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May 14 2012

SATA tip:

Regular readers will know I’m into DIY and fixing things. Lately my Linux PC has been having some hardware problems (which is why people haven’t been seeing a lot of regular posts from me lately). It’s been going on for some time in fact. I’ve checked out a lot of potential hardware issues and ended up replacing most of the computer at one point or another. One thing I haven’t checked out is the SATA cables. Last Friday I borrowed a couple from the place where I volunteer. I removed one cable and replaced it with the one I borrowed. The speed increased as soon as I turned on the machine. However in order to remove the cable from the motherboard I had to remove the other three. Apparently I didn’t put the first two back in the same plugs where they were originally. The computer couldn’t find the boot drive. After a quick switch of the first two cables things worked again.

The lesson here is when replacing SATA cables, make sure they go back into the same place.

By BlankMike • Uncategorized • 0

Mar 6 2012

AAPL : Apple Shares Nearing Previous Close after Dropping in Morning

Apple Inc. (AAPL) Shares were trading at a low of $516.22 USD per share in the morning session on Wall Street.  The obvious antincipation of Apple’s new offerings without any real news, weighing on the stock heavily.  However, after the morning’s losses, the stock has climbed back to the $530-531 USD per share price range with just 30 minutes left in the regular trading session.  Most analysts are still posting Apple as a Strong Buy and little change from the expectations of the $550-$570 USD per share range.   Yesterday’s close was $533.16 per share.

By admin • Uncategorized • 0

Jan 24 2012

E-book reader and translator

I’ve discovered something surprising. There are many E-book readers for the Mac and only one for Linux. This is a shocker. Ideally, with a few changes, those Mac readers should function under Linux. I mention this because I like how some of the ones for the Mac work.

The reader for Linux is so-so. Since there is only one (and I talked about E-book readers at length a few months ago) I’ll just say it is available in the Debian/Ubuntu/Mint repositories and as a separate download. Considering the alternatives are simply PDF readers it is a big improvement. So essentially we in the Linux world are stuck with only a few formats we can access. Wouldn’t cha know it most of the odd-ball ones are not accessible on either the Mac or Linux platforms. This isn’t to mention my MP3 player which will only do .txt format documents.

Given the problems with the various formats I was looking around for a converter. I actually found one which works pretty well. It’s called Calibre. I don’t know if it is available for the Mac, but if someone is running a virtual machine with Linux or is able to install it with a package like MacPorts then that’s a non-issue. This program will convert to and from any of what looks like close to two dozen different formats. This means effectively if someone purchased a physical E-book reader which has it’s proprietary format in the list they now have access to a wider range of content. Naturally most of the content I have seen has been scanned and run through an OCR and not proof-read. This means some of the words are garbled in the original form. Since it’s a case of garbage in and garbage out I don’t expect miracles. None the less it should be interesting to see how some of these E-books look on my MP3 player.

By BlankMike • Uncategorized • 1

Jan 20 2012

Apple iBooks Author has 2GB Limit

A quick read of all of the supporting documentation for the iBooks Author program show that there are some limitations to the program.  Apple shows the limit at 2GB and actually recommends only 1GB in order to make it easily accessible to the users.  While this is not all that unusual for Apple to recommend smaller sizes, a quick check of the current offerings in the Textbook section shows that the Person Biology textbook is over 2.7gb.   ALso, E.O Wilson’s Life on Earth book is at 1 gb with just two chapters of the book completed.

By admin • Uncategorized • 0

Jan 12 2012

Eamon Deluxe 5.0 Nearly ready for Beta-testers

Frank Kunze has posted a slew of new screenshots on the Eamon Adventurers Guild Online Blog showing some of his work on the recently announced Eamon Deluxe 5.0.  Eamon Deluxe is Franks offshoot of the original Donald Brown created classic Eamon.   The latest version of Eamon Deluxe will run on multiple platforms and will also have a number of the original calssics updated to run on the new platform.

The Eamon Adventurers Guild was originally run by Tom Zuchowski but has been run primarily by Matthew Clark for the past 10 years.  The Eamon Adventurers Guild Online has all known Eamon Adventures and Adventure systems online at http://eamonag.org/

By admin • Uncategorized • 0

Jan 8 2012

SDL/MAME Updated to version 0.144u5

A new experimental release of the SDL/Mame emulator for Mac OS X has been released. The latest version includes a number of improvements to the MAME engine. The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator with Simple DirectMedia Layer has been part of the MAME project since version 0.137 and is now available on a number of platforms thanks to SDL.

Improvements in the Mac OS X Version of SDL/MAME include:

• MAMETesters Bugs Fixed
  ----------------------
  - 04594: [Sound] All sets in wiz.c: Missing Sound and/or Music (Darq)
  - 04590: [Sound] firebarr: Music randomly blocks on the last sound and plays it forever (Alex Jackson)
  - 04589: [Crash/Freeze] mstworld: Access Voilation before OK (hap)
  - 04573: [Gameplay] spangbl: Die too quickly during attract mode (timing) (hap)
  - 04584: [Crash/Freeze] Various sets in namcob1.c: Failure to boot past post or disclaimer screen (hap)
  - 04582: [Gameplay] bkrtmaq quiztou numanath swcourt swcourtj exvania exvaniaj: some games fails to pass selftest or freeze after copyright information (hap)
  - 04301: [Sound] cobram3: Game plays using Mach 3 sound effects instead of Cobra Command ones. (Mariusz Wojcieszek)
  - 04581: [Gameplay] brapboys: game loops on crc check (hap)
  
  Source Changes
  --------------
  too many changes to list here.
  
