My EyeTV iPhone App Early Review

Posted on October 2, 2009 by christian

First a quick note to those having problems getting this to work with their mac especially netgear WGR614V9 users, try a reboot of your mac.
As many have experienced, I recieved the ‘router incompatible’ message and red light, when eyetv preferences performed it’s testing. This led to 40 minutes of port forwarding but no green light. After searching the oracle that is google, i found within the comments section of various reviews a possible solution I had not thought of since my windows days, to reboot the mac. I did, and it worked. An hour later and again it didn’t work. What struck me was how disapointed I was with elgato and how unsurprised I was that they had not pulled this off. I’ve used eyetv on my mac mini for months but it’s buggy as hell and the latest releases of software don’t help. Perhaps they should hire the jaadu programmers, or maybe it’s the management that needs a kick.
I wanted to love this program, but I don’t. It just isn’t reliable. After it stopped working I rebooted my mac again, and again it started working.. For a minute.

Have I seen it stream video? Yes, but not for any length of time that would permit me to understand the genre of what I was watching.

Plus any software that is fixed by a reboot is a CF.
Update:Oct09: eyeconnect definately has a conflict with eyetv. I deleted eyeconnect from the library preferences pane and my eyetv does connect without needing to reboot the mac. Only I still get poor performance with the streaming so more tweaking to come.

Wait for the bugs to get fixed, and hope they don’t introduce any new ones :-)

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What it should be. What it will be.

Posted on September 5, 2009 by christian

It has been a while coming, but there was much to think about. Finally a new dawn is rising, where information is freed from censorship and special interests, broadcast over the world in multiple channels. The global recession is impacting our world together with climate change and dwindling resources. The impact has focused our attention and is changing our priorities. Consumers turn technology against irrelevant advertising that serves only to distract us from the informationwe are after (be it entertainment or otherwise). Ad blocking software is a growing concern to internet based information outlets that rely on the revenue to run there business models. Demand for energy is growing, as is investment in alternative forms, notably fusion and renewables.
Banking reforms, open source software, the list of growing changes to well establish business models established since the first industrial revolution goes on and on. All this together has effect of providing us a unique opportunity to plan for a new future using new tools.

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Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Upgrade from Tiger

Posted on September 5, 2009 by christian

Yes indeed, the rumours are true. I can confirm that the regular Snow Leopard for $30 will allow you to upgrade from Tiger OS X 10.4 without 10.5 getting in the way, and yes iLife 08 works just fine.
To be fair i’m writing this after just over an hour using the new operating system, and as warned it doesn’t significantly change the features found in Leopard. It does offer a breath of fresh air, with snappier performance all round with some apps benefiting more than others (safari seems now to be faster than firefox). Many existing features have been improved, screen sharing of other macs on yor network is fast making it very usable. On screen keyboards can be accessed via the top menu bar, a sure sign of impending keyboardless macs?
This installation / upgrade was my first with a Mac, and it was painless compared to my previous experiences. I did encounter two issues;
1) it required me to sign back on to my hidden SSD wireless home connection.
2) it required me to re enter my NAS drive password.
That, my friends was it, with one additional positive note: I’m so used to seeing features being splashed up on screen as the install progresses, it was refreshing to see Apple’s approach. The install feels no different from installing a system patch. It made me feel safe, as if this wasn’t some experimental software i was launching that would break my computer.
I’ve heard snow leopard breaks some software, but must not have any because it all seems to be working fine. I like the majority of new mac owners have little use for anything beyond email iPhoto, iMovie, VLC and safari/firefox. N.B. QuickTime X, still doesn’t match VLC in codec support or functionality… Good try but fail.

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District 9 Sequel

Posted on August 18, 2009 by christian

Having seen the movie District 9 and been impressed by its production, i like many couldn’t help imagine what its sequal would look like.

District 10 anyone?

Having promised to return for Wikus in three years, Christopher returns home. The Travel home takes time as will the journey back, and Christopher uses the remainder of the time in between explaining what happened to his superiors, and what action should follow.
We must remember that the Prawn are organisationally based on ant, or bee colonies, with workers of little intelligence, pilots / scientists like Christopher, and a hole host of others all born for a determined Intelligence. No doubt, we will see the queen in District 10.

We might believe that the Prawn left behind would be territorially intolerable for there home world to be left without leadership, as seems to be the case in District 9, where the leadership was wiped out. Perhaps District 10 will explain by what, or will that be left to the prequel.

While Christopher organises the return party, we learn more about Wikus as an alien. He provides leadership to the worker prawns, protecting and educating them.

Wikus makes contact with humans willing to help the aliens. There influence reaches into a politician sympathetic to the aliens suffering.

Christopher returns to earth with a new leadership of Prawns. The act quickly to protect the worker prawns landing an army to protect and evacuate. A mini war ensures, but the humans have to retreat from the cheer scale of the alien numbers and military leadership. PRAWN WEAPONS ALERT!

Christopher finds Wikus as promised, and takes him to the mothership where Wikus meets Christophers leaders. The ship looks very different, almost floral in nature, and very beautiful. He is thanked for his sacrifice and asked if there is anything that they can do for him in return. Wikus turns to look out of a window in the mothership at the war ravaging the land below, and asks for the aliens to leave the earth and leave the humans alone, saving his species from certain annihilation. They agree.

Wikus is returned to earth and his wife, human once again.

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Were not in this for the short term, we are here to win long term

Posted on August 17, 2009 by christian

Why is capitalism so concerned with the short gains, rather than the long term? Could human lifespans be to blame. Perhaps we don’t live long enough yet to appreciate the need to truly plan ahead. Perhaps its in our nature. Yet a powerful aspect of humanity is our ability to change our nature, to control our actions.
Let me explain…

Short term gains have an immediate benefit. “If i fertilize my land i can grow more crops”. Great, action = consequence.

Long term gains are much harder to appreciate, because the consequences of our actions cannot be measured immediately. “Over time fertilizer washes into the oceans, resulting in alga blooms sucking oxygen of our water and killing organisms living in proximity”. Ouch, action = consequence.

Before we continue, lets discuss one more issue. Humans learn by application. We burn our fingers on a flame, and learn not to do it again. Yes i can be told that the flame is hot, and that it will hurt if i put my finger in it, but i will not know for certain until i’ve tried it, and so an element of doubt remains, even if i never try it.

So should we try to let every farmer witness the consequences of their actions? I don’t see this being a sustainable model for each action carried out. So what is the answer?

It occurs to me that it could be a question of faith, not in the religious meaning, but in the ability to percieve balance, and correct inbalance. Its obvious that many of our actions carry long term consequences, but we stick so virulently to our need to visibly see the concequence. We need to act on our faith when it becomes obvious that somethink is off balance. This applies to everything in our lives and the way we live them, and is a natural consequence of our amazing growth, but diminishing resources to extend our growth further.

We must think about our long term as much as we think of our short term, and expend an equal balance of effort to both.  Perhaps even concentrate on achieving balance over short or long term gains.

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