AtvCloner updated to version 0.1.2.
This minor update just adds “AtvCloner Website” and “AtvCloner User Guide” to the help menu so you can access these resources from within the app. See the change log to review changes.
So, since there have been a few requests trickling in I figured I better put up some kind of a user guide for AtvCloner. It needs some work but should give the basics for anyone that is at all familiar with the old school command line methods for prepping a new drive for use with the AppleTV.
The guide is here but be sure to read the main AtvCloner page if you haven’t and intend to use it since it has a few things about it which are not in the user guide. As well I figured I should post a change log to help keep track of what I changed from rev to rev, even if it’s only for my own benefit.
Note: You can also access any pages via the pages bar at the top of the site.
In an effort to do less and offer more, I have continued on a quest to make WordPress run faster on my server. Hopefully it’s a bit snappier. First I installed WP Super Cache which seems to help quite a bit. The idea is it caches dynamic content into a static html page to be served up to visitors and totally bypassing mySql and php in the process. Of course it comes with it’s own caveats but does seem to help. Second I tweaked Apache’s config file to process more http requests at a time. This also seemed to help some. At any rate … the quest goes on.
Okay, so having used several different drives with the AppleTV (both internal and eSata external) I got tired of constantly using terminal to image the original drive and then format the new drive. I can use the cli terminal commands just fine, but as I said I am lazy. So I wrote a small gui utility that does it for me called AtvCloner. You can read about and download it here.
Now, I have had good success with it on five different drives on a vanilla install of 10.5.7 Mac OSX Leopard but I make no warranties it will work for you. However, feel free to give it a try and if it works drop me a line. Be sure to read the guarantee part because like anything free … there isn’t one of any sort.
Currently it is at version 0.1.1 which of course indicates it isn’t even alpha yet (and maybe never will be). Hopefully it works for you and saves a lot of headache.
Cheers.
So, being lazy and such I decided to put up a new site using wordpress. Nice for management, etc. but for some reason which I cannot ascertain it’s very slow. It’s on its own server but apparently something with WordPress is borked. Anyway I figured I’d do this since my work with the HandBrake project has led me to things which do not really fit there but I figure someone might find useful. Most of this will probably have to do with video encoding ( mostly mac based ) and using video media on Apple products. Right now I am mostly running HandBrake encodes on the AppleTV.
One thing I have found useful is this hardware hack for the AppleTV. The AppleTV eSata Mod is a post I wrote on the HandBrake forums illustrating how I modded the “ATV” to use an external eSata drive to increase its local storage up to 1 TB and above. More on that to come. As well, since I got tired of using the OSX terminal to clone the atv drive, I wrote a mac osx gui to clone you’re AppleTV hard drive to a new, possibly larger hard drive since I am notoriously cli-phobic. More on that later as well. As a developer of the HandBrake MacGui (macintosh graphical user interface) I will try to elaborate here on why it is the way it is … from time to time.
Cheers.