chris nixon : nixonbyname.com

While I think the photography of Thomas Hawk is great, I think this is his secondary skill. He is a man with vision.

Thomas first hit my radar when I bought a Tivo back in 2001(?). I went online looking for more information about the more unofficial things that could be done with my shiny new box. I did a search on Google, and his blog popped up. Later on when I bought a Media Center, he was already there with valuable advice on how to make the most of it.

I have always loved photography. My dad and his dad were amateur photographers, so I knew a fair bit about the art. I was never hugely inspired to get my own camera and do it myself though. That said, I was the first person I know who bought a digital camera. It was horrible. The resolution was bad, and the sensor was so poor. But I was smitten.

When I found Flickr in January 2006, guess who was there before me showing the way. You guessed it…Mr. Thomas Hawk.

Over the years, his blog has changed from a predominantly technology based blog to one that is about sharing ideas. I put the emphasis on sharing. While many want to keep their ideas to themselves, in order to make the most of their page views, faves or likes, Thomas spreads his around, using them as starting points for discussion and providing inspiration to others.

I’ve lost count of the amount of ideas I’ve taken from Thomas. Not once has it felt like stealing. I always feel like they have been given to me to do with what I want, and to take forward in any direction that pleases me.

Last week he came up with the idea of keeping $2 in his wallet so that when he’s asked for money in the street, he can give them the money in exchange for a photograph. The idea was innundated with positive comments on FriendFeed. Almost universally people wanted to use the idea for themselves. This happens regularly on his FriendFeed, Flickr and his blog. His ideas flow, and this has become more obvious since he joined FriendFeed.

Mr Hawk, please consider this a hearty hand shake and a thank-you.

Yours Aye.

One of my most popular posts on NixonByName is this one in which I’m pretty disparaging about BBC’s iPlayer. The system was clunky, it slowed down my PC a great deal, and the overall experience was poor.

It didn’t take long for me to give up on it all together.

The iPlayer is now fully available to UK users, and with a huge promotion push from the TV channels, is gaining popularity.

I now use a Mac, so I am forced to use the flash version of the player…and I’m really enjoying it. I wouldn’t use it to watch all my BBC shows, but as a catch-up tool it’s excellent. If they could get the UI for browsing available shows to be a little better, I would say it’s perfect for when you’ve missed that vital show.

It’s pretty simple. You search for a show, click it, and it starts playing. That’s the way watching TV online is supposed to be. Even if the downloadable version of iPlayer was available for the Mac, I’m not sure I’d bother…my Media Center does the job of normal TV viewing, this is just for when something is forgotten.

My favorite feature is when you have missed the end of a show, something that can happen with MCE. iPlayer doesn’t require you to load the whole show to watch the end part. You can just skip forward near to the end, and it will just load from there. Brilliant.

I am looking for Mac/PC folder sharing advice. I have a shared folder of .avi files on my Media Center that I want to add to from my Mac. When I try to copy the files across, OSX tell me I don’t have write access.

Sure enough, when I look at the folder on the PC it is marked as “read only”. I unclick it and hit apply, and all looks fine. However when I look again, it has marked itself as “read only” again, and I still don’t have permissions in OSX.

I have tried accessing through OSX using my windows log-in rather than as a guest, but this appears to make no difference.

Can anybody help?

Update from Pownce: