Streaming from a Mac to a PS3

I set out not too long ago researching building an HTPC so that I could watch the many movies and TV shows I have on my computer on my TV. I looked in to several options until I realized that I have a PS3 hooked up to that computer - why would I need anything else?

My requirements are basically that the software be very easy to use on the PS3 end of things, and that it transcode from the multitude of formats and codecs I have on my computer (so that I don't need to worry about which codec to download) to one of the supported PS3 formats. I want to be able to watch 1080p quality videos without too much degredation as well.

There are several programs out there (free and pay) that will stream PS3 supported formats, but that would require me to re-encode everything that I have that isn't supported (and the PS3 has pretty poor support for most things, and zero support for .mkv files).

For programs it pretty much boils down to 2 options, one free, the other is $30. The $30 option is Nullriver's Medialink, and the free option is PS3 Media Server - a program that runs on Java. I figured Java would give the software unacceptable overhead so I went with Medialink to start with.

Medialink is very simple and easy to use - basically start it up, point it at the directories you want to share and set your connection speed (for quality). It starts up, and appears on the PS3 XMB. Works very well - or at least it did long enough for me to purchase it. There appears to be a bug between it and the latest PS3 firmware that causes the videos to stop playing after about 10 minutes. I could not find a way around this at all no matter what I tried. Nullriver did not respond to my support request and at this point I consider it a waste of $30. Until the problems are fixed, I would not recommend this software (version 2.0b8).

After the failure of this software I decided to go to PS3 Media Server. I had originally tried this software before going with Medialink but I could not get it to connect to the PS3 consistently (stupid error on my part I found out later). With Medialink off the board I was pretty much forced back to this and quite frankily I'm glad I was. I downloaded the latest Beta version (which had support for dual processer transcoding) and installed it.

PS3 Media Server itself is not the prettiest to look at, and there are tons of different configuration options - it gives you full control over how the transcoding and streaming function, but can be a little unwieldy. You should be fine leaving the settings alone and just setting the directories you want to pull from.

Now, after I installed it I ran in to the same issue as before - sometimes it would see the PS3, sometimes it wouldn't on startup. What was happening was it was selecting one of the virtual network interfaces that VMware Fusion had set up instead of the wired connection of 'en0'. I had to manually change the default interface it used in the general settings tab. Once I did that and restarted it, the PS3 instantly came up.

Since I am using a wired gigabit connection from my Mac to the PS3, I set the transcode settings to "lossless" and turned on the dual core transcoding in the "Mencoder" settings. I switched back over to the "Status" tab, and fired up the 1080p BBC's "Planet Earth" episode about Mountains (lots of high contrast, fine detail shots with movement) that I use for reference, and let it run, watching the buffer size on my computer. It looked amazing on my TV, with almost no transcoding introduced pixelation. There was some slight stuttering during some of the highly contrasted shots with movement, but I found if I paused the movie for even 25 seconds at the very beginning, there would be enough transcoded buffer to handle anything - and this is your outer limit of quality, most blu-ray movie rips aren't quite as contrasty.

So, in the end, I'm glad that Medialink gave me some problems because it just wasn't quite as good as PS3 Media Server. As well, PS3 Media Server updates relatively often - and if you like it please consider donating to them.

Working from the command line - GoogleCL

One might say "To what end would you use GoogleCL?" - and they'd have a very valid point. One can not deny the allure of doing something for the sake of being nerdy, but I've found that there is much more that GoogleCL offers.

At work, due to a somewhat draconian (and selectively enforced) IT policy I'm not able to access a variety of things that I use, namely Google Calendar set up through my Apps domain. Things like web-browsing, email, twitter, and IM are also restricted via the time tested method of shoulder surfing.

Now, my job also entails doing 95% of my work through various command line and shell utilities, so an extra SSH window open does not arouse anyones notice - and therein lies my secret: I do everything I need and want through an SSH session to my iMac at home.

This post will talk about how I have GoogleCL set up to provide me with information at my fingertips that I can use.

First, and primarily what I use GoogleCL for is the for integration with the Calendar portion of Google Apps (or Google Calendar if you don't use Apps). Adding an event is dead simple in its most basic form:

# google calendar add "Some Event at That One Place tomorrow from 6pm to 7pm"

This will add an event tomorrow called "Some Event" located at "That One Place" tomorrow from 6pm to 7pm in your default Calendar.

If you want to add an event to a specific calendar, just append the command with --cal="Calendar Name"

This becomes more useful as when I log in to my session, I'm greeted with the upcoming 24 hours worth of appointments set up in my Google Calendar:

[Calendar]
Lunch with Bob at Sushi Train,Jul 13 12:00 - Jul 13 13:00

[Football Schedule]

[On Call]
On call,Jul 13 18:00 - Jul 14 00:00
iShock:~ user$

How I have this set up is, in my .profile I have it calling a text file that is written to every hour with the google command for todays events via the crontab.

