Did the math last night. Cable TV is a total rip job.

January 24, 2012 6:53 am via Tweetbot for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@dbwilldo

db

Something Stella and I have been talking about for a long time is cutting out cable TV. It’s expensive, and honestly, we don’t need it. With technology and some clever, here is how we are going about getting rid of the TV portion of our cable bill.

1. Most of the shows that we watch are on Hulu
2. The shows that aren’t on Hulu are available through Amazon for $1.89 an episode
3. Over-the-air TV is pretty good in our area, or so we have heard.

Of course, all of this is made possible by the Roku box that quietly lives in our entertainment center. While it’s not as slick or matching-with-the-rest-of-our-Apple-gear as an Apple TV, it’s not horrible looking, fits nicely in the rack and has a good feature set. It has HDMI out as you would expect. It also has digital audio, which comes in handy for the audio channels available (like SOMAFM, Pandora and others).

While I would love to have an AppleTV, the cost of media through the iTunes store makes it less than attractive. To be able to use it as iTunes for the entertainment system isn’t that attractive either since we have a Roku Soundbridge that will play damned near anything we want.

Ideally, I would like to add a new Mac Mini to this system with a Thunderbolt drive attached. That would give access to the web as normal like YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and everything else we use, plus iTunes and Hulu for those shows that are still web only. With Boxee or Plex installed, a Mini would be pretty rad. It’s a pretty low priority item, so the spend can’t be justified at this time, but hopefully one day soon.

Step 1 will be adding an external antenna to see what kind of over-the-air performance we actually get. Luckily they are cheap no matter where you go. Stay tuned as I will be documenting the entire process.

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Tech-wise, PHL is like a step back in time. No power, no wifi. Not cool.

January 12, 2012 6:09 pm via Tweetbot for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@dbwilldo

db

Since I didn’t have WiFi and I wasn’t able to get any work done, I did some writing.

It all started back in 2007 when I acquired my very first Macbook. It was the first generation with the Intel processor and I liked it. Alot. It’s been one of the most reliable PCs I’ve had and is still in active use today.

Jump ahead to 2009 when I got my iMac. 20″ to be exact. It’s been my workhorse, being used to generate countless websites, blog posts, photos and hours of video. As it stands, it’s about the 3rd most reliable PC I’ve ever owned and if it lasts another 2 years I will jump to the number 2 spot.

For the record, the PC I have ever owned was one I built myself. A PII700 running all Intel internals with Samsung drives and Windows 2000. Got about 5 solid years of use out of that before I upgraded to something a little speedier.

I title this post 100% Mac Shop because I have always had a copy of Windows running somewhere. Either in VM on the iMac or Macbook, or in the shape of a laptop or netbook. Friends, I am here today to let you know that is no longer the case.

Instead of getting a mobile device running Windows (and saving a bunch of money) I decided to go mobile on the Mac. And not a Macbook Pro either. A 13″ Macbook Air. Thin, light and limited on storage. A machine that I know will take advantage of dropbox and iCloud. A machine that I will use primarily for editing text (or coding WordPress themes). A machine that has enough space to offload photos and videos from week long events. And if I run out of space, there is always FTP or dropbox. A true portable machine.

I will be using this for light photo editing. I might even attempt video editing on it as well. For video, I’m going to almost bet that it will not be the greatest for encoding, so I will save that for the iMac.

Toss in my iPhone and there you have it! I’m all Mac. Only took me 5 years to get here too!

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On iPhones and the Macbook Air

Recent addition to my quiver is the 13″ Macbook Air. I looked really hard at the 11″, aka the iPad Pro, but decided the larger screen and SD Card reader were a worthwhile $100 upgrade. Timing couldn’t have been better either as I picked it up barely 24 hours before I had an event to cover with a fair bit of travel. Here are a few quick notes.

• Fast – Did I say fast? Yes, fast. The best way to describe how fast is by using iPhoto. On my 13″ Air, from click to fully loaded is less than 2 seconds. On a brand new 13″ Macbook Pro (with roughly the same number of photos) from click to to fully loaded was 12 seconds. The speed makes itself known everywhere too.

• Battery life – I’m not sure about how long it will actually last, but I think the 7 hours claimed is pretty close to being accurate. Not to mention, when the lid is closed, this baby is sleeping and sleeping hard! Over night battery useage with the lid closed so far has been zero.

• Portability – It’s not as light as the 11″, but close enough. And it’s thinner than my iPhone. Yet, it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap.

• The Screen – Something you don’t notice right away, but after you use it for a bit, you start to notice that the screen on this is pretty great.

Comments are open if you have any questions about the Air.

And, for the first time, really, I actually used my iPhone during an event. Now that I’ve had it for a few months and have my groove down, it’s the perfect device for that kind of work. I was able to do things mobile that I always had to rely on external devices to do. For the first time I went to an event with only 3 devices (and it could have been two); an iPhone, my Canon DSLR and Macbook Air.

I’m excited to see what I can really do with these in the field this year!

