Archive for the ‘Geek’ Category

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VNC on the Mac

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

&otI’ve got need at work for running VNC on one of the machines so an app running on it can be shared with multiple users on the network. VNC is a great solution that’s been out there for a long time, but in general it kinda sucks because, 1. it’s slow, 2. the image resolution is crappy, and 3. it’s slow.

Did I mention it was slow? Well, it is.

I’ve been using Chicken of the VNC for a long time, and it works reasonably well for remotely controlling the PC servers I manage on the network, but today I tried using it to control a Mac and it puked all over the task. Wouldn’t pull up a screen at all; just gave an error — Connection Terminated: Zlib inflate error: invalid block type. That was it for me; I decided to shop around for a newer/faster/better solution.

I’ve also used Apple Remote Desktop, which would be a nice option because it’s got a lot of additional features I could put to use. But it’s expensive too; $300 for a 10 Managed Systems edition, which allows for one administrator. I’m not sure, but I think that means there can be up to 10 systems that can be controlled, but only one machine that can do the controlling. That mule don’t pull in the job I’m needing filled.

One thing I discovered on my visit to Apple’s site is that ARD is basically VNC built into the Mac OS (at least for 10.4 and above). Enabling the VNC server on a Mac is as easy as opening the Sharing Preferences pane in System Preferences, turning on Apple Remote Desktop, and enabling VNC control in the window that pops up. That allows any machine running a VNC client to hook up via port 5900 and control it. Slick. And. Easy. (great set of instructions at MacMiniColo.net.)

But then a Google search led me to Vine VNC; wow. Just wow. Does it work nicely or what. It pulled up the screen for the Mac in question with no problem. The screen resolution on that machine is larger than the screen on my lowly PowerBook, but no problem; the scroll wheel on my mouse allows me to move around in the window just like it should. The screen resolution and color on the remote Mac window is beautiful, just as it should be. It just works.

Vine isn’t free, but at $30 it’s not bad either. I gladly ponied up for it (besides, it wasn’t my money!)

Before I bought Vine, I dug around a little more on Apple’s site and found another VNC option, JollysFastVNC. Very nice freebie. Not quite as nice as Vine — the Ctrl-Alt-Del command requires a trip to the menu bar, whereas Vine lets you do it on the keyboard — but still very nice. Relatively fast, nice resolution, and free.

So, to cap it off, using VNC on the Mac doesn’t have to be a painful experience. There are some great solutions out there, but as has always been the case with Mac software, it takes a little digging to find what you’re looking for that works well.

jolly.jpgvine.jpg

Posted in Cool Technology, Geek, Mac Stuff, Work | Comments Closed

WordPress Has Spoiled Me

Monday, October 15th, 2007

I did some old-fashioned html work this weekend, and discovered anew how much easier things are using a tool like WordPress instead of doing it by hand. I don’t do coding regularly enough to know the stuff by heart, but holy cow! what a lot of the futzing I had to do to get things just so.

My niece had a sculpture unveiled this weekend, and it was very cool occasion so I took some photos. My brother didn’t have his camera with him so he asked me to send the photos to him. I figured other family members who weren’t there would appreciate seeing them also, so I thought I’d throw together a page real quick. iPhoto made part of it quick & easy, but when I decided to add some other content to it… Ick. Several hours later, it still needed some tweaking.

The result isn’t too bad, but I wish I’d gone with my first thought and put it together on the blog in WordPress. I might have got a little more sleep last night!

Posted in Cool Technology, Geek | Comments Closed

Really Big Numbers

Monday, July 31st, 2006

Everybody knows what to call big numbers when it comes to a dozen or so digits, but what about when the numbers get bigger than that? I was reading an article on Damn Interesting about the physical difficulties in folding a piece of paper, and tried to figure out how long a piece of paper would be needed to make 51 folds (which is impossible, by the way.) It’d take a lot of paper. 164,888,007,565,194,000,000,000 miles of paper to be (reasonably) exact.
That got me to thinking how a number that large would be expressed. There’s always powers of ten, which would make that number 1.659×10²³. That works out to be But that doesn’t really do much for me. And I started wondering what that number would sound like when expressed in thousands, billions, trillions, and so on. And I found that there really are names for these really big numbers. And they go like this…

