Categories
Personal

Quiet Times

I’ve been somewhat quiet lately. I haven’t been coding much thanks to my computers all needing parts (hard drive, RAM). I’ve also just been taking some time off (away from the keyboard).

Today I even took out Sim City 2000 and installed it on my Mac mini. First time I touched that in several years. Ran rather well except for traffic not showing up well on the roads. Considering that’s a classic app, and I’m running Mac OS X 10.4, not bad. So much faster than it was a decade ago (I can do 1 year of simulation in about 10 seconds now). Getting it installed was the tricky part. Sim City 2000 came on floppy disks (remember those?) Had to boot up the old Performa, create disk images, and save it to a zip disk. Then use the G3 to convert the disk images to the newer dmg format as OS X Jaguar had no problem with it, but Tiger refused to read them. Then save it to Bender and download on the Mac Mini. That’s right, 4 Mac’s were involved. Thanks to only 1 floppy drive around (Bender has one, but there are no real OS X drivers for such an archaic device). So Sim City stole several hours of my day (damn it’s addicting).

Categories
Apple Mozilla

Camino Nightlies Rock

My mac mini right now is my primary system as my laptop is down with a bad hard drive (and still on backorder). Typically my PC handles my mail and basic web browsing. So I was still using Camino 0.8.4 until just tonight when I leaped into nightlies. I’m posting just to give a giant thanks to the Camino team for their amazing work on this browser. The only complaint I have right now is the lack of extensions (and that will remain indefinitely due to it’s design). It’s extremely fast (one bounce to launch), looking extremely good, and even fixed some of the ugly stuff I hated about previous versions (like those uber-ugly tabs). The new design is sleek and just perfect.

So once again thanks to everyone who make Camino what it is. If only some of this performance tuning could be brought to Firefox, and especially Thunderbird (which is extremely slow on my mac mini).

Anyway. It’s pure bliss. If you have a Mac, I’d suggest downloading, “installing” (you Mac guys know how great our “Installs” are), and give it a go.

Categories
Apple Hardware

Memory Frustration

Ok, so first my Hard Drive goes (my good one). So I order another. Thankfully CDW doesn’t process the order, so when I get back from vacation I need to place the order again (note that sarcasm). So I move my mail and such over to my mac mini, which has so far been my secondary system. I use it for fun. My laptop does the mundane email and other associated BS. My mac mini is like that garaged car you take out on days when you want to enjoy the nice weather and open roads. CDW was initially telling me it would ship by 7/8 or more likely 7/13. Ok, so I should have it by Friday. Wrong. Now were looking at least 7/22.

Now my mac mini is only running 256MB of RAM. For a few days I would have made it work, and then go back to it as a secondary system, less apps running means I can get away with it a bit. Now I need to get this thing going for a longer haul. Best Buy has 512MB for $29! Unfortunately they don’t even sell a 1GB stick for less than $200. Yea, that’s right. So my best bet is Crucial. Still I feel ripped off. $29 for 512MB, or $105 for 1GB. How the heck does that work out? Only having one RAM slot makes the system fit so well on my desktop, but it sucks when it comes to purchasing RAM.

Sigh… so if you’ve noticed I’m not doing much lately, it’s because my computers suck. My Thinkpad is down and out, and my mac mini is struggling to perform and just frustrating me. I think I’ve got to bite the bullet and just cough up $100 so my mini performs better, and wait for a good HD to ship.

I hate this stuff.

Categories
Apple

Mac Mini is online

I got my Mac Mini back today. Bliss. Airport Extreme/Bluetooth card for $99+tax. I decided to officially name the system “mini me”. I’m having fun already, though I got to get some sleep, and go back to school tomorrow… looking forward to the next time I get to play with my mini. 😉

Categories
Apple

Mac Mini Getting Wired Up

Called the Apple Store this morning and they got a “limited quantity” of Mac Mini Airport Kits after all my waiting. Went there today and there were 2. So I got one and they took mini-me to get it installed. It should be done by tomorrow. Ends up being $99 + tax, installation included. Not a bad deal actually. $99 isn’t a bad deal for install included. Done by an Apple Certified Technician.

