The Occasional Blog

Jason O’Grady is a tech columnist, blogger, and podcaster that I’ve been following for years (I think back to his MacWeek days). I was listening to his podcast a few weeks ago and he had mentioned having trouble finding a suitable media keyboard to use with a media center Mac. 

As I went through the same trouble with my setup and was very pleased with the Logitech MediaBoard Pro, I dropped him a quick note with my suggestion. After providing some additional information on how to re-map the modifier keys, he let me know today that he wrote the whole thing up for his Apple Core blog over at ZDNet. He was even kind enough to link back here.

In reading the comments on his post, one person complained that such a large keyboard would be lousy to use when watching a movie. That is a true statement which is why I use the bundled Apple Remote with RemoteBuddy by IOSPIRIT. That works much better when we watch shows in EyeTV.

Today was all about the South hall. Obviously, Apple’s booth was the largest and in the middle of the floor. Most people were interested in fondling the MacBook Air but the other products got plenty of interest as well. They were smart to have empty MBA shells at the sides of the booth so people could marvel at the new design. Time will tell how durable it is as the form certainly makes you want to slip it in a backpack or bag. The recessed USB ports look cool, but I’m sure owners are going to have to carry a USB extension for those things that won’t fit.

The coolest product I saw was Eye-Fi which is a 2G SD memory card that also has WiFi circuitry that is independent of the camera. In practice, it allows you to take a picture and have it automatically upload it to your computer (in local mode) or to Flick via their servers. If there isn’t a known network available, it stays on the card just like normal. I asked if they were thinking about a MemoryStick version and he said they are talking to Sony but it’s too early to know. I hope they do.

I also talked with the Omni Group booth about their new OmniFocus which I’ve been using for a bit. I wanted to make sure I was using it properly as I started while it was in public beta and developed habits before some features were implemented.

The funniest thing was the fact there were iPod/iPhone case vendors everywhere including two that were across the isle from each other (awkward). Becky‘s in the market for one so I’ll have to try and find out what she wants and see who has a good show special.

I’m very happy that El Gato released a new version of EyeTV. They addressed several complaints I had since switching from my MythTV last year. They add a smart listing (e.g., smart playlist) based on multiple categories and can optionally record any matching episode. They also improved the on-screen menu which will make it easier to use on our TV.

Yesterday was the opening day of Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The keynote ran from 9:00 to around 10:45 but I did not have a pass for it and considering the extreme interest and attendance, I wasn’t bothered by that. Since registration wasn’t open until after the keynote, I went across the street to the Metreon and followed Engadget‘s live blogging of the presentation.

My take on the announcements? "meh" I like the iPhone upgrade (GPS-like locater, web clips, multi-person SMS, song lyrics, and movie chapters) but am still quite put-out that they still don’t support tasks. I was hoping they were going to discuss the development kit for the iPhone and perhaps bring some vendor out to show a upcoming app, but I suppose that isn’t quite the venue for it.

I am also so-so on the iTunes movie rentals. I really like the concept and while we subscribe to NetFlix, I think we’ll use iTunes occasionally for those movies we don’t want to wait for. Since I am a bit frugal by nature, I would have liked it to be $1.99 and $2.99 (back catalog vs. new releqses) instead of $2.99 and $3.99 and am also disapointed by what has been called the "guy tax" of $1 extra for HD versions (if available). What’s worse, it appears that the HD versions can only be viewed on the Apple TV which leaves my Mac Mini in the SD cold. I’d bet big money that the studios required that restriction so that you can’t easily get to the file to strip the DRM and pirate like everyone strives to do.

Lastly, Apple announced the MacBook Air which is an ultra-light 13" laptop that is quite sexy in person. I have to admit, if I was in the market, I’d strongly consider one but I’m not coveting it. Many have criticized the non-user replaceable battery but having seen the unit in person, I don’t see how they could have made it removable and still keep the laptop thin. The replacement cost for the battery is reasonable, but it’s not clear if it can be replaced at an Apple Store or if it has to be sent in for servicing. Granted, you don’t really need to replace the battery often, but I’d rather not be without a laptop for days to do so.

Other than that, I spent the afternoon in the West hall which is made up of mostly smaller vendors. Some of the highlights include Skullcandy (a vendor of urban tech accessories), Budclicks (clip-on accents for earphones), Fluid Mask 3 by Vertus (alpha mask creation with a unique UI), Blurb (individual softcover and hardcover printing service), and of course Drobo by Data Robotics (a personal RAID device with very impressive features that I’ve been drooling over for a while).

