Mild Green Help Liquid

While I’m sure many people are aware of this, it was something I hadn’t ever investigated until yesterday.

My main machine is a Mac Pro (2010) which has a total of 5 USB ports. That might seem like a few, however two are on the front and I’d prefer to leave those available for external hard drives and USB sticks. Having only 3 on the back isn’t really enough. Currently I run 3 USB hubs to connect everything and this was starting to run low too. (Mouse, keyboard, USB sound, printer x2, scanner, card reader, external hard drive, hard drive dock, iPod cable, etc) I figured I might as well grab a 4 port USB express card while ordering a few other thing from OWC the other day. The model is the Allegro USB PCIe USB 2.0 Adapter Card for PCI Express. (link here)

What I hadn’t thought about was that my Mac Pro motherboard has full-sized slots and the card is a small slot. After googling a bit, I couldn’t find a definite answer to the question “can I just install it anyway since it physically will allow insertion?”. Well, for anyone else wondering the same thing, yes you can. Below is a photo of it looking a little strange in the slot, but it works. Install was simple. Undo the two thumb screws holding the securing metal plate, insert the card, put the plate back on, boot the computer and it works straight away. No drivers needed.

It looks like Apple has finally launched iTunes Match in Australia, however it doesn’t appear to be “officially” launched yet (as of the time of writing 3:32 PM 15/12/2011). There’s no clear link to purchase a subscription and there are reports of people having issues with their account.

Here is a direct link if you can’t find it on the store page.

I just purchased a subscription. It asked me to sign out and then sign in again, and after doing so it deducted the cost ($35) from much account. I received an email with a receipt too (below). Time to upgrade some old low-bitrate tracks!

Update: 3:48 PM
So it seems I got a little excited. You can purchase an account, but you can’t actually turn the feature on yet it would seem… Will have to wait and see if this updates soon.

Update 16/12/2011 10:05 AM
It’s now live (properly). Currently gathering information about my library and uploading.

I’ve been running an X-10 automation system for a couple of years now which has been fun, but over the past year I’ve been looking for something more modern and robust. There are lots of different options on the market which in theory should be a good thing, but it ends up just confusing matters. The other issue is that anything “high end” means you need an installer. I don’t want to rely on someone (and pay them) every time I want to make an adjustment or addition to my system. Most home automation systems push you towards installation services rather than products. (Many sites don’t even show you products, but talk about “solutions”.) The market really is in need of a big player (Microsoft, Apple, Google) to come in and do it right. Google DID announce intentions with it’s “Android@Home” system last year, but nothing seems to have come from it.

Up until reasonably recently X-10 was really the only way to do it yourself. However, after living with X-10 for a couple of years there are several downsides…

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Quite often you need to use an external hard drive (or USB stick) in a mixed environment (both on Mac and Windows based computers). By default, most hard drives you purchase will NOT allow you to do this. Generally they will ship in a way that allows you to read and write files under windows (copy files onto and off the drive), but you’ll only be able to read those files under the Mac environment (and not copy files back onto the drive). This is to do with the way the manufacture sets up the drive at the factory. There are different ways a drive can be set up. This is referred to as the way the drive is formatted.

When shooting a scene with only one camera available, generally many takes need to be filmed in order to ensure you have all the shots required in the editing phase of a project. While this is great for one camera shoots, it is a slow process and leads to issues like continuity problems.

With video cameras, and still cameras that can shoot video becoming so cheap these days, it’s common to have more than one camera available. The obvious answer is to shoot a scene from multiple angles so you have more choices in the editing phase. Continue reading

A lot of people are now working in a mixed environment that includes MS Windows-based PCs as well as Mac OS X computers. While many applications are cross-platform these days, one annoying difference between the two platforms are the default file systems used for external hard drives and USB sticks. Most hard drives purchased these days will be formatted in either the Windows standard NTFS, or (less commonly) the Mac OS X standard HFS+.

Mac OS X machines will be able to read hard drives set up as NTFS, but won’t be able to write files onto the drive. Windows machines will completely ignore HFS+ formatted disks. There is software available to get around this issue, but it needs to be installed on every machine, (and in some cases costs money.) An easier way is to reformat the drive with a file system that both platforms can read and write to. This format is FAT.

