Yep, as weird as that sounds, by cascading your startup items load time (ie: most of the stuff that gets loaded into your system tray) you can actually speed up windows boot times. When Windows loads it’s Startup file, it attempts to load every program in there at the same time. Therefore if you have quite a lot of programs starting when Windows starts, each program will try and grab CPU time so that it can load and that makes windows Craaawwwwllllll.

Startup Delayer allows you to setup how many seconds after Windows has started, to load each program. This little freebee — for example — allows you to load that really really important (yeahright) “iTunesHelper.exe” program later in the boot process. Let’s face it half the crap that gets loaded during windows boot process are not actually needed right when the user logs in. So delay that IMAP/POP Email checker, push itunes/quicktime/adobe air/adobe pdf and all the other junk to a later load time and watch windows rock!!! Finally.

Came across this issue a few weeks ago and never got around to posting it until today. Yes, you can avoid using the Server Assistant program and go straight to ARD to install your server. For this to work your server and remote desktop machines need to be on the same subnet. You boot the server using the 10.5 CD/DVD and note it’s serial number. Now you need to find out the IP address of the server and connect to it from your remote desktop machine. For this, you can run ARD and scan the subnet and find your new server. Once you’ve found it connect to it and login using the first eight characters of the machines serial number and leave the username blank. This even works from Windows/Linux machines using VNC which is great for those who use Windows/Linux on their desktop.

I’d covered Fedora’s Live USB creator a while back. But for those of you wanting to install other flavours of linux on a USB stick (or a HD even), the process was lengthy and cumbersome. That was before UNetbootin, the Universal Netboot Installer. You see UNetbootin can be run from Linux or Windows and will enable you to install a fully functional linux distro to a USB stick or even a spare partition.

The current version has built-in support for the following distributions:

• Ubuntu (and official derivatives)
  • 6.06 LTS
  • 6.10
  • 7.04
  • 7.10
  • 8.04 LTS
• Debian
  • Stable/Etch
  • Testing/Lenny
  • Unstable/Sid
• Linux Mint
  • 3.1
  • 4.0
  • 5-r1
• openSUSE
  • 10.2
  • 10.3
  • 11.0
  • Factory
• Arch Linux
  • 2007.08
• Damn Small Linux
  • 4.4
• SliTaz
  • Stable
  • Cooking
• Puppy Linux
  • 4.00
• FreeBSD
  • 6.3
  • 7.0
• NetBSD
  • 4.0
• Fedora
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • Rawhide
• PCLinuxOS
  • 2007
  • 2008
• Gentoo
  • 2007.0
  • 2008.0
• Zenwalk
  • 5.2
• Slax
  • 6
• Dreamlinux
  • 3.2
• Elive
  • Development
• CentOS
  • 4
  • 5
• Mandriva
  • 2007.1
  • 2008.0
  • 2008.1
• FaunOS
  • 0.5.4
• Frugalware Linux
  • Stable
  • Testing
  • Current

So go ahead and try some of those acquired flavors of Linux, or that FreeBSD you always wanted to install, but were too scared to. After all it’s only a USB stick, if it screws up just format and reinstall in 5-10 minutes using UNetbootin again.

UNetbootin can also be used to load various system utilities, including:

• Parted Magic, a partition manager that can resize, repair, backup, and restore partitions.
• Super Grub Disk, a boot utility that can restore and repair overwritten and misconfigured GRUB installs or directly boot various operating systems
• Backtrack, a utility used for network analysis and penetration testing.
• Ophcrack, a utility which can recover Windows passwords.
• NTPasswd, a utility which can reset Windows passwords and edit the registry.
• Gujin, a graphical bootloader that can also be used to boot various operating systems and media.
• Smart Boot Manager (SBM), which can boot off CD-ROM and floppy drives on computers with a faulty BIOS.
• FreeDOS, which can run BIOS flash and other legacy DOS utilities.

So have fun and happy installing…..

Last week on Wednesday (Aug 20, 2008) TPMG members went to visit the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE/The EX). Here are some of the pictures from the event, more on flickr.

Here are two commands to activate the expanded Print and Save menu’s under OSX by default. You need to type these in a terminal window.

1) For expanded Print menu
defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool TRUE
Logoff and back in again to activate. Reissue the command replacing TRUE with FALSE to turn expanded functionality off.

2) For expanded Save menu
defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool TRUE
Logoff and back in again to activate. Reissue the command replacing TRUE with FALSE to turn expanded functionality off.

Enjoy and Have fun

Here is a quick command to make Leopard’s stacks behave nicer when you move your mouse across the icons. You can type these two commands in terminal to activate the feature:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean YES
killall Dock
or alternatively if you don’t like the look, type the following in terminal to reset it back:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean NO
killall Dock

I’ve always had problems with this and now really appreciate the value of DMS (DivXLand Media Subtitler). You see I own a small HD media player that’s connected to my TV. The trouble with this little gadget is that it does not support subtitle files. That’s not a problem anymore since DMS allows me to embed the subtitles into the Divx/Xvid file before I watch it.

