Archive for the ‘Geeky’ Category


Skype 2.0 goes gold for the Mac

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Video panel in the preferences of Skype 2.0Skype is the staple of The Crazy Canucks podcast. I got it downloaded and tinkered with it just a little bit(the image posted here is a quick screenshot of the video panel in the preferences, which has similarity to iChat). We’re actually looking to record another episode this evening, but I doubt this will really effect anything involving VoIP. The major addition to this version is video support being added for Mac users, making video chatting available between PC users of Skype.

Posted on their blog yesterday:

Skype for Mac 2.0 goes gold today, which means that we’ve tested it, you’ve tested it and we all agree that it does a pretty good job. Download it now and video call your friends, family, colleagues or anyone else you’d like to see face to face. Remember not only does it work with other Mac users but it also works with Windows users too. That means even more people for you to video call with.

We’ve improved the video quality and made changes so that video calling can now work on older systems allowing more of our Mac community can use it.

Thanks for all your feedback and help to improve the quality of video throughout the beta. A lot of you have sent in your stories on how you’re using Mac 2.0 to get face to face with far flung friends and relatives and we’re delighted we can help to bring you all closer together. Many of you also told us that you’re using video calls with business colleagues across the globe or to see your family back home when you’re away with work. If you have any more stories you’d like to share with us please email them to stories@skype.net. [skype]

The question will be about quality when you make your video calls across platform. The quality of your video card combined with the quality of your webcam will offer mixed results, more so when it comes to the world of PCs. Regardless, you’ll still be able to see grandma wave to you over the internet, no matter how blurry or pixelated she might look. You’ll just never know if she’s giving you the finger or not.

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Filed under: Geeky, Mac, Skype, VoIP

Exploring the open source road

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

For the longest time, there have been two main programs that I have used when it comes to doing a lot of my web-editing stuff. BBEdit and Fetch have long been staples in my application library, and that’s pretty much the same two tools that I have been using since I was in high school. I’ve tried my hand at other things, but nothing felt right or as good as lines of code across my screen.

Mmmmm… code.

I decided to venture down the Google way and see what else might be out there in the open source world, specifically for the MacOS. Well low and behold, Open Source Mac was the first site to show up on the list and had the answers I was looking for. I went from just checking a few applications out to making the following programs a part of my permanent library of web tools.

Vienna Finding an RSS application, plugin, or whatever makes reading my feeds easier has been a battle. Safari is good, but not great. Firefox has some good plugins, but nothing has made me happy. Vienna is my first experience with using a stand-alone application to monitor RSS feeds. It works well, imported all of my feeds without a hitch, and looks really nice. “Smart Folders” are super handy, and it’s MacOS native.

CyberduckIf the name doesn’t get you, then the application icon will. Cyberduck is a really great concept for an FTP program. It’s got a simple look to it, but I was instantly hooked with it’s ability to do everything that I needed it to. Let’s be honest though, what more do you want from an FTP program? Upload, download, surf directories, change permissions, and so on. I could use some neat, quacking sound effects though, especially when a download is complete or something.

SmultronSmultron. My final verdict is still pending on this one, but it is a huge step in the right direction. I love the single window with the ability to do split screen editing, and you can trade that for tabs instead. Managing so many files with one program is tricky for any code ninja, but the ability to highlight text to apply a tag is a bit lacking(or maybe I just haven’t discovered that element yet). One cool thing is that it recognizes functions, which makes jumping around your CSS super snappy.

There are more applications that I’m curious about trying out, but these were three that were very impressive to me. Those other programs I mentioned cost money. These other three don’t, and I get a little tired of having to pay for those upgrades, especially when you can get open source stuff like this. However, donate to the developers if you can and give them feedback so they can make this stuff better.

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Filed under: Geeky, Internet, Mac, Open Source

Steve Wozniak on The Colbert Report

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

I’ve been knee deep in getting The Crazy Canucks up and going this week, so enjoy this as much as I did this morning. It’s got everything that can make my morning. Geeky and oh so funny.

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Filed under: Apple, Books, Geeky, Hilarious, Podcasting, YouTube

MSN 6.0 for the Mac isn’t my new best friend

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

I use a variety of chat clients. Anyone who does the same knows how much of a pain in the ass this is. I’ve tried those all-in-one things that people cobble together, but let’s be honest about them, alright? They’re crap. Nothing has been made that can truly do with the original version can do. Stability is always questionable, and it never looks pretty. Setup can be a pain, and cross-platform communication is painful.

So MSN 6.0 came out yesterday for the Mac. Great. Yet another version that doesn’t have what it needs to have, and it works worse than the previous one. No video or audio support, and there is this “Windows Live” thing that you can click on. Everytime I do that, it screws up. Gotta quit out and relaunch.

This is the only chat program Rebecca has while she’s at work, and it gets oh so better. MSN will decide to not even send out messages back and forth sometimes. Whole conversations will get mucked up, and we’re left clueless as to what the other person is saying or if either of us got the message at all.

