New Toy

The old PC has become a little cumbersome for my image editing needs and I had pretty much come to the conclusion that a new computer was in order.

My current Windows box is a AMD Athlon 64 I purchased in February of 2006. Even when it was new it as not all that great a computer. It was on the low end both in price and performance. I had bought it to replace a AMD K6 400Mhz computer with a 40 gig hard drive I had bought in 1999 so it was an improvement and so far has served me pretty well.

I began shopping for a replacement and found myself looking to Apple as a possible option for my impending upgrade. I weighed the pros and cons and determined that it could only benefit me in both my IT career and my digital photography. Sure there would be a bit of a learning curve, but I know a lot of Mac users who are more than willing to assist me in my transition.

After some hemming and hawing I settled on a refurbished 2.8 GHz 24″ iMac from apple.com. The savings were pretty significant when compared to a brand new unit and the specs were more than suitable for my needs. I ordered it online on Friday and it was delivered to my office on Tuesday the following week.

I gotta say, this thing is pretty slick. Out of the box and on to the network in just about 5 minutes. I set it up at the office and poked around a little before I took it home. I then spent most of the evening working out the kinks of getting a program called Synergy loaded on the Mac and the PC so that I could control both computers with a single mouse and keyboard WITHOUTH the need for a KVM switch. It’s a nifty and elegant little program that, when installed, lets you move the mouse seamlessly from one desktop to another and back again. The keyboard works on whichever computer the mouse cursor is on. It’s like a dual display but with two computer instead of one.

Of course this sent me all over the place as I first tried to install the command line server utility on the Mac before I discovered SynergyKM which is a GUI wrapper around the synergy command line tool and makes the setup and configuration much, much easier.

My efforts led me to explore the network preferences and other “control panel” like items of the Mac as well as got me to a command line pretty quick as I struggled to get it installed and working properly.

In the end, I was triumphant and now I have the PC and the MAC working side by side on my desk.

Next step will be to get the 24″ PC monitor connected as a secondary monitor on the Mac. My 24″ Westinghouse has HDMI and VGA connectors. It is connected to the PC using the VGA so I plan to connect to the Mac using the HDMI and then be able to switch the monitor easily from PC primary to Mac secondary.

I have the mini-DVI to DVI to HDMI connectors and just need a HDMI cable which I am expecting to have in hand today.

Please feel free to comment with any suggestions as to applications or Web sites you think I might benefit from as I explore this new system! Keep in mind that anti-spam features in place on this blog may make posting a web link difficult. Just suggest the name of the site and I will find it.

Implementing Video

I just got a Flip Mino HD to play with and am thinking of doing some video on the upcoming trip to Spain like I did in Belgium over Christmas. My first thought was to simply host the videos on my web site and embed them. I had this working more or less with the Podpress plugin but for some reason it’s gone all wonky on me.

In my search for options I found a variety of plug-ins for self hosting video, but they are convoluted and not one offers what I really need.

The other option was to upload to one of the video sharing sights and snag the embed code for publication here at baldheretic.com. Youtube doesn’t allow you to embed the HD version of your video into your own blog so that’s a waste. I was turned on to Vimeo by John Winters (aka @obscura) and it is impressive. The problem is that you are only allowed to upload 500mb a week, which is fine but they only allow ONE HD upload a week which is not so great. You can upgrade to Vimeo Plus for a fee of $59.95 a year. This account allows for 5 gigs of uploads in a week and unlimited HD uploads are included in that.

Kind of overkill for my purposes and too pricey.

I also checked out Flickr Video which is available to Pro account holders like myself, but they limit your videos to 90 seconds with no option to go longer. The call it “a long photograph.”

In my quest I stumble upon a post by WordPress founder Matthew Mullenweg where he was showing off a movie made from tilt-shift photos he had taken.

Doing a little digging I found out that if you have a pemium account at wordpress.com you can upload videos of many different formats and the site will crunch and convert and allow you to embed them rather seamlessly. The premium account is only $20 a year for 5 gig of storage. The cool thing is that once you upload the video you can then grab the embed code and place it in the blog of your choice making this a reasonable alternative to Vimeo for me personally.

It irks me that this functionality is not available for those of us who self host our own WordPress blogs. I suspect it has do with whatever is needed on the back end to process the videos, but still. I bet it could be implemented without much fuss. We’ll see what comes down the pike in the future.

In the mean time I have paid Mr. Mullenweg his thirty pieces of silver and acquired the upgrade. I do like the quality of the video.

