September 15, 2009
I’ve had Hulu Desktop on my machine probably since it came out a while back but never really used it. They haven’t really figured out a good way to navigate around all the content they have. It is designed to be able to be used with just a remote, but you quickly get lost in layer and layer of menus.
So why did I try it out tonight?
I have my MacBook hooked up to a 20″ LCD. It sits on my desk, closed unless I take it for a trip. I decided tonight that I wanted to watch Hulu on the MacBook screen while I do stuff on the LCD. It kind of works but the Hulu video is always so small. I attempted to put it in full screen on the MacBook. It works if you have no desire to do anything else with the computer. As soon as I click anything on the monitor it jumps out of full screen mode. With dual monitor setups becoming more and more common I can’t believe this simple feature hasn’t been figured out.
I remembered having Hulu Desktop around and figured I’d give it a shot. It doesn’t solve the full screen issue but comes pretty close. The video fits to the window and you can resize the window. So I have the window maximized, which is 95% as good as full screen. It also solves some of my other issues with Hulu, such as always having to select 480p and it shows the buffer without having to pause.
Now that I’m aware of this I think Hulu Desktop will be how I Hulu. I just haven’t found how to get embed code from inside the application. After using it, hopefully I’ll get used to the interface and see what the designers were going for.
Update: Actually fullscreen does work for Hulu Desktop. I just had to find it.
March 21, 2008
I keep telling myself to do this daily, but I get sidetracked. Here is a sampling of the links I shared with my friends this week. These are the ones that made the cut and aren’t dumb after looking at them again.
The Condiment Pistol. Now if they can figure out how to get ketchup and mustard into the same gun. Perhaps a double-barreled shotgun?
My new favorite dinosaur name: Duckbilled Edmontosaurus.
Finally I won’t have to listen to everyone demanding that BattleBots come back.
Life Clock. Cool, interesting, or morbid?
Not sure how the Secret Public Journal will turn into a sitcom, I’ll watch though.
Colbert is coming to Philly. I got burned by the fact that I DVR it and watch it after work the next day. By the time I saw this, tickets were gone.
Do we want the largest building in the hemisphere to be in Philly? I guess we never want to win a championship.
Kenny Maine is writing a book? It will be kindling. Not because it will be bad, I will probably get it and enjoy it, but its going to be so try the sun will set it on fire.
The Dodgers are leaving Dodgertown. So sad, it really makes no sense. Orioletown doesn’t sound nearly as good. Lasorda said, “We’re going to leave, but we’re not leaving our memories.” Something about the wording of that quote bothers me. Sounds to me like ‘we’re leaving and we’re taking our memories with us’.
Is independent study a major at Michigan?
Service Pack 1 was released for Vista. Usually things start looking up after the first Service Pack. Who knows with Vista, everyone hates it so much and most of them haven’t even tried it.
The Adam Carolla Show
Teresa tells what Adam says is his favorite story. Part 1 Part 2
Who the F sells this S? (My favorite segment) Part 1 Part 2
These are a little old, but in the off chance you missed them …
March 21, 2008
Just saw this command to enable single window mode in Safari. No more of those annoying new windows!
You just need to enter this in Terminal: defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true
This needs to be a preference within Safari. A command like this will work for me, but anyone else I tell likely won’t even know what Terminal is.
March 20, 2008
I turned on my printer the other night and was greeted with a message saying that a few of my ink cartridges had expired and using expired ink voids your warranty. I bought my printer in Jan 06. It was the HP Photosmart 3310. I went with that model because I wanted an All-in-One with wireless networking built in. I’ve been pleased with the purchase. It taught me that Apple has not quite figured out printers in OS X (Leopard appears a little better). When I got it, it took a few emails with tech support before getting it to work. The wireless networking has been great, I don’t have to worry where to put the printer. Now it isn’t used all that much. How much does one really need to print? I’ve replaced 3 of the original ink cartridges, there might be 6 different ones in there. The originals are the ones complaining that they are expired. Its surprising that these originals are still around since the ones that come in the box have about a third of the ink that the replacements have. The expired ones are getting a little low. I’ll be ordering new ones shortly, but I’m waiting until they run out. I’ll take my chances with the expired ink.
What do you suppose happens after the ink expires? Do the colors come out wrong? Does the ink solidify and not come out? Does the printer start to smell?