I think that out of all the cients I use, MSN is the most unreliable. The words “Microsoft” and “Mac” probably tells all, but if you’re going to put something new out, make it work. Making it look better doesn’t help things at all.

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Filed under: Geeky, Instant Messaging, Mac

My blog was hacked

Friday, September 15th, 2006

When I woke up this morning, I went to delete a spam comment that got through my defenses, but WordPress wouldn’t let me log in. I tried my login and password a few different times and got nothing. That’s when I started to get that feeling. You know that one I’m talking about?

“This site hacked by” whatever the name was. I’m kicking myself for not getting a screenshot of it, but there was a large wolf image with some language that I was unfamiliar with. There was also a sound file that was posted along with it. It started out with some deep voiced man saying something very foreign, followed by some drums and horns. I was still sleepy eyed and increasingly pissed off that I didn’t take in all the details.

I was able to work around WordPress and get into the SQL database, delete the post, and get my user accounts reset. On top of that, I was running WordPress 2.0.3. I might have waited too long to do the 2.0.4 upgrade that apparently had some “important security updates”.

I’m not sure how this person hacked my site, but everything seems to be back to normal. I’ve done all the neccesary steps. Backed up my site, changed all my passwords, and done needed upgrades. All this after being knocked down with a troubling sinus cold thing all this week, this morning being the first day that I’ve woke up and actually felt good. I’m totally going running right now because that’s a lot better than punching a wall.

Update: Rebecca was able to grab a screenshot of it this morning and has it on this post.

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Filed under: Geeky, Hack, Internet, Website, WordPress

Podcasting and the Meta Argument

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

At BarCampVancouver, Ryan Cousineau[wiredcola] led a session called “Sturgeon’s Revelation”[wiki]. The idea that “ninety percent of everything is crud” was the center piece of this session, applying it to pretty much everything that exists in the world of Web 2.0[wiki]. The main topic of focus, however, was podcasting[wiki].

Darren Barefoot made a recent post regarding social networks and podcasting, citing that the resources are not there for the medium as there is for photo, video, or link sharing. This idea speaks a lot to what Cousineau was getting at with his session, and much of his thoughts on the topic is posted on his blog.

When it comes down to it, there is not an easy way to share content within a podcast unless you listen to it. You can’t Google search for information that can be found in a podcast. There are such things as show notes and tags that people apply to the material that they publish, but not everyone does it, nor does everyone do it the same way.

The only solution to this problem is to transcribe podcasts in their entirty so that anyone searching for a topic can locate it in your podcast as well as anywhere else on the web. Quite often, this is where people with low opinions about podcasting derive their argument, and I’ve heard this thought propelled by a lot of bloggers. Yes, blogging is a very quick way of publishing information for the world to read in nearly real time. It is instantly indexed, searchable, and archived.

Generating audio for a podcast can be done in the same way, but often is delayed and ineffective with being timely. The podcast itself, in its raw form, is a bunch of ones and zeros, and no one has developed a way to index the contents of a podcast so that it is searchable across the internet. No matter how great of material that you have in a podcast, some one finding that gem of information inside forty minutes of a mp3 won’t happen unless they download it and listen.

This is where I start to agree with the point that Cousineau is saying and the thoughts presented in Barefoot’s post. The conversation that you can get from podcasting is vastly different for the ones that happen through blogging, Flickr, or YouTube. “Feedback” is the better word for what goes on with a podcast. (more…)

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Filed under: BarCampVancouver, Blogging, Blogs, Flickr, Geeky, Podcasting, RadioZoom, Vancouver, Web 2.0, WordPress, YouTube

Vancouver could do Wi-Fi better

Friday, September 8th, 2006

I’m surprised that there isn’t city-wide Wi-FI already established in Vancouver. I could stand to never have the need to hunker down in a cafe and avoid people trying to peak over my shoulder. It’s a pity that Toronto will have this before we do on the west coast.

Toronto Hydro rolled out the city’s free Wi-Fi – or wireless Internet access – Wednesday morning. The service will be free for six months – and will allow people wireless access to the World Wide Web throughout the downtown rather than solely at pre-existing Wi-Fi hotspots, generally cafes and restaurants.

The project is the largest of its kind in North America, and Mayor David Miller is enthusiastic it’ll be successful.

The signal will be available from Jarvis St. in the east to Spadina Ave. in the west, and from Front St. to the south, north as far as Bloor St. Customers will also be able to make phone calls over the Internet and, in time, watch video. [citynews]

Being such the tech friendly city that Vancouver is, there is probably talk that I’m not aware of. Still, everything I have experienced up to this point, in terms of the tech community that exists in this city, tells me that a Wi-Fi setup like the one going up in Toronto could be dwarfed by one setup in Vancouver.

