Use S60 as a remote for Macs, iTunes
Do you have a Nokia (S60) phone and want to control your computer with it? Read on.
My previous cell phone (SE w810i) had a pretty decent bluetooth remote that I could use to control the mouse cursor and various media players I use (iTunes, mPlayer, Quicktime, etc…). It was cool but didn’t really have much to offer that wasn’t already in the standard Apple remote. However, I liked not having to remember the dedicated remote if I was traveling though so when I got my Nokia N95 last year, I was disappointed that it didn’t have a bluetooth remote as a standard. Problem solved: Salling Clicker.
I haven’t tried them all but it has custom remotes for programs like Powerpoint, Keynote, VLC and Quicktime. In addition to controlling your slides, for Powerpoint and Keynote, this app uses the phone’s screen to display presentation notes too. Could be useful?
What I’ve been into most has been controlling iTunes via wifi from the opposite end of my house. There’s a lot of potential here – especially for homes that have in-wall speakers connected to one system. Clicker’s iTunes interface reminds a bit of a classic iPod but with the added luxury of a search feature. Here’s a screenshot:
This app was released nearly two years ago but it’s new to me and using it makes me feel like I’m in the future! The home automation industry is slowly catching onto using cell phones instead of remotes but there is still a way to go. Imagine using programs like this to easily control lighting with your phone? USB powered designer floor lamps?
I should end this, nerdiest-post-ever, now but here’s a photo of a house I shot last fall. Within it, a lot of automation work was done to control lighting and A/V equipment. See that little circle near the edge of the green wall? That’s a sensor connected to the thermostat! You could probably program that remote in the bottom right to make you coffee.
all day i dream about sneakers
La saison du rock
Somehow I seem to be filling up my calendar with a decent amount of live music lately. Must be a sign that spring is on the way. Here’s a photo of Buried Inside I took in Québec City last Friday.
And a few from Montréal bands Barrier and Vile Intent.
I’m also supposed to be getting photos of Fucked Up and Young Widows in some magazines based in Richmond, Virginia and Barcelona, España. Also, it appears that my photos are all over Artengine.ca from the work I did during the Electric Fields festival. Check it out.
Yesterday, I documented action at a conference and awards ceremony presented by the Canadian Conference of the Arts. Definitely cool times to be reimmersed in the world of cultural policy for an afternoon. I’ll have some photos from that soonish, I figure.
Kind of been sick this week but going to see Malajube, Young Galaxy and City of One Hundred Spires tonight. Ça devrait être pas mal bon. Adidas party at Norml tomorrow. Holla.
Trop hâte pour que le printemps arrive…
Startup question marks and backing up your HD
A few months ago, starting up my computer resulted in an intermittent question mark flashing on my screen without going any further. Not good. I called Apple and consulted their support article for said problem. Nothing. I thought I’d share my experience because while it was annoying, it helped me learn a bit how startup disks work.
My harddrive would start up but it could no longer boot OS X properly. On one of the last times it worked properly, I quickly backed up the internal 100gb disk using a great program called Caron Copy Cloner and the SATA cradle I wrote about a while back.
For a while (longer than I should have), my computer was booting from this external drive. Imagine the computer as a living body whose heart, linked via USB, existed outside said body. Not pretty.
Nowhere close to as mobile as I normally liked to be, the alternative was going without a computer for a week while AppleCare tried fixing it. In the end, I decided what should have been an obvious option: upgrade the internal drive from 100gb to 320gb. The downside: Even with a dead drive, this upgrade was not at all covered under AppleCare. Bummer but it does feel nice to have a bit more (3.2x) storage space in my machine.
In other news, I don’t normally go for this stuff but the Belkin Flexible USB Cable Adapter is a neat gadget that has made it easier for me to constantly have a USB cable protruding from the side of my computer.
New apartment & mini-tour…
I moved a few weeks ago. Things are calming down. Here are some photos of the new place and my neighbourhood.
What I saw walking to a friend’s house.
What I saw on my way to the video store
Ma chambre à coucher
Mon bureau
Ma chambre à coucher
This weekend, I’m playing hookie on my Disorganized residency to travel a bit with a sweet band called Buried Inside who are releasing an album tomorrow on Relapse Records. It’s called Spoils of Failure.
Here are their upcoming dates. Don’t miss this, whatever city you’re in.
5 Mar 2009 @ Lambi (Montreal)
6 Mar 2009 @ Agité (Québec City)
7 Mar 2009 @ Mavericks (Ottawa)
19 Mar 2009 @ Casbah (Hamilton)
20 Mar 2009 @ Wreckroom (Toronto)
21 Mar 2009 @ Sweat Lodge (Waterloo)
22 Mar 2009 @ Call the Office (London)
Here’s an old photo of them from Halloween 2006. They recently asked for live photos but in the last few years, they’ve played so infrequently that this was basically all I could offer. I’m looking forward to once again risking my camera gear and taking more photos of them in a few days.
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