Looking back at 2009, the most popular Art of Geek blog post was “Lock your Mac’s screen like in Windows, Snow Leopard edition”, which received a lot of comments from people who just didn’t seem to understand why we didn’t just use Mac OS X’s screen saver locking feature. Regardless, it’s nice to see so many early adopters of Snow Leopard visiting!

Sorry for the short post, but it’s late, and I want to squeeze in a viewing of 2010 before I hit the sack.

One of these days, the reason this site goes down might actually be the old Mac server I’m running it on, but darn if that thing just doesn’t keep on running like the energizer bunny. For those who are curious, this entire site (blog and forums) are hosted on a circa. 2000 PowerMac G4. Originally a 400MHz G4 processor, I’ve upgraded the cpu to a 1.4GHz G4 and have 1GB of RAM installed. It’s running the latest version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Server quite nicely. But I’m afraid that’s the last major OS X release this hardware is going to see since Apple has already announced that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is going to run on Intel Macs only. Fortunately, we probably won’t see Snow Leopard until late next year at the earliest. In the meantime, I’ve got my fingers crossed that this workhorse continues to serve up pages reliably for another couple of years at least.

I’ve wanted to change the header background for a while to make my website more ‘my own’. The previous gradient/pattern was based on the default image that came with the wordpress template I based my design on, called Blix by Sebastian Schmieg.

This new header background image is based on a great photograph I came across (shown above, click for the full size image), which was taken by Kevin Hiscott, who was kind enough to give me permission to use it for my website (thanks Kevin!). Check out his photo blog, Portway Ave : No Exit, if you want to see more of his work. He’s got a lot of great photos on there that showcase his talent. From the looks of some of the photos on his blog, he’s also a Mac fan, which means he’s got taste too.

Now as I mentioned, I also changed the Art Of Geek logo. Specifically, I’ve updated the gadget icons to be a bit more current. I’ve also made the entire logo a bit bigger, to fill the height of the header more. Can any of you identify the make and model of each of the gadgets featured in the new logo? Post your guesses in the comments. Bonus points to the first person who can correctly identify what gadgets have been added and removed from the previous logo!

Bell was scheduled to suspend my Sympatico DSL service at midnight, so I decided I’d stay up and wait for it to happen so I could connect my new Thomson SpeedTouch 516 DSL modem up in preparation for my TekSavvy DSL service to be activated in the morning. So I figured I’d get some last minute email and websurfing in and then settled into playing Call of Duty 4 online on my PS3. In other words, what I do almost every night. My plan was to play until I lost connection, then install the new DSL modem, then go to bed and reconfigure my router to connect to Teksavvy in the morning. Midnight rolled by and I was still taking out tangos. One o’clock AM came and went and I was still defending democracy from terrorists. By around 2:15 am, I decided that my tour of duty might never end, and called it quits for the night, Sympatico Internet connection still operational. In the back of my mind, I worried that Bell’s delay in disconnecting me was going to delay the activation of the new TekSavvy connection.

Looks like those worries were unfounded since when I got up this morning at 7:00 am, I found my AirPort Extreme router’s connection light flashing amber, indicating a connection problem. I connected the SpeedTouch modem to the phone line and was happy to see the DSL and Internet status lights turn solid green. A few minutes later, I had my AirPort Extreme reconfigured with the TekSavvy settings and was connected to the Internet with our new static IP. A quick trip to my domain registrar’s self-serve website to reconfigure the artofgeek.com domain to point to our new IP and disable dynamic DNS and I was done. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the change to propagate to Internet DNS servers around the world and we were back in business. Total downtime was under 6 hours.

First impressions? My web surfing seems a bit faster, and my wife said the same thing when I asked her if she noticed a difference, but the difference isn’t immense from the limited amount of time I had to test it. There’s not much else to say at this point. It’s an internet connection, and it’s working. If you have any questions about our transition or the service, post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

As you can see, the download speeds seem pretty consistent around 4,270kbps. The upload speeds vary more, but solidly between 500-600kbps. I only wish I had done these same tests with my Sympatico connection while I still had a chance. Keep in mind these speeds may vary depending on the time of day. I’m fairly impressed since right now is near peak hours for internet usage (between 9-10pm). I’ll run the tests again at different times of day to see if it stays consistently fast or not.

See you all when we’re back up and with a static IP address. No more short bouts of downtime because I have to reset my router. Yippee!