  New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
  ---------------------------------------------------
  Quizard 1.8 [Klaus Sommer, Team Europe, The Dumping Union]
  Quizard 2.3 [Klaus Sommer, Team Europe, The Dumping Union]
  
  New clones added
  ----------------
  Rival Schools: United By Fate (Euro 971117)  [Corrado Tomaselli, The Dumping Union]
  Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future (Euro 990608)  [Layne, Smitdogg, The Dumping Union]
  Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future (Euro 990512)  [Layne, Smitdogg, The Dumping Union]
  
  New games marked as GAME_NOT_WORKING
  ------------------------------------
  USA Pro Basketball (Tourvision PCE bootleg) [Clawgrip]
  Thunder Blade (Tourvision PCE bootleg) [Clawgrip]
  Power League IV (Tourvision PCE bootleg) [Clawgrip]
  Rastan Saga II (Tourvision PCE bootleg) [Clawgrip, AUMAP]
  Quizard 3.4 [Klaus Sommer, Team Europe, The Dumping Union]
  Virtuality SU2000 [Phil Bennett, SailorSat]
  7 Smash [Yohji, Smitdogg, Charles MacDonald, The Dumping Union]

You can download the latest version of SDL/MAME from the project website at:

http://sdlmame.parodius.com/

You can follow the SDL/Mame Project on Twitter at: @sdlmame_osx

By admin • Uncategorized • 0

Jan 4 2012

Apple Hires Adobe’s Todd Teresi to Manage iAd

Apple has apparently hired Todd Teresi, an Adobe Systems Inc Executive, to run their iAd section.  The iAd section of Apple was created in 2010 to compete directly with Google’s Adsense and potentially could be a $4.4 Billion USD business within 3 years.  Only Adobe would comment on the change, saying that Todd Teresi is no longer at Abobe Systems

By admin • Uncategorized • 0

Nov 2 2011

VNC Quick start

Frequent readers of this web page will realise I like to learn how to do things (this is the reason for the long gaps between my posts). I hope readers find this information to be useful… After seeing a member of another club demo it on a smart phone for me, I decided to give it a try myself. Be aware this is only scratching the surface of the topic and it can be a security risk if not implemented safely.

VNC is a way to control one computer with another. It sends screen shots over a network. It also accepts commands sent to it. The end result is a window which duplicates the desktop of the machine being controlled. The only thing is the machine being controlled needs to be on or at least in stand-by mode.

I decided to go with what I could find for free. A big surprise there. Since Bill insists on a link to the Mac or Apple // world I figured I would start with that. Because of this insistence it turns out I found the simplest way to implement the use of VNC. Thanks Bill. It saved me a lot of headaches.

The first thing to realise is there are two parts to the process. The first is the server side on the host machine and the second is the client on the guest machine. To simplify the mind set, think of the server being placed on the machine to be controlled and the client installed on the controller machine. Only one server is needed but several clients can be run at the same time.

Setting up the server on the Mac is incredibly simple. Incidentally it has been a free part of OS X since 10.4. Since each version of the operating system implements it differently I’ll describe things in general terms. A functional router is needed. The IP addresses can be assigned by DHCP or the machine can have a static IP. This matters more on the server side than it does on the client side. This is because the client needs to know what address it needs to connect with. This can be found by going into the network preference of the server and searching for it.  Once the host address is known, go into the sharing preference on the server and turn on screen sharing. Going into the advanced setting here is a good idea too. In my case I set things up so only administrative users can connect with a password which is different from the login password. This is where it can get dangerous. We all know how fast passwords can be cracked. Leaving a host machine on all day is generally not a good idea.

Clients are a little more complex. In this case I picked a Linux client and gave it a try. It took about five minutes figuring out what to do before it worked. The client generally needs three things… The IP address of the server, the login ID, and the password set up in the sharing preferences. Once I managed to get all that worked out things went fairly well. Of course I was connecting on my own LAN instead of coming in from the outside. But that’s another story.

There are a couple of things to watch out for. Not all clients which call themselves VNC clients will work properly. At last nights meeting a member tried to connect with a Windows box only to find the client expected to find a commercial server written by the same company. A lot of the “free” clients on the Mac or Windows platforms are crippled by time or performance issues. Not all software will run properly over VNC. I’ve had issues with DOSBox. The screen froze. The user interface is also slower. When reading an e-book I found a single mouse click on the client occasionally translates to multiple clicks on the server box. Video over the LAN is also slower. They will be jerky on the client side but play normally on the server side. Any sound generated as a result of VNC will be on the server side not the client side. If there are multiple clients connecting to the same server, should one of them decides to logout of the account then everyone is logged out. This is different from disconnecting from the server. If someone disconnects from the server, they can reconnect at a later time.

If implemented in a safe way I can see a lot of advantages. For example a person sitting at one machine can do multiple things on multiple computers at the same time. A friend says he uses a similar program to manage his bittorrent downloads without having to sit in front of the machine in his basement. If a persons workplace has implemented a ban on certain web pages, they can use VNC to have their home computer access them. If the computer can control some devices in the home the homeowner can give the impression they are at home even though they are in a remote location. The reason Microsoft and presumably Apple installed the software was to allow remote access for their “technicians” to fix problems with minimal customer input. If the user has a webcam installed on the server machine they can run the software from a different location. Since the monitor doesn’t have to be on for this to work, all this can be done secretly. While having a computer (or tablet) searched at the border, the agents will find only the software the user has on the machine they have with them. If the files the agents are looking for are on a different machine (which is not visible) they have no reason to seize the users traveling machine.

My personal opinion is this is cool, but insecure, and is minimally useful.

By BlankMike • Uncategorized • 0