Welcome to jpatkinson.co.uk

Normally I do not get excited about software but once in a while one will catch my eye which in this case is Parallels desktop 6 for the mac. Now at the time of watching The Techbuzz’s episode of Mac n Tuesday back in March I did not own a mac computer however I watched this particular episode entitled Parallels Unleashed with David Spackman from Parallels.

After watching this particular podcast I could not believe a piece of software could integrate with an operating system as well as Parallels did with mac osx. I was actually jealous that I did not have a Mac to try Parallels on but it so happens a few weeks later I purchased a nice shiny Mac Book Pro 13″ and the first application I bought for it, you got it Parallels Desktop 6 because even on the PC I do run OS images not just to test but because I have certain apps that will not run on Windows 7 only on XP also by running these images it allows me to use Desktop Presenter on that image and pull it into Wirecast when doing podcasts.

Rather than me writing how good Parallels 6 is I decided to do a screen cast so you can actually see why I like it so much then you will be able to see for yourselves how good it is.

You can see the original interview with The Tech Buzz and David Spackman here

 

 

So i was looking at a small solution for streaming media files in particular xvid but with the added functionality of high quality video files in .mkv format when i came across the sumvision cyclone media player.

I had read the reviews first of which there were quite a few all scoring it highly.

You can see my youtube review below and the following are its specifications of what it can handle

Now supports full DTS
Support All Poplular HD video-
The Cyclone MKV supports all popular 1080p HD video formats currently on the market. Formats supported include H.264; MKV; DivX HD; MPEG 2-TS; RMVB (up to 720p) and WMV9.
Support USB host and LAN SAMBA Client-
With USB 2.0 support you can plug storage devices such as HDD; flash drives or mp3 and play them directly through the Cyclone. Cyclone MKV can act as a SAMBA client; you can stream media from your PC directly to your player. Play standard and HD media fast and efficiently with no slow down
Support Multimedia Memory Cards
With the multimedia memory card reader socket you can insert memory cards such as SD; SDHC; MMC and MS cards into the product. You can play all your favourite AVCHD camcorder video files directly into the player using a SDHC memory stick
HDMI Digital Output
With a HDMI interface design-in; digital audio can output to TV with 1080p HD video signal. It enable user connect his video connection very easily.
Specification

Memory card input Supports: SD, SDHC, MMC and MS cards
USB input: USB2.0 high speed USB host x 2
Firmware: Upgradeable
OS language: English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Dutch
Audio file: MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, AAC, LPCM, FLAC, AC3,*DTS
Video codec: H.264, MKV, WMV9, MPEG 1/2/4, HD Divx , Xvid, FLV, RM/RMVB
Video file: mkv, ts, m2ts, mts, tp, trp, wmv, Ifo, iso, vob, dat, avi, mpg, mp4,
mov, rm, rmvb, divx, xvid, flv
Video resolution: H.264, MKV, WMV9, TS and HD Divx supports up to 1920 x 1080p 30p
RM/RMVB supports up to 720p
Subtitle: sub, smi, ssa, srt, idx + sub
Photo file: JPG, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, GIF
Video out: CVBS, HDMI 1.3(max 1080p)
Audio out: stereo R/L, optical, HDMI digital
LAN RJ45, supports Samba client, Wi-Fi 802.11g dongle (optional)
Internet Services*: Youtube, BBC, Picasa, npr
Remote control: Yes
Power supply: Universal AC 100 ~230V 50Hz
Power rate: DC 12V 2A
Product dimension: 170 x 125 x 25 mm (L x W x H)

This morning after seeing a friend get locked out of her PC for some strange reason I remembered i still had a password reset tool (only one of the things this tool is capable of) from a few years ago till Sysinternals were bought out and abruptly shut down (I wonder by whom and why ).

However unbeknown to myself at that time even though SEC when it first came out would reset any password based on an NT based OS it will not work with Vista either 32 bit or 64 (i did point them to Hiren’s Boot CD and that worked for them) however it works fine on Windows 7 32 bit and 64 using a tool from 7 years ago. You can see the 4 min vid below on how simple it is to reset with SEC.

I still have to test this with Server 2008 Enterprise which i will try later.

John

I have recently joined another irc network as I knew some friends that were already on this network which is irc.ipocalypse.net.

I had been talking with a couple of friends from Ipocalypse who when it got mentioned about their podcast that they had restarted every Saturday afternoon at 5pm (UK Time) and mentioned that I would’nt mind being a guest on their show. Anyway to cut a long story short i was invited as a guest for Saturdays show (2nd October) and we met up on the Friday to go through the topics we were going to discuss on the Saturday ( i do like it when podcasts are done this way as you get to know what is going to be discussed on the podcast when it goes live).

A lot had happened this particular week with one of the biggest stories of the week being Tech Crunch being bought by AOL but you can see the topic’s we discussed below:

Tech Cunch news of the year also Tech Crunch and AOL a match made in heaven

Congress Turns Volume Down on Commercials

4chan DDOS to IRA websites Leaks Email database also here

Will Tweetbeat Put an End to Twitter hashtags?

Stupid carry thing for the Ipad (most ridiculous thing i have seen yet)

The Zeus Botnet

ISP scanning customer’s PC’s – What is the real reason for this?

FBI Wants backdoors into encryption communications

As you can see we covered a wide variety of subjects and in all honesty we could have went on quiet easily for alot longer than the hour we had allocated to do this and the time just flew by. I am used to doing podcasts with video however this is the very first podcast I have done with audio only but I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I would like to thank the staff over at Ipocalypse for a really great time and for inviting me onto their show.

You can listen to the podcast here

John