Archive for the ‘ Mac Project ’ Category

recent events

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I have been busy with work and with busy designing my new look web site. So far all has gone reasonably well. I had a few issues uploading my images of the House Build last night, it seems that my hosting company had a few issues, as tonight the images have gone up without issue.

I will start with the new look site. I have been toying with a number of ideas, but none of them really appealed to me, they also caused me a few dramas with the design. Dreamweaver CS4 has some strange quirks with templates. I have had these problems before on previous versions. Thankfully I have powered on and worked through them, although, I have to say that I am still not 100% happy. Lets say it is down to the end user more than the program. My new site will be based on Photography, Video, Music and design. It will also feature the Mac and a little mention here and there on the PC. The site is still being worked on and toyed with, so don’t hold your breath, as I have yet to finish a web site of my own.

The House build. So far it is going well. There are a few hiccups, as to be expected with builders, plumbers and sparkies. They will always find an excuse to not be there when they are supposed to. It seems that the plumbing has taken a bit of a hammering from the major cleanup today. They have completed the task of putting storm water drains in and in this task have managed to damage 4 of the pipes used for water and sewer. I could understand this if they were just white, but they were sprayed yellow so they would stand out from the grey/white slab. The slab has now been cleared off and all the dirt moved off to fill in the drainage channels dug out to accommodate the pipes. Now residing on the slab is a selection of wooden frames, RSJ’s and other items. Hopefully this week the building will actually look like a house, or at least the makings of a house.

Work. I had to replace the switches in the small rack as one had given up the ghost and the other was old and only 100Mb connection. So off to the shop and 2 x 16 port switches and some new cat6 patch leads. So a complete rewire of the rack and finally get everyone and everything on the network connecting at 1Gb. Some would argue that there is no difference. At this point I would agree as the main link from the small rack is only cat5 cable and is double backing from outlet to rack then back to the main rack. Hopefully soon to be rewired correctly – Don’t ask, my predecessor had no idea.

The Mac…It works and works well. Need I say more?

Posted in Computers, Foto Gallery, General, House Build, Mac Project, Personal Blog, Site Updates, Web Sites, Work, photography | No Comments »

stuff

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

It has been a funny start to the year so far. The house build is starting to take shape. I drove by this afternoon after work and took a few snap shots. So far the footings have been laid out and prepared for the concrete, so hopefully sometime in the next few days, it should be poured and left to dry.

Work has been full on with changes and major repairs. I mentioned that the main domain controller died on its ass the other week and left us high and dry. The so called ability to recover data from backups proved extremely hard work and non eventful. You would think that you would be able to recover the data using Windows own version of backing up and restoring, but oh no. Nothing was corrupted, Windows just decided on being an arse hole. So $200.00 or so later and a small but really useful download, I retrieved what data I could. The previous nights backup failed when the server crashed and yes, it was the only time you would wish this had never happened, everyone who needed their latest data…sadly didn’t get it! So off to a Data recovery expert, who worked remotely from the UK of all places to here in Sydney, resolved the problem with our three Raid Drives. Thankfully the amount of money we paid (lets just say it was rather a lot of money), actually worked.

So with that out of the way, a new server was ordered and delivered last Friday. The Server will go into the rack tomorrow and be worked on until such time I have to kick people off the system so that it can become the Main DC. I am also in the process of revamping one of our older servers. Citrix 2 box has been revamped and 2 more Gig or RAM has been added. This quite nicely runs Server 2008. I am just in the final throws of doing updates and organising for Citrix to be put on.

The Mac that has become my new best friend is still charming me into what it can offer. Thus far I am in the first stages of rebuilding my main web site, although for the past 5 years or so, this has been my only creative and active. Hopefully I can rekindle my creative juices in Music and Photography.

The new thing in my life which takes me away from computers and internet is Golf. The two rounds of golf I had this long weekend proved that it isn’t as easy as it looks. No matter how good youget in WII golf, you will never hit 300 metres in real life if you have never played a real game of golf.

