geek – Page 3 – Station in the Metro

Ad-blocking

I don’t always agree with Marco Arment, but his post today about the ethics of modern web ad-blocking really struck a nerve.

As a publisher myself I’ve been trying to figure out how to monetize my sites so they will at least pay for their own expenses. I’m not trying to turn my podcast into my sole income source, but it would be nice if it wasn’t a money pit, y’know? However, I want to support it in a way that’s not creepy — I really don’t want to track you, and you don’t want me to track you, I’m sure.

Recently my wife also was complaining about flashing and otherwise intrusive ads on a “free” game site she frequents. We talked about the ethics of blocking the ads on a free site, and she eventually decided that blocking the ads was worth reducing headaches from flashing and flickering junk on her screen. We installed an ad blocker for Firefox, and not only did the ads go away, but it actually improved the site’s performance on her computer (an older white MacBook model). This surprised me at the time, but blocking those JavaScript loads on the page really reduced the amount of work that her browser had to do.

In Marco’s article, he recommended the free Ghostery add-on, which installs in your favorite browser and shows a little pop-up of what tracking scripts are running on a given page. It can also block any or all of these, but the most interesting thing for me today has been just to see them, and realize that there was more going on on my own site than I knew.

Let’s take a look at what Ghostery is seeing on my own sites.

Upgrading Django to use Virtualenv on WebFaction

geek, howto / By Mark Boszko

Recently, I wanted to upgrade my website on ye olde Django 1.6.5 to finally come up to speed with Django 1.8.3 (current, as of this writing). However, I realized that upgrading a WebFaction webapp in situ seemed to be a rather painful process. In addition, WebFaction doesn’t set you up with Virtualenv by default, and I’d like to be able to upgrade Django and the other packages I need for my site without affecting any of my other sites.

I’m going to show how I did my upgrade, but of course, you may have things set up differently, and YMMV. However for a relatively simple site, like mine, I hope this will be helpful.

Get an HBO Now login, even if you first subscribed on Apple TV

geek, howto / By Mark Boszko

Frustratingly, it seems when you sign up for HBO Now on the Apple TV, it just associates it with your iTunes account, and that’s it. No email confirmation. No password to sign in to HBO Now on other iOS devices or on the web.

I appears the best answer is to sign up on your iOS device first, but if you’ve already signed up on the Apple TV, here’s the workaround:

Log into your iTunes account on your Mac or PC.
Go to Account > View Account. You will be asked for your iTunes password again.
Scroll down to the Settings section. You will see Subscriptions: on the left, and on the right side next to that, click Manage.
If you have many subscriptions, you might need to scroll down. Next to HBO Now, select Edit.
Under Automatic Renewal select Off and then click Done. You may need to confirm in another dialog box, because iTunes really wants you to be sure.
Download the HBO Now app for your iOS device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch) that uses the same iTunes account for purchases as your Apple TV. At the launch screen, select Start Your Free Trail With iTunes, then register with an email address and password. It seems that it doesn’t need to be the same email you use for iTunes, as the purchase goes through iTunes, so it’s automatically linked to the same iTunes account.
Repeat steps 1–4, but then this time you won’t see Automatic Renewal in the Edit page, but Renewal Options. Click the button to Subscribe, and it will ask you to confirm. Once you do, the Automatic Renewal option will reappear, with On already selected.
Enjoy HBO Now on all of your devices! If you want to log in to hbonow.com, use the email and password that you entered in step 6. Assuming both your iOS device and your Apple TV use the same iTunes account, it does not seem necessary to log out of HBO Now on your Apple TV.

Some steps came via this Apple Support Communities post.

The Ultimate Guide to Hosting Your Own Data

geek, howto / By Mark Boszko

Hi! Sorry about that click-bait title. What one person can write an ultimate guide to anything, really? All I can do is tell you about my own experience, and some tools I find useful.

