I was going through my many images folders on many backups of backups and came across this little beauty. Sadly the quality is not that good (it was taken on one of my many Nokia phones I have owned over the years). The picture simply illustrates that when a Rhodesian Ridgeback (albeit a Crossed Ridgeback and German Shepherd) wants to cuddle up to you whilst sprawled out on the sofa, you don’t really have much say in the matter.
I have chosen this theme for its clean appearance. The only issue I have at the moment is the Archived items. For some silly reason the text is bold and enlarged, this is something I hope to rectify in the coming days. All other items appear to be ok.
Thanks to bluetooth and my trusty nokia e71, here is the latest picture of the house.
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.
Well, after a lengthy wait for Westpac to pull their fingers out after stuffing us around for a month, we are back on track for the house to be completed. The time it has taken for this to actually start sees like a lifetime.
The picture below shows the Plumbing and groundwork ready for the Concrete to be poured on Monday (fingers crossed)
The Ground work
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.
After a few days with my new toy and very small keyboard, I find myself spending more time sat in front of this beast. I now have a full legal copy of Office 2008 and Adobe Creative suite. For most long term Mac users, what I am about to say is common place and everyday just do it features that the Mac has to offer.
The fact that you power on the Mac, whichever version you have and whichever version OSX you use. It just works. I really don’t need to say much more than that. Sure the layout and functionality are different to PC’s, but I find that I can quite easily get around the desktop and not have to fight with the system. The Ctrl and C options are now Command and C to name but one of the subtle differences. Most of the music and web design software is Mac or PC, so no major issues there.
I still have my little cheese wedge iMac and my G4 which just needs space on my desk (if I had one now) to setup and dispose of the PC’s. As much as I use PC’s for work, I really don’t want to come home and fight with a PC for my leisure time. I want happy computing time. I have RDP on my mac for access to my work computers and I suppose that if I looked hard enough I could find a VNC equivalent or VNC for the Mac.
Apart from the fact this is a new toy, I am loving it. Did I mention that stuff just works on a Mac?
Ahh the familiar sound of a stylus rubbing on Vinyl and oh how much better the sound. Nice little feature to this turntable is you can connect it to a PC and turn your albums into MP3.
Well finally I get one. Happy is not a word I would use, seriously happy is almost getting close to it. As I sit here and look at the screen real estate that dominates my view, its pretty amazing. Hard to believe that I used to hate Mac’s and always thought they were a joke. How wrong was I.
2.66Ghz and 4 gig of ram, 500Gig Hard drive, and all the usual bells and whistles. Out of the box and up and running.Nice!
