The MacValley blog
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The MacValley blog Editor: Tom Briant
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Monday, February 14, 2011
Tom's opinion on the introduction of the HP touchpad
February 9th, Hewlett-Packard came out with its answer to the iPad, the TouchPad and its operating system, WebOS. It looks impressive, but the presentation and ancillary marketing materials -like the e-mail I got on an old e-mail address-leave several questions to be answered.
Great! When it’s coming out? Later this summer. That leaves a lot of wriggle room.
What will it cost me? The retail price has yet to be determined.
Where can I buy one? Again, no answer. HP markets its desktops and laptops all over the place, so I would presume they would try to get some saturation on this product.
Since it’s primarily wireless, who will serve as your wireless partner? Again, no answer. Is the TouchPad in play for the best deal from the competing wireless carriers?
Also, by the time this comes out, Motorola should have its Xoom tablet out. Apple, of course, should have the second version of the iPad out.
I’m of the opinion that many potential customers will not wait for HP to get its act together and will buy a competing product they can physically touch in the store. Such as the new and improved iPad 2
A Few Words on Adding an External Monitor
I have found that adding a second monitor to my Mac to expand my desktop is one of the best investments I can make. For $160 to $180 you can buy a 23” monitor with a screen size of 1920 x 1080 pixels, big enough for full-size HD movies. If you look around on a Saturday morning, you can find an old CRT monitor that someone doesn’t want any more.
Using the Apple adaptors, you can hook them up to the second video port on your Mac. You can get these adaptors at the Apple Store in the mall or on-line.
If you don’t have the most current Mac, I’d ask at the Genius Bar if they have the video adaptor for your model of Mac available. I looked on-line and Apple sells a wide range of video adaptors.
Anyway, once you have the adaptor, you need the monitor and the applicable video cable. VGA in the case of an old CRT monitor, DVI in the case of a new LCD monitor.
You Do Not Need to run the monitor at the same resolution as your Mac’s primary display. For example, my 13” MacBook runs at 1280 by 800 pixels. I’ve attached a 14” Hyundai monitor I found in the laundry room of my condo complex and run it at 1024 x 768. I now run the new LCD monitor at 1920 x 1080.
You Do Not Need to install a video driver for this to work. Unlike most Windows computers, which only come with one video output, the Mac has featured a second video output since at least my first iMac, a G3 all-in-one. True, the video output was only good for mirroring my computer’s main screen and not extending the desktop. It provided me with a convenient way to add a projector.
To make adjustments to the video, go to the Displays preference pane in System Preferences. In the lower left-hand corner, you will see a check box for Show Displays in Menu Bar. Check that off and you’ll see an icon that resembles a flat-panel display up in your menu bar of your primary display. Click on this and a menu will drop down, displaying all the monitors attached to your Mac. You will see the resolutions you can select for each one.
By default, the displays will extend the desktop area. You use the Displays preference pane to adjust the displays. Do you want them arranged horizontally or vertically? Do you want the secondary display on the left or right of the primary display? Adjust them to your pleasure with the Displays preference pane.
Have fun. More in the March Voice, including how to use an external computer as a secondary display.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Successful installation of forked-daapd, an iTunes music server for Linux
Forked-daapd as found in the Ubuntu 15.10 repositories works great. It keeps running and running. I'm using Kubuntu 15.10, the KDE variant on the Ubuntu theme.
If you found this article and wondered how to do the tricks with ssh on a Windows machine; well, you want Putty, an ssh client for Windows. You can find out about it here and download it, too.
So enjoy using forked-daapd. Please leave a comment if you found it useful.
Tom Briant
Editor, MacValley Blog
Note: This is a draft of an upcoming article in the MacValley Voice.
Build an OS X Friendly Linux Media Server From Your Old PC" It is accessible here.
- Add “deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian squeeze main” to your /etc/apt/sources.list
- 2. Run “sudo apt-get update”, which will recognise the new repository
- 3. run “sudo apt-get install forked-daapd” which will install it and anything else it needs
- 4. If the forked-daapd failed to start up with the error “main: libgcrypt version mismatch” then run“sudo apt-get install libgcrypt11สบ″ which will install an updated version of libgcrypt11
- 5. Edit /etc/forked-daapd.conf with your settings
- 6. run “/etc/init.d/forked-daapd start”
- 7. If everything has worked correctly, remove the additional line from /etc/apt/sources.list and run “sudo apt-get update” again.