06.16.08
Posted in Modern Life at 11:26 pm by thomas
Just recently I got my hands on a second LCD monitor and my first thought was to set up my Mac Mini as a two-monitor setup similar to the rig I was used from work. It initially didn’t occur to me that this would be a lot more complicated on the Mini than what I had anticipated.
The Mac Mini is designed as a simple home system and has only one graphics adapter, and there is no split cable that allows you to simply add a second monitor. There are really only two solutions to add a second monitor to the Mini:
- Matrox offers DualHead2Go, which splits the video signal from one video card across two monitors, using a special graphics driver that simulates a very wide monitor to the computer. The problem with this solution for the Mac Mini is that the internal graphics adapter can only support 2048×768 in this mode – which means that my two 1280×1024 monitors would both be running at non-native 1024×768, which is far from perfect and would not really improve my situation.
- VGA via USB. When I first heard of this concept, I couldn’t believe that this is actually possible, but I read up on some of the reviews and they were quite favorable. And to add to that, just a few months ago, DisplayLink – the manufacturer of the chip set of many of these USB video adapters – launched their Mac OS X drivers. Once I had found these drivers I went with the Kensington sd200v notebook docking station, which in addition to the second VGA port also offers 5 additional USB ports.
The Kensington VGA adapter works great. I have now a second monitor on my Mac Mini in portrait mode at 1024×1280 which is very useful for web development and just generally great to surf tall web pages.
The performance is surprising, and while I don’t know exactly how the DisplayLink chipset works, I guess the driver actually compresses only the difference from one video frame to the next and sends it via the USB connection to the VGA chip, which then buffers the screen content and only applies new changes as they come in.
In most normal situations where I use the second monitor (browsing, scrolling, working on Photoshop palettes) the performance is easily adequate. It even supports Flash content in web pages and video players, but that obviously reaches the limit of what is possible.
All around, the USB VGA port has greatly improved my desktop environment and makes my tiny Mac much more useful for many years to come.
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06.14.08
Posted in Modern Life, Science at 8:31 am by thomas
Over at Charles Stross’ blog is a great post about Singularity theory and the state of AI. The post and the many comments that follow it are a good read for a lazy weekend (which this one isn’t for me, but hey).
Artificial Intelligence has long fascinated me and early on when I started programming I remember reading in books that we were “less than 20 years away” from true AI. That was 26 years ago. Since then we have seen amazing progress in nearly all other fields of computer science, but AI has turned into some sort of neo-philosophy where many words are written about the unknowable, but very little active research seems to go on.
It’s odd that we seem to be able to create utterly alien concepts like the hive-minds of our networked society (imagine explaining Wikipedia or World of Warcraft to your great-grandfather), but we have still no clear concept of what a recognizable individual intelligent being (I guess that’s what we think of when we say AI) actually is. We frankly just don’t know what makes that fatty ball of neurons in our head tick.
But I’m sure we are only 20 years away from figuring that out. 
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06.13.08
Posted in PhotoBlog: Street Copy at 7:28 pm by thomas
Something’s been leaking in the Broadway Tunnel…
Photo taken and post created with Palm Centro
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06.08.08
Posted in Modern Life at 6:37 pm by thomas
Something a little bit more geeky than the photo posts of the last few months… I’ve been using a Palm Centro for a while now and I am thoroughly happy with the phone and its features – but the really big advantage of having a smartphone based on a relatively open platform is of course the fact that there’s thousands of applications to download.
Here’s a list of applications that I’m now carrying around everywhere:
- FileZ – a free utility to help with the housekeeping on the Palm OS. I mostly use it to move files between the main memory and the microSD card.
- Mergic Ping – a free ping tool for Palm phones. Yes, not everybody needs this, but if you use ping to check on server availability a lot, then it’s a pretty cool thing to be able to do so from anywhere.
- pssh – free SSH client. Did I mention that this will be a geeky post? For me this is one of the coolest things about the Centro. I won’t use this often, but I know that SSH on my phone will come in handy one of these days when a server I rely on is down.
- whois – another little laser-focused application – a free, simple whois client.
- CaSTaway – the Palm version of this Atari ST emulator. I had Atari ST computers back in the 1980s and early 90s and in fact still have an old Falcon stuck in a box in a basement somewhere. Not only did I have many games for the ST, I actually wrote a lot of code on the machine. So now I can play my very own version of Mahjong on the go. And then there’s of course Civilization I. And Dungeon Master… enough said.
- ArmZX – a free Sinclair Spectrum emulator. There’s some games that just don’t get old – even after 25 years in this case. I still can while away half an hour with Atic Atac or Manic Miner, and this emulator runs the oldest of my own code that still exists – a couple of ZX Basic games that I wrote in 1982! I’ve noticed an issue with the USB syncing after running ArmZX, and so I’ll be looking for an alternative, but since I usually Bluetooth-sync my Centro, it’s not a big deal.
- GoogleMaps – of course.
- Flight Status – a pretty cool application that gives you live flight data. Written by a teenager who by what I can tell has a big future in front of him.
- MetrO – a mainstay on Palm and other handheld devices for many years. Whenever I travel I make sure to upload the databases for my destination and I’ll never be lost in the transportation network of an unfamiliar city.
- PAdict – simply the best Japanese dictionary for any handheld, comes with a 100.000-character database. The draw-a-character Kanji recognition is amazing, especially considering that you are doing this on a cellphone. Oh – and it’s free, too.
- Planetarium – is that bright red light in the evening sky Mars? Or Jupiter? This shareware application is really cool if you are one of those people who occasionally looks up at the sky in the evenings…
- Tide Tool – if you are living close to open water and spend any time at the beach, this tool is a must.
- RiseSet – Sun and Moon rise and set times. While I’m out taking pictures I often want to time a certain shot for sunset or moonrise. Not a problem with this free application.
- YAUC – Yet Another Unit Converter. My life saver whenever my metric brain encounters fluid ounces, square feet and Fahrenheits…
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06.02.08
Posted in PhotoBlog: Street Copy at 10:58 pm by thomas
Found in San Francisco at Columbus and Green Street.
Photo taken with Palm Centro
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