Disqus - Latest Comments for Brendan Gramer

Re: crust

Brendan Gramer — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:56:01 -0000

Thanks for the write up - Laura and I are definitely interested in checking it out!

If you like organic desserts, I definitely recommend checking out firstslice.org ... they sell organic pies in the Lill Street building on Ravenswood. http://lillstreet.com/

Re: great weekend

Brendan Gramer — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:47:56 -0000

Yum! We have reservations for Table 52 during the first week of Feb and looking forward to it! Thank you for the recommendations!

Re: A couple Mac tools for DVD ripping and compression

Brendan Gramer — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:16:43 -0000

From my experience so far, you don't need MacTheRipper.

Go right to Handbrake if you want to rip the file, and just put it in the Movies folder and you can play the video thru Front Row on the Mini.

if you're one of these nuts who insist on DIVX/XVID instead, rip in Handbrake using the highest settings to preserve the quality then get Burn ( http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/ ) to convert the file to DIVX/XVID ... move over the converted file into the Movies folder (this is where Front Row looks for your movies.)

Front Row plays Quicktime - which means you're going to need to put Perian and/or DIVX/XVID codecs into the Quicktime Components folder within your computer settings. When that happens, Front Row can play DIVX/XVID movies too.

I have AppleTV and haven't really used it much because it's slow and a pain in the ass to sync up iTunes from our computers around the house to the device, but I've used Front Row on my laptop, and am pretty sure that it's the same for the MacMini to be more flexible/extendable. The only thing is that AppleTV has up on the Mini is the HDMI port.

That may all change with MacWorld '08. Until then - we're waiting to see if we should ditch the AppleTV and move towards the Mini.

If AppleTV is a no-go, we'll get the Mini and a couple extra external hard drives and RAID it all up to be one big file server. I'd probably turn on all the Share settings within the Mini's OS so we can access it over the network to transfer our media from devices on case-by-case basis.

Great articles (and sort of "how to")
http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/25/how-to-turn-...

http://scobleizer.com/2007/12/27/the-macmini-hd...

http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/02/28/the-intel-...

http://nextlust.com/a-mac-mini-or-an-appletv-wh...

Re: i love days like today

Brendan Gramer — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:15:03 -0000

http://www.pixiesdiscs.com/index.php

Hey - Coudal did something similar with The Pixies, and I think Dead Can Dance - except it was sales by CDs. I may be wrong, but I think this is how they got started with their Jewelboxing business - they creating a process/materials that worked for them in making CD/DVDs and sell it to others.

Re: i love days like today

Brendan Gramer — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:16:25 -0000

I meant to give you this link: http://www.theshowlive.com/sign.php

Re: Movie Studios Unite, Create a Hulu for Films

Brendan Gramer — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:36:47 -0000

I hope they've done their homework and will have all their content captioned.

Hulu, iTunes, ABC.com, YouTube and Google Video have all made significant strides in this arena, and are showing the rest of the market that yes, it CAN be done.