HerdingChaos

The iMac now has 2G of memory.
I also was able to spend some time testing the new build of the Cisco VPN client. Once it is released, any version greater than 4.9.00.0430 should work fine on the Core 2 Duo’s.

*grumble* I just found out that all of season 3 and season 4 of The Shield that I encoded for my iPod will not work on said iPod. I had one little setting wrong. So here is a reference for me and anyone else who cares.

Under Destination: File Format=MP4 Codecs=AVC/H.264

Under Video: Framerate=Same Encoder=x264 Baseline Set Average bitrate=400 Select 2-pass encoding

Click Picture settings and reduce pixel count to 320×240.

Main Profile for x264 will not work at all on the iPod. It needs to be the Baseline Profile. Well the good news is that this new iMac encodes pretty quickly.

I plan to update this post with information on what I put on my iMac and what I am finding useful. This is partially so I have a reference, and also to help any others that may find this entry on a search engine. I have an iMac 24″ running Tiger 10.4.7.

Safari is great, but I use firefox on windows and linux and I already understand how it works and all of the quirks. So get firefox. http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Encoding video: Handbrake. This is a great tool that will let you rip right from a DVD to various formats. I use this to rip DVD’s to 320×240 H.264 dual pass video for viewing on my Video iPod (G5). One hour of video will compress down to around 180M and look great. http://handbrake.m0k.org/

Bittorent client Azureus. This is a java based client but a JRE that will run it was already installed on Tiger. http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

I like to code sometimes so I need a full development environment. I downloaded XCode from apple. I was going to put a link here, but every other site that I find that links to Apple’s XCode is out dated. Go to apple.com and type xcode into the search field. As of the time of this writing the more current XCode was 2.4 and that is what I have installed.

I want to run unix apps including those compiled to use X11 windowing system. Apple ships an X11 implementation on both the 10.3 and 10.4 install DVD’s. For 10.4 I stuck in install disk 1 and scroll to the bottom. There is package called “Optional Installs”. You will find X11 under Applications. Simply install this. I also made a few changes to the X configuration. To get focus follows mouse under X do the following.

defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm true

To stop X from asking are you sure when it you try to close it:

defaults write com.apple.x11 no_quit_alert true

I have a ton of photos. As of this writing I have around 17,000 pictures that are around 34G in size and go back to early 2002 when we got our first digital camera. I have hopes of someday also scanning in all the film we have. iPhoto will not handle that many photos. I purchased Aperture from Apple and installed it. So far I have been pretty happy with it, but I have not really spent a ton of time with it. I did import all of my photos and it appears to handle a huge number of photos easily. It also has an easy method of backing up not just the photos, but all of the metadata as well. I had an external drive laying around so I am going to use that as the backup device.

Downloaded the latest free Stuffit. http://www.stuffit.com/mac/index.html

If you want to get access to all your unix tools you will need FINK. I am not going to repeat the FINK docs on this page since they are pretty good. Get FINK here: http://fink.sourceforge.net/

Video playback: Flip4Mac and Divx. This will allow you to play most all of the video formats floating around out there. http://www.flip4mac.com/ http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/

I like to see at a glance how my mac is doing. I love MenuMeters. This will add a set of fully customizable meters to the menubar in the upper right. http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/

I am not totally sure if I am going to use Parallels much, but I did install it. The iMac pushed my weakest processing machine off my desk for lack of desk space. This was my dual head linux box running FC5. So I thought that if I ran FC5 in an Parallels VM I would get good access to linux on something that turned out to actually be faster than my old machine. Please note that at the time of this writing (Sept ‘06) that the “shipping” version of Parallels has some very serious issues with the Core 2 Duo based Intel Macs. They have an internal build available on the support forums that completely fixed all of my issues and everything is running great now. Forum thread that has the internal build I am running is here: http://forum.parallels.com/thread4487.html and that build number is 1908.

I used AdiumX for instant messaging. AdiumX is pretty easy to use client with support for most all of the IM networks. http://www.adiumx.com/

I wanted to see how hot these CPU’s are running so I looked around for a monitoring program for temps. I found Temperature Monitor. It allows me to watch the CPU core temps and the HDD temp. http://www.bresink.de/osx/TemperatureMonitor.html

I tried to install the Cisco VPN client and it has some serious issues. I would not recommend installing it if you have the same config as me. Remember: to boot into safe mode hold the shift key down while the Apple logo is on the screen. I have an internal build of the Cisco VPN client that might fix my problem but I have not tried it yet.

I also get MS Office v.X Pro through work for close to free so I installed it incase someone sends me MS office files.

The third time is the charm. The third tech from TWC was able to program two CableCARDS and get the Tivo Series 3 HD working perfectly. I proceeded to program all of our season pass information into it and away it goes.
The only outstanding issue with the Mac is the lack of the Cisco VPN client. Well I have a bit of an “in” at Cisco…. so today I emailed the development manager for the mac os x client with a problem report. Hopefully they already have an engineering build I can try.