March 18, 2008
Apple released Safari 3.1 today for Mac and Windows. For a while now I’ve been using Camino as my main browser. Firefox was a little buggy for me and there are a few things in Safari that bother me enough to not use it all the time. I have been paying close attention to Safari development. They have been talking up these speed enhancements and support of a lot of new standards.
Reasons I haven’t used Safari:
Double-click on the tab bar does not open a new tab. This now works in 3.1! It may sound like a small nuisance but it really drove me nuts. I’ve become so used to it in my other browsers. Now that this is fixed it brings me a lot closer to using Safari.
Open In Tabs – I keep most of my tabs on the Bookmarks Bar. I have a bunch of folders and even subfolders inside of those. When I click Open in Tabs it opens all the bookmarks at that level but also all the bookmarks in the subfolders. This is not how Firefox got me used to the Open in Tabs functionality. I like having the level of organization and still open a bunch of pages at once, I just want them to be the pages in that folder. Apparently it was changed to this behavior in Safari 1.3, here is the Apple Doc.
New windows are created instead of tabs. Please just give me the option to go all in on tabs.
After opening a folder in Bookmarks Bar hovering over a different folder does not open it. Too crazy? I’ve gotten used to this not working because Camino doesn’t do it. Firefox does. It really took me a while to get used to. It’d be nice to have, but I can live without it.
WordPress support. Usually Safari would screw up any post I tried to make in WordPress. This is the first one I’m trying with 3.1. (Update: It still removes all line-breaks. Not sure whose fault this is, I guess we’ll find out when WordPress 2.5 comes out soon.)
I am very happy with the double-click for new tab functionality but without fixing the Open in Tabs I can’t use Safari all the time. I know there are some add-ons, so if anyone knows of one that will support this please let me know. I’m not thrilled about that, but I’d give it a shot. The WebKit engine behind the scenes is great, I’d just like to be able to use it without going crazy.
I have similar nitpicks with iChat which have led me to avoid using that as well. I’ll cover that later.
October 21, 2007
I don’t know what took so long to think of this. Bandwagon Jumping really didn’t work for what I was going for. I’ve had Lists for years, so it makes perfect sense. There are many lists. When someone crosses me, they are threatened with being put on The List. But there can be good lists as well. You can have a list for just about anything. For now, we’ll keep it simple: Good and Bad.
Good
MAC OS X Leopard
This will be my first new OS release since being a Mac user. I’ve been excited for OS releases before. Windows 95 and XP being the most notable. The release of Leopard is a little different. An OS is a big change and its not something you want to screw up. So I try to wait until its out for a little while to make sure every computer it touches isn’t bursting into flames. Apple is doing such an amazing job marketing this thing that I’m strongly considering pre-ordering. The biggest hurdle is how ridiculous it is to pre-order an OS. Video games, movies, DVDs, sure. But not software and especially not an OS. I think I’m going to wait a few days. I’m not going to be around for the weekend of the release. When I get back on Sunday or Monday I’ll read up and what people have been going through. If everything seems to be going alright then I’ll swing by the Apple Store one day.
Apple Keyboard
While we’re on the subject of Apple … I decided to order the new Apple Keyboard a few weeks ago and I’m loving the purchase. I previously had the old Apple Keyboard with Bluetooth. The Bluetooth was beginning to act strange, telling me my batteries were dead when I had just charged them. Instead of going through all the trouble of figuring out what was wrong I just ordered the new one, which had just been released. I had gone to the Apple Store and played around with one right after they came out and really liked the feel. The keys are more like a laptop keyboard. It took a little while to get completely used to but now I love it. The only way I’d improve it would be to have some sort of indication on the function keys so I can find them without looking. I went with the wired version because the wireless one doesn’t have a numeric keypad.
Bad
Football Announcers
This week Andre Ware and Brian Baldinger were the color analysts for my college and NFL games this week. If you just listened to Ware you’d be shocked to learn that PSU is a good team and won the game. He spent the entire game talking up Hardy, the Indiana WR. It was so bad a friend of mine had to call and vent about how horrible it was. Baldinger was his usual self. Actually, while Baldy really bothered me during today’s Eagles game, thinking again about Ware makes Baldy look great. One note on Baldy, I think he has positioned himself perfectly to step in for Madden when the time comes. They both have a similar style and even sound a little alike, if you can imagine what Madden might have sounded like 30 years ago. Take a listen next game.