There are some downsides to FAT. For starters it won’t support files larger than 4GB. This shouldn’t be a problem for most people, but it may affect you if you’re working with large video files. Another issue is that Time Machine, (Apple’s built in backup utility) will NOT work under a FAT hard drive (it needs to be HFS+). Despite these issues, having a drive formatted in the FAT file system makes transferring and working on files between platforms a LOT easier. (NOTE that there ARE ways to get around the aforementioned issues, but they are a little more complex and beyond the scope of this clip.)

Below is a video which gives an overview of the issues around different file systems, as well as a quick run through of how to set up your hard disk to work under Mac OS X and Windows computers.

Please be sure to BACKUP (copy to another location) any important data on your hard drive before following the steps in this video. You can copy the files back onto the drive after setting the drive up using the FAT file system. Reformatting will COMPLETELY ERASE your drive!

I promised this a while back, so here it is. An updated version of the popular social media video that was created in 2010. This video looks to add the latest statistics available from around the globe, but this time around I’ve tried to focus a little more on Australian specific statistics. We’ve also provided a full bibliography for those who need to reference any stats found in the video. The video has already been showcased by several businesses, universities, TAFE institutions, and by the gorvenment at a recent youth forum.

Full bibliography after the break.

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With most of Apple’s sales being laptops these days, I’m guessing I’m in the minority installing Lion onto a RAID volume (in this case a RAID 0 SSD and a RAID 10 for the server). The much discussed command-r to enter an invisible partition designed for system recovery will not create itself if you’re installing onto a RAID volume.

This is probably not a huge issue as most users competent enough to set up a RAID should have no issue with manual diagnosis of system issues, however it’s something worth knowing if you do run a RAID and you’re about to upgrade to lion.

One other potential issue that is perhaps likely to affect more proficient users is the lack of FileVault (encrypted volume support) under a RAID setup.

Here’s a shot of the message you receive before an attempted install:

And now back to waiting for Lion server to upgrade. This takes AGES it would seem…

UPDATE: Lion server seems to be a very buggy upgrade. There are lots of reports of the upgrade failing and then making a mess of things. This happened to me too even through it is essentially just a simple file server. I’d suggest a clean install when possible.

UPDATE: Apple has released a recovery tool creator here. This will recreate the same partition as the invisible one normally created on a non-raid volume. Unfortunately however, you need to do this on a machine that already has a recovery partition on it. It is still likely a better solution to create a full bootable Lion drive on either an external hard disk, DVD or USB drive. Guides for doing this can be found in lots of places, here are a couple. Link 1, link 2, link 3.

We recently got in a Cinevate DSLR camera rig at my workplace and I decided to put together a quick overview video to step students through its basic use. This rig is based off the core package (more info here) with the additional shoulder mount, (link here) and counter weight, (link here).

I thought I’d post it here too as it may be useful for people researching these rigs (and there are lots avaialble) and for those who’ve had the chance to hire one out for a short period and want to get up to speed quickly. I’m using a Canon 5D mkII, but this rig can be used with any SLR that shoots video. It can also be used with some video cameras.

Why would you want to use an SLR to shoot video? Low light, nice depth-of-field effects, lens choice and (relatively) low cost. The big downside is audio. You need either separate audio recording facilities, or a more elaborate mic/amp setup.

Please keep in mind that this is not the only way you can setup this rig. There are thousands of possibilities from which to choose from. Because of this, the rig can be a little daunting on first inspection, so this is a “default” setup to get you up and running. Once you’re comfortable with this setup, then you can start to explore other ways in which the rig can be used.

Additional video guides can be found here and here.

If you have any comments or questions, please post them in the comments.

One of the things I need to do in a role as a tutor is demonstrate software packages to students. To aid in pointing out parts of the screen, I’ve been using Zoomit for several years which works well as I can zoom in and “draw” on parts of the screen. While it’s not nearly as pretty as some of the alternatives available on the mac, it’s functional and I’ll keep using it until I find something better for the windows platform.

Being able to highlight things during software demonstrations is great, however using Zoomit, there isn’t really a way to show students what keys I’m pressing. As any video editor or graphics person knows, having a solid knowledge of available keyboard shortcuts can speed up your work process greatly. Because of this, I want to pass knowledge of keyboard shortcuts onto my students.

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