I posted earlier about my order for a new Tivo Series 3 HD. This is my first post about my new iMac 24″. What do they have in common? They are both really really new.

On the Tivo front: Time Warner cable will not allow you to self install the CableCARDS into your own device. At first I was really upset by this because they are going to charge me ~$30/card for the install. The cards are leased for only $3/month/card so the install charge was almost a year’s lease on the card for the install. Well now that I have seen the install in action I can say that they are going to blow through the $60 some odd dollars I will be paying for the install and then some. The contractor that does the house visits and installs stated that my Tivo HD was the first they had seen. Then the fun started. We inserted the first CableCARD and called it in. It seemed to go okay. Then we installed the second card and it started a firmware update. Tivo kindly told me that this normally takes 40 min and that I could do nothing else while the second card was loading the new firmware. 18 hours later I ejected the second card. The first card is mostly working except some of the channels will pop up a banner telling me I need to call the cable company to get the card activated. And the random channels that do this are not all pay channels. FOX HD is doing it but all the other network’s HD channels work fine. This morning I called the contractor back to report the results (since they recommended the overnight wait for the firmware update). The supervisor seems to think this is an issue with the way the headend is programmed at Time Warner. But since he is just a contractor he is going to have to come out here, look at it, play with it a bit, and then file a work order for a real Time Warner cable dude to come out and take a look. I just want my Tivo. *cry*

On the iMac front: Oh my god I love this iMac. The screen is super crisp and this thing is so fast I am amazed. But this is only around week 2 of the Core 2 Duo based mac’s being released. All of the software from Apple works like a charm and I have no problems with it at all. I planned on using this iMac to replace my old aging linux box, but run a copy of linux within Parallels for Mac (kind of like VMWare for you non-mac people). Well Parallels for mac has a really cool feature that only works on the Core 2 Duo based machines. When you start the virtual machine the kernel panics and your mac reboots! What fun! I found a forum post from the Parallels guys and the internal build that they made available actually fixed the problem. Which allowed me to move onto the next problem. The Cisco VPN client for mac will install and work fine until you reboot. Once you reboot whatever the VPN client installs to run on each start will cause the system to crash and you go into a loop until you boot the Mac in safe mode and remove the VPN startup items. But the good news is I can login to work via ssh and the VPN client is not a must have.

Becky made a wonderful dinner tonight with pork and steaks from the grill, some spicy rice, cranberry sauce, and cottage cheese. We were nearing the end of the meal and Tracy belched HUGE. I looked at her and made a funny face of surprise with wide eyes. She giggled and then said to me, “That was me, but it is normally you.” She is her father’s daughter.

Loren is laying on Becky’s lap and something amusing to Becky happens. Becky laughs. Then Loren giggles. She has no idea what is funny.. in fact Becky is often reading something that made her laugh. But it does not matter. Loren giggles.

So what is a TWCHDDVR you ask? The Time Warner Digital Cable High Definition Digital Video Recorder is simply the worst executed DVR that I have ever used. However, it was pretty much the only option to get something that even the kids could use that would work in HD at home. Well no more you craptastic monopoly! Tivo has released the Series 3 HD DVR. I own a Series 2 DVR and it has always done what I wanted, never crashed and in general helps me dig through the billions of crap shows and boil my viewing time down to the 2-3 hours a week that I really want to see. I can not wait to take my TWC DVR into the TWC office and ask for two CableCARDS in return. The Tivo is expensive, but they have earned it. I cannot think of any other bit of electronics that I have bought recently that I felt really produced a high quality product for a decent price (except maybe the macbook I bought for Becky). Anyway, once I get it in I will let all two of you know what it is like.

My buddy Derek owns and runs Derek’s Martial Arts Gym. Back when Derek started the gym I helped him a bit here and there getting it setup. The building was in pretty bad shape when he started with it. It looks great now. So great in fact that a few months ago the gym was the setting for a music video for one of Derek’s students Ron D. for his video South Sea. The video has been posted to you tube. Check it out!

We have a DVR in our cable box. It is a bit like a VCR without all the tapes. We record the few shows that Becky and I watch and a ton of kid shows for those rare times that they want to watch TV.

A couple of mornings ago I was sleeping in and Tracy came up to the bedroom. She had the cable/TV remote in her hand. Andrew started school and I think she was a little lonely. She wanted to watch her favorite show, Dora the Explorer.

The remote for the cable box is the universal kind. And the TV is setup to send all the sound through an amp and not the TV. So I was showing Tracy that she needed to hit the CBL button, then POWER, then TV then POWER, then AUX then POWER. She watched all of this closely, then turned to me with a smile on her face and said, “That sure is a lot of power just to watch Dora!”