh you know the smell I’m talking about. It’s that sweet high quality plastic-y-but-not-cheap-plastic smell. Even if your mac is not made out of plastic. It will still smell amazing, you can smell the quality. The detail; perfection. The only thing is it does not last forever and you know it as soon as you get your new pride and joy out the box. You know the truth that the chemical smell will not last forever. And indeed as you carefully slide your new mac out of it’s lovingly wrapped cover you know that in a few months time it’s sweet cent will be gone forever. It’s not the box, oh no. Press your beak up against the intricitly designed polystyrene box padding and inhale. You will only find traces of the nectar but the piece de resitance. Take a close whiff of the machine it’s self and your taste/smell(?) buds will be delighted.
It’s not as much of a pile of bullshit as it sounds. Honestly. A quick search for “that new mac smell” returns pages of forums. People are querying the unique smell and wanting more. If only there were a way of finding out exacty the source then I would sell it in little boxes or tubs or even on scratch ‘n sniff. People have blogged about it ” what gives it that new smell? “, why does it smell so good”. One website even siad that it is simar to but more addctive than the new car smell. People have said it’s bad for you! What’s not bad for you these days
Speak to any mac user - they will know what you are talking about. It’s well known among mac users: new mac smells amazing.
smellmymac.com Comimg soon
Apple games console - rumor
May 13th, 2009I think apple are making a games console. It’s a dirty rumor to start spreading as the case with any rumor but all the signs point to apple launching their own games console at least within the next year. Here are my reasons for believing this:
Apple have filed a patent for a games system that has partiqular emphasis on allowing players to listen to their music which is stored locally as they play. This is probably the unique feature in the application (for a patent) as successful patent applications have to have a unique feature that has never been done before.
Ok so it’s obvious that apple are planning a games machine of some sort. Or at least the patent has been filed. However what form will it take?
I think it will be an upgraded version of the Apple TV system. I’d has not been updated in a while and apple have been very hush on that front. So an update must be due. Jobs and co sweetly and cleverly linked Apple TV with the iTunes store for buying music and movies. This type of on demand has been proven to work well with apple and they have perfected the service making buying songs, movies, tv shows and games(iphone) all too easy.
Adapting their current model for such an on demand service to let users download full games onto their Apple TV (or apple tv like device) would be as simple as adding the content.
Apple has been employing lots of games developers from various parts. Advertisements were found showing that apple have been looking for game developers to add to their team. This can only mean an interest in the sector with the type of candidate required being highly competent in 3d rendering systems, physics and AI.
Apple have headhunted Bob Drebin from ATI. An updated Linkedin profile reveals that Apple has poached Bob Drebin, the former CTO of the graphics group at AMD/ATI. But what would they even need with someone that has experience in graphics hardware. This can be explained by my next theory which is that Apple are going to make their own processor for their games machine. Yes, I believe that apple will harness their purchase of PA Semi and make a CPU for their games console sporting a very high memory bus and multiple cores. Bob Drebin from ATI would be a good advisor when making a chip with a graphics renderer and Apples current involvement in the OpenCL project could provide the software platform. However the OpenCL project is aimed at harnessing the abilities of GPU’s for general purpose use by running non graphics processes on them. Apples intention for exactly what they want to get out of the OpenCL project is not clear and it is rumored they are not interested in using OpenCL to take advantage of offloading “normal” processes onto the GPU.
It is rumored that Apple has been speaking to the big boys in the games industry such as EA, Ubisoft and Epic Games. This may be why some have rumored that Apple was going to buy EA. I personally think this is ridiculous and not likely to happen.
All in all I speculate that Apple will update AppleTV to a games console supporting it’s existing feature set. It will have a Cell like processor made by Apple and their newly purchased skill set and IP with PA Semi. It will be an entirely download only platform where games will be purchased online. I think it might use OpenCL to run either a CPU-GPU architecture or only a CPU where the graphics rendering is also done on the custom made chip.