Today, I’ll be hitting the South hall which is the big one. I’ll twitter what I can and do a day 2 wrap up tonight.

This upcoming Monday afternoon, I’ll be flying up to San Francisco to spend a few days at Macworld 2008. Back "in the day" when I worked for a small software company (Gryphon Software, makers of Morph) we exhibited at Macworld all the time, but I haven’t been there for years so I’m really looking forward to it.

The reason I’m attending this year is my company’s increasing use and support for Macs as well as me becoming more involved in supporting our cinematics group’s Shake renderfarm.

I’ll probably post one or two blog posts of my experiences and will try to also twitter what I can just for fun. You can follow me on Twitter by going to my page there.

Yes, I know it’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged. I do plan on rectifying that and I want to commit to at least do one post a week.One way that will happen is by adopting the Getting Things Done method and specifically a software package by the OmniGroup called OmniFocus. It’s currently in public beta but has been rock solid for me and there’s a new build almost every day which adds features.

If you’re in the the whole "GTD" thing and use a Mac, you may want to take a look.

With the release of OS X 10.5 (Leopard), I decided to take advantage of my work’s enterprise discount to purchase a license of Leopard Server for use at home. As a result, all of the peay.us services (dns, mail, and web) have been moved from the kids’ Mac mini upstairs (running Tiger client with hand-managed services) to the media Mac mini downstairs.

I believe that I got everything moved over correctly (e.g., this blog as well as the one for Kaelyn and Becky) as well as the mail services. I haven’t yet fixed my Gallery installation but should have that fixed shortly.

Gamasutra did a nice write-up of my work in San Diego. They barely mentioned IT, but my involvement with the groups hi-lighted is frequent. My group’s responsibility is to support the studios in San Diego and, specifically, I support Alienbrain, Perforce, and other “inward facing” services that the groups need to get their work done as well as the OS X infrastructure throughout the studios.

As anyone who knows me (or has read this blog) knows, I am a Mac user and pretty serious fan. Some would go so far as say “fanboy” but I like to think that I am honest enough to see the warts, too.

Having said that, one thing that has been quite interesting to me is the adoption (conversion?) rate of OS X and Macintosh hardware in my department at work recently. I work in IT and in my “section” there are sixteen of us. When I first transferred in about two years ago I was one of only two Mac users (the department was only 11 then). As our department grew, OS X improved, and products like Parallels came about, Apple hardware started showing up. At this point, nine of thirteen laptops are MacBooks and as I write this, my manager is anxiously awaiting his MacBook (updating to ten of thirteen).

I work with a lot of smart people.

Over the last few weeks, the MacBook Pro at home had been having some issues where it would go off to la la land for a bit before resuming whatever you were trying to do at the time. After some evaluation, I decided to reinstall the OS (which isn’t very troublesome as it leaves existing apps and copies over your user directories) which didn’t improve things.

Thinking it was the hard drive which was failing, I decided to purchase a new one but wanted to get a good backup of the original drive before replacing it. Of course, I already had numerous current copies of the user directories but the “up-to-the-moment” copies were on the drive itself. I spent the better part of the weekend trying to get a complete copy of the data off the drive which became quite tedious as the drive would pause and/or hang as it warmed up. My geek side just wasn’t satisfied with a day old backup.

In the end it all worked out. I got a refurb Seagate 120G (from the original 80G), have a clean OS install and restored the user directories just fine. Now I just can’t bring myself to throw the old (largely useless) drive away. I think there’s a drawer in the den I can put it…

Through the generous donation of time from my dear friend, Kristin, I was able to purchase an iPhone this past Saturday morning. I have to say that I’m quite pleased. Sure, I could have stuck with my current phone, but the fact is that the commercials are accurate. The device works as they say it does. I truly have a full web browser, functional email, impressive iPod, and a functional PIM all about the size of a deck of cards. I am still getting accustomed to how everything works and there are some minor nitpicks, but I think I will be quite pleased for the foreseable future.

Confused about Kristin’s involvement? Well, since the iPhone was released just over a week ago, supplies have been somewhat limited. Apple was kind enough to identify every night which of their retail stores will have some in the morning. Since the only reasonably close Apple stores are in San Diego (UTC and Fashion Valley), Kristin offered to get there early in case supplies are limited as she lives much closer. I argued with her that such an offer was unnecessary but since she insisted that she would enjoy the time away from the house to read, it would have been rude of me to decline.

All-in-all, I have a cool gadget and an even cooler friend.