Mac Mini
My desk felt kind of empty without Adam’s Mac. Before it left I had begun using it to play movies. The built in DVD player is great, though for some reason it won’t play all DVDs. I suspect the studios have been fraking with the DVD standard and old players don’t work on new discs. They are so considerate. I had no problem connecting to the XP box and playing music or through the Internet and getting Pandora.
Two years ago I made a Windows box to play movies and maintain a network connection. It eventually failed due to heat issues. For several months it worked, even if it was a little noisy.
So, I began wondering if a Mac could perform the same function. How would you hook it to the TV? What kind of remotes would work? What does the UI look like? Etc. It seems Apple has been working on the computer set-top box problem. See the Apple TV. The Mac Mini might be just the thing.
A little research revealed that it connects easily to new DVI equipped HDTVs and they offer an adapter for $20 that has S-video and RCA video. Front Row is the UI that Apple TV has and should work on any recent Mac. An Intel Mac should have no problems playing video on HDTV. The Mini is tiny and cute. It also has no storage. Recording TV is possible through a $150+ device.
The UI still remains an issue that I will have to work out. It depends on the storage solution. This is an expensive or thorny issue.
Right after Christmas one of the Mac stores put out a clearance 1st gen Intel Mini for $488. It seemed like the lowest price I was going to see. So, I got it and an adapter. We’ll see how it goes.
A 700 MHz Mac could play standard def TV, but I don’t know about the requirements for HD. I think a 1.25 G4 with AGP video could probably do this. A 1.25 G4 would be about $500 plus $150 adapter (old, nVidia 5000 or Radeon 9000). $650 for an old minimum requirements Mac or $600 for a new dual core. Come on! I settled on a low end 2nd gen Mini with 1st gen dual core processor for $500.
This is a Core Duo (1st gen dual core) 1.66 MHz with 512 meg on 40 gig running Leopard (not Tiger).
Now, if I could just get the damn storage solution to install Windows. I tried 3 times already and the motherboard only recognizes 120 gig. Almost all my hard drives are way bigger; 3 500s, 4 200s, a 250, a 320, and probably more.
David Brin Books
David Brin writes about a lot of the stuff I see on websites lately. I’m surprised it took so long to connect one with another. If I were trying to illustrate a metaphysical concept in a “contemporary” or more familiar setting this is how I would do it. And some of this stuff is just fascinating for it novelty.
For example, his first book Sundiver (1980) takes place in the Sun, exploring the creatures that live there. The creatures are blames for killing a scientist, when it’s really another person.
Then the Uplift War books introduce a fantastic future where the closest 5 galaxies are full of intelligent lift which genetically modifies species to give them sentience. For this the new race servers their progenitors for many thousands of years. The idea that a race could Uplift itself into sentience is laughed at and they all wonder who worked on the humans and then left half way. Humans avoid “adoption” (i.e. servitude), because they have already passed a right of passage and begun to uplift chimps and dolphins. All the aliens are fanatically environmentalist.
Startide Rising is the best of the books. It tells the story of the first dolphin crewed ship discovering ancient ships the size of moons on their first flight. Almost every race listens to the first few moments of discovery sent by the dolphin ship and races to take the knowledge. The ship flees to a water planet for repairs as the races, aligned along religious and racial boundaries, fight over who will go down and claim the tiny ship.
Earth was written in 1990, but predicts many of the advances brought by the Internet. There are massive overpopulation and environmental issues. Species are dying out quickly even as some people work to revive lost ones like the wholly mammoths. In the very climactic ending the Internet goes into the planet along the lines of damage caused by 2 sides fighting and provides as voice to a planetary consciousness.
The Kiln People is recent and describes a future where it is possible to duplicate oneself in clay beings that have a 1 day life-span. So, in the morning you make a copy to clean the house, another to run errands, and you go to work. Or you might make a copy to do something very hazardous. Then you can choose to inload the memories from the copy or discard them.
Flushing Remonstrance
from Wikipedia
The Flushing Remonstrance was a 1657 Colonial American petition to Peter Stuyvesant, the Governor of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, in which several citizens (none of them Quakers themselves[1]) requested an exemption to his ban on Quaker worship. It is considered a precursor to the United States Constitution’s provision on freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights.