Holidays are booked
April 20th, 2009Going to the peaceful village of Elounda, Crete on summer holidays this year and it’s all booked up. Woopee.
I am really looking forward to this. We looked at this place first, fell in love, looked at other places, hummed and hawwed. Looked at more other placed, hummed and hawwed some more then just decided this place looked too pretty to not go. So we are going here..
Courtesy of eloundabluebay.gr
The EloundaBlueBay hotel is a four star hotel just outside the village of Elounda. The village sits at the heart of the Blue Bay, a fairly large expansion of so-I-have-read deep blue water. It is sheltered neatly by the small island of “Spinalonga”(?) which has the old ruin of a leper colony who used to live there. Interestingly the island used to be attached to the mainland and there are underwater ruins that you can go and visit with snorkeling equip. That would be neat provided we didn’t bump into any obscure marine life. Eeeeehhh!
More about the Town/Village. From what I have read it has a fine array of restaurants and some bars. There are wee nakkity shops there apparently. What we like about this place is that it seems sooo relaxed. We don’t want some jakie trying to drag us into their urinal-hole of a bar up the strip. (ahh the memories). So this year the opposite has been opted for.
Elounda has some of the finest hotels in the world. Such as the Elounda Beach Hotel. These places are the kind of place you would go on a honeymoon. All inclusive, private pool, open space - no, not rooms but little private villas. Your own area with a view of the bay and awesome weather all the time. This kinda of place will cost you about 13k a week :S ELoundaDotCom will show you what the most expensive hotels in Greece are like.
Anyway, we have booked half-board at the Blue Bay, so no worrying about food. I really can’t wait to
just chillax in the sun in the beautiful surroundings. I am looking forward to exploring and visiting the town of Agios Nikolaos. This large town is reasonably close to Elounda, and apparently there are busses that run regularly. We will be able to visit this town and explore the bars a bit, and perhaps get a taxi back. If not drinking or going out for the day, I may consider renting a car, as I hear it is easy to do, and the roads are quiet so this prospect is really exciting.
VMWare conflict with Nmap
April 20th, 2009Today when I went to check what ports were open on my router with Nmap it gave me a message saying:
Failed to open ethernet interface (vmnet8). A possible cause on BSD operating systems is running out of BPF devices (see http://seclists.org/lists/nmap-dev/2006/Jan-Mar/0014.html).
This confused me at first but then realised that it does not like the virtual network interface that is installed for VMWare. I am currently operating under Mac OS X 10.5.6.
The only solution I thought up to solve this was to delete the interface. This worked, but now means that any OS I install onto a Virtual Machine may not have any connectivity to the internet. Ohwell!
Just run this command to delete network interfaces. (hardware and virtual)
sudo ifconfig vmnet8 remove
(you will be propted to put in your password because of the “sudo” command.) Nmap now works with no conflicts with Virtual Machines or VMWare Fusion.
Don’t know what to write!
April 6th, 2009Hey,
Been getting the fancy pictures you see above working. Pretty simple really. There used to be a plugin for this in an older version of WordPress but it’s no longer available. So it was implemented the old-school way, rolling the sleeves up and getting elbow deep in some PHP hackery of wordpress. That’s what’s so brilliant about WP: something not working right? ; can’t find a plugin: just edit the html directly and put in your own PHP code to create that feature just the way you want it.
Anyway, I used Photoshop to put the frame round a picture, copying the frame from the ‘kubrickheader.jpg‘ image which is the standard banner for this theme. Made quite a few of these, just putting random photos in, whatever makes it look good. Then I changed the code in header.php (wp-content/themes/default/) so that every time the page is loaded a random number is generated (between given values) and stored. The banners are all saved banner1.jpg, banner2 . . etc so I just made it that rather than load the default image, load the bannerx.jpg, where ‘x’ is the value of the random number we generated and saved.
The desired effect is that every time the page is re-loaded a different number is generated and appended onto the call to the banner draw, and thus a different pretty picture every time.
Hello world!
April 4th, 2009Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
