Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

Or how to make a single-display Mac Mini Media Center even better.

I have a Mac Mini that records all of my favourite programs (almost) automatically. It runs EyeTV (by default), and can play movies stored on either a local FireWire hard drive, or a LAN server (running OpenSolaris, and using ZFS, incidentally).

One annoying thing is that to set up a new smart playlist, or edit a movie, or do anything on the machine, whilst I can remote in and do stuff, this all displays on the TV.

However, using ScreenRecycler, it seems like I can trick the Mac Mini into thinking he (his name is jens!) has two monitors. Thus, with some swizzling, I can have the EyeTV full-screen display on the “real” monitor, and the desktop on the other one.

Doing this means that I can happily edit a movie (say, to remove advertisements), whilst the TV still displays the live TV (or being viewed video).

Run ScreenRecycler on the Media machine. You may need to restart if this is the first time you have run it, as it installs some driver. I’m hoping it’s pretty safe…

After running ScreenRecycler when the system has the driver installed, I needed to run JollysFastVNC to get ScreenRecycler to give me a second display. I was using ARD (and still do), which when I then reconnected showed me the whole desktop, with a menu enabling me to choose which display (or both) to view. I chose to view both displays for now.

I then loaded up the Displays preference pane, and moved the menu bar to the ScreenRecycler display.

I made the ScreenRecycler display run in a higher resolution (1280×960, so that it fits nicely onto my external monitor on my laptop at full-size). I then went to the EyeTV preferences, and made sure the full-screen display went onto the “real” monitor. This apparently has the side effect that quicktime movies will also play on this monitor, so that’s quite good.

Finally, I made new Live TV and Recording open in a new window. This enables me to edit a movie while Jaq is watching another. It does, however, mean that it is a little cumbersome to switch between tuners (need to view both monitors, and do some more swizzling), but it’s workable. It was always hard to switch tuners anyway, at least with the Apple Remote.

This makes for a fairly cool setup. I’m fiddling a little more before I buy ScreenRecycler (like, does it work better upon startup?), but it looks pretty promising.

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I’m not even going to tell you what it is. You must just listen to it. And laugh.

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One good thing about doing benchmarking of algorithms for homework is that I have time to watch TV while I wait for code to run.

And then I see things like the World’s Fattest Man, and World’s Heaviest Teenager.

How the fuck does someone get to 1000 pounds. And you can’t tell me that the teenager’s Mother isn’t to blame for him being so large.

I just couldn’t see the point of living if I could not move around.

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Hmm. That is new. Google Music.

I’m guessing it will now be better to use Google Music to check for artwork and so on than Amazon.com.

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Channel 10 is pretty crap about how it plays House. They’ll advertise a new episode, and then play two old ones instead. It really pisses me off.

Last night, however, they played the season finale of House. It was truly excellent.

With Amber about to die, they decide to ‘wake her up’ so that Wilson can say goodbye to her. So, she is brought back to consciousness so that she can find out she is about to die.

I wouldn’t want this, or do this to my partner. Even if it means not being able to say goodbye. I think I’d rather never wake up. Jaq knows I love her, regardless of me having to say it.

If we had had a fight, then I was in a bus crash, that might make it different…

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Shopping today - had to buy some Nutella (Hazelnut Spread).

Noticed a couple of cheaper imitations. One was Foodland or Black and Gold brand. The other, well, was:

Nutkao new Cream.

Guess which one I didn’t buy.

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John Gruber is well worth keeping in your feed list. Not only is the stuff he writes generally entertaining, on the ball and well written, but he finds other good stuff too.

Take, for example, his recent comment on How Apple is Changing DRM. Which, let’s face it, I wouldn’t have come across otherwise.

The flip side, though, is that DRM rules the day for paid video content.
[From Daring Fireball Linked List: May 2008]

I think that (tech-savvy) people are more accepting to have DRM applied to video content for a couple of reasons. First, you are less likely to keep watching the same movie over and over again. You are likely to listen to a piece of music over and over again. People will rent movies, either on DVD or from an online source, for this exact reason. By definition, rented movies must have DRM, else you have effectively bought them.

The second, and I think more important reason is to do with viewing modes of video. Most video is watched on a single device - at this stage still the device it was bought with. If you purchase a video on your computer, it’s probably to watch it there. Or, you have purchased/rented something as part of a system and plan to watch it on, say, an Apple TV, which uses the same DRM system as iTunes on your computer.

Perhaps in the future, as people have more video devices that can view the data they buy or rent, we will find less of an acceptance of DRM.

A third reason that just struck me is that traditionally, music was sold without DRM, even whilst in a digital format. Digital video has never really been sold without DRM. Even if it’s trivial to disable the DRM in DVDs and make copies, say to use on a device that doesn’t have a DVD drive.

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One command:

defaults write com.elgato.eyetv “apple remote menu button behavior” -int 1

This made my day.

Don’t do what I did first, which was:

defaults write com.elgato.eyetv “apple remote menu button behaviour” -int 1

It still frustrates me that the world has chosen to LCD in spelling: colour and behaviour shouldn’t be spelled the USA way…

Update: this seems to cause a crash when starting Front Row. I’ve had to revert to the old behaviour. Poo.

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Did you ever notice that The Gossip • Standing In The Way Of Control is a ripoff of Loverboy * Turn Me Loose?

Now, these links were obtained from the iTunes Australian Store, by right-clicking on them. But they don’t work for me when I try to use them to get back to those tracks…odd.

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I’m studying at Flinders Uni this year - so far it has been pretty cruisy, with a summer school subject I think I got 93% for, and lectures started proper this week. Pretty much all of the topics I am studying, and a whole lot more are available as podcasts or video streaming. You need to be logged into the FLO (Flinders Learning Online - an excellent tool, from what I’ve seen) to get the streaming video (I think), but the podcasts are technically available to anyone. If you know the URL, for example:

COMP 3001, 2008 Audio Feed : http://video.flinders.edu.au/podcasts/COMP3001/audio/COMP3001_2008.xml

You should now be able to figure out the URL for any topic. Just replace the COMP3001 with your subject code, and audio with video, if you desire.

The files are quite large, but no larger than regular podcasts.

I wasn’t able to find anything on the University website(s) that prohibit me from making this information public, but it may be under copyright restrictions. So only use it if you are allowed to…

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