e v i l _ b l e n d e r

I'll admit - I haven't yet really put Tiger through it's paces yet. I installed it about 12 hours ago - and spotlight is still 'indexing' my harddrive! That's not a good sign is it?! (maybe I just have too much stuff!)

I worry a little bit though about being on the bleeding edge. The list of incompitable software over at macintouch at least lets me know that my new backup system won't be working anytime soon. (Thanks Dantz!)
<sarcasm> Glad I bought the Maxtor harddrive and not the cheaper Lacie model. </sarcasm>

That and since the office uses Now up to Date... well... that's going to be an issue too isn't it? Guess I'll not be upgrading many of the machines at work until Now Software pulls their act together.

Having quicksilver's launch sequence hijacked by spotlight is a little bit disconcerting. I'm just ingrained to use command-space to launch quicksilver. I don't mean to pimp it quite so hard - but really, if your running OSX you owe it to yourself to go and check it out for yourself. So I had to change the spotlight's default to launch with a F11 ... F12 is the dashboard... close enough for me.

However, beyond that - I'm not sure there's really much of difference that I've noticed yet. I had to upgrade a few applications - quicksilver, candy bar (yes, that _is_ important to run :) ) and stickybrain - but so far (knock wood) things have been running pretty smooth.

In fact, as I write - spotlight is now done indexing.
It's sort of fast - not macworld showoff fast though... guess I need a G5 after all!
Here's a look for ya

hmm... interesting - .png instead of .pdf for screen grabs. Looks like we're PCing ourselves a little bit there steve aren't we? ;)

Now I just need to search my harddrive for something I actually NEED! you'd think that after 12 hours I could think of something to search for! :)

iChat appears to be new-ish. No more rendevouz chatting - it's now called 'bonjour' chatting. Very french. Very chi chi as they say.

I've heard that mail's new - maybe I'll use it at work instead of Entourage. Not sure I trust it yet though - not after it started eating my older email. I had thought - 'I'll keep my serial numbers here in mail for all my shareware' that way I won't lose the numbers in some kind of database that goes corrupt. Then mail started eating mail older than about 7 months. DOH! bye bye serial number collection. Didn't know I had over 20,000 email messages in my mail program. Maybe that's the trouble - I keep too much stuff. Wonder if that's what took spotlight so long to deal with.
-after the import-
well... it certainly LOOKS different!
They finally made it so I can have different signatures for my different email accounts. That's nice.
'Add invitation to iCal'? What's this? iCal doesn't seem that different - maybe there's something under the hood that will be impressive.

Dashboard - not impressed. Still like Konfabulator better. Not sure why this needed to get implemented into the OS. I used Konfabulator for a while - and then the usefulness of it wore off. I haven't used it in about 6 months. So I'm not sure why it's important to be tied to the OS. Maybe some of the widgets besides calendar and clock and calculator will change my mind. But I haven't figured out where to download some new ones yet.

Haven't even opened up automator yet. And truth told, it's one of the things I'm most looking forward to using at work (to make my life easier). All right... so I went and peeked. Yikes it looks deeper than I thought - and mostly only support for apple's programs... nothing in there for photoshop... hopefully that changes soon.

What else was big Tiger news? They didn't mention the little sound effects that happen when you copy files around... not sure I approve of that yet. I'm used to my computer being silent. It strikes me as the kind of thing that will eventually get really 'old' - like the ichat 'whoop' sound that it did by default - that everyone I know turned off within 10 minutes of using the thing.

OK ecto... what am I listening to right now? No More from the album “Return To V” by Roni Size Thanks ecto!

Technorati Tags: mac osx, quicksilver, konfabulator, tiger

Posted by vashremix at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dan Schellenberg � Blog Archive � Use Quicksilver Triggers to Control iTunes on a Remote Computer

Is a fantastic explanation about using applescripts, the curl command, and quicksilver to remotely control itunes on another computer.
I could use this at work I think.

Posted by vashremix at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I cannot live without quicksilver on my machine. I've installed it on any machine that I have to work on - at work and, of course, at home. Any time I end up on a windows machine, or when I'm trying to fix someone's who doesn't have it installed - I'm always at a loss. I hate having to cmd-shift-a to go to applications, type u to highlight utilities, hit command-down arrow to open the folder, type disk to highlight disk utilities, and hit command-down arrow to launch it, just to repair permissions. It's so much better to type command-space disk enter - done.
Learn more for yourself at:
Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog: QuickSilver - A Better OS X In Just 10 Minutes He's got a good intermediate piece as well.

Posted by vashremix at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yet another boring picture of six flags.

Perhaps if I make it so that you have to click the link to see the big picture... would that help?
can't we do any better yet?

Posted by vashremix at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's the great american scream machine. I know you've been wondering what I've been up to with a whole week to myself... well - we decided to purchase a season pass to six flags and see what happens when you try to ride as many rides as possible.

As soon as I figure out a better way to post photos I will.
I've got tons of them.

Posted by vashremix at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lest you think I'm nothing more than a vitrol of hatred... or a fiery ball of anger... or anything near that negative... you should know that I spent most of my evening laughing. Laughing at some of the finest theatre ever recorded. Improv Everywhere. I would have done anything to be in the subway when the pantsless men purchased their pants back.

