Archives for June, 2006
Remote Desktop: CTRL + ALT + PrintScrn
I never gave it much thought until today when I tried to capture my Remote Desktop screen to my remote desktop. Obviously this will work if you need it on the computer you are on, but suppose you are working on graphics. If you capture the screen locally, you’ll end up with the compressed-for-terminal-services image, which is likely not what you really wanted. I haven’t fully played with this ‘feature’ because of lack of time and the knowledge of other keyboard functions that do not work through Remote Desktop, but by hitting CTRL with the usual ALT + PrintScn, then screen was captured to the remote clipboard. Problem Solved!
UPDATE:
Now that I’m using a Mac with a Mac keyboard, this was a little more difficult to achieve. I found this in a forum posting somewhere and remembered it when I needed it.
The “Command” key maps to the “Windows Key”. Also, F13 = printscreen, F14=scrolllock, F15=pause.
So for the purposes of this post, to take a screenshot, use option+command+F13
Random Thought: Keyless Entry and other remotes
Why is it that when walking to your car, your remote will not work from a distance of 200ft (distances may vary), but the second you place the remote to your chin, suddenly your remote is the most powerful transmitter ever created? And what kind of damage are we doing to ourselves using this impatient technique? I mean, do we really need to unlock our car doors from 200ft away?
I tested my remote this evening in a somewhat empty parking lot and I got about twice the distance using my cranium as a tower compared to the remote by itself.
Your thoughts?
If you are a web geek, you are not alone.
I was thinking this morning that of the people I know, and surround myself with, only one person (podious) shares the same interests when it comes to the Internet. Percentage wise, this is very low. Here are some things I use often that would qualify anyone as a web geek (IMHO):
Can anyone think of other things that qualify someone as a web geek?
XML stopped working in ASP: Error ‘80070005′ Access Denied
I have a legacy VB Script that regularly parses XML files, then suddenly stopped working. It gave the error that I was denied access using the msxml3.dll. What I later found out after discussion, was that .NET 2.0 was installed on this machine which upgraded the version of the XMLHTTP object. So here is the breakdown:
< .NET 2.0 use Microsoft.XMLHTTP
Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
= .NET 2.0 use Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.4.0
Server.CreateObject("Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.4.0")
Monolingual for OS X
This tool, Monolingual, is a fantastic find for anyone using OS X and only needs English installed on their system. This tool found all of the languages I had installed on my system and gave me the choice to remove any I didn’t want. After 5 minutes of business, it alerted me it was done and freed up 2.4GB of space just by removing the extra languages.
http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/
How do you classify your music?
This has always been one of those topics that has come to mind just long enough not to remember to ask others what they think. This time I remembered and ask anyone who happens to read this post… How do you classify your music and why?
What I mean is do the genres of your music files follow patterns? I typically classify everything as Alternative, Pop, Christian, Country, etc., but I’ve found myself thinking Aerosmith is not really Alternative, but many out there would kill me if I called them Pop. Along those lines, who can determine if new music is Alternative or Rock? Do we still have Rock or is everything since Nirvana considered Alternative? Alternative to what, Pop or Rock? What about Soundtracks who could have a good mix of different genres? I’m thinking to just classify them as Soundtrack and have them be the exception. After all, the whole point of the soundtrack is to have some remembrance of the movie not each individual song.
What is your source of classifcation? I know some people rely on sources such as FreeDB.org or CDDB or even AllMusic.com, but I think these sources have fallen to the new generation of ‘everything gets its own genre.’ You’ll find such things as General Pop, Hard Rock, and the likes. Do we need to be this granular? When I’m in iTunes and have Genre set as my default sort, the last thing I want to do is figure out if Pantera is considered Hard Rock or Heavy Metal, not that going from H to H is that hard, but you see my point.
I’m thinking of reworking my classification system and getting down to the basics. I’d like to hear what others think before I continue, but this is what I’m thinking:
- Pop - for the type of music that doesn’t seem to fit a real category (i.e. Britney, Justin, Boy Bands, etc.)
- Rock - for anything that uses a real band and guitars to create the music (i.e. Aerosmith, Blue October, Pantera, Genesis, 3 Doors Down, etc.)
- RnB - for anything that has an underlying sound similar to that of 60s Motown, but is not Rap. (i.e. Destiny’s Child, Jamie Foxx, Rihanna, Gnarls Barkley)
- Rap - for anything that has a bumbing beat and chatter instead of singing
- Country - for anything with country roots including the very Pop Leann Rimes
- Electronic - for anything that uses little to no lyrics, lots of synthesizer, and may to most be considered Trance, House, Techno, Dance, Rave, Ambient, and many more (i.e. Alice Deejay, ATB, Chemical Brothers, etc.)
- Jazz - for those using a variety of feeling, horns, piano, bass, drums and vocals and may include Blues (i.e. Joss Stone, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Michael Konik, etc.)
- Soundtrack - for anything that is distributed on a soundtrack for a movie and/or play
- Classical - for anything called a Concerto, or played by an orchestra that typically speaks volumes without words (i.e. Beethoven, Mozart, Boston Pops, etc.)
- Opera - self explanatory, but not to be confused with Classical (i.e. Three Tenors, David Daniels, etc.)
