Tech, TV, Apple, DivX (repost from other blog)

I was fascinated when Steve Jobs announced the Apple TV. I like the idea of watching on TV media that has so far been confined to my computer.

There appear, however, to be a number of snags.

• First, my TV is an old Toshiba 4:3 CRT with SCART and phono sockets. No way would the Apple TV interface to it without an expensive conversion box of some kind. But what about a widescreen LCD computer monitor? -- these can be quite cheap, even with a DVI input, and Apple are already selling reasonably priced HDMI-to-DVI cables. That might work. Maybe.

• Second, some of the media I'd like to watch on my TV is intended for Windows Media Player, and I've installed various codecs into QuickTime so that I can watch this stuff on my MacBook. Couldn't I install these codecs on the Apple TV's internal hard disk? Highly unlikely. (I could transcode the files so that they play in standard QuickTime, but the idea is to make them easier to watch, not more difficult.)

But I've found a way to watch .avi files on my old Tosh TV.

Last week I bought from a local Argos Extra store, for £29.99, a Bush DVD2054DIVX DVD-player. So far it's played every .avi file I've tried in it, and I also found on the web a remote-hack to convert it to multi-region. It not only plays all my region 1 and region 2 DVDs, and my .avi files (whether on CD-R or DVD-R), but also mp3s and jpegs.

The 2054 is not listed in the current Argos catalogue or on the website. I went to the store to buy the 2051, which has an entirely different, compact form-factor. The 2054, however, is the conventional width, and fits better with other equipment. They told me when I paid that it might have 'some cosmetic differences.'

"Fine," I said, "as long as it does DivX."

Buying software for the wrong/right reasons (repost from other blog)

The podcast Security Now has been on my 'must listen' list for quite a while. Some podcasts I subscribe to are downloaded by iTunes, copied to my iPod and when they turn up in my "Unplayed" Smart Playlist I'll make a snap decision as to whether I'll listen or skip (this decision is usually directly dependent on the total number of podcasts in the "Unplayed" list).

But I'll always listen to Security Now. Steve Gibson knows computers. Not like some people know computers -- people who have used lots of software on several different machines, people who may have done a little scripting, or even programmed in 'C' or Pascal. Steve Gibson is familiar with the PC on a hardware level. His website, www.grc.com has loads of free Windows software utilities available for download. These are not the kind of idle utilities that someone thought up as maybe possibly useful, for someone somewhere. They are essential utilities that solve (and I mean solve, not just mitigate) specific problems with Microsoft Windows. I first came across Steve's utilities without knowing it. After suffering persistent pop-up spam windows on a new XP PC, I did a Google search and came up with something called "Kill The Messenger". I downloaded it, ran it, and have not been troubled since. At the time I knew nothing about Gibson Research Corporation, and didn't actually give it any more thought. It was only after listening to early episodes of Security Now that I went to the website and discovered I had successfully used one of Steve's free utilities several years ago.

Steve Gibson's flagship product is SpinRite, now up to version 6, and by all accounts is the world's best hard-disk recovery and maintenance utility. It isn't cheap, at $89, and some might balk at such a price for a download of only 170 kb. (Yes, that's kilobytes.) Remember, however, that Steve Gibson is 'old school' -- he programs in assembler, for DOS, so his utilities are really tight, fast and efficient. This is the ultimate low-fat software.

The Security Now podcast, part of the TWIT network, features Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson talking about various aspects of computer security, whether this is a comprehensive primer on cryptographic technology (and I do mean comprehensive -- this isn't something that you can give less than your full attention to; it's geeky in the extreme), or discussions on the underlying technology of something in the news -- such as the recent Sony rootkit debacle. Every fourth episode (which with typical geekness they designate a MOD 4 episode) is devoted to answering listeners' queries.

I've been considering buying SpinRite for a while, partly because Steve is providing a useful free service, not only via Security Now, but also to all Windows computer users via his Shields Up! website, and partly because if it's as good as everyone says it is, SpinRite will be a useful utility have instantly available. So today I purchased it.

A few months ago I bought a Maxtor 300GB external USB drive for my MacBook, and it began to regularly misbehave after being powered up for an hour or more. Apparently SpinRite is undiscriminating as to operating systems and file formats, and the recommendation is to extract the external drive from its case and mount it inside a PC before running SpinRite on it. Alternatively, it's possible to run SpinRite on a USB drive if the USB drivers are accessible by SpinRite, although this likely to be much slower in operation.

Well, I couldn't open the case, so I connected the drive to a USB port on the PC, just to see what might happen. I was surprised to find that SpinRite found the drive, and is now -- as I type -- doing its stuff. It will apparently take about five hours.

Watch this space.

Our own, our very own (repost from other blog)

At last, an intelligent, stylish and hugely entertaining science-fiction series that is, for a change, home-grown.

I refer, of course, to the Doctor Who spin-off series, Torchwood, currently airing on BBC Three on Sunday nights, followed with a BBC Two prime-time showing on Wednesday evening, plus various re-runs on digital throughout the week. The plots are utterly fantastical, but believable, thanks to the solid cast and the tight scripts, which show a respect for the main theme and arc of the Torchwood story (as much as has so far been revealed) that has long been missing from serious British SF. And make no mistake, for all its speculative unreality, Torchwood is serious adult stuff, about real people caught up in a world they are still trying to understand.

In the face of such epics as the new Battlestar Galactica and other serious SF from across the pond, British TV now has something to hold up and say, 'See, we can do it too!'

