eldamar

Why i switched back

Samuel Tilly — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:45:12 +0000

I recently sold my mac, i really liked that computer allot but there is a couple of major reasons why i decided to sell my MacBook-Pro 17 inch computer and switch back to a linux system, let me elaborate:

Money: The main reason why i switched over back to PC is that i simple needed the money. I sold my Mac while i still could get something out of it.
Workflow: The screenon the mac was a great big 17inch screen with 1920×1020 resolution so the work area in it self was great. Tho i really miss the simple solution of having multiple workspaces, something that Mac OSX can do but it does it really ugly and sluggish in comparison.
Love for Linux: I really missed using linux and i missed being in control of my operating system. This is a feeling and freedom that i simply can’t get with windows or mac.

Why did i switch to a Mac in the first place

I made the switch for Mac because i needed a better computer (my laptop was just not good enough), i was really tired of the poor service from HP for my Pavillion laptop and the small screen-resolution was really not helping when i needed to work in design environments like Photoshop and Illustrator. The second reason was that i thought i was going to need this computer for work, i was studying to work with advertising and web development in a more graphical way, and the way of the business is to use Mac and so i was desperate to learn how to use it for one of my internship.

What I’ve learned from using Mac

I have really learned allot from my time as a Mac user, the main thing would be that i learned the value of a good system and brilliant thinking when it comes to design, Mac is and will probably be for a long time in the front-line when it comes to designing both beautiful hardware and user-friendly software. It took a while for me to see this after coming from a Windows user, things made sense for me there because i was used to how it worked but after getting acquainted with the OS X environment i could see that the way i was using my computer back in the windows days didn’t really make any sense, the interface is ugly and not at all user-friendly. Take a good look at how you manage your user settings in Windows, allot of separated software plays a part here, boxes that you need to check that didn’t really belong where it was etc (this is something that most Linux systems really need to have to approve on as well).

Back to hardware, why is it that most PC-manufacturers make this really ugly computers, whats with the plastic “gaming computers” for example, and what about the annoying stickers everywhere!? I know it’s an “nvidia inside” and i know it came with Windows originally, i really don’t want to show that of. The most annoying sticker of them all is the windows license sticker, why would i want to show of my license key on a bloated and ugly sticker that completely destroys the design of my hardware.

Actionscript development on Mac

Samuel Tilly — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:10:56 +0000

I’m planing on starting up some small game projects in Flash using either actionscript or haxe with all open source softwares, just to look at the possibilities of doing interactive flash things using this tools. It looks to be a bunch of different ways of compiling and making this possible but i have a hard time getting going because i can’t seem to find a good IDE to start development in. I currently use Eclipse with Flex plugin for work but is very unpleased with this solution and since this Flex plugin is a commercial product it’s not really what I’m looking for.

The closest thing Ive come across for mac is using MacVim with plugins, i have been trying all kinds of syntax plugins, omni-completion plugins (no auto-completion plugin available) but nothing seems to work, the syntax plugins Ive tried gets weird results in most of the files Ive loaded, omni-completion is just not working no matter how many times i press CTRL-X or CMD-X. MacVim looks really nice but it also looks like it would be a lot of hard work just getting to know the editor.

I have known about FlexBean for NetBeans witch is my IDE of choice, there is also nbflex and flex-bean but development for all of this projects seem to have halted.

Does anyone out there know of a good IDE for developing actionscript on mac? what are people using?

MilkyTracker

Samuel Tilly — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:21:34 +0000

There is just something about me that makes me so happy every time i find something extremely nerdy that i can tinker around with, and today i was looking for an easy way to make music the chiptune way and i came across MilkyTracker, i cant say that its easy to understand everything that is happening on the tiny screen, but it feels like it can be something one could learn in a couple of days with enough time on ones hands.

Streaming content from Mac to Xbox360

Samuel Tilly — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:48:31 +0000

This weekend i was having trouble finding out a good and easy way to stream video from my mac computer to my xbox360, i needed to do this because xbox360 for some reason wont accept the HFS partition on my external drive because i made the partition inside Mac OS using DiskUtility, so i figured why not try to go back to streaming content the way i used to do in the past.

The trouble then was to find a good software that would alow streaming, i first tried to use XBMC which has a build in UPnP server, but the Xbox360 wont recognize and list that one for some weird reason. Then i remember that i used to have a small software called uShare on my old linux system, and i looked it up and it turns out that there is a port available for this software using DarwinPorts. I decided to give it a try and the installation was pritty much straightforward.