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Oh boy is the internet pissed at Godaddy this week! Turns out they supported SOPA (which they later changed their mind about). That was reason enough for quite a few folks to start pulling their domains and move them to different registrars. I know I did, but not because they supported SOPA. More like, that’s the straw that broke the camels back.

I’m transferring domains away from GoDaddy as fast as my checkbook will allow. I only have 8 or so left with them, and I hope to have them transferred to Hover by the end of January. This is a process I started earlier this year after Bob Parsons came home from Africa after spending some quality time shooting elephants. But that’s only part of why I’m moving my domains.

Another part is their famously awful user interface. Or the fact that they are the worst WordPress host. Or the fact that when trying to check out when purchasing anything you have to click through 10 different pages offering upgrades, magazine subscriptions and ginsu knives. But, like the other reasons, this is just a part of why I’m transferring away.

If we take a second to look at the graphic at the top of this post. That is a screen shot from my Gmail account. Please note the date stamps on each line. If you want to know why I’m transferring away from GoDaddy, it’s because they are practicing email spammers and there is no way to make it stop that I can find.

Buy a domain? 2 emails. plus the weekly “buy more domains” email. Have a domain? 9 months before it expires they start sending reminder emails to renew. As the date draws closer, the frequency of the emails increases until you are getting 2 per day (per domain). Once the expiration date has passed, they continue to send emails at the rate of not less than 1 per day per domain. And there is no way to make them stop.

Worse part is when you don’t want a domain name any more. I let about 10 go this year that I will never do anything with (or my customers won’t be using). And the damn emails never stop. It’s truly rediculous.

So, if the emails won’t stop, if the UI won’t change and if the check-out process won’t stop pushing ultra high security email and faxing from my rotary phone, then I’m out.

And now you know The rest of the story.

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I think I just broke up with google chrome on my Mac.

December 1, 2011 7:49 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@dbwilldo

db

About an hour before recording the latest episode of White Roof Radio, I was trying to get everything setup and in place to do a live-to-the-internet show. I’ve done it before without any issues, so I thought I’d start early and get listeners lined up before everything started.

Open up uStream.tv. Get logged in and select the channel I’m going to use for the live show. I’m then prompted for the Flash Security stuff. And that’s as far as I got. The browser didn’t crash, but at the same time, it didn’t do anything. I tried multiple times without success. So I tried again in Firefox.

Oh yea, right. Lion doesn’t come with Flash. And the uStream broadcast thing only works with Flash for how I needed to use it. Next step to most would have been to shuffle off to Adobe.com and get Flash for OSX Lion.

I did not.

Chrome has it’s own, built in intepreter for Flash that seems to work perfectly fine on almost everything I need. Considering that I have gone almost 2 weeks before I realized I didn’t have Flash installed, I’d say it’s hit that mark.

I’m going to try to go as long as possible. I think I can go forever without having to install Flash on my Mac. Since the Chrome version appears to work ok, no need to clutter up my system with rubbish Adobe Software, right? I don’t like or need Flash. But for when I do, I’ll use Chrome, even if I break up with it like I mentioned above. But that’s for another post.

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When it does come to upgrade, I’m also the guy that does the full install, from scratch. Format the hard drive, install the OS, reinstall all apps and restore all documents. After working technical support for a few years and watching Windows upgrades completely bork PC’s, I think it’s the way to go.

Until Apple released Lion.

Again, I waited the requisite time until the first update was released. Then I got my iPhone 4s and really wanted to use the iCloud features, only available on Lion. And, since Lion was in the App store and cheap, I figured I’d go against the norm and upgrade my operating system instead of installing from scratch. What a huge mistake that was.

My iMac was running about as fast as Windows XP on an old Celeron (with only 256MB of RAM) and almost everything I did would trigger a crash to the ol’ Finder. All of my apps, appropriately updated to the correct version to actually work with Lion, were also unstable and very slow. Finally, I didn’t notice a change and I think some of the key features of Lion weren’t on.

So I decided to do it right, erase the hard drive, install Lion, reinstall my apps and restore my documents from backups. Slight problem with that however; as soon as the Lion upgrade is completed, the installer magically deletes itself from your drive. And, re-downloading from the app store didn’t seem possible. So I fired up the Goog.

Installing Lion from Scratch

Why do the research when your old pal db has already done it for you?

If you haven’t installed Lion yet, and you want to do a clean install, you are going to need to get the installer on a USB thumb drive (8GB works best) or a DVD. Instructions for that can be found here. Once you are done getting the installer on your media of choice, run the installer just like always, including making a pit stop at the Disk Utility on the installer media to erase your hard drive. Easy.

Now, if you, like me, upgraded to Lion already but want to do it again (or want to have a copy of Lion should you need it), the boys at OSXDaily have you covered again with this, explaining how to re-download OSX Lion after you already have. Once it’s downloaded again, follow the steps above to get the installer to bootable media and get to it.

Of course it’s assumed that before any of this starts you have a reliable backup to restore from, right? Remember, you have to back it up to get it back!

Comments are open if you have any questions!

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Pictured above is the 6 remotes it takes to run the entertainment system at Camp Stella.