The rumours are true (repost from other blog)

Steve Jobs was very impressive in his keynote at WWDC, even if he did seem a bit flustered in the last few seconds.

So, OS X has been running on Intel for the past five years? And this doesn't mean that OS X will be available as an alternative operating system for Windows XP machines? Isn't OS X based on Unix?

Linux runs native on PCs so why shouldn't OS X? Even if it's not Apple's policy to make available an alternative PC operating system it seems to me that it's inevitable. Mac and PC hardware has been converging for years, and many software companies have a wealth of experience developing applications for both platforms. Apple itself has iTunes and QuickTime running on both. Will we soon see bootleg PC versions of OS X available for download from dubious websites? My guess is that these versions already exist, and the only way Apple will stem the spread of unofficial 'PCOSX' is to release an official version.

What Windows user hasn't envied the sleek designer efficiency of the Mac? (Okay, some Windows users say they never have, but they're lying.) The cool usability of the Mac is largely derived from its operating system, and the chance to sample it directly on cheap PC hardware could be too tempting to resist.

Just think: the release of a PC OS X could be the one thing that takes PC design by the throat and hammers some rationality into it. Currently the main authority on what makes up a PC is Microsoft. If Apple started publishing strict system requirements and hardware standards for PCs to run OS X, we might start getting better designed PCs that weren't so prone to crashing.

And amongst all this speculation let's not lose sight of the irony that the originator of the PC -- and therefore of all the clones that followed -- is the company that Apple are now ditching in favour of the 'heart of the PC'.

Unbelievably, incredibly, utterly...stupid (repost from other blog)

(This is a post originally from my other blog — my intention is to put everything here on EB so that it's all in one place.)

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I still can't believe it. How could anyone, even someone with even the briefest acquaintance with the mechanics of computing, be so thick-headed and...just plain dumb?

But there we are. I suppose some people just have moments of temporary insanity.

After a discussion earlier today about the options for getting my dad fixed up with broadband, I wondered how close I was to my 2Gb-per-month cap with Wanadoo. So I did a search in Windows XP of all my downloaded podcasts during the last 30 days -- just to get an idea of how much stuff it was. Only thing is, the search doesn't show the total size. So I copied the results into a folder on the desktop and used 'Properties' to see the total. It was 3.62 Gb, which means I'll probably have to go up to the next band when Wanadoo start metering usage.

Fine, I thought, it's what I expected. But I didn't want a 3.62 Gb folder cluttering up my desktop, so I dumped it in the Recycle Bin. And I didn't want all that still on my hard disk so I emptied the Recycle Bin.

It was only when I next tried to sync my iPod that I realised that I hadn't 'copied' all those files, I'd 'moved' them. And deleted them. And emptied the Recycle Bin. 3.62 Gb! How could I be so STUPID?

Well, to cut a long story short, I did manage to retrieve the majority using a utility (let's hear it for restoration.exe, available at http://aumha.org/a/recover.php), but I still had quite a few gaps to fill in.

So much for worrying about my bandwidth usage -- it's certainly gone up this evening...

Here I am again... (repost from other blog)

Yes I'm back, though a lot later than I'd thought. How am I supposed to find time for all this stuff?

I'm getting the next Rev Up Review podcast ready, and I've received emails from a couple of authors who have given me permission to use their promos. I had hoped to be posting the new podcast this evening, but I had a major black-fingered-episode on Saturday morning, as my trusty HP printer is finally on its last stutterings. It's served me well for nearly ten years, so I can't complain.

So it was a quick trip to the local PC box-shifter to pick up a new printer -- I went for the Epson R300, as it was cheap, and bog-standard, and I'd been thinking about buying a proper photo printer for some time.

I set it up today, connected -- dare I say it -- to the Mac mini.

Okay I admit it. I'm one of those, you know, victims of what they're calling the 'halo effect'. One of those -- speak it in low tones, covering the mouth -- 'switchers'.

Well, maybe. I'm not entirely new to the Mac. I have a Mac Plus right here in my studio, though I've not used it for a number of years. And, let's face it, I'm not about to stop using my year-old Winderz PeeCee, as it's a blistering box of power that currently runs my life for me.

But hey, being a Mac user is kinda like, totally awesome and cool.

The New Stuff Starts Here (repost from other blog)

It's about time, I thought. After all, everyone's doing it, aren't they?

Blogging, I mean.

I haven't tried it, so far. Until now. As a writer, I've always had the feeling that my writing should be channelled into something more productive, something that someone, somewhere, might pay actual money for.

Which is all very well, except that recently I haven't been writing. So as an excuse for not maintaining an online journal, or web-log ('blog'), it doesn't really stand up.

Nevertheless, I've lots of things I want to be doing, and only so much -- or so little -- time to do them. I have several interests: writing fiction; writing non-fiction; reading; listening to radio drama and book-readings; photography; fiddling with computers; going to the theatre, listening to music (on CD, and -- in the case of classical music -- going to concerts). And architecture. Mustn't forget that one, even if it is my work, and as such I have mixed feelings about it.

Some years ago I even cultivated an amateur interest in philosophy, though I never properly followed it through.

In the last few weeks I have swayed with the breeze and become interested in the bizarre world of 'podcasting' -- to the extent that I've even produced an experimental podcast of my own.

But when do I find time for all of this, as well as the day-to-day living, cooking, laundry, etc?

The answer is that I don't. Something gets reluctantly squeezed out, left on the side of the highway that is my congested calendar. But neither am I particularly willing to give stuff up. I do all this -- or try to -- because I like it.