Category: General

Well, since I’m sitting here waiting for more “Blueberry Repeat” and wide awake I might as well clear up a few details about my Macbook.

As reported earlier, I was waiting for my glacial “expedited” delivery and none too happy about the pace. Despite what the delivery projection stated, the Macbook arrived on the 30th at about 9:00AM. I was almost too sick to answer the door, and if Michelle hadn’t alerted me, I wouldn’t have even heard them.

As it was, I hauled it into my office and left it there. It was over an hour before I had the energy to take it out of the box (and dutifully photograph the process.) Even then, the best I could manage was to boot it, hook it to the iBook and start the transfer.

Point one: I’ve never done a complete Mac to Mac firewire transfer before. It worked really well. The most I’ve done in the past is to just transfer user accounts and network settings and such. This technique certainly makes it simple to upgrade from one Mac to the next. When completed, this Macbook was virtually identical to my iBook.

Apart from booting and verifying that it connected to my network, I did nothing else with the computer. I must say, in terms of speed, it seemed like a real dog. Later that same day, my 2GB memory upgrade from Mac Ram Direct arrived. Late in the evening, I made a half-hearted attempt to install the memory, but, despite the new, easy to upgrade Macbook I couldn’t find a single philips-head screwdriver small enough to open the easy-access panel.

I figured if I couldn’t go visit my son in the hospital, I wasn’t going to go to the hardware store and buy a screwdriver. (I couldn’t have driven a car if I’d wanted to, anyway.)

Wednesday morning was quite different. I felt almost alive, and more importantly, hungry. We’d exhausted most of the food in the house over the weekend and never got to go shopping due to the medical emergency, so I foraged out for food… and a screwdriver.

Both accomplished, I came home to wait news about my boy, see if my breakfast “stayed put” and upgrade the memory. My boy is getting better, breakfast stayed down and the memory upgrade is a snap – although you do have to push the memory in quite hard before it properly snaps into place.

Point two: 512mb isn’t enough. This should come as no surprise to anybody. Once the upgrade was in place, this machine flies!

Point three: I saved enough money by not buying a black Macbook that I paid for more than half a third-party memory upgrade to 2GB.

Point four: Intel Macs are a bit disappointing. Yes. It’s fast, but, lots of my apps aren’t universal yet, and quite a few of them explode. I’ve had more app crashes today than I’ve had ever on my iBook. Yes, things will get better, but this might not present the best user experience to a new switcher.

I’ve taken my Applications folder and used label colors to indicate which apps are PowerPc only, plus I’ve created a new folder where I’ve placed programs that just don’t play at all. I’m still searching for universal or intel versions of everything I’ve got. Some apps, like Ecto (which I’m using for blogging) work just fine under Rosetta and I notice no difference over my iBook, but I also detect no improvement, either.

So, after one day’s use, here are my random observations:

Hot! This will be great in Greenland, but not so good in Arizona in July. Luckily, I don’t actually put a laptop on my lap very often.

Front Row. That’s kinda cool, but that remote is destined to be lost. I know there’s no room, but they really should have built a dock inside the case for it. It clips to the magnetic latches, but no matter how I move it, it slides over some of the screen. That’s also useless for taking it with you. I never take my camcorder remote with me for the same reason I’ll never take the Macbook remote with me, either.

Built in iSight. Wonderful. What a great idea.

Keyboard. I like it. It feels good to me, but I’ve noticed a little sore on my right index finger. I’m not sure if that’s from the new keyboard, or just a coincidence.

Size: It’s a smidgen heavier than my iBook, but smaller in virtually every other respect. It feels lighter, even if it isn’t.

Screen. Oooooo, pretty colors. And some glare, although it hasn’t bothered me yet. Nice resolution and widescreen format.

Mooooo. Yes, it moos. My initial reaction was that, if I took the computer out into the desert, at night, far, far from the sounds of any human activity and I put my ear to the keyboard, I could just hear the cow inside. (I shall hence-force call the cow, “Intelly”.) That’s not quite correct, though. I do once in a while hear it over the background noise.

“Right” clicking? Heck yes, you can finally Ctrl-click without the control key, but you have to enable to option in preferences. Holding two fingers on the trackpad and clicking does the trick.

Trackpad: Wider and rougher than the iBook. So far, I think I like it better, although, maybe that’s why my index finger is developing a sore!

