cousin girls » Recommend

Wiimote and Darwiinremote to Control Powerbook Volume

morton — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:24:07 +0000

For a long time, but without success, I tried to get my Wiimote to work as a volume control for my Powerbook G4. The problem with the free software Darwiinremote always was that mapping the volume keys to Wiimote doesn’t seem possible.

That problem is partially solved now. The free software PTHVolume lets you define any other shortcut which can then be mapped to Wiimote using Darwiinremote.

Still, it’s not perfect. PTHVolume misses a customisable shortcut for the option-shift-volume combination which under 10.5 Leopard controls the volume in smaller increments. And, but that’s only an aesthetic issue, you can’t hide the PTHVolume icon from the menu bar as you can do with the normal volume icon.

Anyway, find PTHVolume here, and Darwiinremote here.

Quicksilver for OS X

morton — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:14:16 +0000

Quicksilver for Mac OS X is a launcher very much based on keyboard input.

It works by bringing up an alt-tab-style menu via a definable hotkey combination and a search algorithm for finding items matching your input, which works almost instantly. Define which parts of your system are searched, so it’s fine to just serve for starting applications.

You can get much deeper into it, though. Do not only display applications, but any objects. Do not just launch, but use any other action in an application or on an object. Query an online dictionary for input text. Email a paper to your friend. Do it all with just a few keystrokes.

You can find the freely distributed software here.

Dan Dickinson’s blog presents a lovely introduction to using the code.

Hans Ulrich Reck – Audiolectures at KHM Cologne (in German)

morton — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:32:25 +0000

At Cologne KHM’s website, you can find two complete lectures (i.e. about 50 hours in German language) by Hans Ulrich Reck, titled Utopie, Funktion, Kritik, Kontext and Brechung, Setzung, Expansionen. Reck combines art historical aspects with topics from art theory, aesthetics, technology, media theory, philosophy, cognitive science, mathematics etc., a.o. giving an informative overview over newer discourses in the field while already contextualising the different aspects, problems and outcomes towards integrative questions and reflections.