The original AppleTV software had a beautiful startup movie (startup.mov) that I loved. It, along with many other nice features of 1.x were replaced in the Take Two update. Granted Take Two brought a lot of new functionality with it, but I still mourn the simplicity and elegance of the 1.x software. The new startup movie (Intro.m4v) particularly bugs me. So I decided to do something about it.
First, I found and extracted the original Startup.mov from my AppleTV before I upgrade to Take Two. Then I went hunting for where Apple had stashed its replacement in the Take Two OS Install. You can find it here:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/Intro.m4v
Note that they moved from using an MOV to using an M4V file for the movie. I messed around with trying to convert the original MOV into an M4V, but everything I tried was too lossy. By the way, the “Export for AppleTV” setting you find in Mac software that supports it does not export to the highest bit rate that the AppleTV is capable of — it actually can handle up to a 6500MBPS combined bit rate.
So I tried Export in QuickTime, I tried all the different settings in FFMPEG, but I still wasn’t happy with the result. So I decided I’d try a Symlink instead, to fool the AppleTV into playing the file I wanted. Note that you could do this with any movie file the AppleTV is capable of playing, so you can customize your start-up to your heart’s content! Here’s the steps I took. You’ll obviously need a patch-sticked AppleTV to do these steps:

• Copy over (using SCP/Fugu/WinSCP) the startup.mov file
• SSH into your AppleTV
• sudo bash
• mount -uw /
• cp ~/Startup.mov /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources
• cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources
• mv Intro.m4v Intro-Take2.m4v
• chown root:wheel Startup.mov
• ln -s Startup.mov Intro.m4v
• reboot

When its done booting, you should see the new (old) startup movie! All we’re doing here is copying in the original movie, backing up the existing one, fixing any permission problems, and creating a Symlink so that when the boot process goes to open Intro.m4v its redirected to Startup.mov!
Symlinks have to be one of the coolest things about using a Unix-based OS…

Someone at our new church (who’s introduced themselves to us 3 times now) asked us how our summer was going. I surprised myself by answering “Oh, we just want it to be over!”
But its true, everything good that we’ve been waiting for and working for comes right as the summer wraps up — not the least of which being the house! You have no idea how much we’re looking forward to getting out of this purgatory (no offense to those soon to be living here.)
Nicole and her parents went appliance shopping yesterday. An old family friend knows of a place where they sell stuff for great prices, and Nic managed to find 4 four great appliances totaling less than $2000! What a shopper!
I myself have wrangled a deal or two, and managed to get three pieces of office furniture, including a very spacious desk to replace this plastic table I’ve been working off of, for $250.
Roofs, on the other hand, seem to be a little harder to find for cheap, and as of yet we haven’t been quoted much less than $5500. This is a little bit higher than the estimates our real estate agent gave us while we were making our decision, but… we still feel like we got a pretty good deal.
The other big expense is movers. Almost all of our friends are legitamitely busy on our moving day, and this is admittedly a rather different move than the ones we usually conscript help for, so we decided to work the expense of a moving company into the budget. Its not as expensive as I’d feared, and I think it’ll be worth it just to get it done quickly, but these costs do add up.
So we’re biding our time, and counting our pennies… it’s been a long, lean summer, but the end is in sight, and we can hardly wait. Phase 3 of the transition home is almost here. And a house means a never ending supply of projects for me to work on which, given my propensity for getting bored quickly, is a very good thing…

I think most introverts know that they are. Most extroverts I’ve met, on the other hand, don’t seem to be aware of the two definitions at all. They assume everyone is like them… which is not entirely unfounded. 70% of people are extroverts — using the proper definition of the term.
For those who’ve never heard the proper definition, here’s a great article highlighting some of the differences in personality types. Its a useful read, and as an introvert, I wish more extroverts took the time to understand the subject matter. Here’s one of my favorite lines:
Perhaps the hardest thing for extraverts to understand about introverts is that someone could actually want to be alone. Not because they don’t like to have fun, or because they hate people, but just because they prefer their internal world, and they need to return to it to be energized.

Today has been a good day! I love it when people call me to arrange things I need done, instead of the other way around.
There’s a list of people we needed to get in touch with in these last couple weeks before the house deal goes down. There’s the insurance company, the lawyer, the utilities, etc… There’s also the matter of our little car having been in the shop most of the summer, lots of banking details to work out, and the final transition with my employer all to get closed out this month.
I figured I’d pick up the phone and get started, but its been ringing off the hook all morning. Our lawyer got in touch with me to get the ball rolling. Our insurance agent (who I love) called me to let me know where she was at. Even the car repair shop called to give us good news. I still had to call the utilities myself, obviously, but the largest “new account set-up fee” was $35, which is a lot less than we’d expected.
Also on the phone this week was the guy in charge of hardware purchasing at work. After a few months of the craptop sitting broken in a box in New York, my new laptop is on the way. Our only options are Dell machines, so this time I decided to go with a lightweight laptop. Given the horse power available to me both at home and at the office New York, I figured I’d aim for portability this time. When we get to Albany in September, a cute little Latitude D430 will be waiting for me.
My parents got a small-sized Dell that they use in their travels, and while its no MacBook, its a decent little machine that fits well in a suitcase or backpack. Something tells me that might be important to us over the next couple years.
So the movers are booked, all the little pieces are falling into place. Two and a half more weeks and life begins again. We can hardly wait…

I have no idea what “playing conkers” is, but I couldn’t agree more with this article. (And also this video, if you have the time.)
This is easily one of the largest problems with (many) parents these days, and we’re very determined that our kids will get a fair chance at skinning their knees, breaking their arms, and everything else that comes with the adventure of growing up. Kicking Benjamin out of the house to play in the backyard is one of the many things we’re looking forward to about having our own place.
On an unrelated note, why are open source/free software project leads so frequently ignorant, self-important jerks? I released a couple projects to the Internets for free, and I can’t remember “act like a douche” or “verbally assault anyone with a suggestion” as being part of the process.

– That return air fare to Paris is only $249?
– That flying to Europe is cheaper than flying to Vancouver?
– That you can stay in a hostel outside Paris for $25 a night?
I just found all this out, and I’ll tell you what: if we weren’t buying a house and breast-feeding a baby, we’d be blogging from Europe by the end of next week!
Oh well, there’s always next year…