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Posts Tagged ‘Simon’

20 Jan 2010

It appears that we have the year’s first mega viral hit. “Pants on the Ground,” an original medley performed during American Idol auditions by Larry Platt, is seemingly everywhere this the past week, from Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show to the Minnesota Vikings locker room.

The phenomenon has also joined the rarefied air of one million fans on Facebook, where Platt’s activities are being documented (he’s already been on The View), and users are uploading their own “pants”-inspired creations to the fan-created Page.

Like any huge viral sensation, “pants” is also getting the remix treatment on YouTube, with some spinoffs of the original receiving hundreds of thousands of views. Popeater put together a list of some of the best.

American Idol has to be counting its blessings that it’s found the year’s first hit in the show’s first week. With Paula gone and Simon on the way out, the show is going to be more dependent than ever on viral moments to drive interest — manufactured as they may be.

In case you’re still out of the loop, here’s the original:

Reviews: Facebook, YouTube

Tags: american idol, larry platt, pants on the ground, tv, video

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Tags: American, american idol auditions, hit, Idol, jimmy fallon, Larry Platt, late night show, Minnesota, minnesota vikings, Paula, show, Simon, year

3 Sites To Check Where Your First & Last Name Come From

In: tutorial

18 Jan 2010

nametag Learning where your last name comes from can be interesting. Your first name often holds an interesting meaning and descent, linking you to the founding fathers, Hebrew, or even the old Greek.

Your surname even more so. Since it’s passed on from father to child, it can be used to track back your family origins for hundreds of years. There’s a story behind your name and lineage, and with the internet in every household, these campfire tales have never been more within reach.

Genealogy and Etymology are two major fields of study, dedicated respectively to the lineage and linguistic origin of your names. In the past, Tina has already talked about fun sites to ‘calculate’ name characteristics, now it’s time to get serious.

Namepedia – A Wikipedia of Names

Without a doubt, Namepedia is the single most extensive free name database to find out where your last name comes from. The reason, as you might have guessed from its name, is because it’s maintained by the community. Like Wikipedia, people can edit pages and add additional information.

Obviously, you need to look at the information with a skeptical eye. Although often swiftly corrected by other users, faulty information sometimes goes unnoticed. Before taking the second screenshot below, I admittedly deleted a (trivial) ‘Simon is a character in this soap opera” entry under “origins”.

Screen shot 2010-01-14 at 19.20.06

Apart from those little, err… mistakes, Namepedia is an invaluable source of genealogical and etymological information. Apart from the default (originated from country a, and spread mid-1500 to country b), Namepedia provides an almost ridiculous amount of information.

Scrolling down, you’re met with a relations chart, connecting this and other names in terms of variation, translation, nick, opposite and pet-name. As opposed to the blue ones, pink boxes display related female names. Selecting any one will make the jump to the relevant page.

Screen shot 2010-01-14 at 19.31.42

Further down, you’ll also find name dates, frequency rates, famous people, and another mention of related names, listed according to similarity. Find out how appreciated your name is, and the activity in different countries and languages, as well as the cycle in which it currently resides.

I was a little shocked to find out that my name was rated so-so, and appears to be fading around the world. Well, I guess that’s the risk of demanding information.

Behind the Name

If you can’t find what you want on Namepedia, or like a lot of people, just don’t trust wiki’s, it’s time to venture elsewhere. Compared to Namepedia, Behind the Name is far off in quantity, but the information provided is solid. True, Behind the Name also allows people to contribute information, but not after a rigorous registration process (which tends to chase away the trolls and ignorant ‘contributors’).

Screen shot 2010-01-14 at 19.41.16

At first glance, Behind the Name appears to offer little more than pronunciation and origin. At the far-right portion of the screen, you can summon popularity graphs (rank and percent used) from a number of different countries.

Screen shot 2010-01-14 at 19.49.21

Also available are related names, and comments. These last can be incredibly interesting – they include unconfirmed information that has not (yet) been included on the page.

FamilyEducation: nameLAB

nameLAB is the odd one out on this list, but also a worthy mention. Primarily a ‘family’ site, FamilyEducation offers a little extra genealogical information, like popularity graphs and relation charts. Instead, this part of the site seems to be aimed at parents investigating baby names.

Screen shot 2010-01-14 at 19.56.24

Albeit limited to, that doesn’t take away that the offered origin and meaning is often even more extensive than on Namepedia and Behind the Name. What the site misses in raw analytical data, it makes up in interesting facts and story-telling.

