All posts by kirsch

Keep Austin Weird

Capitol 10,000

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cap-01The Statesman Capitol 10,000 is the largest 10K in Texas and the fifth largest in the nation.

As one of my two 2013 New Year Resolutions (sadly, the other one is a carryover from 2012 and shall remain secret), I decided to run in the Capitol 10k on April 7th. For some people running ten kilometers is no big deal, but for me it is, as I’m not particularly fond of running after anything that isn’t a soccer ball or a toilet.

So now the cat is out of the bag, although technically it left the bag on February 5th. And I’m not alone in the suffering: one-time The MKX® author Shlomit is going to do it as well. Feel free to hold us both accountable.

Reality Distortion Field

Late night surgery

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Last year I upgraded Shlomit’s MacBook Pro to an SSD. A few months ago I upgraded my MacBook Pro. The only little Mac left behind with its puny little spinning platters was my Mac mini. So I finally broke down and bought an SSD for it. This time it was a 250 GB Samsung 840.

Samsung 840 SSD

Similar to the last times, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer the contents of the original 2.5″ hard drive to the SSD. This took about three hours over USB 2. Slow but without a hitch.

CCC

But one thing would be different this time: turns out that when Apple ditched the DVD drive on the Mac mini, it left room for a second internal hard drive. So I can fit both the original drive and the SSD in the little box! Great. The problem: You need a special cable to do this. The solution: OWC ‘Data Doubler’ SSD/2.5″ Hard Drive installation Kit.

For $35 you get:

  • A little ribbon cable to connect the drive
  • Four cute screwdrivers: two were needed for the installation, two were not, and a third type that was needed did not come in the kit but thankfully I had it.
  • Four screws.
  • Four rubber bumper thingies.
  • A piece of green plastic they call “pry tool” and was actually super useful.
  • A U-shaped piece of bent metal, effectively used to move the computer’s motherboard out of the chassis.

A rip-off? Hardly, because they also bundled a very detailed manual with great photos and step by step instructions. Trust me, the booklet alone was worth the price. This was one tricky installation, they sure pack those little boxes tight.

mini
The Mac mini 40% into the installation. These little boxes fit together like one of those impossible to put together wooden puzzles.

I’m happy to report that although it took a long time, the operation was a success. The computer is a lot faster now. Nobody should be forced to use magnetic hard drives anymore. Now all I need to do is decide how to best distribute all my stuff across the 5 (five!) hard drives connected to this machine. I want iPhoto to be fast, but my giant library won’t fit in the SSD. Questions, questions…

From the tubes

Valentine’s

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I thought this screen capture of my Facebook wall today was worth sharing. Identities covered by red blobs. Facebook friends, you know who you are.

Post 1: My wife is the best. I love you. Feliz Día de San Valentín.

Post 2: And then people are surprised that I dislike this day. How is it romantic to spend tons on paper and glue without writing a single word?

valentines

Keep Austin Weird, Music

SXSW 2013 Band Geography

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sxsw-2013-logo

The SXSW (South by Southwest) Music Festival 2013 lineup is up! Very exciting. There are 479 bands listed from all over the world for this amazing Austin, TX event. I got curious about how they are spread out. So I broke out and charted it for your enjoyment. It’s all in Google Drive, so you can click on the charts to get more details or you can see all the data here.

US vs Rest Of The World

As expected, almost two thirds of the bands are from the home country. I don’t know how this compares historically, but I would guess that the US share has been slowly declining as the event grows in size and notoriety.

SXSW 2013 – US vs Rest of the World
Click for interactive control

US bands by state

This one you definitely want to click on so you can see in more detail. To my surprise, there are nearly as many Californian acts as there are Texan!

SXSW 2013 – US bands by state
Click for interactive control

International

As expected, US-speaking Canada, UK, and Australia are the most represented. Southern neighbor Mexico is next. The biggest surprise in my opinion is that tiny Israel is next, with 10 bands! Good, since I like Israeli music. Saddest surprise: nothing from Colombia. Colombian bands are always a big draw. As circumstantial evidence, an old SXSW photo I posted with Bomba Estereo’s Colombian hottie lead singer Li Saumet is one of the top traffic referrers to The MKX®. Go ahead, look it up on Google Image.

SXSW 2013 – International bands
Click for interactive control

And only because I can and because it’s cool (Google Docs Drive FTW!), here’s a World Map showing the number of bands per country:

SXSW 2013 – Bands by country
Click for interactive control

 

Reality Distortion Field

1Password boomarklet for iOS

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IMG_0222

I’m a huge fan of 1Password. If you aren’t using it or some other secure wallet / password manager, you should go set it up, then come back and read this.

In any case, I often find myself browsing on my iPad/iPhone and land in some website that I need to log into (my bank, Twitter, Reddit, Google, whatever). Since I use unique random un-rememberable passwords on every single website, I have to:

  1. Copy the URL from the Safari URL bar
  2. Open 1Password
  3. Paste it inside 1Password’s built-in browser
  4. Use 1Password’s auto-fill

or the reverse which is more painful:

  1. Open 1Password
  2. Find the login info I need
  3. Copy
  4. Go back to Safari
  5. Paste

So I wrote a small bookmarklet that will open the current Safari address in 1Password. It works with 1Password for iOS 4.1. And here it is:

Open in 1Password

In order to install it while on your Mac, just drag the “Open in 1Password” link to the Bookmarks bar. If enabled, iCloud Safari syncing will take care of making the bookmarklet show up on your iPhone/iPad.

If you want to install it directly from your iPhone / iPad, follow these instructions.

Once it’s installed, you can visit any page in Safari. Click on the bookmarklet you just created and the page should open in 1Password. I hope this saves several minutes of your life!

My other set of bookmarklets for changing font size in iOS Safari is quite handy and popular too.

My Blog

The MKX® has moved!

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mkx_no_com

Notice anything different? Look up. As in the URL bar of your browser. Yes, that’s right. After The MKX® has moved. We have dropped the .com!

Our team of economists determined that given 2 million daily page views, and the fact that typing .com takes about 0.67 seconds in average, we are saving the world economy about 372.2 hours of lost productivity every day!

Since we have way less hits, the productivity increase is not nearly as dramatic. But still, the new URL is cooler. Visit us at http://Marcos.Kirsch.mx from now on! Or just use the old address which will just transparently redirect you… but wouldn’t you want to save 0.67 seconds of your day?

Reality Distortion Field

Mapping it all out

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google_maps_iphone

Anyone who is tech-savvy enough to read this blog has undoubtedly heard about the “Apple Maps debacle”. The press has written lots and lots about it – some justified, most over-simplified link bait, as follows:

  1. Apple hates Google ‘cuz they copied the iPhone
  2. Apple wants Google off the iPhone so it created its own Maps, got rid of Google Maps
  3. Apple Maps suck.

The reality is, of course, much more complicated. Since their negotiations happen behind closed doors, all we can do is use what we know and speculate on the rest. My take follows.

Continue reading Mapping it all out →

Film Critic

Man of Steel Trailer

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The trailer for Man of Steel is now up. As most of you know, a new Superman movie is A Big Deal so I had to post it here.

Hard to say if it’s going to be good. There is barely a glimpse of the villain General Zod (played by Michael Shannon) and he looks nothing like Superman 2’s Zod. Henry Cavill really, really looks the part. And Superman actually throws punches in this movie, not like in that all-but-forgotten Superman Returns POS.

Director Zack Snyder is really hit or miss. He’s got very good movies, but he also has terrible movies. But John Williams’ theme song appears to be missing.

What do you think?