A recent visitor came to this site looking for directions on how to move a Bento database to a new server. While I had related articles none covered this in one place. Now I have it in one article. Read the rest »
Bento Has Its Place, Finally
I bought Bento awhile ago but it never seemed to find a place in my computer life. Bento is a “personal database” from Filemaker, an Apple subsidiary. It’s a Mac-only product, unlike Filemaker’s flagship database product. The Mac version is $49. There’s also versions for the iPhone and iPad for $5 each. I don’t like having my data tied to a specific platform and converting formats back and forth is usually more trouble than it’s worth. So cross-platform apps are the norm with me. Bento isn’t cross platform but when [...] Read the rest »
The New Handbrake Rocks
I’ve been using Handbrake to encode video for a couple years and love it. The open source Handbrake works on Windows, OS X and Linux. I’ve always preferred and used the OS X version. It had been about a year without a new version of Handbrake but the drought was ended in November 2009 with the release of Handbrake 0.94. I was a bit slow to upgrade since the old version was working fine for me. Finally I upgraded. I had an issue (it wouldn’t encode) and kept using the [...] Read the rest »
Windows & Mac Synergy
Now that my iMac problems seem to be behind me it’s time to get my desk optimized. In the past my iMac was my primary computer and the Windows PC was used for for specific tasks. My Asus monitor was setup as a dual monitor for my iMac. If I needed it I would remote desktop from my iMac to the Windows PCs. In a pinch there was a cable from my Windows 7 box to a second input port on the Asus monitor so I could hook up a [...] Read the rest »
iPhoto vs. Windows Live Photo Gallery
I recently moved my photos from iPhoto on my iMac to Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG) on my Windows 7 PC so I figured I’d compare the two. The short version is that iPhoto is a mature application that has gone through many iterations of enhancements while WLPG is newer and less feature rich. I used iPhoto mainly as an organizing tool for any images I didn’t take – screenshots for my website, graphics for the website, pictures from others and from the web. I rarely edited those images and [...] Read the rest »
Parallels 4 Released and Installed
Parallels recently released version 4 of their Parallels Desktop for Mac. I’ve been running Parallels 3 on my iMac and have three virtual machines configured. The first is Windows Vista Ultimate, the second is Ubuntu 8.04 Server and the third is a little used Windows XP Home virtual machine. I purchased the upgrade and just completed converting the Vista and Ubuntu VMs. The upgrade wasn’t problem free. The Vista upgrade ended up being successful but required some manual intervention. The Ubuntu Server upgrade resulted in a VM that can’t talk [...] Read the rest »
Path Finder 5 Released
Cocoatech has released a new version of my favorite OS X File Manger. This is a paid upgrade ($20) from earlier versions, and $40 for new customers. I installed the latest version through Path Finder’s own software update feature and this installed the thirty-day evaluation version. It’s pretty much a given that I’ll buy the upgrade but it’s nice to be able to check it out. Path Finder 5 requires OS X 10.5 or later. Tiger users need to stay with PF 4. I’ve just installed the upgrade so I [...] Read the rest »
Video Encoding: Handbrake
After ripping the DVDs I’ll be needing to encode them so I can watch them on my various devices. The premier software in this category is the open source Handbrake. There’s versions for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. I’ve been using Handbrake 0.9.2 for OS X. Handbrake can encode directly from DVD if they are unencrypted or encrypted with CSS encryption. But Handbrake isn’t a dedicated ripper and feeding Handbrake unencrypted video is recommended for best results. I took the approach of first ripping the DVDs to disk using [...] Read the rest »
DVD Ripping Software: Fairmount & SlySoft AnyDVD
I’ve been looking at two pieces of software to rip my DVDs as part of my Video on Demand project. They are pretty much polar opposites. One is free (open source/GPL license) while the other is commercial. One is for Windows and the other is for the Mac. Fairmount is Open Source for the Mac that is included in the download for DVDRemaster. DVDRemaster is a commercial product that does not have to be installed (and I haven’t installed it). Fairmount does require that the VLC Video Player is also [...] Read the rest »
Video On Demand
I’ve been batting around the concept of being able to have a video and music library available most anywhere in my apartment but didn’t make much progress. It was always easier to pull out the DVD, copy the file, or just go to where the video was easiest to watch. I was recently laid up for a couple of days and couldn’t get around very well, so ended up streaming from iTunes or watching whatever was handy. That was enough to motivate me to start building a video library that [...] Read the rest »