According to Apple Insider:

The upgrade kit will be available from an AASP and will include an adapter mezzanine board, a Bluetooth board, a AirPort Extreme card, and antennas for both AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth modules. The kit is not user-installable and must be installed by an authorized technician. According to documentation, the mini’s Bluetooth module is located on its own USB bus.

When configured with internal AirPort and Bluetooth modules, the antennas for AirPort and Bluetooth are located in the top of the Mac mini. More specifically, the AirPort antenna is located in the top, rear left-hand corner above the mini’s power button, while the Bluetooth antenna is located in the top, front right-hand corner of the computer.

Due to the placement of the antennas, users who stack other computers or displays on top of the Mac mini may experience reduced wireless reception. For the best wireless performance, Apple suggests that users do not rest anything on top of the Mac mini, or stack other Mac mini’s on top of one another.

So I should get it back tomorrow. Just in time to go back to school. Oh well, it’s something to look forward to all week ;-).

Categories
Apple

Mac Mini Wireless Upgrade

Just got off the phone with the Menlo Park Apple Store regarding getting my Mac Mini a Wireless Upgrade.

The card should come in soon (will call me when it’s in). They told me last week it should have been in sometime this week, so I assume that means it should be in relatively soon. Should be priced around the same as the Apple Store ($99). Installation may be $30, depending on the date of purchase. Not bad. I’m guessing since it’s such a new product, there won’t be an installation charge. But it should cost less than $130 to get WiFi. A little more than a 3rd party adapter would, but this way I don’t have extra adapters on my already somewhat crowded desk.

Haven’t seen any reports of people getting their mini upgraded yet, so I assume the kits just haven’t shipped yet. Hopefully in a week or so I’ll get the call that they have some (and hopefully they will still have some when I get there).

Categories
Apple

Posting from a Mac mini

This is the first post from my mac mini!

Sweet…

Categories
Apple

Qualified for a Mini Mac!

mac mini qualified! Well, after the success with Free iPods, I went for a free Mac Mini, because as we all know, I’m obsessed with Apple products. So I guess I’m on my way to mini-ownership. And I’m a proud parent-to-be. Time to find some desk space, a LCD display, and perhaps a KVM switch… once I figure out how/where to setup.

Oh Joy!!!!!

Categories
Personal

Fun With Todo Lists

Some things upcoming this week:

  • Operations Management Quiz (hopefully not to hard)
  • Find/Order USB 2 PCMCIA card for Laptop (any recommendations)
  • Order iSkin for iPod
  • Hopefully Free Mac Mini’s will have #10 and be processing (likely done, just hasn’t and registered).
  • If above goes to processing, time to start researching a nice LCD display (likely 17″ or 19″), as well as KVM Switch
  • Finish sifting through some of the useless code in project aquarius, and finish up redoing the templating architecture (big speed improvement). Get a few more core parts hooked up… and that would wrap up milestone 0.1. [long term]
  • Finish reading Candide for World Lit
  • Figure out what’s left on the new reporter tool, and figure out a timeline for wrapping it up for 1.0
  • Watch a little TV
  • Get a little Sleep
  • [Suprise Addition] Operations Management Homework from hell

There’s more than that, but those are the ones that come to mind.

Oh yea, this page is now XHTML Strict. And will hopefully be that way 99% of the time.

Categories
Apple

More on the Mini

I mentioned it the other day. Now it looks like someone made a business plan out of it. Pretty cool idea. You could fit a few clients into 2U space. And cost effective.

Perhaps VPS (Virtual Private Servers) are a waste of time. Maybe this approach is better. This way, less clients are effected per hardware outage. This minimizes liability.

I’m 6/10 on getting a Free Mac Mini. I need 4 other people to make my goal of a free Mac Mini come true. So if you want to help your faithful blogger out, signup and complete an offer. most are painless. Read through them and find one that works for you.

No, I don’t currently plan to host on mini’s. But I do hope to have a mini to play with. My Macs are aging, so having a more powerful one for things like building Firefox, Thunderbird. And general development purposes would be really sweet.

So if you can, help Robert out! 4 More!