Posted in Computers, General, Life Down Under, Mac Project, Music, Personal Blog, Site Updates, Work | No Comments »

Mac Update

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

A few days on and have now installed a full legit version of Adobe Creative suite 4 – Design Premium. So far I have used Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Photoshop was interesting. Having predominantly used photoshop in its many guises on PC, I was having a little fun getting round the Mac version.

There are some subtle differences apart from the quality of the screen resolution, the option and command keys have some good uses. The image you create or open remains on your desktop, then any other images you open are opened in the same window, just look at the tabs and you will find the other images you have open. That took me about 5 minutes to figure out, with some puzzled looks.

Dreamweaver however is better on the Mac I feel. It loads quicker and no real change to its function. The way in which it opens is better. I recall the first time I opened Dreamweaver on my works laptop I had to fight with it to give me the layout I needed. I do much prefer earlier versions of Dreamweaver on PC. For those that code purely in Notepad, you aint missing much.

Posted in Computers, Mac Project | No Comments »

Its Official

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Again, from my previous post, the gremlins from the bowels of IT World have once again struck a fatal blow.  You may recall from my previous ramblings, that the Quicksilver is no longer working. The problem lies with either the Mainboard/Logicboard or whatever board they call it or the Processor. I feel that the issue lies with the former and not the latter.

I removed all the memory from the Quicksilver and installed it one by one into the Graphite. Each time the machine booted up and loaded OSX.  Therefore I can only conclude that the Mainboard is at fault. I find it hard to believe that both lots of memory would be faulty. It could be that the board has been faulty from Day one and has chosen to work because of whatever reason. Maybe installing the card has highlighted an issue, could be just a simple dry joint or broken track on the mainboard. Without actually removing the board and having a close look I cannot actually say for certain.

The task now is to find a replacement board, I am sure that task is going to be fun. The other option is to see if the Daughterboard/Processor will work in the Graphite, so that this machine I am on now can become a 800Mhz machine. If so, How do I go about it? I don’t want to spoil this machine, as she hasn’t caused any issues, but, having said that, I did buy this machine from a ‘Mac Based Company’ that’s all they do all day, the Quicksilver was purchased from people who get these in from time to time.

So, with that in mind, this little beauty is now running 1.25Gb of RAM. I have noticed a big difference too. It originally had 256Mb, I added another 256 to make 512, then another 256 to make  768. All four slots are full, namely 1x 512Mb and 3x 256Mb. I could look into upgrading the AGP card to something a little more exciting, but, not sure if I should.

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Quicksilver has taken ill

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Not sure what happened, but the quicksilver is sick. My Airport cards arrived today, so naturally when I got home, plugged one into the quicksilver, fired it up and NADA. It no boot up. So restarted and got a shit load of console, restarted again and got the YOU NEED TO SHUT DOWN screen. The All I got was the gibberish screen, panic and hanging here like in old DOS mode.

Re installed OSX and had 3 attempts, so removed one stick of memory and managed to install, so being greedy, put one stick back in…whoops, silly thing to do. Same issues. So a whole night wasted.

However, not to be put off and feeling eager to try out and kill my 400 Graphite, plugged in another airport card (I bought 2 remember)……….. It booted, no issues, it found said card and went through the setup screen…..NO ISSUES.

My guess its a dodgy board in the 800 Quicksilver. I just had a feeling about it from day one, after many attempts to get it to work. Now I know it wasn’t me, twas the beastly Quicksilver. So here is my technical opinion. Stay clear of Quicksilver’s.

The other weird thing is when it did work…albeit briefly, it did see the Airport card. Crazy!!!

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eBay Madness

Monday, September 10th, 2007

as with my previous post, I am now just waiting on 2 Airport Extreme cards for my Macs. Yes i know I have just bought a 16 port switch, but I am sure there was a perfectly good reason. sam said, how many do you want? Silly question to ask me hehehehe :-) So seeing as I have 2 G4′s, only seemed fair that they should both have one. Besides, once I resurrect my other POS machines gathering Dust and Red Backs, I will need the switch. I just need a decent KVM that doesnt use PS2 I require USB 2 and a video input/output that don’t blur or Ghost!