Flushing, now in Queens, New York, was then part of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Stuyvesant had formally banned the practice of all other religions outside of the Dutch Reformed Church, the established church of the Netherlands, in the colony, in accordance with the laws of the Dutch Republic.[2]
The document was signed on December 27, 1657 by a group of English citizens who were affronted by persecution of Quakers and the religious policies of Stuyvesant.[3][2]
Four who signed were arrested by order of Stuyvesant. Two immediately recanted, but the writer of the remonstrance, Edward Hart, and the sheriff of Flushing Tobias Feake, remained firm in their convictions. Both men were remanded to prison where they survived in isolation on rations of bread and water for over a month. After friends and family petitioned Stuyvesant on behalf of the elderly Hart, the clerk was released on penalty of banishment. Feake held out for a few more weeks, but eventually recanted and was pardoned after being fined and banned from holding public office. The town government of Flushing was removed and Dutch replacements were appointed by Stuyvesant.
Subsequently, John Bowne of the colony allowed Quakers to meet in his house. He was arrested in 1662 and brought before Stuyvesant. Unrepentant, Bowne was sentenced to banishment to Holland, though he spoke no Dutch and was of English descent. After several months in the foreign land, Bowne petitioned the directors of the Dutch West India Company. After a month of deliberation, the WIC agreed to support Bowne, and advised Stuyvesant by a letter (1663) that he was to end religious persecution in the colony. One year later, in 1664, the colony fell to British control.
Books and TV from Childhood
The Information Age has some cool benefits. Like being able to look up childhood entertainments. Once and a while a half remember fragment comes to mind and Google and Wikipedia are a wiz at finding this stuff.
Lately, it was the War of Worlds TV Series. The most striking aspect of this largely forgotten TV series is the aliens stored in steel drums, wearing human bodies like a suit, and using large doses of radiation to keep the nasty microbes at bay.
Before then it was the Tom Swift novels I grew up reading. I really wish I still had these. Turns out these have a very long history, going back to the 1910’s.
Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker (The Ice Cream Ball)
You might have seen the email I sent about the Ice Cream Maker ball. My mom gave me one for Christmas. We were all surprised. I guess I’ll find out how fun and exciting it is this summer.
Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker (The Ice Cream Ball)
The Truth About Chuck Norris
This is hilarious.
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
Guns don’t kill people. Chuck Norris kills People.
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
The chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain.
There is no chin under Chuck Norris’ Beard. There is only another fist.
Chuck Norris has two speeds. Walk, and Kill.
The leading causes of death in the United States are: 1. Heart Disease 2. Chuck Norris 3. Cancer
Chuck Norris drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.
Chuck Norris is my Homeboy.
Chuck Norris doesn’t go hunting…. CHUCK NORRIS GOES KILLING
iDog and iCat
My nephew got an iDog Amp’d for Christmas. It’as a cute little desktop toy/speaker that moves and lights up with the song. I like it so much I went looking on the internet and found several iAnimals; penguin, cat, puppy, fish, and dog. I got an iCat on clearance and an iDog (not Amp’ed). For $15 each, it’s a cute, cheap desktop distraction.
I’m not swapping out batteries. There should be someway to run it off of USB or a leftover brick.
Christmas Videos
Great news. The video that my Canon camera takes is directly compatible with iMovie. I have 3 clips from last night when we were opening presents. One clip is the entire 1 gig of memory stick. These are too big, in size, to upload without transcoding. They are only be a few minutes long.
iDog
My nephew got on of these iDogs for Christmas. It’s so cool, I wanted one… With a few changes of course. Like twice as big, plugs into the wall, and has line in AND line out. This things is cute, but I would like to listen on my $400 stereo. The light show and dancing are cool. I’ve been debating about getting on, jacking in a wall plug and snipping the speaker wires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WENrU6-IfGs
Fortune: Apple MacBook is Amazon’s No. 1 top-selling computer
Despite fierce competition from machines with more than twice the memory and price points hundreds of dollars lower, Apple’s (AAPL) white 120 GB MacBook has captured the top spot on Amazon’s (AMZN) list of bestselling computers this Christmas eve.
Helped along by rebates ranging from $75 to $150, three Apple-brand notebooks are on the top 10 list this morning. The other bestsellers are the 80 GB MacBook (No. 7) and the 120 GB MacBook Pro (No. 10).
Apple MacBook is Amazon’s No. 1 top-selling computer
Fortune
Christmas Shopping
I was concerned that I wasn’t giving enough, because I didn’t feel like shopping. The money and time required are just really unappealing. At this point everybody has FINALLY reached a point where they don’t need something. That makes shopping a lot harder. If you know Heather doesn’t have money for baby clothes or dollies you know what to get. Or if Christopher.. Well, he generally needed warm clothes at this time of year or a tool. Both of them have what they need.
Tonight, I started packing the car for Canadian and this is how the presents broke down. Everyone gets: a copy of the DVD, video and slideshow, from Grandma’s Surprise Birthday party, a copy of Grandma’s photos and some of mine (7.8 gig). Some get: a CD of music I picked up listening to Pandora that you can’t buy in Walmart or Best Buy. And the local ones get jars of homemade bread and butter pickles from my canning adventures in September and aromatherapy bath salts that we’ll make at Grandma’s house tomorrow night. I took a class last year at this time.
