Ed's Big Plans

Firefox Eats Cara's TV

Way back at the beginning of this month, I sent away to Apple to order a DVI-I to S-Video / RCA connector. The total cost was $35 after shipping and tax, so it was well worth it as now I’ve gotten yet more value out of the Mac Mini.

The circa 1980′s television set can now play all of the media that is on the network, on the internet or on whatever other storage you can plug into Zinc, the Mac Mini.

DVI-I to S-Video and RCA

Technical Stuff about DVI Connectors

When looking for a DVI to RCA video connector, the wrong thing to do is to go to a big computer shop. These places will turn you away and tell you the part doesn’t exist. Heck, even the hobby shops failed to provide it or give any useful information. And you know– they’re half right. There’s no such thing as a DVI-D to RCA connector, because the former is a digital signal, and the latter is an analogue signal. The DVI-I is port is offers a combined digital and analogue signal, that’s how it can be converted out to such a large variety of display devices. It’s one of the selling points that Apple discusses about its laptops and other machines.

Buy it or not…

If you purchased a computer with a DVI-D output, you won’t be able to use Apple’s connector– so don’t try, you’ll waste your money and be frustrated– however, if you have a machine with DVI-I output, then this thing will work for you too even though big and small shops alike will tell you the connector doesn’t exist.

Simply Charming

I also got two charming flotation device / pillow / toys packaged with the connector!

Conclusion: I’m happy

Zinc grows an eyeball.

So, before Cara and I left home yesterday, I decided on a whim to quickly attach an ancient webcam to Zinc to use as an ad hoc surveillance device — well ok, it’s mostly for fun. This webcam was actually purchased and used with Bronze (my very first laptop), so the refresh rate, white balance and optical zoom are all from circa 2004.

Here, Zinc’s eyeball has been mounted with macam and works like a charm. The frame rate is inexcusably horrendous– but over a VNC connection, I seriously don’t care.

Eventually, Zinc will use macam’s quicktime application component to automatically shoot a photo once every x minutes, and send an e-mail to me if there is significant optical difference between the two images. In a stagnant room– this is not very challenging technically.

Giving Zinc an eyeball has granted us more peace of mind whenever we decide to travel– thus improving again the value of the mac mini… wait till you see what I’ve got planned next…

Brief: Wow… that was fast– in the wp-admin control panel of WordPress, a banner will appear to indicate whenever new version is available. One simply follows the links and may either download and install the package manually or click a single automatic upgrade button– a receipt is output to indicate the success (or failure) of the upgrade.

Now to upgrade my phpBB installation!

Update: Just updated phpBB– it’s a bit more convoluted, I bet the developers will eventually incorporate an automagic system like WordPress soon.

Brief: I just registered http://eddiema.ca — I’m using a domain redirecting approach first, where the domain is automagically transformed into tin.blogdns.com in visitors’ browsers– I’ll definitely want to try using the custom nameserver approach to let my site content and addresses actually hang off of eddiema.ca later.

Zinc on a Shelf

Zinc the Mac Mini has arrived! I’ve set it up as the new webserver currently spewing forth this website. Migration and setup was incredibly easy with MAMP– copying the application folder implied moving the application plus Apache settings and SQL database. Copying the Sites folder from one machine to another was a breeze too. Of course I’ll need to upgrade the software in the backend some time in the future, but I’m very happy with how fast it was this time around. It implies very little downtime to be expected should another migration be needed within the same LAN.

Zinc also offers an additional two cores in case I need to offload experiments. I’ve read various reports about Mac Minis overheating or not– so I’ll keep an eye on the thing until I know for sure. It runs very silently next to the router right now. Headless functionality is exactly as I would have hoped and imagined.

So– anyone wanting to do any webhosting, a nice small box next to the router gets my vote.

(A brief how-to entry on this was added to my wiki.)

I’ve decided that this WordPress blog will now be the frontend of my site– removing the need for a splash page and thus making everything else the buttend. This seems to have been a productive move so far, but I’ll probably want to re-organize my links to make the transition clearer.

This move presented minor technical challenges– actually, it was very smooth since I’m moving within the same virtual host and same domain name. Two settings must be altered within wordpress administration though in general when performing this kind of move. First, the URL of the wordpress installation must be changed to reflect the new address (found under Settings/General). Second, the URL of media uploads must be changed too so that pictures and other linked items start working again (found under Settings/Miscellaneous).

And that’s all!