This past week has truly been one of magic here at the palladium. The trees are budding, the birds are chirping, the mosquitoes biting and, to top it all off, a brand new program has escaped from the lab.
If you too have chance to leave your bat cave this spring, remember: green is just the forest's natural color and the scent that flowers (those colorful leafy things) give off is "good".
otojin · 05-08-07
Magic packets
otojin · 05-04-07
Nudge 0.1: Awakening
Would you like to be able to wake your computer remotely without throwing a projectile at its keyboard?
No? Oh... nevermind then.
otojin · 05-02-07
hTV 0.2: Launch!
Today at 8pm ESPDST (Eastern Standard Premature Daylight Savings Time), version 0.2 of the hTV low-Earth orbiting vehicle was catapulted into the stratosphere via rubber slingshot. The newly christened hTV will provide video monitoring services to Earth inhabitants running the Mac OS X operating system, version 10.2 or higher. Users can download client software from panuru.net.
An iSight or DV camera is needed to make full use of the software's video monitoring features, as no signals or anything else for that matter are transmitted via the orbiting vehicle. When asked about the vehicle's actual utility, Anton Medved, emigre and panuru.net spokesperson merely answered, with a twinkle in his eye, "It's shiny and cool looking, k?" Panuru Labs' coordinator, a nocturnal subterranean being known to anxious local villagers only as "otojin", could not be reached for comment.
This isn't the old HTV that was sealed away all those months ago, this is a totally new hTV. Note the lowercase "h". Gripes, bugs, feature requests, and, of course, ecstatic praise can be forwarded to panuru.
otojin · 03-18-07
Flurry of updates
otojin · 11-18-06
Making the best of a bad situation or: killing ibooks for fun and profit
Just thought I'd share this example of how not to fix an ibook. This particular specimen (a G3 icebook) fell victim to the dreaded scourge of a failed backlight.
I identified the faulty cable with the help of a multimeter, then stripped the wire a bit on either side of the hinge and bridged the two points with a tie (one of those metal wire and plastic things you use for cables, bread loaves, and garbage bags).
Victoire!
Sort of... When everything was back together the display worked fine, but the airport reception was toast. The story ends happily, though, with a new cable set (installed very carefully at the hinge), a working display, and the ability to sense wifi networks a hundred feet away restored. Ordet assures me he has another 4+ years left in him.
A few words of advice for anyone thinking of repairing their old ibook:
1) If you can stand the trauma, seriously consider partitioning and selling it for parts. An original airport card alone will get you 10% of the price of a new ibook (bigger percent of a used or refurb) that has builtin airport extreme and much better everything else as well.
2) If you do go in, have a map.
3) Keep cool
4) Use an ice tray or something similar to organize screws and make a sketch of the particularly horrific upper shield so you can tape screws to their exact position.
5) Remember to disconnect the power after you're done testing something (open case) and are about to dive back in (sparks will fly... and only that if you're lucky).
While disassembly can be a fun recreational pastime for someone with dull survival instincts, it takes a while to get used to. I definitely wouldn't recommend the ibook as a first machine. If you have any doubts or desperately need the machine or some data that's on it, take it to the professionals.
Finally, I didn't foresee HTV ever making itself so useful, but I was able to use it to monitor the ibook's video output after the backlight died. Very convenient if you have a spare all-in-one Mac and dv cam, but no spare monitor.
Dismal resolution, but it gets the job done. There are options in display settings to overscan and spruce things up a bit for video (they only show up when the AV cable's plugged in).
otojin · 03-06-06
HTV 0.1: release
Finally, from the depths of our cavernous subterranean bunkers where paranoid gnomes tool away on their bastard frankencode creations, it emerges: the first scrap of code to open its atrophied eyes and behold the warm glow of sunlight.
Apologies for the buildup... HTV v0.1 is merely HackTV further hacked to include fullscreen monitoring. For those unfamiliar with HackTV, it monitors quicktime video streams. With a Canon ZR and some ingenuity, it can be used for PVR-like functions.
Of course, we may have a Mac mini-based PVR within a week that will render this even more of a relic. Enjoy!
