Posts tagged Apple
Review: Dell Mini 9 + OS X 10.5.6
Apr 10th
There are already a plethora of online reviews and breathless unboxing videos of the new(ish) low-cost, high gloss, Dell Mini 9 netbook.
So here’s one more!
I ordered my black Mini 9, with 1GB ram and 16gb SSD hard drive, webcam and Ubuntu for just over US$300, thanks to a $50 off sale on Dell.com.
It took about 2 weeks to arrive, even though the estimated delivery time was a painfully long 4 weeks. It arrived via Fedex last Saturday morning, looking like this:
Underpants (American Apparel, I believe) included for scale.
After the inital boot, Ubuntu setup, wifi connection and web-cam funness and other mandatory new-gadget-bonding rituals, I decided to try out the Gizmodo method of installing OS X.
It didn’t work.
However flash forward about 48hrs later, at around 2am on Monday morning, I did have a fully functional OS X 10.5.6 netbook. My hairline was probably a few mm further back than it was a few days prior, but it was done.
Everything works; Sleep, iChat, CoverFlow, AirTunes, Apple updates, Time Machine (see iTimeMachine) and even a slightly slimmed down version of MS Office 2008.
My drama began when I could not, despite my well known super-nerd abilities, create a bootable OSX flash drive from any of the several 10.5 .dmg files that fell off the back of a pirate ship. Every attempt I made to ‘image’ or ‘restore’ the file onto 3 different flash drives failed miserably.
In the end, I used a program called CarbonCopyCloner to just extract the entire DMG image, file by file, onto the ‘OSXDVD’ partition. I then followed the Gizmodo instructions at step 12.
NB: In order to extract the DMG rather than image/restore it, I had to place a file in the partition prior to extraction, and then select the option of NOT erasing files already on the drive. This was the crucial step in creating a viable OS X 10.5 install drive.
I’m in the process of making a short video demo/review of my new franken-mac, so check back here again over the weekend. Feel free to leave me a comment if you want any more tips, or need help troubleshooting your own setup.
How to: Geotagged photobloging with iPhone 3G & Wordpress
Mar 30th
Non-geeky friends: if you value our friendship, please stop reading now!
After learning that the iPhone 3G embeds GPS location data in the ‘meta-data’ of every photo, I thought it would be cool to use this information to show the location of photos I post on my Wordpress (self-hosted) blog. An example is shown on left.
Once you have things set up, you simply need to take a photo, email it to a certain ’secret’ email address, placing the post title in the subject and post content in the body of the email, and voila – everything else is automatic!
To do this you will need the following:
- iPhone 3G (or other device with GPS, camera and email)
- Wordpress blog & host that allows you to install plugins
- A host that allows you to set up something called a ‘cron job’ – basically a server setting that runs a predefined script every x minutes/hours/days. I use Godaddy and they allow it.
- The ExZO plugin (I’m using version 0.b7.5)
- The Postie plugin, development version
Step 1: More >
iPhone 4G?
Mar 19th
There is talk of new iPhone hardware possibly coming out this summer, in addition to the 3.0 update of the operating system (which looks pants-wettingly-good!).
However having just bought the 3G – and paying through the nose for it (eg. US$500 ’security deposit’) I am not overly desperate to upgrade to something that is only a minor improvement.
Things that would encourage me to upgrade:
- A better camera: At least 5MP, zoom functionality and perhaps a flash?
- A forward-facing camera: Skype or iChat video calls
- High/low end models: Not to sound too elitist, but I don’t want to see every 2nd person on the subway holding the same device as me.
- Faster wifi: Draft-N would be nice, maybe allowing for wireless syncing.
- Memory card slot: Wishful thinking, but I’d like to be able to download my digital camera pics to the phone on the go.
- Replaceable battery: A brick is a brick.
- All of this and a sexier case: Plastic is, and looks, cheap. The 2G model with its aluminum back was much more aesthetically pleasing.
Things that would NOT encourage me to upgrade:
- More storage: Yawn
- Another botched launch: I don’t want to have to hear how OMG amazing the phone is from certain people in Australia, before I have been able to get one here in New York.
Did I miss anything?