• TV
• A/V Receiver
• Roku XD|S
• Roku Soundbridge
• Cable Box/DVR
• Crappy DVD player (supports PAL, so shut up)

6 devices. 6 remotes. Until now. Thanks to our friend Jason, who, after seeing the above photo, sent us this.

That is the Logitech Harmony 670 Remote. You’ve seen this at stores thinking that it would be cool if you had one, right? I can say, without a doubt, that it is very cool to have one!

After a download and about 1 hour of programming I had it set to operate almost everything in the rack. When the TV button is pressed, the TV turns on, sets to the correct input and fires up the cable box (if it’s off). It would turn on the receiver and set the correct input too if I was using the receiver with the cable box (I’m not, yet). Watch a movie? Press a button and the TV changes to the Roku XD|S, stereo sets to the correct input and it even triggers a HOME button press on the Roku box. Listen to music through the Soundbridge is just as easy!

The controls make sense and the device seems pretty easy to use so far. In as much as it only takes one remote to do what previously took 2 or more, that was an easy task.

Don’t worry, full write-up to follow after we use it for about a week or so. I’m positive that it will be favorable.

HUGE thanks to Jason for hooking us up, quite literally! You should add him to your circles in G+ (he takes pretty rad photos) and follow his blog.

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First, G+ had everyone excited. I’m still excited about it in fact. Then a new hotness became available that everyone went super duper crazy for. Spotify. And, to be honest, I don’t get it.

It appears to be a recolored version of iTunes with streaming capability. There is a mobile app that you can download and pay $9.99 a month to use. You can sync your iTunes library too if you have a premium account, plus a few other features.

Streaming on the desktop is speedy and the sound quality of the tracks is pretty good. No complaints. I haven’t gotten into the desktop app fully, mostly because the strength of Spotify, or the piece that every is going crazy about, is the premium mobile streaming service.

I’ve never been one to ‘rent’ my music. I guess I’m a little bit old school in that I still like to own (a questionable term to be sure) my music. I’ve switched from CD’s to digital downloads, but I still mostly download complete albums that I can use to build playlists that I sync to my ipod.

“But”, you say, “Spotify lets you stream your tracks to your mobile device db”.

Which I can already do on my phone using either the Amazon cloud service or Google music (which I haven’t tried yet). I need to check the new pricing on Amazon, but I have 20gb of online storage for $.99 a year. Google music is practically free too. There isn’t any discovery there, but I can listen to my music on any device I want.

So is the big sell for Spotify discovery? If so, ok, cool. I get that. In fact, as I write this, I’m using it to stream some Depeche Mode (unlike Pandora, I can listen to any tracks I want it seems). For this it seems pretty capable.

Or is the excitement about this for mainly iOS users that don’t have a way to sync, wirelessly, to their phones? That would make sense. And make sense that Spotify is released in the US prior to iOS 5 and Apple’s new iMobileMeDropBox service is released, which, I would think, would render Spotify moot.

I think it’s a nifty app. I also think that $10 a month a bit much to pay to have music streamed to a device. But, as I have already mentioned, I don’t get it.

What is it about Spotify that you are super duper excited about?

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It will take you to a fabulous service called Freshbooks. They provide a service to help you bill your customers. And, here are the best parts, it’s free (for up to 3 clients) and easy to use!

One thing I hate to do is invoice. Such a boring activity that I dread. To many steps involved and I would usually do it so late in the game that the client is always a little surprised when they get it. No more friends, no more.

With Freshbooks, I’m an invoicing machine. They make it easy to set up new clients, fill out an invoice, send it out and get paid. Support for recurring billing works great as well and I’m told there is on iOS app that helps you track time when you are working on projects that automatically updates your billing.

If you are one that has to bill and are looking for something that is more elegant and efficient than Excel, check this out. You can thank me later.

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I was recently contacted about a Mac running slow. Made me think that maybe I should do a quick DIY Tune-up guide for the Mac. If you have an hour, this is all super easy stuff that will make your Mac run better. Ready? Let’s do this!

1. Empty the trash
2. Go into your Applications Folder and remove any apps that you are no longer using by dragging it into the trash. If you aren’t sure about an app, leave it alone! If you want to make sure the app is completely uninstalled check this out.
3. Empty the trash again
4. Open System Preferences –> Accounts. Click on Login Items button and remove everything there except the iTunes helper service. No, you don’t need any of that.
5. Restart
6. If you are using Safari, start it up, click Safari in the menu bar and choose Empty Cache and click Empty
7. Quit Safari and start it again

That should have you running pretty good. Finally, one more bit of maintenance that you should do.

1. Go to Applications –> Utilities –>Disk Utility
2. Select your main hard drive. At the bottom click the Verify button. This will take a few minutes
3. If you get errors, click the Repair button
4. Restart one more time

Now would also be a great time to check the status of your backup to make sure everything is running as it should. You are backing up, right? With Time Machine or Super Duper to an external drive or Carbonite to the internet? Say both and you get a gold star for the day!

Questions? You know what to do!

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