Have some other ideas to add? Hit me up on Twitter or Facebook, and maybe we can actually build an ultimate guide together, as we hold hands and drink Coca-Cola — with crazy straws from a beer hat, obviously, since our hands are busy.

Let’s get started!

Mac Screenshot-O-Rama

geek, howto / By Mark Boszko

Useful Mac recently posted The Screenshot Spectacular, with all of the shortcuts and variations on taking a screenshot on the Mac. Very comprehensive and clear.

My favorite is ⌘⇧4 for taking a crosshair-bounded screenshot, and then pressing space to switch it to a cursor that captures whatever window is under the cursor when you click, and then (and I didn’t know this part before today), ⌥-click to capture the window without the big soft shadow around it.

Anyway, check out the whole post for even more screenshot tips-n-tricks. Thanks to Liz Marley and Joel Page for dropping screenshot knowledge.

Addendum 2017-12-08

Andrew Abernathy mentioned that once you are in window mode, you can hold command ⌘ to target just a sheet attached to a window (instead of the whole window).

ECCC Artist Alley Table Dimensions

art, geek, howto, Seattle / By Mark Boszko

I’ve applied to get a table in Artist Alley at Emerald City Comicon in Seattle next year, for my VFX podcast, The Optical. So, before I helped my good friends at AAlgar Productions pack up their table this year, I took some measurements. Assuming I get the table, I plan to have an overhead display clamped to the table, and bins underneath. If you’re doing something similar, here are some useful dimensions.

Here’s a scalable PDF of the same dimensions, all released for you to use under CC BY 4.0 (tl;dr — give me attribution, preferably with a link to this blog post, then use it however you like).

Comparison of Buffy original and widened HD looks.

Buffy’s HD Remaster Woes

finalcutprose, flicks, geek, rants / By Mark Boszko

This post on Facebook shows in great detail the disappointing issues with the new HD remaster of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Pivot TV, complete with side-by-side comparisons and video links. (All of the side-by-sides here on the blog are taken from that Facebook article. Thanks, mystery author!)

The questionable 16:9 cropping (or opening the frame up to see crew members and lighting rigs, as above) is bad enough, but the liberties they’re taking with Buffy’s HD color grades are ruining the aesthetic of the show.

Buffy has always been one of the darkest shows (in terms of luma levels) I’ve ever seen on TV. While I understand tiny tweaks to take advantage of the full color information and resolution of the new film scans (and the vast amount of information a Blu-ray can hold vs. the original Betacam master tapes¹), brightening every dark scene makes it akin to going through a haunted house with the harsh fluorescents on overhead the entire time — It actually makes it feel more like a cheap soap opera. (And yes, at times Buffy is a soap opera, but at least it was a moody and atmospheric soap opera!)

The new effects aren’t terrible, and I can’t blame them for replacing those, assuming the effects were only ever finished at SD resolution to begin with — the same thing that had to happen for Star Trek: The Next Generation, when they remastered for HD. Kind of weird that the vampire dustings look more like smoke now, though:

I’m not usually one to complain, “you’re ruining it!,” even about a beloved film or series like this, but it’s terribly sad to see Buffy being treated like this for the HD remaster. I hope the producers take a hint from the TNG Blu-rays and reassess their decision not to remaster the show in the 4:3 ratio as Joss Whedon and his crews originally intended. That Facebook post seems to hope that this is a “rough draft,” and that these issues will be corrected for an assumed eventual Blu-ray release, but I fear once these episodes are done, no one’s going to spend the money or take the time to do them yet again. Still, since only seasons 1 and 2 seems to have been done so far, fingers still crossed for season 3 and beyond!

I’d assume it was Betacam SP, given the time in which it was made. Later seasons might have been DigiBeta — or even from the start, if Fox was very forward-thinking. However, from personal experience with the formats, and seeing the very soft resolution on the DVDs, I’m going to assume BetaSP for now. ↩