MacPinoy

The beauty of Fluid

At first, I didn’t know why Fluid would be of any use. So what if you could run your favorite web application—for example: Flickr, Gmail, or Facebook—as a separate application?

But after a while, I found that it can be an efficient way of launching web sites that you visit often, especially if paired with my favorite application launcher: Quicksilver. Fluid creates what is called a Site-Specific Browser (SSB), which is basically your favorite webapps running as a separate desktop application with its own Dock icon and a logical separation from your other web browsing activity.

For example, using Fluid, I can create a SSB application for Flickr.

Then, with just a few keystrokes, I can launch Flickr as a separate application.

Great for de-cluttering your browser will all those tabs….

Ripping DVDs

I have always wanted to backup my DVD collection. I have a lot of fringe and unorthodox DVDs. And no, I don’t mean porn movies. A number of my DVDs cannot be found in typical video shops. One of my main worries is that they could get damaged and thus rendered unwatchable.

Fortunately there is a software called Mac The Ripper, which allows me to copy the DVD onto my hard drive, removing the region controls and all sorts of copy protections. Best of all, the software is free. Take note, however, that I am not in anyway espousing DVD piracy. I just want to backup my special DVDs, and maybe even view it on my iPod Touch.

MTR was a breeze to use. All I did was pop in a DVD, launch MTR, and it was able to detect the DVD. The default settings were good enough so all I had to do was press “GO” and after about an hour I had the DVD backed up onto my hard drive.

As you may know, some DVDs have a lot of “extra features.” Some have trailers at the beginning of the disk. All these “extra features” add up to extra gigabytes. I recently ripped a copy of “300″ and the size was about 6.2 GB. This may not be an issue if you plan to watch the DVD off the hard drive, but if you want to burn the movie onto a DVD-R disk for playback on a DVD player, you will encounter some problems because a typical DVD-R disk only has a capacity of 4.67GB. Fortunately, MTR has the capability to rip only the main feature. I still haven’t tried to copy the content back to a DVD-R though—MTR recommends Roxio Toast to achieve this.

Handbrake love

With work and other extra-curricular hobbies (like biking, squash, photography), I have been looking for more ways to use my idle time for my leisure time. My time spent driving to and from work, time often extended by traffic, has already been used by listening to audio books from Audible. But there are times that I lounge around in a coffee shop, whether it is after lunch or during early mornings before work. I will soon be enrolling in a gym where I would probably spend some time on a stationary bike or on a treadmill.

So enter Handbrake and my iPod Touch. One reason why I bought the iPod Touch was to keep updated on my religiously-watched TV shows. Now I plan to use the iPod Touch to watch movies that I want to watch but can’t find the time to watch.

If you are eager to try, you will need to consider two things. First, the settings can get quite technical. You could get besieged by such terms like framerate, bitrate, and anamorphic. If you really want to understand the innards of Handbrake, then head on over to their wiki site. If all you want is to rip a DVD to watch on your iPod Touch, then you can read this.

I tweaked the Handbrake settings for my iPod Touch, mainly turning on the 2-pass encoding as well as boosting the average bitrate to 2500 kbps. Here is a screenshot of my settings:

Second, ripping and encoding a DVD for the iPod will take some time. I have a 2Ghz Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro with 1GB of memory, and the process took almost as long as the DVD itself!

And after taking a snack and having a nap, I was ready to watch my newly ripped DVD.

Parallels or VMware?

At first it appears to be a tough choice. How does one decide between both virtualization softwares?

AppleInsider offers the following recommendation:

Using a MacBook, MacBook Pro, and a Mac Pro tower as its comparison systems, MacTech finds that Parallels Desktop is generally faster than VMware Fusion in common networking and office tasks when using Windows XP. When switching to Vista, however, Fusion handles the performance hit more gracefully and drops by an average of 32 percent across the three systems versus a steeper 85 percent for Parallels.

Surprisingly, either can be slightly faster than running Windows through the native Boot Camp mode for some of these particular tasks, the publication says. Parallels earns additional recommendations for those who depend on a tight link between Mac OS X and Windows, though VMware’s solution may be better for Windows software that depends on multiple cores.

The funny thing is: I’ve been running less and less Windows applications ever since I switched to a Mac. I admit that Boot Camp was the tipping point for me to switch. Boot Camp provided me a parachute in case I needed to run Windows. But I found myself using it very infrequent. Now that I have upgraded to Leopard, I have even delayed installing Boot Camp simply out of pure laziness.

