Month: June 2009

  • Speed Test

    It used to be that I trusted Speakeasy’s Speed Test for accurate network measurements, but in light of recent results, I tend to trust Speedtest.net a lot more. To wit, these are the results from our recent switch to Comcast “Blast” broadband service (taken in alternating tests between the test services):

    I understand Comcast does […]

    More
  • Downloading Movies from Dropbox

    When you upload a QuickTime or other movie file to Dropbox, and then get the “public link” to give to someone else, Dropbox does a really cool thing and redirects the original movie file link to deliver a very simple web page with the movie embedded in it instead. Which looks great in a browser if you just need to view a quick clip — but what if you actually intended for the link to be a download instead?

    It turns out the trick is a little obscure, but fairly simple. All you need to do is add ?&dl=1 to the end of the “public link” URL. So:

    http://files.getdropbox.com/.../movie.mov

    becomes instead:

    http://files.getdropbox.com/.../movie.mov?dl=1

    Once you do that, Dropbox forces the download link, and the movie will download instead of playing in your browser.

  • iPhone ///gs

    The new iPhone announced on Monday is officially called the “iPhone 3G S” by Apple, but others (myself included) immediately started calling it the “///gs” — a combination of the Apple ///, and the Apple ][gs, two early pre-Macintosh Apple computers.

    This was too good an idea to pass up, so I’ve created […]

    More
  • HDV Workflow

    Quick word of advice.

    If you’re ever editing anything shot on HDV: NEVER EVER capture low-rez DV proxies and expect to recapture in HD clean at the end. Yes, I know the HDV decks have that hand-dandy feature to downconvert to DV over firewire. DON’T DO IT. NONE of these HDV cameras seem to record […]

    More
  • Zak McKracken Theme

    The theme from the old LucasArts game Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders seems to be especially popular for latter-day remixes. Case in point — I was digitizing an old mixtape, and discovered I had both a basic remix and a “House” version created as Amiga MOD Tracker remixes by a friend of mine, Mark […]

    More

Mark Boszko

Film & Video Editor, Voiceover Artist, macOS IT Engineer, and Maker

Mark Boszko Avatar