My iPhoto ‘09 Faces Page
Feb 23rd
It seems like I spend half my life tagging photos, Facebook uploads and managing iTunes album art, but I have to admit the new Faces facial-recognition feature in iPhoto 09 is pretty fun.
Some of the “is this person _____?” mixups are rather hilarious; I never realised so many of my friends apparently look like Posh Spice! Don’t ask what I’m doing with photo’s of her in my iPhoto library.
Anyway, below is a screenshot of how the the Faces page looks. Quite a random collection of people so far – family, friends and frenemies. Fun times!
January Randomness & Rants
Jan 29th
- Here’s something I’ve learned recently: a really good way to insult a New-Yorker is to refer to them as “American“, or if you really want to insult them, a “typical American“.
- I think I’m coming down with the flu – thankyou weeks of sub-zero temperatures, snow and an unforgiving daily 1.5hr commute to and from Tarrytown.
- There are about 8 million people living in NYC and over 1/3 of them were not only not born in New York, but not even in the United States! Something about that fascinates me.
- The Snuggie. WANT.
- To go with my new eyes, I am trying a new beard: New beard.mov. Basically I just want to look like Ricky Martin. Is that too much to ask?! So far it does not seem to be working. *Shakes fist at wine+chocolate next to couch*
- iLife ‘09 is pretty good, not really worth paying for though, if you get my drift (Pirates ahoy). Besides now I have to spend weeks tagging everyones face in my 10,000+ photo iPhoto library.
- The women of 86th street New York Sports Club are driving to the point of mass-homocide-fantasies during my workouts. It is NOT a freaking mall, Club Med resort or nightclub. Please, for the love of all that is holy: put your crap in a locker, switch on your friggin’ phone for 30 minutes, leave the whorish stripper outfits at home and if you’re going to hog a machine for 45minutes+ at LEAST work up a freaking sweat. Aaagghhh!!!!
- My fab friends Dane, Dean, Zemeel and maybe Chris are all independently planning visits to NYC this year! I just hope I can understand them with their funny aussie accents. Like, totally.
- I narrowly avoided being spat on in Harlem this morning by a scary-looking homeless person. My constant cat-like state of readiness and super-human contortionist skills came to the rescue once again.
- I have downloaded Australia, The Reader, Yes Man and Moonstruck to watch this weekend. I have also switched from Transmission to uTorrent, as my bittorrent application of choice.
- I am officially no longer being polite to pushy short people in puffy outerwear. Just because you are short (and puffy) does not give you the right to barge your way through life. You’re short, deal with it. If you’re going to walk directly at me and expect me to move, you’re going to be the one who gets hurt. Women included. Sorry.
- People are mean(er) in winter.
RLUs (random life updates)
Jan 6th
Here’s what’s going down:
I have an appointment this Thursday evening to have LASIK. I’m still in two minds about it, to be perfectly honest, but I’m a little far into the process now to back out. One possibly complicating development is that I evidently ruptured a blood vessel in my eye on New Years morning (vodka is not my friend, no matter what it tells me). I didn’t realise until a co-worker screamed in horror when I walked into my office yesterday – welcome back! I’m hoping that it clears up soon and doesn’t delay the procedure.
I ordered a pair of Logitech ClearChat Comfort USB headphones today from Amazon. I got tired of connecting and disconnecting regular headphones when iChatting with friends and family, so did some googling and found that USB is the way to go. That flip down microphone also looks suitable for private-time Madonna impersonations!- Terminator Salvation looks good…
I have no need for one, but I WANT one of the new 17″ unibody MacBook Pros that were announced today so badly! Shame no update to the Mac Mini though, I have a friend who was holding off buying one based on my assumption that a new version would be out today.
As a fun little project over xmas/nye I installed Windows 7 beta 1, using Bootcamp on my iMac and have to say, it’s pretty damn good. It installed without needing any special drivers and seems to be really snappy, although the same can be said for a fresh install of any OS. This week I had to merge two (almost) 1-gb text files and none of my other computers, including the iMac running OS 10.5 could do the job. I booted into W7 and voila – Excel 2007 handled it without a hiccup. Watch out Apple!
I’m going to Colorado in April, with 20,000 of my closest cancer-research friends. Finally, my life-long dream of wearing chaps and a cowboy hat to work will come true! I am so going to ride a horse into one of the talks. Whips may also be involved.
Bitching