Unique gifts are: a Macintosh 2002 eMac for Adam, Patience’s 10? year old boy, $100 Lowe’s gift certificate to Mom plus the 4×6 pics of her paintings, and finally for Grandma 2 seat cushions and a $100 Lowe’s gift certificate. I thought of burning the digital scans of Mom’s paintings to CD, but they are already downloadable for anyone who cares or understands. Christopher gets the TiVo Wireless (b/g) Adapter for his birthday. He doesn’t need it. Wires are much faster, but it should make his life easier trying to connect things.
That seems pretty good to me. No one gets stupid crap. More time went into these gifts than if I had bought them. Making the pickles took 2-3 hours plus growing the cucumbers. Bath salts will take 2-3 hours. The DVD took a hundred or more hours to scan photos, assemble in a timeline, transcode, and burn. The blank discs cost $5 or more each.
I’m happy with everything. Most of it is unique and personal (or familial). Some things like the DVD and eMac are technical things that would be impossible for anyone else in my family to do. Not because they can’t. Because they wouldn’t spend the time or perhaps be aware of the possibility. These two items let me experiment with something new and were good projects in themselves.
It might seem strange that I would tell everyone what they got for Christmas beforehand. I don’t think anyone reads the blog, except Suzie. So, who cares. I felt like writing it.
Wide vs Deep
On not being a manager..
I’ve got this theory about what it’s like to be a manager and what it’s like to be a developer and which role suits a particular individual best, and I think it explains pretty well why I deeply, profoundly hate the former and dearly, truly love the latter.
Wide vs Deep
iPod Mini Reset Instructions
My iPod Mini needed a reset today. This is how you do it.
It locked up in the middle of playing a song and wouldn’t respond to any controls.
Is your iPod Broken? iPod Reset Instructions
Resetting iPod mini
Most problems with iPod mini can be solved by resetting iPod mini.
To reset iPod mini:
1 Connect iPod mini to a power outlet using the iPod Power Adapter.
2 Toggle the Hold switch on and off (set it to Hold, then turn it off again).
3 Press and hold the Menu and Select (center) buttons for at least 6 seconds, until the
Apple logo appears.
If Your iPod mini Won’t Turn On or Respond
* Make sure the Hold switch is off.
* If you’re using the iPod Remote, make sure the remote’s Hold switch is off.
* If that doesn’t work, connect iPod mini to the power adapter and connect the
adapter to a working electrical outlet. Your battery may need to be recharged.
* If that doesn’t work, your iPod mini may need to be reset (see above)
MacBook Upgraded
Oh, I almost forgot the 3 gig I put in the MacBook. It was 1 gig and I could see where I was pushing that sometimes. 3 gig from OWC for $75. That was by far the cheapest price I found. Pulling the old sticks and adding the new ones is something anybody could do.
iPod Upgraded
Wahoo! I just finished replacing the battery and flash drive in my iPod Mini. It was time consuming, delicate, and fairly easy. I now have a 15 gig flash based (no more moving parts) iPod Mini.
Thank God. The old battery won’t last a whole day at work. Maybe 4-5 hours. The flash memory should use less power and the battery has gone from 400 mAh to 650 mAh. That should easily last a day.
The battery was $20 with screw drivers and instructions. The flash drive was $90 for a slow 16 gig. 4, 6, and 8 gig drives are much more reasonably priced. These drives are commonly used in professional cameras, instead of those little thumbnail size SD cards.
The 15 gig is cool. When I was researching new mp3 players I discovered that there are no 15/16 gigs. It’s 1, 2, 4, 6, 8. Then hard drive based at 30, 80, 160.
There’s no way I will use all the space, because the Mac I sync to doesn’t hold the whole music library. That 30+ gig monster is on another machine. The Mac has 70 gig for data. 30 gig would be about half of the whole drive. No Thanks.
There was a tricky part. After everything was back together I couldn’t get the iPod to work. Eventually, I got it to restore the firmware and that fixed it. Funny thing. iTunes had no problem sync’ing, but coughed up furballs afterwards. The iPod would attach, sync, eject. Over and over. It was very annoying.
In related news I got lucky at the Camera store yesterday and picked up an iPod Mini dock. The Mini has been discontinued for years. I couldn’t believe they had a dock, but it was disappointing. I thought is should have come with a cable. Two would make life easier. Unfortunately, it’s just a heavy block of plastic with a dock connector and line out. So, the iPod can stand up while it charges instead of lay down. Whoopee.