I've called the script gcal.script and it very simply just calls google calendar today for all my calendars, and writes it to a text file:

google calendar today --cal=.* > ~/MainDownloads/commandline_tools/synced_cal.txt

The --cal=.* is a regular expression to capture all calendars.

This script is called by a cron entry every hour:

#download google calendar to file for .profile
0 * * * *       ~/MainDownloads/commandline_tools/gcal.script

And .profile is set to echo the file that is created whenever a new session is established (If you are on Linux, you'll likely put this in your .bash_profile in your home directory):

#google calendar for next 24 hours
echo "Calendar for the next 24 hours:"
cat ~/MainDownloads/commandline_tools/synced_cal.txt

Hope this has been has been helpful. Later I'll go in to how I use screen to put all the various programs I need in to one terminal window, that maintains state if I lose my session.

Have fun!

Capital One woes

I have a Capital One credit card, and I love it. Low interest rate, works really well. I only have one beef that has cropped up recently. My spending habit isn't very erratic, and it looks something like this during the month:
Amazon
iTunes
Restaurant
Amazon
Restaurant

Now, for the last two months, I've gotten several of the restaurant purchases flagged as fraud, and the card locked down until I call them and sit on hold for 2 hours to say that Yes, that purchase at Earls that I make every month is in fact my purchase. Please unlock my card so I can use it and pay you money.

Now, I appreciate the fraud response, and I understand the reasoning behind it, but when you are flagging purchases that fall precisely in my usual spending habits, there is a problem with your algorithm.

Second beef, when you lock my card down, I can no longer use the website to review my purchases so I can't see if there is suddenly something that I didn't authorize on my account. No, I have to call you, and have you read the charges back to me. One of these days I'm going to buy something like "Anal sex 4, horses for courses" just so the clerk has to read it back to me.

Lotus Notes, Bane of my Existence

I'm not sure how one piece of software can be so widely used, and yet so terrible. The list of issues with this program are nearly endless. 

First off, my biggest grief: Scrolling. I use the mousewheel, and Home/End religiously to scroll in every application I've used since the Microsoft Mouse first came out with a scroll wheel. Scrolling down in notes works as you would expect, I scroll down one 'click' of the mouse it scrolls 5 lines worth of text. The issue is in when I scroll up one click, this is how it works:

First click - 2 lines

Second click - .5 lines

Third click - 1 line

then it repeats this pattern, although it seems like 3/4ths of the scrolls are between .5 and 1 line. It literally takes 30 full circles of the scroll wheel to scroll up a page of any length. And it works the same with arrow keys. The only way to scroll without making me want to kill someone, is to use the scrollbars on the side, but even THEN I can't use the top and bottom buttons, I have to use the bar in the middle.

Second Grief: I installed the latest release of Notes because I thought maybe they would fix this issue.. turns out they didn't, but what they did do is completely remove a feature I used constantly. You can no longer right click a tab or a link in notes, and have it open in a new window. The feature is completely gone. Have two monitors? Too bad.

Third Grief: This may be more down to our implimentation of notes, but it's SLOW. Even on a mid range server, the thing is a dog. And that's on site.. if you are remote? Expect to wait between 2 and 5 minutes between each click to get a refresh.

Anyway, that's the rant of the day.

VNC Server for the iPhone/iPod Touch

How cool is this? There is a new app on the Cydia installer named Veency. This gives you a VNC server on the iphone, letting you use your desktop to input stuff to your iphone. This is especially handy, if like me, you've had to restore your phone to jailbreak it. This makes inputing things like the 5 email accounts I had on it very simple. Check it out:





Kind of cool, right? It's simple to install. Just open up Cydia and search for 'Veency'. Install it, restart springboard, and connect with your favorite VNC Client (Using the IP address found in the WiFi setup area).

Note to Mac users: You will want to download 'Chicken of the VNC', as the inbuilt Screen Sharing app won't be able to connect, nor will Apples 'Remote Desktop' app.

To use it: Left click is a standard 'tap', right click is the Home button, middle click is the power button, and holding the left button down and moving your mouse is like dragging your finger across the screen in the direction you move you mouse.

Bonus points for 'Ninja Magic': You can set up Jaadu on your iPhone, connect to your computer, then connect back to your phone. See if you can destroy the space-time continuum!

Bad Captchas

So, as I was updating a few options for my blog (including moving the domain to blog.shockwaver.org) it naturally asked me to complete a CAPTCHA. Normally this isn't a problem, even the newer double CAPTCHAs that aim to help optical character recognition. But Blogger, I've never seen a captcha this bad. I guess it means I'm a computer:

Updates

A few small changes have been made to the blog. I've removed the digsby chat widget on the right column, as I'm no longer using Digsby for IM (It being Windows only). I've also moved the blog to my own domain (shockwaver.org). That won't change anything except that the blog can be reached from blog.shockwaver.org.

Thanks for reading!

