hax0r

Aug 25 2010

Teleport …and a Feat of Geek Strength

If you don’t know about Teleport from Abyssoft, you should. It’s a donationware application that allows you to use one keyboard and mouse to control many Macs—a virtual KVM switch of sorts. In the video below, I show how I am able to drag a single folder from one iMac across the screens of two other Macs to a fourth Mac situated across the room from the mouse I’m using to control it.

You probably have no use for such a Feat of Geek Strength, but one situation where I’ve used Teleport with great success is when I’m sitting at my desk using my iMac for some serious video rendering while my MacBook Pro sits in front of the iMac’s screen. I use the mouse and its built-in keyboard to control the MacBook Pro and also use them to control the iMac. With Teleport configured to let me move my mouse to the top of the MacBook Pro screen as the portal to the bottom of the iMac screen, the interface is slick and seamless.

I have to admit and caution that, when using Teleport to control another iMac to control a MacBook to control another MacBook as I did in the video, it can become very easy to lose your cursor and become confused as to which Mac is in control at any given time. But, hey, that’s why they call them Feats of Geek Strength

Have you accomplished any Feat of Geek Strength? Let me know in the comments. Better yet—challenge me!!

No Flash? No problem—click here!»

By RickMacMerc • Featured, Geek News, hax0r, MacMerc.TV, Mini Video, News, osx, productivity, tips • 2 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 24 2010

Automated DVD and Blu-Ray backup, encoding and tagging… right to iTunes

workflow2 318x139 Automated DVD and Blu Ray backup, encoding and tagging… right to iTunes

First written back in October of 2009, this post on the Handbrake forums is the backbone of my AppleTV home theater setup.

While it takes a bit of fiddling to set up, it allows me to use my old MacBook Pro as a “Media Mac” that backs up my DVD collection while also making that media available via iTunes and shared across my network to my AppleTV.

Using the system is simple: I insert a DVD and the Batch Rip Dispatcher Automator action asks if it’s a DVD of a movie or a TV series1 , it copies the contents to an appropriate Batch Rip Folder and renames it automatically. Then, in the wee hours of the evening, an iCal action springs into…well…action and summons Handbrake to encode everything for iTunes. An Automator action kicks in to add metadata, cover art, and the correct title for the resulting files and then Hazel moves it all to my backup folders and adds the movies to iTunes. Once in iTunes, the regular update process propagates the media to my AppleTV making them available for viewing.

It all works like a well-oiled machine. Every time I slide in a disc, my mind reared on Looney Tunes cartoons can’t help but start me humming this tune:

0 Automated DVD and Blu Ray backup, encoding and tagging… right to iTunes
Automated DVD and Blu Ray backup, encoding and tagging… right to iTunes
  1. this can be set to auto-run if you plan to rip a bunch of movies [↩]

By RickMacMerc • elsewhere, Featured, hax0r, minimediamac, News, tutorial • 1 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 17 2010

MacBook Air transplanted into Mac Keyboard/Magic Trackpad combo

4893004792 9db606f2b0 318x157 MacBook Air transplanted into Mac Keyboard/Magic Trackpad combo

What you see above is a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo Mac with 2GB of RAM and 80GB hard drive. Don’t believe me? I’m not so sure I believe it either but here’s a look at the innards.1

4892426127 192defe0b6 318x211 MacBook Air transplanted into Mac Keyboard/Magic Trackpad combo

As the story goes, Bart Reardon ( @bartreardon ) was given a broken MacBook Air.

Bart had seen the motherboard for the MacBook Air way back when Steve Jobs first held it up at the announcement keynote and thought it should fit in one of those old white plastic Apple keyboards. Now he had his chance to find out!

You can follow Bart’s progress on his blog.

Tell me; is this Mac awesomeness? Would you dig a Mac/Keyboard combo? Leave a comment and we’ll chat.

  1. yes, that’s black duct tape …aka gaffer’s tape [↩]

By RickMacMerc • Geek News, hax0r, ideas, News • 5 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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