If Matt reads this I would like him to know that donated wordpress.com account to Technology Bytes would be a tax write-off. Just wanted to put that out there.

Google Maps

Google just announced a new feature of their map site that allows you to embed a Google Map right into a web page just like you would with a Youtube video.

KPFT

View Larger Map

The embedded map has all the functionality you find at the actual Google Maps site. You can scroll it, zoom it, get directions and that good stuff.

It’s way faster and easier than the in-line Google maps plug-in I was playing with before.

This will be a lot of fun to use during the upcoming trip to Spain….

Details are at the Google Lat Long Blog

Cat Cam

I’m not a huge cat fan nor am I cat cam fan but I am a technology fan and a fan of novel ideas. That’s why I find Mr. Lee’s CatCam quite fascinating.

Ever wonder what a cat who spends most of his time outdoors is up to?
Apparently J. Perthold in Germany did and came up with an idea…

So the idea was born and split into these parts:

1. find small, lightweight, inexpensive digital camera
2. develop a controller for the camera
3. protect the camera from cat attack
4. mount equipment to cat

For anyone who has lived with a feline, the mystery of a cat’s mind is an all-too-familiar quandary. This site does not venture any answers to that dilemma. But it does attempt to record what one cat.the illustrious Mr. Lee.does and where he goes when left to his own devices. Mr. Lee’s human companion, a clever man who lives in Germany, rigged a small digital camera to take a photo at regular intervals. He affixed the device to his cat’s collar and let Mr. Lee do his thing. What came back is an amusing, sometimes fascinating peek into Mr. Lee’s daily activities.

Out of the day of a cat – Trip 1
Out of the day of a cat – Trip 2
Out of the day of a cat – Trip 3
Out of the day of a cat – Trip 4

TV Time

Got a call from Jeff Ehling over at the local ABC affiliate (Channel 13). He was putting together a story to tie in to the recent FBI press release regarding botnet cyber crime and needed a geek talking head.

Lord knows there’s no talking head geekier than yours truly and despite my fear of being in front of the camera, I agreed to do it. I try not to pass up any opportunity to promote the radio show. Plus I think I must secretly enjoy being scared out of my wits.

Much like the previous times, it went smoothly enough and I was not horrified with the results. Jeff did a great job on the story and used sound bites from me in the piece that worked well and I was very pleased to hear him use talking points that came from our more candid off camera conversation.

You can see the news story video here.

I blog alone

I’ve installed the Podpress plugin for WordPress.
This means you can automatically pick up any audio content I post on this site as a podcast. Just add the RSS feed of this site to your iTunes and your iPod will do the rest.

The Podpress plugin also allows readers of this blog to play audio content I post to the site right inside the post, streaming in REAL TIME! No more waiting on a download.

If you are viewing this from the main URL (www.baldheretic.com) you should see a Podpress player at the top of this entry. Just click the play button and the song I have posted will start playing.

To test my new feature I have uploaded a song called I Blog Alone by M. Spaff Sumsion over at spaff.com

I’ve also included the lyrics below:

I BLOG ALONE
Parody of Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”

PERFORMED BY ROBERT LUND
Download MP3 (3.4 MB)

I spill my guts online
At live dot home dot blog my name dot com
No one hits my site
But it’s home to me and I blog alone

I dish out brilliant quotes
On the blogger board of broken links
Guess who leaves me notes?
Yes, I’m the only one and I blog alone

I blog alone
I blog alone

I blog alone
I blog a-

I work all
Day to make the Web admire me
It’s not my
Job; if my boss knew, she’d fire me
That’s fine; the
New York Times would beg to hire me
Till then I
BLOG ALONE

Bla-ah, bla-ah, bla-ah, blah-og
Bla-ah, bla-ah, blah-og

I mock celebrities,
Politics and sports and TV shows
Then I Google me
And hope it links to where I blog alone

I can’t sleep at night
Even on vacation far from home
I pull up my site
To know I’m still online and I blog alone

I blog alone
I blog alone

I blog alone
I blog a-

My only
Friends are avatars and smileys
I humbly
Post my views then praise them highly
Some day I’ll
Sell my soul like Bill O’Reilly
Till then I
BLOG ALONE

Bla-ah, bla-ah, bla-ah, blah-og
Bla-ah, bla-ah

I blog alone
I blog alone

I unmask media lies
On the blogger board of broken links
Guess who leaves replies?
Yes, I’m the only one and I blog alone

Hey, look, they
Praised me in the News on Sunday
My site got
Thirteen million hits in one day
Okay, I
Lied, but that could happen some day
Till then I
BLOG ALONE