DivXLand Media Subtitler key features:

* Create subtitle files from plain text files
* Preview subtitled video immediately without saving file
* Save partially edited files to resume subtitling process later
* Automatic caption timing features
* Multiple subtitling modes available
* Support for basic text formatting
* Support for at least 30 subtitle formats (open and save)
* Keyboard shortcuts available to control subtitle process
* Spell check using the Ms Word component
* Embed subtitles on AVI video
* Extract audio streams from AVI and MPG videos into MP2, MP3 and WAV formats
* Check for product updates directly from Help menu
* Quick Start Guide in several languages included as PDF and online
* Support for all East Asian and Right-to-Left languages; more info

Subtitle formats currently supported:

Adobe Encore ● Advanced SubStation Alpha ● CSV (Excel) ● DKS ● DVD Subtitle System ● DVD Subtitle ● FAB Subtitler ● JACOSub 2.7 ● Karaoke LRC ● MacSUB ● Mac DVD Studio Pro ● MicroDVD ● MPlayer ● OVR Script ● Pinnacle Impression ● PowerDivx ● PowerPixel ● QuickTime Text ● RealTime ● SAMI ● SonicDVD ● Sonic Scenarist ● Spruce DVD Maestro ● Spruce Subtitle ● SubRip ● SubStation Alpha ● SubViewer 1.0 ● SubViewer 2.0 ● Tabbed values (generic) ● TMPlayer ● TurboTitler ● Ulead DVD Workshop ● ViPlay ● ZeroG

Fantastic windows only application and free to download.

For those of you who’ve hated the opensource ffmpeg command line media conversion tool, here is Quick Media Converter. It’s a nice looking front-end for ffmpeg that hides the command line complexity of this swiss army like media converter. So What can you do with Quick Media Converter?

-Converting Video files from one format to another.
-Converting Audio files from one format to another.
-Extracting and converting Audio files from video or audio media.
-Extracting and converting Video without sound.
-Preview and/or listen to video and audio files with FFPLAY Multi format player (Fabrice Bellard).
- A myriad of formats is recognized by FFmpeg, those not recognized yet, are worked on by many people around the open source community and may most of the time, become available sooner or later.
-Many files to convert? No worry, batch files processing is also supported by QMC.
-You are lazy by nature and do not wish to start selecting files? That’s okay just drag and drop the files in the active worksheet.
-You have more specific needs and want to experiment with video and audio conversion, you can do so by using our Expert mode section.
-You want to capture a movie or picture directly from your webcam or DV Cam, just click on the webcam button and start capturing in raw flux or avi divx , after this is done the software will offer you to convert your file to other formats.
-You want to make a tutorial or capture your latest performance in your favorite video game? just click on Camstudio (open source) start recording and add comments on your avi divx movie output.

-Access our support forum directly from our application to get help, we usually respond to your questions within one day or two. We do not support expert mode in general as by essence if you use it you are considered an expert user.

It’s a Windows only utility and is free to download.

I came across EASEUS Disk Copy today and I have to admit it’s pretty cool. It’s not a live disk imager, but will image just about any disk (even damaged) or partition. It also has a neat feature of being able to image one large disk onto multiple smaller disks. It boots off CD and supports IDE, SATAI, SATAII, SCSI, Firewire(IEEE1394) and USB drives. The best part……It’s FREE.

For our fifth meeting, TSG members decided to try their hands on a large group production. Very much in the spirit of productions Gregory Crewdson puts together. It took us nearly 3 hours to set this shot up, we walked away with 8 frames and this is my rendition of the frames superimposed in Photoshop CS3 with lots of masking to reveal the different layers of “information”. I will be working some more on different combinations of these frames, as there is a lot more information (people) that is not visible in this version.

The Toronto Strobist Group got together again at Ryerson. We decided to leave the studio alone and congregated instead in the Eaton’s Lecture Theater — a 199 seat theater style lecture hall — to shoot our Cinema with a Twist theme. Here is a sampling…..more pics on flickr set.

More crazy image-enhanced video rendering papers from University of Washington being presented at Siggraph08. I just can’t get enough of these new applications of combining crappy video and some still frames to produce eye popping results. Most of the experiments in this video were done using a standard video camera and a hi-res still camera. The results were combined, some secret sauce added and you end up with these killer results. I for one can’t wait for editing packages to include some of these research topics as new features….Can you say UNREAL :-)

If you’re like me, you don’t like to install Anti-Virus software or any of the malware removing utilities on your system. The machine is sitting behind a firewall and I know what is running on the machine (most of the time).