Welcome to NY!

Stay awhile!
I think that working near NYU makes for being in a great location. Most of these stunts seemed to happen right on my work 'turf'. Somehow that makes it even better. (As far as I'm concerned.)

I'm finally getting back to being myself after being sick for like 4 days. Nothing beats HAVING to breath though your nose - and having it stuffed. Oh, nice. I always try to do the same thing when I'm sick - just go 'coma' and hopefully wake up when it's over. I need a new bed. This one's a bit to uncomfortable anymore. And it's too big without you! :) Yeah, I listened to radio in the 80's -- didn't you?! So after spending about way too long in it though - I think I really need to get a softer bed. Maybe I will.

So what the hell is up with MTV? What happened to the 'Music' part of the TV? Even MTV2 has been co-opted by the 'real life' take-offs. Enough! I can live my own drama filled life. In fact, I do. Don't get me wrong - 'Viva La Bam' might be the best thing on TV next to 'Team Sanchez' and 'The Shield' and '24' --- oh boy... I'm sounding like a junkie listing all my favorite drugs.

Television drug of a nation.

Disposable heroes of Hypocracy. Dig it. They remind me of Public Enemy.

Public Enemy still rules - although I don't get Flava Flav's new thing... at all. I think Chuck D's still real though. Sorry Flav. I'm just confused. I've never been famous you understand. I don't anticipate it any time soon either. So I probably won't get it for quite a bit.

Perhaps that's enough rambling for the evening. - Yeah, time flies when you're typing and watching TV. Wow - a punk version of the Jessica Simpson show. Thanks mtv for that brilliant glimpse into reality. Let me put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it.

Posted by vashremix at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

gotta love this one ---

In a nutshell, the story breaks down as follows: the TSA secretly obtains travel data on citizens from commercial airlines, lies about it, and then happily spreads that data around to various third parties with minimal, and in some cases zero, oversight on how that data was being used. Your tax dollars at work!

Posted by vashremix at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, just in time for the NAB show in Vegas!
BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon
I still want to understand how the roulette calculations are working. That one seems the most fun to figure out how to beat.
Not that I would mind you - but it's fun to dream.

Posted by vashremix at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK - here's a fun one - making a phone tap that will work with your PC!
How to Record Phone Conversations in the PC | Hardware Secrets
There are more practical uses as well - but getting a phone signal to an analog signal can sometimes be pretty useful.
(any clients want to listen to that mix??)

Posted by vashremix at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anton’s Stuff » Blog Archive » Battery Powered Altoids LED Lamp

Oh yeah! LEDs and a little circuitry fun. Now we can all build our very own altoid flashlights. (I've already got my USB powered one) now I guess I'll just have to buy some batteries.

Posted by vashremix at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's one I didn't know.

Make sure that on BOTH the system that you are trying to control, as well as the system that you are controlling from - that the firewall on your router is set to port forward UDF port 3283 to the appropriate computer!

What does that mean?
Go into your router and look for the 'forwarding' or 'ports' option on it (my netgear calls it port, and the lynksys at work calls it forwarding but both put them under 'advanced') and add the IP address of the machine that you want to control, or are controlling from and make sure that you point the ports to them.

As you can see from my setup below:

I've got two different machines that I'm serving different services off of. One of them is at .2 and the other is at .6
So, depending on what it is you are requesting (jabber, or web browsing, or Apple Remote Desktop) you're going to end up on a different machine.

Make sense?

Posted by vashremix at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love watches more than most people - I'll admit it.

I love sleeping too.

How about the 2 together! check it!

Posted by vashremix at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They've gone and done my idea proud.

I know you don't know that I've wanted to create something like this for a long time - it's the entire reason I started dabbling with understanding electronics at all! But that's OK. I don't mind that other people are thinking about it. That means I'll probably be able to buy some at some point!

wireless beads (I hope I linked that right!)

Well - I didn't envision it being just for girls - and it didn't have to do with beads - although I must admit - I like the bead idea a lot! I still think clothing is the way to go.

Don't worry - I haven't stopped thinking about it either. :)

Posted by vashremix at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm finally getting to the point of understanding electronics like I've always wanted to. It's taken quite a few books, and a bit of internet crawling - but I think I might actually be 'getting it'! Which I'm quite excited about. I went to college hoping to be an Electronics Engineering Technology major - but got 'weeded out' of the 'weed out' classes.
It made me think I was rather stupid.
I just figured that they knew best - that it wasn't possible for me to learn something quite so complicated.

Well - F you. You were wrong.

Turns out you just didn't know how to teach me - thank goodness for big bookstores and the internet. Maybe I should put up a list of the books that were helpful. I don't need to know everything about these circuits... I just wanted to understand how they worked - how the signal flowed - what was going on inside those green boards to make them do such cool things.
Now, it's funny - I find that as I learn more about it all - the simpler it seems. But I guess that's what it means to learn something. Some of the magic goes away once you learn how it works. Is that what learning is? Or is it a side effect of it?Is that the way it is with everything?
Seems like it may be.

So I know you can learn by making mistakes... how does that fit in? What about those mistakes?

I know I don't know that yet.

Sort of lost the train of thought on this one. Sorry about that - I should learn to go to sleep when I'm tired instead of writing.

Posted by vashremix at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)