As always, a picture for those that GAS. (Give A S…  need i spell it out?)

Airport Doodad x2

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Canon MP810

Monday, September 10th, 2007

We took the TV card back to Dick Smiths today and got a full refund, which was good. We then made our way to ‘The Good Guys’ another electrical shop which offers good discounts if item is bought for cash. However, we got sidetracked and ended up in ‘Bing Lees’. Bing Lee is another electrical store that does many things. So we wandered off to the Printer section. Sadly the Epson Printer was still a tad expensive and appeared to be the only one there. So whilst I was looking at the Epsons, Sam found the Canon at $319. Its an all in one – just no fax function, which to be honest, you can turn your PC into a fax anyway, should you need one.

I had a look at the Canon and had a look at the box to check for the Apple Logo. Sure enough it did! Unlike its predecessor which catered only for Windoze. The Box was huge, as is the Printer. It does printing to DVD/CD it also scans Negatives and Slides. It copies and prints without the need for the PC/Mac and all kinds of wonderful things, like Duplex printing. Yes Both Sides!! It was weird watching the print come out the usual way and then get sucked back into the printer only to be printed on the reverse side. It utilizes 5 cartridges so as to improve on wastage and quality, like most printers these days. I have now installed on the Mac and NO ISSUES. No need to download additional drivers nor did I have to validate!!!!!!! MS TAKE NOTE.

Thus far, I am totally impressed. It does all that the Epson did and for 2/3 of the cost.

Canon MP810 Multifunction

Posted in Computers, General, Mac Project, Personal Blog | 2 Comments »

Memory addition

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

Memory finally arrived for the Mac. 512Mb of 133 taking it up to 1Gb of RAM. Certainly helps, even if it is a Single 800Mhz Processor, she fairs well with what I ask of her. I now need to buy another USB2 card for this Mac. I could take the one I bought for the 400, but then I may want to use it one day. They are only $35 or so, so no major cost involved.

I have considered a keyboard upgrade for this machine. I have looked at the two new keyboards on offer from the Mac store, both look like nice shiny pieces of kit to have sitting on the desk. I will look at the reviews. One is Bluetooth – so I may give that one a miss. Although its not a PC running Vista, so I should be ok.

I have installed Illustrator and a few other items on here, to trial. I never really had any success with Illustrator, but then again, I never really played around that much with it unlike Photoshop.

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Won It!!!!

Friday, August 17th, 2007

There was two sticks of 512Mb of SDRAM for grabs, i just dipped out on getting both by a bees tadger. Finally got the last one with only 5 seconds on the clock to go. Paid more than i really wanted, but still cheaper than normal retail prices, including postage.

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Memory – lack thereof

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

Maybe because I am tired or some people haven’t got a clue (at the moment, that could be me), but I appear to be having a really big stupid moment in finding memory for my G4. I have located some 512 sticks that are genuine Apple memory, except that the usual issue of people bidding against themselves and bumping the cost up is pissing me off. Also the kind of SDRAM required is getting confusing. There is the ECC ram and non ecc one page says it wont work, whilst others say it will….aaaarrrgghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

I have gone to various websites such as Kingston and Crucial to name but a few and i have even found one local and one in the states. The Crucial Site has a 2-Step process, which is more like 4, but hey, if it helps me past my uber blonde moment then I ain’t complaining. It asks the question of what machine you have, what model and so on. It then pulls up a complete list of memory for you.

It mentions the following:

  • # Module Size: 512MB
  • # Package: 168-pin DIMM
  • # Feature: SDRAM, PC133
  • # Specs: SDRAM, PC133 • CL=3 • Unbuffered • Non-parity • 133MHz • 3.3V • 64Meg x 64

Now the above style memory is listed on some pages and states that it isn’t compatible with MAC, whilst others state that the ones that ‘are’ compatible with Mac are indeed not!?!?! Come on folks, try singing off of the same bloody hymn sheet for Christ’s sakes.

It is most annoying and I am getting tired and cranky. So looks like I will just wait a while and use the old Buy it Now method as i really and truly cannot be arsed!!!

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