Team Art Of Geek
Folding@Home Team #56245

You can view our team’s progress on the F@H Team Art Of Geek page.

If you’re not already folding, what are you waiting for? It’s a good cause, and costs you next to nothing, if not nothing, depending on whether you pay your electricity bill. You can learn more about the Folding@Home project from this Wikipedia article, or the official Folding@Home project website.

F@H clients are available for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista, Linux x86 (32 and 64-bit) and Mac OS X (PPC and Intel) and can be downloaded from the project download page. Of course if you own a PS3, you’ve already got the most powerful F@H client available built-in, just look in the Network menu of the XMB (Xross Media Bar) interface.

For those who participate, whether on Team Art Of Geek, or other team of your choice, thanks for contributing!

There seems to be a big misconception about the AAC format. Many people seem to think it’s an Apple owned format, but that is incorrect. AAC is an open standard, and was developed by Dolby, Fraunhofer, AT&T, Sony and Nokia to replace MP3; it was declared a standard by the MPEG group back in 1997. Apple chose AAC for it’s iTunes Store because it was the logical industry standard format for their needs. It offers better quality audio at smaller file sizes and supports features like 5.1 surround sound and DRM. Apple’s DRM solution is called FairPlay, and is used to encrypt the AAC file so it’s playback can be limited to authorized devices. Remove FairPlay and you’re left with an open, industry-standard music file which will never, and can never, be controlled by Apple or any other single company. AAC has already gaining widespread support in the consumer electronics industry – even Microsoft’s Zune can play DRM-free AAC audio files.

Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, in contrast, is a proprietary format. Only companies and devices that license it from Microsoft can use it. It was created so people would require Microsoft’s products in order to play back their music and by extension, make Microsoft lots of money. But in order to convince third party music sellers and device makers to support WMA, they needed to offer value. That value came in the form of a digital rights management system that could be licensed, saving everyone from having to make their own DRM system, the way Apple did. The record labels wouldn’t allow their music catalog to be sold digitally without some form of copy protection, fearing it would contribute to online piracy. So company after company came knocking on Microsoft’s door seeking to license their WMA/DRM solution, later branded “PlaysForSure”, in order to get a slice of the music download action. The record labels were set to hand Microsoft it’s music monopoly.

Apple no doubt saw the risk of letting Microsoft take over the digital music market. They were already seeing what Microsoft’s domination in the web browser and office suite markets was doing to lock people into the Windows OS. To combat the WMA threat, Apple at first decided to try promoting the MP3 format by releasing iTunes in early 2001 and the iPod, later that year for the Macintosh – both of which were promoted as “MP3 players”. But it was Apple’s decision to take iTunes and the iPod to the Windows platform a year later that was the trojan horse that would eventually lead to the death of WMA. In 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, later renamed the iTunes Store, and cemented their position as the leader in digital media, bringing AAC along for the ride. The rest is, as they say, history.

Once iTunes goes completely DRM free, competing stores will be forced to go DRM free as well, in order to compete. They’ll also jump at the chance to finally be able to sell music to iPod owners, something they’ve been begging for ever since the iTunes/iPod duo took over the market. But there’s one little thing–the iPod doesn’t play WMA formatted music. So one by one, Microsoft’s former media partners, no doubt still smarting from being locked out of Microsoft’s Zune party, will start selling DRM-free music in AAC format. Why? Because WMA, and even MP3, require royalty payments to use. AAC does not. There’s no point whatsoever in continuing to sell WMA formatted music, if you aren’t using Microsoft’s DRM copy protection.

So as the whole world adopts industry standard audio formats over the coming years, where does that leave Microsoft and their closed, proprietary WMA audio format? Dead in the water. Microsoft will be forced to adopt AAC for their Zune Marketplace, otherwise they’ll lock themselves out of all the consumer devices that are developed to support AAC, but won’t support WMA. Not to mention, even Zune owners won’t want to buy WMA formatted music for fear of not being compatible with future device purchases. WMA has lost it’s value proposition and will die a slow death along with Microsoft’s aspirations of obtaining a music format monopoly. It’s a great day for music lovers as well as the consumer electronics and music industries, and no doubt will be seen as the day Microsoft lost the music format war.

So welcome to Art Of Geek! We hope you enjoy your stay and please, visit us regularly!