setup

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Apr 27 2009

Five Things You’ll see In IE 6… That Aren’t New

Microsoft is a company known for “monkey see, monkey do” behavoir.
First is was the GUI, then it was the little things like the recylcling bin.
Now it’s things like Windows XP’s GUI which is suprisingly similar to OS X.
I’m going to predict 5 things you’ll see in IE 6 for the Mac that are already
done in competing browsers. Further more, I’m predicting that these features
will be touted as original, and as major innovations straight from Redmond.
Let’s get started.

1) Tabbed browsing windows – This one is almost too obvious
to use in this article. If you’ve used Mozilla lately, you’ll notice that it’s
got tabs. What do I mean? Well, one browser window with multiple web pages.
Here’s a screen shot of my Chimera setup(click to enlarge):

tabs thumb Five Things Youll see In IE 6... That Arent New

It’s the main reason why I love to use browsers based on Mozilla.
Chimera has book marks that load tabs… I have one for Mac news that loads
all my favorite Mac sites all at once. It’s genius. Adam Iser has been using
this same tab concept with Adium,
a great AIM client. It was why I switched, and is currently why I don’t use
iChat. I’m just an all around sucker for tabs.

2) favicon.ico support – Windows users have long had icons
they see in the link bar when they go to webpages. Webmasters load a specially
named icon (favicon.ico) onto the root level of the server, and it gets shown
on almost every browser except IE on the Mac. Look for this to change with 6.0.
You can see our icon and some others in the above screen shots.

3) Pop-up Blocking - It’s too good to pass up. Mozilla ships
with it… and I see no pop-ups. It’s great. Look for it to be touted as a fresh
idea. Also look for MS pop-ups to still work (from MSN and such). This will
probably be stuck under the preferences somewhere.

4) MetaData – I bet IE 6 will act more like Mozilla with MetaData.
If you aren’t in the know, it’s info about the page that can be handy to the
visitor. Stuff like RSS feeds, publish dates, author name, simple navigation
and a ton more can be done in a special toolbar that pops up. It’s nifty stuff
that you have to scour the source for in IE.

5) Search in browser – I love searching Google right from Mozilla
(in the link bar)… This will show up in IE 6, except it will be defaulted
to MSN and be hell to switch to Google. There will be a way, and that’s all
that matters.

I’d love to see nerdy stuff like what images were loaded from where, which
forms go to what pages, and allow javascript to do only certain things, but
I have a feeling for that I’ll have to stick with Mozilla. The good news is
that the most popular Mac browser will be better. If you can’t wait, most of
the new functionality can already be harnessed. Mozilla for OS X isn’t bad,
but it feels bad because of its cross platform interface. For now, I’ll stick
with Chimera
and it’s Cocoa widgets icon smile Five Things Youll see In IE 6... That Arent New . If you have any comments or questions let
me know.

By admin • Articles, Editorials • Comments Off • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Apr 27 2009

Twitter on your own Server and Teach your iPhone to back itself up

In its first year, Twitter has become one of Web 2.0′s most interesting communication tools. Its so popular it is almost impossible to use during events like the Macworld Keynote. Why not bring it home to your own server?


DIY Twitter

If you remember way back to the days of blogging, you’ll be familiar with WordPress. This flexible, Open Source content management system has just graduated to version 2.5 with some cool enhancements.

prologue Twitter on your own Server and Teach your iPhone to back itself up

We’ll use it to build our own twitter-like engine on our own server. With a recent version of WordPress, you’ll be able to install Prologue, a WordPress theme from the creators of WordPress that transforms your WP blog into a twitter-style stream. The theme kills your titles and adds a quick post box at the top but keeps comments and permalinks.

This is a perfect setup to run your own tiny twitter for your company or Lamaze group. But, part of the draw of Twitter is the network. So, after loading the Prologue theme, grab the Twitter Tools WordPress plugin.

twittertools.jpg Twitter on your own Server and Teach your iPhone to back itself up

With Twitter Tools, you can post to Twitter using WordPress, post to WordPress and have it simul-post to Twitter or even sync your Twitter tweets to WordPress as posts. Dizzy?

TimeCapsule (iPhone app)

timecapsule Twitter on your own Server and Teach your iPhone to back itself up

This iPhone app is a great idea. It backs up user data by application. That includes addresses, calendars, bookmarks and even installer.app sources. The free version has a couple nag screens, and only backs up a single instance of each app, but is still extremely useful. If you use it regularly, consider the $15 (about) to register it.

That should be plenty of tweet for you.

Brian

By admin • Articles, Freeloader Friday Download of the Week • Comments Off • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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