That said, I’ve always wanted to have the equivalent of trip-wire or rkhunter from Linux/Unix land. An application that would monitor the rest of windows and would alert me when vital files/registry entries get touched. Well, I think I’ve found such beastie and it’s free to boot. Grab Tiny Watcher and install it on your windows box and let it run once to create a profile. From then on TW will monitor your system and tell you when some application/installer changes something vital on your machine. You also get the option to heal/remove/delete the changes after the fact.

Tiny Watcher checks the following point:

Processes

Registry keys or entries

ini entries

File scan

Scheduled tasks

Have Fun, and remember to stay safe :-)

You can thank Murat Konar for this free application. GarageRemote is a OSX control panel app that lets you assign MIDI commands to those pesky GarageBand commands. No more using the mouse to press Play/Stop/Record and such. It gets even sweeter if you’ve got a MIDI controller with dedicated shuttle controll buttons.

If you’ve ever come across the email gateways of most social sites, you know that — in order to protect you and your account — they produce some very forgettable email addresses. I’m talking about those special email addresses you can setup where for example you can Email a picture to, which will automatically be posted to your flickr stream.

Well here is a easy way to use Google mail’s filter function to create easy to remember gmail addresses that would inturn forward your precious postings to the appropriate social site.

1. First get a gmail account if you don’t already have one. I’ll call mine middleman@gmail.com
2. Setup your Flickr (or any other) account to accept posts via email. My special flickr email address is manthisemailishardtoremember@photos.flickr.com
3. Back in your gmail account create a filter. In the To: field put middleman+flickr@gmail.com and select “Forward it to” and fill the field with manthisemailishardtoremember@photos.flickr.com
4. DONE.

Now any picture attachment sent to middleman+flickr@gmail.com will automagically get rerouted to your flickr publishing Email. You can do this for all your services and that way standardize/centralize your publishing Email addresses.

Hmmmm……Ugggghhh…..Yet another MS research juicy fruit that no one outside of Redmond is gonna be able to play with. I guess this is a further development or an offshoot of PhotoSynth that MS presented at Siggraph in Boston. This one is much more polished and seems to actually have a purpose (see the end of the video). The days of QTVR are numbered if MS ever decides to make this project a reality.

Yep, Microsoft is at it again (actually MS research to be more precise). Show up at Siggraph, present a juicy paper, get everyone salivating and then, well…..not sure…..hide :-). I don’t get it, I’ll give you an example, couple of years ago a bunch of MS research guys showed up at Siggraph in Boston (I think) and showed this amazing application — PhotoSynth — that would stitch pictures taken by random tourists from different internet sources into a brilliant 3D model. It was fantastic, but other than a demo application, it’s no where to be found.

MS, are you listening…..You’re a Software company, stop producing software noone wants/needs (Vista/Office anyone?) and realize some of these apps the research people are working on.

Anyways, rant off. Now for this years amazing app. The tool is called Unwrap Mosaic and is described as Photoshop of video editing tools. Watch the video here. Imagine being able to take a video and changing something inside it just like you would in photoshop…..without having to go to every single frame of that video. The technology behind UM allows for changes by unwrapping the objects contained in the video into a flat image. It would be incredibly difficult to update the video in its original form, but making objects flat allows the new objects to be mapped into the correct positions. In the old days (like 1-2 years ago) 3D artists had to manually map things in 3D onto models and then composit them into the video…..well no more. This is amazing….koodoos to MS research. More info here.

Monash University team downunder has done it again. Nodal is their Free (for personal use) generative music software for Mac OSX. It’s a good looking application that I will be taking out for a test drive soon. From the website:

Nodal uses a novel method for the notation and playing of MIDI based music. This method is based around the concept of a user-defined graph. The graph consists of nodes (musical events) and edges (connections between events). You interactively define the graph, which is then traversed by any number of players who play the musical events as they encounter them on the graph. The time taken to travel from one node to another is based on the length of the edges that connect the nodes.

Now Nodal generates MIDI data only. This means that you need a hardware/software MIDI synth to hear the good stuff. For simple demonstrations try SimpleSynth. Nodal will also work with Apple’s GarageBand software…….So what are you waiting for……Bombs awayyyy……

If you love(d) 78 rpm records, you owe it to yourself to check out Cliff Bolling’s website. Here he is continually digitizing and adding tunes from the first half of the last century in mp3 format complete with  scratches, hisses, pops and all. It’s absolutely wonderful :-).

He uses an old Garrard Model RC 121 Mark II turntable and a GE VR 1 cartridge that came with the turntable. Right now, there are 3,739 titles on this page linked to mp3′s.

Although this happened a little while back I’ve finally got around to posting it. These are a couple of concepts shots we had for the TSG (Toronto Strobist Group) Album Cover on July 26th. The idea behind it was to shoot using daylight as fill light and strobes as key/hair lights.