A good friend of mine from college, Andy Stoll, was apart of a non-profit group trying to setup something like this in the “technology corridor” of eastern Iowa(the area between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City) I’m not too sure how well the operation is going, but the initative was pretty bold. cFree Wireless Network still exists, but I can’t say anything about the network itself.

With the amount of high rises that populate downtown Vancouver, one would think that this could be easily done. You just have to get past the asethetics police and those that feel the frequencies used to transmit wireless signals don’t cause tumors to grow all over your body.

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Filed under: Geeky, Internet, News Item, Technology, Vancouver, Wi-Fi

Speeding up Firefox

Wednesday, September 6th, 2006

When I used to do I.T. for WSUI, I pushed for people to use Firefox as their default browser on their PC. Fellow tech support monkeys can understand that for obvious reasons.

I just recalled this tip that I caught wind of about a year or so ago. This is a really great way to speed up Firefox, and it doesn’t require you to download anything to do it. This mostly applies to those folks on broadband, so if you’re on dial-up, this isn’t for you.

  1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
    • network.http.pipelining
    • network.http.proxy.pipelining
    • network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
  2. Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
  3. Alter the entries as follows:
    • Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true“
    • Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true“
    • Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
  4. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select “New” -> “Integer“.
  5. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
  6. Restart Firefox.  You can follow steps 1 through 5 to be sure that your changes saved correctly.
    • Note: You might have to make these settings changes everytime Firefox is updated.

This works for the Mac version, too. Logging into WordPress is a snap, and browsing just got a whole lot faster. Once again, another reason I’m a happy switcher to Firefox.

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Filed under: Apple, Browsers, Computer Tips, Firefox, Geeky, WordPress

Here, there, and I swear I’m forgetting something

Friday, September 1st, 2006

This week has been full of various projects and events. For starters, the concert at the former home of Matthew Good is still having some ripple effects. More so, the podcast Rebecca and I did to document the occassion after the fact is still going strong in terms of downloads. It was the most downloaded episode that I have released in a single day, on the day that it was published. A lot of that is in part from Good linking RZ#109 that from his website. Can’t thank him enough.

The Flickr Vandigicam meetup was a resounding success, and it appears that many of the past meetups are just as much so. There was nearly 30 people who showed up for the Portrait Throw Down III, and Rebecca even got in on the fun[miss604:post] while I recorded audio for a podcast to released next week. Lots of really fun people and just as many pieces of camera equipment. Be watching the RadioZoom website for that episode on Tuesday.

Darren Barefoot also put a call out to Vancouver bloggers to go check out his play[db:post], Bolloxed, during the Vancouver Fringe Festival. I sent him an email, and he graciously put Rebecca and I on the list. Being that we’re getting in for free, Barefoot is asking that we blog a review of the play. Of course, I offered to do some podcasting about it as well. I’ll take the mobile rig along with, capture what audio I can during the play, and even try to get Darren, the playwriter himself, on the mic.

I also want to encourage people to check out the “Fringecast” that is being put on by xpodradio.com. It’s a podcast about, you guessed it, the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Darren sent me a quick note to also inform me that he’d be appearing on there.

I’m also in the process of planning a new podcast, and that’s, once again, another hint drop. We hope to launch the project in the next few weeks, but everything is still in the planning stages. Listeners of RZ won’t be too surprised when it does land, but the scope of the podcast goes a little beyond what many podcasts are doing. Keep checking back as we get things off the ground.

Needless to say, without having any source of income coming from anything of what I just listed, I’m keeping busy.

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Filed under: Blogging, Blogs, Flickr, Geeky, Neat, Photography, Podcasting, RadioZoom, Vancouver

You’ve got questions, they’ve got batteries

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

There is one thing about being laid off from a job, but it’s a whole other story when it comes down to the way it’s done.  Even having Donald Trump give you the news would be better than this.

RadioShack Corp. notified about 400 workers by e-mail that they were being dismissed immediately as part of planned job cuts.

Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters got messages Tuesday morning saying: “The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated.”

Company officials had told employees in a series of meetings that layoff notices would be delivered electronically, spokeswoman Kay Jackson said. She said employees were invited to ask questions before Tuesday’s notification on a company intranet site.

Derrick D’Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never heard of such a large number of terminated employees being notified electronically. He said it could be seen as dehumanizing to employees. [breitbart]

No kidding!  400 people is not that big of a number.  They couldn’t even make the rounds by phone?  Even though I loathe going into a RadioShack[wiki], I feel for the folks that work there.  It’s the Kmart[wiki] of electronics stores, and I have yet to meet some one who doesn’t have a horror story about shopping there.

But an email telling you that you’ve been terminated?  That’s cold.  You’re not an employee.  You’re just a machine with a number, a name, and an email address that gets a paycheck.  Getting fired electronically is like setting an electronic time bomb to go off.   Some one secure the stapler.

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Filed under: Buh?, Geeky, News Item
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