After you have installed DarwinPorts to your system you just run the following command:

sudo port install ushare

and after that you get a sample config in /opt/local/etc/ushare.conf.sample so just make a copy from this to the same directory with the name ushare.conf:

sudo cp /opt/local/etc/ushare.conf.sample /opt/local/etc/ushare.conf

now we need to edit some things inside this config file, i personaly like using nano for editing. for this you need first to install nano..

sudo port install nano

sudo nano /opt/local/etc/ushare.conf

The config is kind of self explanatory, but when it comes to setting up which the network interface you need to write en0 or en1 instead of eth1,eth0 just run the command:

ifconfig

and you can see what interface you are going to run, on my MacBook Pro i use en1 because that is the wireless connection. In the bottom of the config you will find a line that sais ENABLE_XBOX=, this should be set to yes obviously but also this needs to be changed to USHARE_ENABLE_XBOX=yes.

If you don’t know which path to enter this is how you add your default Movies directory on the mac:

USHARE_DIR=/Users/username/Movies

The “Stop Trying Ritual”

Samuel Tilly — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:45:36 +0000

David Sherwin posted a great ritual on how to get past a creativity block wich he calls “Stop Trying Ritual”, basicly it’s about not trying to hard and just relax for a moment, David is a Art Director at Worktank Brand Storytellers. Read about the ritual here.

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. – Linus Pauling

So that next time you find yourself in the position of a creativity block maby you should try the “Stop Trying Ritual”.

Twitter

Samuel Tilly — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:42:12 +0000

Twitter seems to be the main thing right now and most people doesn’t seem to know why, maybe it’s just because people are attracted to the whole online celebrity thing that has happen to many blogers but just to lacy to write relevant post and therefore try their luck at writing 140 character posts every 10 minutes. I personaly like to keep updated with Boxee news the twitterway but that’s also as far as it goes for me.

The Behemoth Teams Latest Creation

Samuel Tilly — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:36:32 +0000

The Behemoth is showing of a very early version of an upcoming game, it looks really cute but we will have to wait until 2010 for a release.

We learn: It’s a platformer, it’s very multiplayer-orientated (as if you couldn’t have guessed that Behemoth would make a multiplayer game) and it’s to be released 2010. Sometime. From what it looks like, it would appear that there are both multiplayer co-op and versus modes bundled in there to enjoy. Let’s hope we’ll be getting some online action on the go come next year!

The Behemoth – Game #3 Trailer from The Behemoth on Vimeo.

HP Pavilion dv9740eo Windows XP

Samuel Tilly — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 17:22:18 +0000

I have just “downgraded” vista to xp because of some weird memory problem and overall annoyance with that OS. Last time i had trouble installing graphic drivers and audio drivers. This time the graphic drivers was quickly solved by using the drivers from driverpacks.net but audio was still a very annoying problem to solve. But i solved it at last, this is how i did it…

First i downloaded ConexantHDAudio 221_XP.zip from here.

Then i needed to check out some information from the unknown audio device in device manager. So start Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager, select the unknown device, right click and choose properties then go to the detail tab, now there should be a line looking something like this:

HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5051&SUBSYS_103C30CF&REV_1000\4&183BC4AF&0&0001

We need the SUBSYS information, in this case “103C30CF”. Remember this for later…

Now extract the zip file and open up the WiSVHe5.inf file in here we will find a row that looks like this:

[Conexant]
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Hermosa5051.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5051&SUBSYS_103C30CD
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Hermosa5051.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5051&SUBSYS_103C30D6

And after the last row we need to add a new row and use the “103C30CF” from earlier, so it will look like this:

[Conexant]
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Hermosa5051.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5051&SUBSYS_103C30CD
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Hermosa5051.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5051&SUBSYS_103C30D6
%HdAudioFunctionDriver.Hermosa5051.DeviceDesc% = HdAudModel,HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_5051&SUBSYS_103C30CF

Now i could run the setup.exe and the driver started working.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Samuel Tilly — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:30:27 +0000

So Valentine’s Day is coming up rappidly and i sure know what i will give my girlfriend this year.

A new design for the site

Samuel Tilly — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:50:36 +0000

I have been quite busy lately and therefore haven’t had the opportunity to really update this blog, i have had several things that i felt like writing about but just never got to. Instead I’m challenging myself again with trying to make a better site out of this by making a new design. My inspiration have been various pages, some like Vimeo and Twitter and some not that known like sIFRvault and Power to the poster. This is the Photoshop sketches I’ve got so far:

Pointers and comments are highly welcome!

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5 Stunning New Sites To Waste Some Time On (revenueherald.com)