mashby

I tend to bash on Microsoft products quite a bit. This year I’ve become a Mac convert and just yesterday I was touting the virtues of giving Internet Explorer the boot. Most of my ire comes from the fact I’ve become fed up with the typical bloated, unsecured, buggy products that come out of Redmond. I’m tired of having to patch software on a daily basis and wade through features for the one simple feature that I’m looking for. I’ve got a pretty bad taste in my mouth regarding Microsoft products, so you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon one that I actually like – Windows Movie Maker.

Holly Needs A Video
Holly wanted to submit a video audition to the producers of Nashville Star. My past video editing experience consisted of using the pause button on our old VHS deck as I played captured video on our Hi-8 analog camcorder. I knew there had to be a better way, so I figured I would explore how hard it would be to edit the video on my computer. After a few conversations with Dan, it was clear that I needed a camera with Firewire. This would allow me to import the video directly into the computer.

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I forgot just how bad pop-up ads can be. For the past 3 years I’ve been using Opera as my primary browser, which features a built-in pop-up ad blocker. Pop-up ads were not what drove me from Internet Explorer though, what sent me looking for alternatives was speed, features and peace of mind For those of you still using Internet Explorer, there are alternative browsers out there that offer more and better features and are worth taking a test drive.

Why I Left
I never liked the fact that Microsoft tied Internet Explorer so tightly into the operating system. Neither did the Justice Department, but that’s another story. What I didn’t like about it was the fact that there were big security holes in it and if IE crashed, your whole system could be affected. To me this was ludicrous. The idea that your entire computer could be compromised by browsing a malicious web site is pure insanity, but that’s the penalty for having applications integrated into the OS.

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I hope you don’t mind, but I need to take a break from all the Matrix Mega reviews that I’ve been doing as of recent. I’m about halfway through with them and I’m wearing a bit thin. 😀 My guess is that you are too, so for the next few entries, I’m going back to my normal types of postings.

For the past week or so, I’ve been up to my ears in learning all about a fairly new technology called VPN, or Virtual Private Networking. You may have heard of it, as had I, but if you’ve never explored this technology on your own, you’re in for a real treat – not!

Here’s the idea – let’s assume that you have two computers that you’d like to network together so that they ‘talk’ to each other. Computer A is downtown and Computer B is in the suburbs. Both computers are connected to the Internet using fast connections (DSL, T1, Cable, etc.), so by using VPN you can create a secure ‘tunnel’ through the Internet and thus connect the two computers. Although both computers are accessing the unsecure and open network that is the Internet, the encrypted tunnel secures the information exchanged between the two computers. The best part is that each computer sees the other as if they were on the same exact network. The concept itself seems rather straightforward, it’s the implementation that’s a killer.

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With the release of the Tapwave Zodiac, my attention has returned to a favorite interest of mine – video on Palm OS devices. Since color first appeared with the Palm IIIc, putting pictures and video clips on my Palm has been something of a fascination with me. I may be acting a bit like George Costanza, but being able to combine passions can only make things better right? I love Palm OS and I love movies so why not combine them?

Currently, I have all the Matrix Revolutions TV and Theatrical trailers on my 256MB SD card on my Tungsten C. It’s been nice to be able to fire up a video clip and see a preview. It’s been like getting a mini-fix in anticipation of Revolutions release. In fact, I’ve watched all the clips so much that when I went to go see Mystic River, I mouthed all the words to the Revolutions preview. But there’s more to video clips than simply fixating on an upcoming movie. There’s a lot of applications that I can think of where having video on your Palm device can be handy.

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Every so often, I’ve heard a few of my techie friends rail against Adobe’s Acrobat PDF technology. When ever they’ve gone off, I’ve just chocked it up to them being a purist when it comes to file technology. I’ve used the PDF for years as a way to send invoices to my clients and it works wonderfully. I’ve never had a problem with them and kind of saw them as a standard in corporate America. However, my love affair ended rather abruptly the other day once I tried to work with one.

I know that the Acrobat PDF format is designed for publishing. The end goal of any PDF is to be printed, yet if you look at Adobe’s advertising, you’d get the impression that it can do more. Heck, even the name of the extension leads you to believe that it’s versatile – Portable Document Format. Hmmm, portable document format huh? Sounds like I should be able to do more with it than just print don’t you think? Where is all this seething animosity coming from? Allow me to explain.

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After my post yesterday, I decided it was time to wipe out my hard drive and start fresh. Figuring it would only take a few hours, I thought I could steal a little time while I worked on a Linux server to rebuild my main PC. I put in my Windows XP CD and as usual I heard the drive spin up. I was closing a few applications before I shut down the PC to reboot and install when all of a sudden, I heard a “PUH” and something hit my leg hard. I looked down and saw the faceplate to the CD-ROM drive next to my leg along with several shards of what was my Windows XP Professional CD. The CD had exploded. :O

As I inspected the drive, I realized that the CD had disintegrated in the drive. There were pieces everywhere. Unable to open, or close the drive tray, I had to shut down the computer and remove the entire drive. Once disconnected, I disected the drive and tried to pull out all the pieces. They were everywhere! To make sure that I had them all, I began re-assembling the CD like a jigsaw puzzle. Slowly I began putting all the pieces back together. At one point, getting out the last piece reminded me of trying to get a guitar pick out of a guitar when it drops into the sound hole.

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A few weeks ago I wrote how I had migrated Holly to the iMac, but that I had run into some hurdles running the 10.0.4 version of OS X and that I needed to upgrade to 10.2. My experience thus far had been mixed, but overall was positive. The OS X 10.2 CD that I purchased via eBay arrived and the following weekend I decided to make the upgrade.

Making A Backup
I hadn’t done all that much in the initial setup. I had Holly’s e-mail client setup and the St. Edwards Youth Choir in her address book. All of her main data is stored on a small windows server, but I had been unsuccessful in connecting to it. Even though she had very little data, I wanted to back it up and save from having to re-enter all of that information. Luckily I had a good friend who had my back. Mike Rohde is a long time Macphile and he had a contact with Apple that told him everything I needed to do to back up Holly’s data. I simply used an FTP client on my main Windows workstation and transferred the files to the server.

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