- Kids - these are typically songs from nursery rhymes, children’s CDs and possible kids remakes of current Pop music. (i.e. Kidz Bop, Blue’s Clues, Dora The Explorer, etc.)
I may have missed some, but I’m sure I’ll need to adjust my list after a few passes and suggestions. Please leave comments and let me know what you think and what your answers are to the questions above.
What software I’m using on the Mac
Here are a few applications I have discovered and started using for my Mac. Flash and Photoshop weren’t new discoveries, but familiar faces are always welcomed. Why in the world they can’t get these two products working in Linux is beyond me. They can’t use the RISC processor excuse any longer. No one bother telling me about CodeWeavers projects. I’ve tried them and they are so-so.
Smultron - Web Editor
Cyberduck - FTP Client
Acqlite - Gnutella Client
Transmission - BitTorrent Client
HandBrake - DVD to DivX
Toast 7 Titanium ($) - Burning CDs
Fast DVD Copy ($) - DVD Backups
Adium - Instant Messaging (Yahoo and MSN)
CocoaMySQL - MySQL Management Tool
Disk Inventory X - Hard drive space reporting
DivX Player - self explanatory
Firefox - Web Browser
Thunderbird - Email Client
Macromedia Flash 8 ($) - Vector Graphics
Adobe Photoshop CS2 ($) - Photo Manipulation/Graphics
Kellie Pickler on Leno
Some people may think she is an airhead or an idiot, but I think she is just plain hilarious. Kellie Pickler did some correspondence for Jay Leno at the MTV Movie Awards and I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. Check it out here:
Ubuntu upgrade to Dapper
Though I plan on doing a clean install of the latest version of Ubuntu (6.06), I ran across this nice upgrade feature found in the System Updates Manager. Apparently, with this new release, you no longer have to fuss with changing your repositories over and doing a Dist Upgrade. You simply click on Upgrade and follow any prompts that might come up. For an operating system to not only be fully upgradeable, but to then add a extremely simple method to do it, is amazing. The screenshots below show most of the steps involved. I tried to do this overnight and during a busy day so the whole process took me about 24 hours, but that is because there were quite a bit of prompts throughout the process asking if I wanted to overwrite the existing config files. In my case, I probably fubbed something up and now my computer won’t boot into the latest kernel and when I select the kernel one version back is half loads and gives my partial access to the system. Since I planned on doing the clean install I was just going to try this to see where it lead me, but I don’t think I have it in me to try to fix this install which I already knew was a mess prior to this version. I’ll post more about that experience when I find the time to do the install.
Migrating Mozilla Thunderbird from Linux to OS X
Apparently I’m in the minority when it comes to migrating my Thunderbird Profile from Linux to OS X. I couldn’t find information for it anywhere. Most of the information I found was how to move from another client to Thunderbird or how to migrate from XP to Linux.
What I’ve tried
I copied over the entire profile, and added it to the Profiles directory under
/Users/[username]/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles. After that, I modified the pref.js for this profile changing all references to/home/[username]/.mozilla-thunderbird/to/Users/[username]/Library/Thunderbird/. With all of this done, the only thing that appears in Thunderbird when I launch it is Local Folders. There is no sign of my emails. When I look under the mail settings, the mailbox appears to be setup, but nothing shows up in the Inbox.Another thing I tried was using default profile as created by Thunderbird, then overwriting the Profile Mail files over the existing and still nothing shows. This method doesn’t require any change to the prefs.js file as it should already be correct and more environmentally accurate.
GOOD NEWS!! The second method is what proved to be the answer, although, one key thing for my situation was the speedbump pothole in the road. I keep my Inbox as a global Inbox, meaning all of my mail for my email account gets stored in Local Folders’ Inbox rather than the mail.whatever.com Inbox. This means I was copying the wrong Mail folder into the Mac profile. What I did to find this was a simple du -sh on the Mail directory to find that my Local Folders directory was 1.4GB while my mail.whatever.com was only 100MB (which is still a lot for no use, but no worries… I don’t need it). Once the correct Mail dir was put in place, Thunderbird was launched and had all of my email and folder structure was intact.
Note: I spent about an hour looking for the answer and submitted a post to the mozillazine forums. I must commend the Moderators over there because they are on top of their game. They replied to my post in about 5 minutes and provided another workaround that would’ve worked (I tested it) had I not found out my own goof up during the process.
What is keeping me from moving to my Mac Mini fulltime?
These are items I need to get worked out before I can move to my Mac Mini fulltime.
- get Mozilla Thunderbird configured and showing all mail from previous Profile (Thunderbird on Ubuntu Linux)
- find a good DVD Copy program that works without a hitch
- get my music stored off on a larger hard drive. I’m currently approaching the limit on my 40GB hard drive. I was thinking of getting a MiniStack v2 and putting the spare 120GB I have in it.
- get my iTunes setup as it is on XP with my music and podcast subscriptions.
- get my photo collection moved over from XP
- get my DiVX movie collection moved over from XP (BTW Handbrake is an awesome app that is very easy to use and can even crop out letterboxes!)
- get all of my FTP Sites setup in CyberDuck.
I believe that is it. Some of you might be wondering why I even posted this. The answer is because I needed to checklist for myself and this just happen to pop into my head when I was looking at my blog.