Remote Controls
Originally uploaded by rgcottrell.
I now have three different remote controls to switch songs on iTunes. Oh, and the keyboard and mouse still work pretty well too.
March 2006 Archives
I am sitting rather uncomfortably in front of my 42 inch plasma TV. That's old news, I've had it for over three years now. What's new is the Intel Mac Mini connected to it, with iTunes playing on the home sterero, streaming music wirelessly from my main computer in the other room. I just got the Apple AirportExpress stereo connection kit, not because I have an AirportExpress (I don't) but because it was the most convenient way to acquire that funky mini-phono plug to TOSLINK digital optical cable needed to connect the computer to the stereo in glorious 5.1 surround sound.
I am really surprised that sitting about three feet away from the screen actually delivers a pretty good picture, good enough to write blog posts at least. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with this system, as I've got three other Macs around the house that are much more convenient to work with. I have some vague ideas about experimenting with home multimedia and theater software, but I'm not sure exactly how that will be realized.
My tentative plan for a weekend project is to see if I can get the FireWire SDK and samples installed and play with the demos to grab video from the cable set top box and save it to disk. That's phase one of my secret plan at least....
I've been relatively unhappy with the performance of Firefox on my new Intel iMac. The Rosetta technology is a great tool for moving PowerPC apps over to the new platform, but for something as big and bloated as a web browser, well there's really no choice but to go native.
I was surprised that Firefox has not yet come out with a universal binary version of the browser. At the Apple WWDC developer conference last year one of the sessions on porting apps to the new platform featured a live demonstration of the very minor changes needed to get Firefox to build.
I just discovered that there is a test version of the browser that is built as a universal binary. OK, so it's still alpha software but I need the extra speed. Besides, this isn't anything new for me. I first started using the Netscape Navigator browser at some sickening low version, 0.89 I believe, back in the day when you could get almost daily releases of the app.
So this post is now being written with the "Deer Park" browser. Wow, this thing is fast. I can't believe how fast pages are loading now. Even our top secret LOB site is rendering pages at breathtaking speed. I guess this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. After all, the old PowerBooks that we all have at work are aging machines.