thousand 4 to 6 digits
million 7 to 9 digits
billion 10 to 12 digits
trillion 13 to 15 digits
quadrillion 16 to 18 digits
quintillion 19 to 21 digits
sextillion 22 to 24 digits
septillion 25 to 27 digits
octillion 28 to 30 digits
nonillion 31 to 33 digits
decillion 34 to 36 digits
undecillion 37 to 39 digits
dodecillion 40 to 42 digits
tredecillion 43 to 45 digits
quattuordecillion 46 to 48 digits
quindecillion 49 to 51 digits
sexdecillion 52 to 54 digits
septendecillion 55 to 57 digits
octodecillion 58 to 60 digits
novemdecillion 61 to 63 digits
vigintillion 64 to 66 digits
unvigintillion 67 to 69 digits
dovigintillion 70 to 72 digits
trevigintillion 73 to 75 digits
quattuorvigintillion 76 to 78 digits
quinvigintillion 79 to 81 digits
sexvigintillion 82 to 84 digits
septenvigintillion 85 to 87 digits
octovigintillion 88 to 90 digits
novemvigintillion 91 to 93 digits
trigintillion 94 to 96 digits
untrigintillion 97 to 99 digits
dotrigintillion 100 to 102 digits
tretrigintillion 103 to 105 digits
quattuortrigintillion 106 to 108 digits
quintrigintillion 109 to 111 digits
sextrigintillion 112 to 114 digits
septentrigintillion 115 to 117 digits
octotrigintillion 118 to 120 digits
novemtrigintillion 121 to 123 digits

I’m sure there’s more somewhere, but that’s what I was able to find, and it’s plenty impressive. I’m not even sure how to pronounce some of those words.

In the process of digging up this information, I ran across several really cool math-related websites. One of the best has to be the Kokogiak Megapenny Project, which helps to visualize large numbers using, of course, pennies. For example, did you know that ten million pennies stacked up would make a cube 6 x 6 x 6 feet. If all those pennies were laid out flat, side-by-side, like a huge carpet of pennies, it would nearly cover one acre. If stacked in a single column it would reach 9.88 miles into the air. Oh, and it would weigh in at around 31.3 tons. That’s a lot of coin.

Posted in Fun!, Geek | Comments Closed

SAT Math Problem of the Day – Yahoo! Education

Tuesday, September 20th, 2005

Yahoo provides the SAT Math Problem of the Day to challenge your brain.

Deane pointed this out on Gadgetopia. I’ve gotten a little rusty on my algebraic expressions, and I plan on hitting this one daily. On the first one I tried, I got the correct answer, but got sucked into the trick part of the question. Dang!

One number is 4 times another. The sum of the two numbers is -15. What is the value of the smaller number?
A. 5
B. -3
C. -5
D. -12
E. -15

I won’t give the answer; I’ll let you figure it out.

Posted in Fun!, Geek | Comments Closed

Kim Komando

Friday, August 12th, 2005

On many Saturday mornings, I’ll listen to the Kim Komando radio show, where Kim fields calls from computer users with problems. Most of the callers are dealing with Windows problems, and I often get a good laugh out of some of the situations these people wrestle with, because on most occasions there would be no problem if they were using a Mac instead of a PC.

A large portion of the calls are from novice users with virus, worm, or ad-ware problems, or they just need help getting something simple done on their computer. Their Windows computer. And Kim will often end up talking way over their heads, giving some obscure string of commands to fix the problem, and promising to add the issue with thorough instructions to her newsletter.

When a question comes up about a Mac, she’ll often talk about how the issue would be handled on a Windows computer, but rarely gives a decent answer for the Mac user; she usually throws in some snide comment about Macs. When I turned the radio on last Saturday she was talking about Macs, and how one of her former employees — who had moved on to a new job using Macs — had stopped back for a visit. She said that he had told her that Macs aren’t really any easier to use than Windows machines; he said that the Macs that they used for her show worked well because they were well maintained, but the ones at his new job were not and they were anything but reliable. And she used that to back up her disagreement with a caller’s assertion that Macs are easier to use. The only ones who find Macs hard to use are hard-core Windows users. “Don’t throw anything new at me, I know all the ins and outs of Windows, and could care less if there’s an easier & better way!”

Now I don’t fault Kim for being Windows-centric. In fact in her line of work having more users on Windows machines is in her best interest, and it’s even better if they have problems with those Windows machines. It creates more demand for her books and drives more listeners to her show. Macs are a threat to that, plain and simple.

It still drives me just a little nuts listening to it all, and knowing there is a better way.

Posted in Computers, Gadgets, Geek, Mac Stuff | Comments Closed

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