Geekistry: It's all geek to us

It's all geek to us

Fixing the default Macintosh network share name

Michael Gaines | Jan, 25, 2010 | 0 comments

I’m constantly sharing Mac and Windows machines on the same network, but for some reason, Apple decided to make the default Mac share name the ID of your MAC address. MAC is not the same as Macintosh, but stands for “Media Access Control” ID which uniquely IDs all network cards. This helps, but the name doesn’t really help describe which Mac you’re pointing to if you have more than one.

Are CDs dying because of what once made it king?

Michael Gaines | Dec, 28, 2009 | 0 comments

Back in the 80′s when the compact disc first became available, there was a debate over which was the better choice: CDs or vinyl. Twenty-five years later, the current king of physical media, the CD, is now being threatened by the latest advancement: digital downloads.

Following the red brick road

Michael Gaines | Dec, 26, 2009 | 0 comments

Everyone knows the story of the Wizard of Oz. In the beginning of the story, Dorothy is told to follow the yellow brick road. At the end of the road she’ll arrive at the Emerald City where the great Wizard of Oz resides, and will grant her the wish to send her home.

Anatomy of an iPhone Wallpaper

Michael Gaines | Nov, 15, 2009 | 0 comments

A few days ago I started working on some classic videogame iPhone wallpapers which have gotten thousands of views after I posted them and were mentioned on the AppSlappy podcast. I wanted to write a bit about how I put them together.

The iPhone’s screen is 320×480 and has two tall banners on its home screen, one on the top and one on the bottom. What annoys me about slapped-together wallpapers is how they just resize images to fit the screen and don’t take the banners into account. If images are blindly resized, the result is cutting off heads or logos that look amateurish.