DVD copy

While I still have to finish my HOW-TO on duplicating DVDs (hmm), this product struck my attention: Fast DVD Copy.

An all-in-one-one-click commercial app that duplicates your personal DVDs - and commercial ones for that matter - switched them to region free (and presumably disables Macrovision).

For USD 99, version 2 allows you to select the bonus you want - or don't want for that matter. The previous version duplicated the lot, limiting to a maximum of 97 minutes the movies it could copy. Apparently, this has been addressed in the latest version.

Beware of the licensing scheme - install it on the computer that will be used to duplicate:

Your license is valid for one computer only. If you want to install Fast DVD Copy on a second Mac, you need to buy a second license.In addition, your Fast DVD Copy license is computer-specific. Your serial number will only work on the Mac that you licensed it for.

HFS+ Fragmentation

Remember the days when we use to defrag our disks with Norton SpeedDisk? When was the last time you defragged under Mac OS X? No need to thanks to Mac OS X built-in measures against fragmentation?

Learn more about the topic by reading Amit Singh's "Fragmentation on HFS+ Volumes" on kernelthread.com.

Defragmentation on HFS+ volumes should not be necessary at all, or worthwhile, in most cases because the system seems to do a very good job of avoiding/countering fragmentation.

It is risky to defragment anyway: What if there's a power glitch? What if the system crashes? What if the defragmenting tool has a bug? What if you inadvertently reboot? In some cases, you could make the situation worse by defragmenting.

Mail.app Junk Mail Filter

O'Reilly's part two gives interesting information on what Junk Mail Filter is, and isn't. A good read for anyone using Mail.app

The Fight Against Spam, Part 2

Interestingly enough, the technology that underlies the Junk Mail filter began its life as an information retrieval system, developed in the Apple labs to help users who managed thousands or millions of large documents find the one they were looking for easily. In order to do that, this technology had to allow users to perform a search by topic.

iChat TV

Simon Thornton presents an interesting idea on his weblog ("a mutual misunderstanding"): connect a DV input device to your Mac and make iChat believe it's a firewire cam ..

Sending Live Television Via iChat

In other, shorter, easier, words: you can use your converter box to stream live video from something - oooh, let's just say your Sky Digibox for example - to someone else using iChat anywhere else in the world. If you happened to have one of the outputs of your Sky box (it has two) connected up to the inputs of your converter box, you might see how this could work.

iSight power drain

There really is a power drain problem with Apple's superb iSight camera.

I switched to a larger external firewire drive earlier this year, and after my loyal 6Gb VST (SmartDisk now), 20Gb iPod (G2), 20Gb LaCie 'DataBank', I'm walking around with a 40Gb LaCie 'by F.A. Porsche' .

I use it mainly for synchronising my e-mail, bookmarks, preferences, and current work between my desktop and PowerBook, so the amount of data that is transferred each time is now tremendous as I sync twice a day. Nevertheless, I've been copying large files (7Gb+) recently which all caused my desktop Mac to lockup. It wasn't a crash per se, but a number of warnings and errors started to appear in the system logs which lead to the freeze of the GUI with a kernel load of 99.9%. This situation occurred each time I tried to copy those large files, or loads of small ones (20'000+).

My first thought was to incriminate the system, as the external drive worked fine on my other desktop Mac and PowerBook. I explored all sorts of solutions, ending up by a complete OS reinstall. But to no avail - the problem didn't disappear - until I realised that my iSight and the LaCie drive were both plugged into the motherboard Firewire connectors - which was the only difference between that Mac and the two others.

Unplugging the drive during a freeze resolved the problem. The load drops, the system generates an error, but you regain control of your Mac. Apparently, the iSight drains power on both ports, leaving the second one underpowered.

At least for the 'F.A. Porsche' LaCie. I never had that problem with the 'DataBank' (which only offers one firewire connector, against two for the 'F.A. Porsche' - which was what decided me for the model over the 40Gb 'DataBank'.

This problem is evoked on Apple Discussions in various threads. I should have known.

So, I sorted that mess out by adding a Belkin Firewire PCI card to my desktop Mac. Everyone is happy. Everyone is powered.