Tips From Tony Blog

Well, not quite, but pretty darned convincing to MY eyes, nonetheless…

I’ve been able to experiment with all sorts of High-Definition (HD) video files, and I’ve had access to plenty of recent hardware to test them on. DVD images are horrid compared to HD video… I need to cover my DVD’s with plastic sheets because I keep wanting to spit on them! :-> HD movies are actually sharper than what you originally saw in the movie-theater, the first time around. CinemaScope is pretty close, though.

I have found that the 24″ iMac (particularly when gussied-up with the high-end graphics and larger hard drive) is IDEAL for watching HD video:

- The hardware can keep up, even with the largest file-formats. No stuttering or screen-hashing. Just glorious imagery and sound.

- The 24″ screen is plenty tall enough for even the largest HD movies. George Lucas uses the “1080p“-sized digital format when he projects those extra-cost, luxury versions of his Star Wars films (and there is only ONE theater in San Diego County that can project them). The 24″ iMac can easily display the same format, and it still has 120 extra pixels of height (count ‘em) left over!

Here’s a nice screen-shot, to pique your interest. It looks best if you look at it in Safari.  Now, imagine an entire movie, just as crisp and clear in every frame, during every second of the movie.

Starting yesterday, you can even order your 24″ iMac with a 750-gigabyte hard drive. Trust me, you might need it, once high-definition media becomes common. A high-resolution documentary such as Microcosmos takes up 7 gigabytes, and the entire, three-movie, non-extended “1080i” (BIG) version of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy takes up 76 gigabytes!

So… If you don’t have a new iMac, then what other Mac hardware can handle the biggest HD Video?

MacBook Pro’s, Mac Pro’s or possibly G5 towers (with a 23-inch or 30-inch monitor hooked up externally). Nothing else can keep up with the massive flow of data. In a year or so, ALL new Macs will have sufficient graphics horsepower, and the price of flat-panel screens will drop even lower. Pretty soon, we’ll all be luxuriating in High-Definition video!

Welllll, actually, it’s more like version 5.0 by now:

- Version 1.0 was faxed to a handful of people using the very earliest Mac-compatible faxmodem ever offered. I think that it was around 1986. I just wanted to test out the technology for a single, bogus “newsletter”, but then everybody started demanding MORE!

- Version 2.0 was handled by e-mailing people using my AOL address book. Most of my clients were annoyed at the very idea of “e-mail”… It was too newfangled, and didn’t involve paper (Dead Tree Technology)! I spent a lot of time convincing people back then that e-mail was The Coming Thing. Managing the addresses quickly became painful as more and more subscribers piled on, all over the world. Mac users were online at long last, and they were frantic for any kind of online community.

- Version 3.0 was the BIG one (named Mac*Chat, with almost 100,000 readers), using a unix listserv from out of Texas. It grew that big in a year and a half! Then, I trimmed it WAY down and renamed it to TipsFromTony:

- Version 4.0 used the free OneList service, then

- Version 4.1 used eGroups, and then

- Version 4.2 used YahooGroups, as each company consumed the one before it…

So, I’m moving to the next level higher after twenty years of newsletters, and I’m dragging y’all with me!

I’ve decided to use my own mailing system (blessedly free of Yahoo ads) to send out better-looking, interactive e-mails, mostly pointing everybody to a web-page where you can add comments and continue the discussion. I’ve been getting many, many replies in response to my postings, and I haven’t been particularly rigorous about re-posting these golden nuggets of wisdom in the past. Now, I won’t have to manage stuff like that manually any more, and everyone will get the benefit of each others’ generosity and experience.

Frankly, I’m several years overdue… Blogs have seemed sort of wierd and newish compared to the simplicity of sending out an e-mail, but I read a LOT of blogs nowadays, and I certainly have what it takes to keep a popular, well-read site. It’s time for information to flow in both directions.

Honesty compels me to give full credit to my husband Dennis for the design and quality of the website, blog, newsletters, business cards and everything else that you’ll be seeing from now on. We’ve been together 16-1/2 years (and we were married back in 1991). His vast experience as a founding web-editor and designer for the San Diego Zoo’s phenomenal website is all gravy for my business too, as you will see in the years to come.

So, thanks for your patience, and I hope that you stick around!

As time goes by, more and more airlines are providing “Empower” outlets at each seat for travelers who want to avoid draining their laptops’ batteries on ultra-long flights. A stack of DVD’s and some sound-canceling headphones can make those long, long flights a lot more tolerable!

If you have a Powerbook or a white iBook, you can get an airline adapter nice and cheap…

As of today, the final piece of the “Traveling with a MacBook or MacBook Pro Laptop” puzzle has arrived:

Apple’s new “Magsafe Airline Power Adapter” has been annoyingly late in arriving for many of my world-traveling clients. Apple owns the patent on the magnetic power-plug on the newer MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, so there has been a decided lack of cool, third-party power adapters for frequent travelers. These laptops first shipped in FEBRUARY 2006, for goodness’ sake!

Being a new, modern and hyper-powerful computer, the MacBook Pro is a power-greedy device, which is why the 85-watt power adapter that came with it is so big and heavy. The airlines are only providing 75 watts per seat, (as I vaguely recall), so the new adapter will only power the laptop, and will NOT charge the battery as long the laptop is operating.

You’re still better-off than somebody who buys a high-end Windows laptop, though - A few recent Sony Vaio laptops can draw 135 watts!

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By the way - If you order one of these adapters using the link given above, and type “AAO71743″ in the “Enter Agent Code:” area on the final “Verify your order” page, then I’ll get extra Bonus Points from Apple, and you’ll earn my endless gratitude!

I’ve just discovered “Perian“:

No, the name didn’t mean anything to me before this morning, either.
It’s not software, per se, it’s merely something that you drag and
drop into a special folder, once… (It’s a plugin component for
Quicktime). However, it’s now my very favorite new treat for Macs
running OS X 10.4.7 or later. Here’s why:

When you combine it with Flip4Mac (see below), Perian allows you to
play ANY kind of media file that can be downloaded onto your
computer, using Quicktime Player. Best of all, if you have one of
the newer Intel Macs that come with a remote control, then you can
drag those media files into your Movies folder, then hit the remote
control and watch your videos from across the room at full-screen
quality.

Perian covers everything that you need except for Window Media.
Luckily, there is a free component called Flip4Mac that allows you to cover THAT stuff, too.

Microsoft gave up on supporting the Mac for WMV and WMA files, so
this is a nice add-on that makes them all double-click friendly.

These people who forward jokes - ARGH!!@!

I’m MERCILESS with people that do that. I say:

“Thank you for expressing love to me by sending me jokes and other
thoughtful items via e-mail. I clearly perceive PLENTY of love
coming through. Now, I’ve reached the point where I simply can’t
handle any more jokes/recipes/political alerts/puppy & kitty pics
from anybody at all, no matter how much I enjoy them. Please remove
me from your e-mail lists, with no hard feelings at all, because I
truly understand how much you care for me!”

Works every time, especially if I keep sending the exact same thing,
over and over.