BZFLAG: BZflag blows up. 🙁 The coolest game ever and I cannot run it. Come on guys! Somebody out there compile that thing for Intel!

Eject key: Dedicated eject key for the optical drive, yeah!

Battery life: Seems comparable to the iBook, but too early to tell.

I’ll post more as it occurs to me…

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, OSX, Macbook, Review, Technology

James is getting progressively better, and should be home in a day or so. I, too, have also made a huge improvement and even ate solid food today. Michelle has still been good, but not quite so good as yesterday. I think she realized I’m feeling better and so decided to push her frontiers a bit more. Or perhaps it was something else…

After successfully negotiating (and retaining) a solid brunch, I decided I’d best go visit James and Irene at the hospital. James still had that sick child look but he was obviously feeling much better. He is off oxygen and the IV. He’s keeping solid food down, and lots of it. He’s also none too happy about being locked up in a metal crib with monitors tied to him. That’s unpleasant for him (and I’m sure for Irene, too) but a good sign.

I made an unfortunately lunch choice at the hospital and, combined with driving home in a very hot car, set me to a bit of relapse, but I recovered after rest and even had some dinner.

Michelle wanted to go to bed, and, being no one else in the house, wanted to sleep in Irene’s an my room. I wasn’t ready for bed and stayed up, feeling somewhat ill at ease. Was something wrong?

When I went to bed, I felt the same way. The house was empty and foreboding and I had a difficult time getting to sleep. I finally got to sleep around 11:30.

I awoke at 12:10 to the sound of Michelle screaming. She was incoherent and couldn’t tell me what was wrong, but finally asked for water. When I handed her the glass she pushed it away and started to vomit. I just barely managed to get her to the bathroom before it all broke loose.

She did her business, stood there and cried for a few minutes, then washed up, told me she was “OK” and crawled back into bed.

Just after 1:00 the scene repeated itself. (I’ll spare you the photograph, but I can tell you that she had blueberries at dinner, and it’s not a pleasant sight.)

She was fast asleep again before I finished cleaning up the horror that was the bathroom, and now I’m quite wide awake, waiting for the next scream.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids

lonelocust.com => So What About The Family?

Back three weeks ago I mentioned that everybody except James and myself had gotten sick. Not so anymore.

Sunday, James was coughing a bit, but by Sunday, he was throwing up and wouldn’t drink anything, so Irene finally had to take him to emergency. They admitted him immediately because he was having difficulty breathing, and that’s where he stays. He’s got a touch of pneumonia and has to stay there until he’s breathing normally through the night.

Irene is staying with him. After the first night when I got home (someone has to look after Michelle) about 1:00AM I was hit by the same thing Irene had. A nasty stomach flu, with muscle cramps, fever, etc.

All day yesterday, I could barely do more than move from one spot on the floor to another. Michelle was particularly good. She didn’t cause problems and she helped out. She’d get me things when I needed them and didn’t complain.

Still, with only her and myself in the house, it was really lonely last night.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family

In order to link to this article, I believe I agreed to a copyright condition that I would make no comments on this, so I won’t.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Natural Sciences, Science

Yeah! My grass Jelly Drink photo inched its way to 100 views on Flickr.

Well, looking at the picture is infinitely better than drinking the darned stuff!

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food

worldwaronecolorphotos.com => Photos from World War I

World War I…. who would have thought there were original color photos of WWI? This site contains hundreds of photos taken by the French in the last two years of World War One.

This is a site containing hundreds of actual color photos of World War I. It’s an eerie feeling looking at these photos. It’s quite odd how color really makes the pictures seem more real… I’ve not seen any other color pictures going this far back in time. It really is a window on a world long gone.

It’s disturbing to think of all the thousands of years that went before photography that have passed and are gone from any memory or first hand representation that they ever existed.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Technology

abandonedbutnotforgotten.com => B25 Airplane Pulled Out From Lake Murray, South Carolina

I’m not even going to try to include one of these pictures, they’re too big, but really worth a look. A wrecked B25 in remarkably good condition was recovered from a lake in South Carolina. These a pictures of the plane.

Technorati Tags: Blog

BBC NEWS => Divining rods ‘help beat drought’
This article popped up on the BBC the other day concerning thee drought in England and it got me thinking about it again.

