Why can’t Apple just synchronize our photo metadata via iCloud?

A minimal monit-compatible implementation to report basic system info to m/monit.

Computer networks were revolutionary in the 1980s, but they’re required today.

When using the old computers I have, the first thing I discovered is that nothing on the web works in old browsers anymore. The old browsers can’t do modern SSL, PNG graphics, CSS or most HTML. So, in an effort to make the internet usable, I built legacyproxy. I mainly targeted Netscape 1.1N and it has some triggers for its specific User-Agent. To get started, you just configure the browser’s HTTP Proxy to point to a running instance of the legacyproxy. [ Read More… ]

Beyond the original Macintosh computers I have working, I assembled a few alternative Macintoshes using Raspberry Pis to emulate the old hardware.

I have a few old computers in my basement. They are mostly old Macintosh computers, starting with my first ever computer, a Macintosh LC. I started evaluating which ones I should keep by making sure they still work.

I had a dream where I was working on hacking on something with another person, I had apparently travelled to the past, since I still had on an Apple Watch, but it said the year was 2003. While hacking on whatever it was, I had the idea to download Linux, but then I remembered it wasn’t released yet. There were all sorts of things that don’t make sense in the dream: my Apple Watch face doesn’t show the year, nor is there a way to show it and Linux certainly had been released. [ Read More… ]

I recently got a drive enclosure that allows it to be connected via eSATA or USB2. I got a nifty ExpressCard eSATA adapter for my MacBook Pro since eSATA is theoretically faster. Guess what? It is a lot faster!

DVD Import 5.0 is much improved as far as keeping the audio in sync with the video on imported media. However, there are some cases that still cause DVD Import to get the audio out of sync. Never fear, there is a new Audio Processing option that lets you override the Sync.

I’ve been working a little more on my little utility for fixing files to play on the SX servers from Tightrope Media Systems. I’ve added the ability to process files other than MPEG files (such as WMV or most AVI files). It will convert audio in these files as well as fix problems with the video by scaling to 720x480 and converting frame rate to 29.97. When fixing the video, it will transcode the files to the ubiquitous MPEG2 format to play on the server (so don’t process files you don’t want to have re-encoded). [ Read More… ]

In response to my co-worker Brandon’s recent post about his computer upgrades… and possibly a little follow-up to my previous post about the MacBook Air…

One of the things I’ve been hearing from our support guys at Tightrope Media Systems is a lot of people have legacy content that is 44.1kHz audio that they would like to play back on their SX Server. The server, however, requires the standard DVD sample rate of 48kHz. This leaves everyone sad.

Apple just released their super slim MacBook Air. I got to thinking, this is perfect, it’s super portable, you can carry it around easily and keep in touch wirelessly from your couch, coffee shop, et c. It doesn’t have the real power of a full-blown computer, so you probably would be able to do all your work on it. Instead, it is perfect to read email, browse the web, look at pictures, maybe some other stuff.

I use a Mac at home and want to have the ability to run PC software. I wish I could use only a Mac, but I still do some development on Windows and I have some weird legacy hardware that can’t be put on/into the Mac but works fine on the ol’ PC. Boot Camp is too disruptive and Parallels or VMWare don’t let me use those strange hardware devices and they are slower than real hardware (which I already have).

In our wonderful world of technology, free software or open source software have pervaded our computers, whether you have linux running as your OS or Firefox as your web browser (which you definitely should have, btw). It seems that this abundance of free software has lead to a strange phenomenon where all consumer of software no longer consider any software to be of any value.

How come every time I search on google to find the answer to a question that obviously has been asked before the only matches I get are in forums that have someone asking the same question, and never are there any answers posted? Either there are no answers, or some overzealous moderator has come in and removed the answer saying that it belongs in another area on the forum, with no link to help find it. [ Read More… ]