HOWTO: Quickly toggle function keys on and off on OS X

Let me say that I love using the Mac, it works great and runs really well. For the most part. I like using the apple keyboard because I like all the special keys for controlling iTunes and what not. However, being that I don't have the 'aluminum' keyboard that has a function key, I've noticed that in order to use the special keys, I have to go in to Settings, go in to keyboard, and manually check or uncheck the option. This was driving me crazy, as quite often I need to use the terminal, and mc (midnight commander) via ssh to a linux machine - which needs the F keys to work as F keys.

Luckily, all is not lost! Thanks to applescript, we can toggle the option using script file. Open up 'Script Editor' and use this script:

tell application "System Preferences"
    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
end tell


tell application "System Events"
    if UI elements enabled then
        tell tab group 1 of window "Keyboard & Mouse" of process "System Preferences"
            click checkbox "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys"
        end tell
    else
        tell application "System Preferences"
            activate
            set current pane ¬
                to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
            display dialog ¬
                "UI element scripting is not enabled. Check \"Enable access for assistive devices\""
        end tell
    end if
end tell

tell application "System Preferences"
    quit
end tell

This means, when you run the script, it will open the system preferences menu (without making it active), set the option, and close it again. Now, in order to make this useful, we need a way to associate this with a hotkey. So, we need to get the program Spark. This will let you set any hotkey you want to any thing else you want. Once you download it and it opens, you'll add a new hotkey for AppleScript, pick the key (I use F19), and point it to the applescript file (or just use the code above).

Once it is saved, everything is set up and ready to go! Happy terminal-ing!

Must have OS X (Leopard) Applications

These are the apps that I've dug up and installed, and use constantly.

1. Adium - Best IM program by far I've ever used.. although Digsby (Windows) is damn good.. if only Adium had support for the blog widget I use on the left column.

2. VMware Fusion - I've used Fusion, and I've used Parallels and after a while, I decided on Fusion. I need this to run XP for the 2 or 3 apps that I simply -have- to use (Support apps for my job). The thing I love about Fusion (and I know Parallels has it) is Unity mode, so I don't ever see an XP desktop, just the apps I'm using.

3. Transmission - Best Mac BitTorrent client that exists so far, in my humble opinion. Until I stumbled on this, I was using Vuze (Azureus), and it is bloated and big. Transmission is tiny, does all the bandwidth stuff I need, and runs really fast.

4. Firefox - Need I say more?

5. Gimp - Photo Editor: I cut my teeth on this when I was in Linux full time, and I love it for quick photo edits (scale, crop, file type change, etc).

6. Simultron - HTML Editor: In Windows I used Notepad++, which I adore, but instead of throwing it in VM, I found this little app. It works really well, has good syntax highlighting, and handles CSS. Perk, it also shows a mini-preview of the page as you edit.

7. Shades - This little application controls the brightness of the screen by putting a black (or really, any color you want) over the screen. This is good because by default, the iMac display is WAY TO FREAKING BRIGHT. I realize Steve Jobs has a Jesus complex, but I don't need to feel like I'm staring at the Light of God(tm) when I turn my machine on.

Backups Galore

Call me paranoid, but I like to back things up. I've lost too many files over the years not to anymore. This is where Time Machine comes in handy. I've already mentioned how easy it is to set up, but I went a step further. Not only does my entire machine back up every hour to my external hard drive, I've just set up my linux machine to back up my development folder each night. It's the same schedule I was using previously - Incremental back up every night, and a full backup once a week, while keeping 3 full backups, and 18 incremental backups.

My linux machine, while getting much less use these days is still an effective web server, and an effective backup machine. Not only does it back itself up, it also backs up mine, and my wifes machine. Hopefully we won't need them, but you never know!

Backing up is fun!

Go Mac

So now I have a new iMac, 20". I love it so far. I'm running VMWare Fusion with Windows XP Pro in Unity mode, so I've got seamless access to any windows programs I may need (such as the support software my company uses). I've just got the base model iMac, but I've upped the RAM to 4GB, and tacked on a 1TB external Firewire800 hard drive.

And holy crap is Time Machine easy to use and damn cool. Just plug in the drive (I partitioned a 300gb space for time machine), and pick the partition you want to use, and it starts backing up. No other input needed. I already had incrimental backups set up with my Linux server, but this is just dead simple. What I think I will do is keep using Time Machine to backup everything on the machine, and "mission critical" stuff will be backed up to my Linux machine nightly as well. Nothing like multiple backups.

I've pulled the 20" LG monitor from my Dell machine, and am using it along side the Mac. I wish linux was as easy to set up for dual monitors. I plugged it in, it turned on and was already at the right resolution - just had to adjust the location of the display for continuity. I love having 3360x1050 total desktop space. It makes me a glad panda.

I'm still tweaking things and copying over stuff from my old machine, but once I do that I'll drop a few more articles on here about various cool apps that I've found, and what they do.

Fedex

I believe all Fedex trucks should have an interactive GPS so that I can watch my package drive across the US. I may be a bit compulsive with my tracking though..

http://xkcd.com/281/