Of course the respective sites of genealogy and etymology aren’t limited to the above three mentions. Perhaps I even left out some of the best alternatives to find out where your last name comes from. Feel free to drop a comment of suggestion or appreciation below.

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Tags: campfire tales, family origins, information, linguistic origin, name, name characteristics, Namepedia, Origin, pink boxes, Simon, site, Tina, Wolfram Alpha Knowledge

Sleeping With the Enemy: Running Windows Programs on Your Mac using WineBottler

In: tutorial

15 Jan 2010

Will you agree with me if I said, “Being popular isn’t always better.”? However, popularity does provide some privileges like a wider choice of options and more freedom to choose.

That might be the case of Mac OS X choice of applications. Even though most Windows applications today already have their comparable – or better – Mac versions, and most Mac users get along just fine with the available Mac apps; there are still some Windows-only apps needed by a small group of Mac users.

If you are one of them and require the use of some Windows-only apps, you can still run them. Here are your options for running Windows programs with Mac:

Boot your Mac computer into Windows using Boot Camp. Windows and all its apps will completely natively, but you have to go through the hassle of rebooting every time you want to switch OS.
Create a virtual Windows environment using VirtualBox. Windows can run alongside Mac OS X, but the processing power used will be drastically high.
Transform the Windows apps into Mac apps using WineBottler and run them Natively in Mac OS X. (And save yourself from spending several hundred bucks on a Windows license).

Open the Bottle and Pour the Wine

running windows programs with mac

If you’ve used Macs for a while, it’s very likely that you’ve heard about Wine. There’s an entry explaining everything about Wine in Wikipedia, but if you only need a quick recap, here’s the quote:

Wine is a free software application that aims to allow Unix-like computer operating systems to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows. Wine also provides a software library known as Winelib against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like systems.

WineBottler utilizes the Wine environment to port the Windows applications to work on Mac. The installation is an ordinary drag and drop procedure. However, please note that the disk image contains two files: Wine and WineBottler, and you have to put them BOTH at the Application folder.

running windows programs with mac

When you open WineBottler for the first time, you will see the window with available “prefixes” – some kind of Windows environment to run Windows apps. If you have used other application that simulates Windows environment before – like Crossover – there might already be several prefixes on the list.

You can add or remove prefixes from this window.

running windows programs with mac

But to install Windows applications, you have to choose “Create Custom Prefixes” tab from the left pane.

run windows on mac

Then customize the installation using the options on the right pane.

run windows on mac

First, select the application that you want to install. If the file is the actual executable – for example, a portable app, check the “Copy only” box.

Then decide whether or not you want to create a self-contained app. If you check the box, you can use the resulting file on another Mac machines without the need to install Wine.

Before clicking the “Install” button, you can choose “Silent install” by checking the box. I honestly don’t know what this “Silent install” business mean. I’ve tried to check and uncheck the box during installation and did not see any differences.

Drum roll, please!

Now we’ll go through the installation process. I tried to install Crayon Physics (mentioned by Simon here).

I chose the file, and click the “Install” button. The installation progress window appeared.

run windows on mac

Then, during the installation process, a strangely familiar window popped out: the actual Windows-style installation window. It was like I was performing the installation on a Windows machine.

run windows on a mac

I followed the Windows installation steps to the end. And when everything was done, the last WineBottler installation window popped out, asking me to choose which file run every time the resulting app is launched.

run windows on a mac

Not ever installation will ask you to select the “Startfile“. But if you are confronted with one, please make the choice carefully because choosing the wrong one would prevent the resulting app from running; and you have to go through the installation process again.

After the process is done, you can open the ported app the same way you open any other Mac app: by double-clicking it or by selecting it and press “Command + O”

run windows on a mac

The Glass Half Empty

I haven’t had the time to play with many installations but here are few things that I’ve picked up during the short encounter:

Not all Windows application can be ported to Mac. You just have to try it for yourself.
Creating a self-contained file will result in a much larger sized file. In my experience, a 285MB self-contained app was produced compared to 86MB non self-contained app.
You’ll mostly likely get better results from porting portable Windows apps. Check out this article about portable apps to know where to find a whole bunch of them.
The processing power used by ported apps will depend on the type of each application you’re running but they will consume a considerable amount of juice from the system.
Be careful not to break any laws (Copyrights, EULA, etc.) while performing the porting. You are responsible for your own actions.
Ported apps will run under X11 (Applications > Utilities > X11), you must have that installed before beginning.

Have you tried WineBottler? Do you know other alternatives to port Windows app over to Mac? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments section below.

running windows programs with mac

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