Adblock for Safari

One reason why I don’t use Apple’s Safari browser is its lack of ad blocking a la Firefox’s Adblock.Now, there is Safari Adblock.

Now how good is it in blocking ads?  You be the judge.  I took a screenshot of one of Philippine’s top blogs, before and after Safari Adblock.

Before Safari Adblock was enabled:

After Safari Adblock enabled:

As you can see, only the US-based ads were blocked.  The ones based in Philippines remained to be displayed.  Users also do not have the option to blacklist or whitelist ad sites.  I hope that such a feature will be added in future versions.  

Eve Online problems

I love Eve Online. As soon as I heard that there was a Mac client available, I downloaded it and after the 14-day trial,

I signed up.
I was drawn to Eve Online because of its complexity. Compared to other MMORPG, Eve Online is far more cerebral. What other game has a Ph.D. economist on the staff who publishes a quarterly newsletter about the game’s virtual economy?

I have longed for an actual role-playing game wherein I can immerse myself in a particular persona. At first, I thought that the more popular MMORPG’s like Everquest and WOW would fit the bill. But as I logged in days of playing time, I realized that these games had a number of limitations, mostly because these games employed what is described as the “theme-park” approach, where one’s experience is scripted and carefully crafted. As described in Eve Online’s site, theme-park MMORPGs commonly develop lines, just like real world theme parks, as players wait for monster spawns, rare items, or quest requirements. Eve Online, like Second Life, employs the playground approach—the game is what the players make it to be. In a playground you have access to different kinds of toys and rides, and you are allowed to use your own imagination to figure out how to create games you enjoy.

But lately Eve Online has been giving me problems. The client crashes often. After about an hour of play, I get kicked back to the Mac desktop. No error messages. The problems have appeared since I upgraded to the new Trinity content. And I am not alone with these problems. Sad, because I truly love the game.

Xslimmer

One of my essential applications is Xslimmer, a great utility that slims applications by removing language packs and Universal Binary codes that do not match your architecture. So if you are running an Intel Mac, for example, Xslimmer removes the code that supports the PowerPc architecture.

Running Xslimmer through iTunes, it reduced the size of the application from 129MB to 31MB. All in all, I was able to recover 1.67GB of disk space! You can safely slim down applications because Xslimmer backs up the application in a separate directory and you can restore the deleted code if you encounter errors. I have been using Xslimmer for many months and have not encountered any application problem.

Xslimmer is a great application for those whose hard disks are already cramped with files!

Firefox Mac theme

When I installed the beta version of Firefox, I was asked if I wanted to download a theme extension that would make my Firefox more “Mac-like:”

So what are you waiting for? Get the theme!

Leopard and Skype problems

I’ve been having problems with Skype under Leopard.  Basically, it won’t launch.  I would re-install it and then it would run fine.  But after that first launch and I try to re-launch it again, the problem is back and I can’t launch Skype.

After searching through the web, there seems to be an explanation.  Now whether Leopard or Skype is the culprit is not subject to debate.

From this forum post, it appears that Leopard’s firewall remembers the structure of an application and creates a digital signature based on this.  Change the structure and the digital signature changes.  If the digital signature changes, then the application cannot run.

OS X 10.5 now digitally signs all applications. The first time you run the app OS X will confirm that you want to run the app downloaded from the internet and will apply a digital signature to the app.

If the digital signature of the app changes (by even one byte) the app will no longer run as it no longer matches the signature originally approved. OS X will prevent it from running. If Skype is making ANY change inside the /Applications/Skype.app bundle when it runs it would cause this issue.

Ars Technica has more details.  Go to the section on “Code Signing.”

Code signing also means an end to the practice of applications modifying themselves (e.g., saving custom theme files inside the application bundle itself rather than in ~/Library/Application Support/MyApp or another user-specific location). This practice has always been discouraged by Apple, and now there’s another reason avoid it.

Well, at least the problem has been identified.  If you ask me, programmers should adhere to the strategy of Apple.  If the application does modify itself, then how can one validate if it is a legitimate modification or that of a virus or malware?

So is the problem caused by Apple’s firewall or is it because the application is poorly programmed?

Leopard in Manila “on or before November 6″

iStudio will have Leopard “on or before November 6.”  They are taking reservations.  If you are one of the first 50 to signup for Leopard, they will throw in a 20% discount.