Tommy Peters' Bicycles

Someone asked me if I knew how to take screenshot on a Windows PC without an external application. Being a Mac user, I was baffled but I knew it was somewhere in there. I applied the following steps which involved Paint, although not regarded as ‘external’ but rather a ‘bundled’ Windows application. First I opened a screen and pushed Prnt Scn/SysRq. This action takes the shot of the screen and stores it in RAM but without a click or some sort of confirmation, you wonder if the picture was indeed taken. Then I pushed Start, Programs and Accessories. In Accessories I pushed Paint. In Paint, I pushed Edit and then Paste and the picture showed up. Then I pushed File and Save but I was not done yet. I picked Desktop to save the image, named the picture accordingly and for ‘type’ I tossed between jpg and png. I chose png then pushed Save and I was done. The image showed up on desktop. To take a screenshot on a Mac , I held Command - Shift and pushed 3 and the png image ...

MacMini with the VGA connection The iMac 24" I have an iMac, a MacBook Pro and a Mac Mini. The Mini is wired to a 1080p HDTV with a DVI to HDMI adaptor. I have a fair bit of movies in iTunes and a small mix of Hand-Braked original content. Also in the mix are pirated High Definition BluRay media, which I view separately with QuickTime, VLC, DViX or RealPlayer. One BlueRay content on the iMac is KungFu Panda which I downloaded illegaly from The Pirate Bay (as the name would suggest) and being an .avi format, the P2P torrent named Kung.Fu.Panda.(2008).BluRay.XViD-LaR took days to build. Panda plays fine on the iMac and MacBook Pro but on the Mini, the video shows up on the 1080p but with no audio. Now, why is that? Why is audio missing! Some research brought up a commentary by media consultant Christian Zibreg on HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), an Intel protocol viewed as the movie industry’s...

To scale: USB and MINI DisplayPort DVI to HDMI adaptor DESKSTANDZ for MacBook Pro HDMI to HDMI adaptor MINI DisplayPORT to DVI adaptor MINI DVI Many are fuming. It has been 4 months since the introduction of Apple’s Mini DisplayPort (‘MDP’) and no manufacturer (at least until mid-February 2009) let alone Apple, announced the advent of a MDP to HDMI adapter. Although Apple introduced MDP to DVI and the DVI to HDMI adaptors, it has been strangely silent about the MDP to HDMI adaptor that, as many believe, would enable Unibody MacBook users to enjoy HD content over 1080p HDTVs. In a Home Theatre, a MacBook Pro in clamshell mode sitting upright on a Deskstandz must be the coolest thing. On February 11th 2009, Monoprice.com, an IT accessory wholesaler, announced they are ready to ship the MDP to HDMI adapto...

A brief description of my home Bravia /5.1 AV Receiver setup is appended. This may be elementary to most but it took me a while to figure it out, in particular, routing the 5.1 to the Mac and the optical settings on the PS3. Astro . On the back of the LCD, the Red White Yellow RCAs route to the Astro decoder. Video and audio (on the LCD) are settled with this arrangement. DVD . The black Giraffe HDMI > HDMI cable routes to the AV Receiver that incorporates a HD DVD player. The Giraffe not only settles video and sound for DVD but enables what is called ‘Bravia Sync’. This feature enables Astro or any unit connected to the LCD to sound on the 5.1 arrangement and controlled with a single remote. The ‘sync’ feature also embraces iPods and the iPhone through the nifty little ‘DMPORT’ which I will explain in another post. MacMini . The Xtreme Mac HDMI > DVI cable plugs into the MacMini. For the Mac to sound on the LCD, the green 1.8 > 1.8 mini stereo cable plugs into the ...

Screenshot of the iMac 24 Screenshot of the MacMini My MacMini was previously attached to a LCD Hitachi that was able to scale 480i up to 1080i. The Mini automatically set the display preference at 1024 x 576 @ 50 hertz (NTSC). The set-up was pretty straight-forward. (‘i’ stands for ‘interlaced scanning’ or commonly known as ‘HD Ready’). Last week I had issues trying to configure the Mini to a Full HD Sony that was able to scale 720p up to 1080p (‘p’ stands for progressive scanning). Enter a no-frills program called SwitchResX Control by Madrau. I downloaded Version 3.8.5 as a torrent and built it up with Transmission. Placed the un-registered program in the dock and launched it upon the over-scanned display. Without fanfare the preference pane displayed as 1360 x 768 @ 60 hertz (NTSC) and the screen set itself up automatically. Given the limits of the Mini's graphics card, the resoluti...

He would agree with the ‘principle of damage’ devised by a 19 th century philosopher, who argued that no person should suffer as a result of someone else’s exercise of freedom. Cast your mind two decades ago when he responded to a Member of Parliament who willed Malaysia an Islamic state. He applied the ‘principle of damage’ then as he does now. The issue is not 'consistency' but rather a ‘formality’ in his thought process, the way a lawyer is trained to think. It is clear that as much as he is a politician for the man on the street, he does not discern the concept of power . He does not condone the horizontal power-spread of his partners lest it jeopardizes the vertical relationship between the individual and government. He relates party hopping to usurpation of an individual’s freedom in favour of the usurper. A straight line connects a party hopper to a serial polygamist - where desire trumps fidelity - where a vile practice trumps a sound pr...