Running Away from Maven

After managing a number of Java projects with Maven, the 2.1 release of the Twig Cassandra JDBC driver fork has prompted me to revisit the build process. This was a significant rewrite of the existing Apache driver, and incorporated a build process that leveraged the maven-assembly-plugin to produce a JAR with all of the dependencies included.
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iTunes for TiVo

Until recently, my iTunes media has been trapped on my PC without any easy path to my television. Apple offers some great solutions, using an AppleTV or connecting a Mac Mini to my big screen would provide a great viewing experience. However, we already have a Tivo and rely on this for just about everything – so it seems like this would be a good place to start.
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Squeezing a DVD on a Mac

While Apple provides an excellent general purpose DVD tool with iDVD, once you find yourself editing 1 hour videos it will quickly become problematic to squeeze those onto a single disc. This is a common problem with shows that we have recorded on our TiVo and would like to archive on a disc to either watch on the road or simply save for a future date. There are some professional tools capable of assisting with this task, but if it’s acceptable that your videos lose some fidelity then SmallDVD may be all you need.

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