Southern Water said divining is used by some of its crews, although modern electrical equipment was mostly used.

Divining is one of the techniques used by some of our crews, although by far the majority of teams use modern electrical equipment to measure flows and listen for noises of potential leaks and burst water mains.

Dowsing is really a grey area for me. I think I can safely say that, in general, I don’t believe in any phenomena that cannot be demostrated under controlled, scientific circumstances. While I’m actually fascinated by things paranormal, I’m a non-believer. My interest in them is more of a “well that is a fascinating story/theory and wouldn’t it be interesting if it could be demonstrated to be true?”

Dowsing, of course, falls in that category. There isn’t a scrap of credible evidence that it works. Supposed dowsers simply have never been able to recreate their ability under any form of controllable scrutiny. While I suppose you could make some wacky argument (that would play well in Sedona) that, like quantum physics, the act of observing dowsing changes the outcome, that doesn’t hold much water. (Pun intended.)

So, why do I mention it? Because my great uncle was a dowser – and by all accounts, a really good one.

My great-grandfather ran a farm, and that’s where my grandfather and his brothers and sisters were raised. The story goes, told to me by more than one of the people involved, that during a drought, my great-grandfather cut a divining rod and hauled all the kids out and tested each one of them to see if they could work the divining rod. My great-uncle, TW, successfully located water and they drilled a successful well.

None of the other kids demonstrated any ability to perform the same task.

Throughout his life, he travelled all over the place using his skills to locate things (he could, apparently, locate other materials) and never collected any remuneration beyond travel expenses for his services. He believed if he profited from it, he’d loose the ability. He also believed that one child in each generation had the ability, and he dutifully tested every one of his kids, grandkids, great grandkids, his brothers and sisters’ kids, etc.

Not one of them had the ability.

Of course, this is hardly surprising if you, like me, are quite skeptical of these old wives’ tales and superstitions.

However, there came the day when he tested me.

I can still see the whole scene vividly in my head. He cut a fresh forked branch from the oleanders next to his house. He showed me how to hold it and he demonstrated. He walked out across his yard and, from all appearances, the rod visibly twisted in his hand towards the ground. He then told me that was where the water main for his house ran out to the supply.

It didn’t look like a hoax, and, although I was only 11 at the time, I was a pretty skeptical and sharp-eyed kid.

He then handed it to me and let me try. I walked slowly towards the water supply and… nothing happened.

He was really disappointed, he told me that I was pretty much the last of the family to be tested and that, as soon as he handed me the rod, he was convinced it was going to work. He said I was the first one to really take the rod and use it the right way, but there was absolutely no reaction.

I was still standing right over the water main, and he told me to hold the rod out over it again. There was still nothing. He reached over from behind me, touched my shoulder and that thing pulled straight towards the ground like someone had jerked a string attached to it.

Now I know that scientifically dowsing just doesn’t work, and that eyewitnesses are unreliable, but what happened there was absolutely undeniable. It’s also probably the defining moment in my life that fueled my interest in the paranormal.

I went home to tell my dad and when I told him he’d tested me, my dad told me the tale of when he’s been tested. He told me that, more or less, he had the exact same experience. The second TW put his hand on his shoulder, the rod reacted.

I still don’t know what to make of the whole thing, but I wonder if someday I might not go out and test my kids.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Diving Rod, Dowsing, Paranormal, Water Witch

I ordered my new Macbook yesterday, and, with any luck, it will arrived early next week. (I’m dreaming that it might arrive this week. Some hopes!)

In any case, the Macbooks, like the Macbook Pros and the last iterations of the Powerbooks and iBooks have a motion sensor used to lock the hard drive in the event of sudden movement. It’s a great idea, nothing too earthshaking, but there have been some amusing side effects. For example, on my iBook I have a widget that allows me to use it as a level. (The level would work better if it was actually level, but as a proof-of-concept it’s interesting.)

In the last couple days I’ve been seeing people who have converted the motion sensor to act as a joystick, a lightsaber (the macbook makes authentic lightsaber noises when you swish the laptop around) and this user interface hack:

Technology Wrap Block => Macbook Motion Sensor Hack

While I don’t think I’d use this type of interface, I do think it would be immensely gratifying if someone could adopt it for Windows PCs. Perhaps that could be the Next Big Thing for Windows Vista?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Computer, Hardware, Mac, OSX