August, 2004

MacGeeks.net is up!
Took me a while to get it going. Im using Mambo as the CMS, is not too bad at all and has some good add-on modules.

I also chose to go witha custom forum module as well instead of phpbb and the likes, mainly cause it integrates a lot better and has all the features i think ill need.

Ive already put one small review up over there and the forums are working, so if ya feel like discussing some mac stuff head over and sign up

More reviews, tutorials, articles will be added soon, along with some forum content.

The fan finally arrived. Friday morning, 3 days after it was sent overnight express post – good ol Australia Post

But yeah, the fan is great, amazing the difference a good fan can make. My video card isnt too hot to touch now

Got everything installed again on my new PeeCee, ghosted it, and all is well. Its amazing the speed increase.

Good things come to those who wait – or so they say. I guess in a way its true.

Could this get any more painful??

As you know from previous posts, the video card fan didnt arrive yesterday. The fan was sent from Wynnum in QLD, to Rockhampton in QLD via Express Post. I have confirmation that it should be overnight postage from Wynnum to here, but as yet nothing.

I just got off the phone to Australia Post, the person on the other end said there is no record of the tracking number i have in the system, which means the package has not been scanned at any Australia Post centre.

He then goes on to inform me that i need to contact the sender, and get them to launch an investiagtion with Australia Post into the packages location.

So now i wait till 10am, to ring the sender. I contacted them yesterday to tell them i hadnt received the package and they confirmed that they had sent it.

How much longer is this going to go on for?
How long does an Australia Post ‘investigation’ take?

*sigh*

I use PulpFiction Lite, and for most things its great. However, is it just me or is it buggy??

Take a look at this screenshot and see if you can see anything weird.

Your back? Ok, heres whats wrong:

1) Notice how next to the inbox there is no number – representing that there are no unread feeds even though you can clearly see that the MacSlash feed hasnt been read.

2) Notice how ive clicked on the top feed, but nothing comes up in the bottom section?

Now go look at this screenshot.

Back again?
In that one i clicked on the MacSlash feed. Notice 2 things.

1) Still nothing comes up in the bottom section.

2) See how ive now got -1 unread feeds. -1 unread feeds? what the?

Ill admit though that after clicking around for a while the feeds did suddenly appear, however no matter what i did i still had -1 unread feeds.

Wish i could find that last -1 unread feed, might be somthing important.

Finding a fan for my video card wasnt as easy as i first though…

I went to all the local computer places and none of them had anything even close to what i needed. One shop said no straight up.

At another i walked in with my card and the following dialog occured:
Shop attendant: “Is that a return?”
me: “no”
Shop attendant: “Thats good, i dont like doing those”
me: stunned in amazement

I go on to explain that i need a fan, the guy is puzzled, says he has nothing but could look around for me, probably take about 3-4 weeks before it came in.

Needless to say – i left there, vowing never to return.

Another shop, another person, they sit behind the desk for 5 mins looking at a webpage and talking to themselves. They then turn to me and say ‘no, sorry, we cant get any”. He then proceeds to write down the webpage he was just looking at and hands me the paper saying “Have a look here if you want”.

I leave that shop as well, giving up all hope of getting local service, i go home to find a fan online to buy. Not sure where to look, i typed in the site on the piece of paper the dude gave me. Up popped a site with cooling stuff. I look under the VGA cooler section and low and behold i find a fan to suit my card (lord knows that the other guys was looking at).

So i order the fan/heatsink – $18- bargain. I get confirmation about 10mins later that my order had been recieved. A further 5 mins later i get another email stating that the order had been shipped. – Great service!

*sigh* So after ordering a new fan for my video card yesterday, and getting confirmation that it was sent at around 12:20pm, today it didnt show up and there is no record of the tracking number in the system

Whats the deal? Is someone trying to tell me something with all these delivery problems??

So once again, im left waiting for a package in the mail. What should have been a single day job has turned into a 3 / 4 / 5 day job.

Who wants to bet that it will arrive during the one hour tomorrow when i have to be at uni, which means ill get home around 1 and find a nice “we missed you, but you can pick it up after 4pm” card in the mailbox. Then i get the joy of going to the post office

OR

I could get home just in time and get it.

Anyone want to make a bet on what actually happens? – feel free to type in any other likely outcomes. The first person with the correct answer wins a prize…..

Whats in the dock, in the dock. Whats in the dock today?

Following on from the previous post… heres a screenshot of my current dock.

From left to right – Finder (duh), SubethaEdit, Terminal, XCode, PulpFiction Lite, Safari, Netscape, OmniWeb, Firefox, Launchbar, Mail, MSN, iChat, Grab, iPhoto.

Usually my dock doesnt have all the browsers in it, it only cause im trying them all out that they are there.

I use Launchbar exclusively for launching apps, its so much faster and quicker, and sure beats having 500 icons in the dock.

With the recent release of Omniweb 5 and Netscape 7.2, heres my thoughts…

OmniWeb 5 – Looks nice and funky, has some good features, BUT lags like an ant walking through honey on my 12inch powerbook. Example – i was downloading the new netscape in the background through safari, and Omniweb was extremely slow at responding to my mouse clicks. When i tried the same page in safari it worked ok. SO either OmniWeb is slow, or safari is hogging the CPU

Netscape – Looks very firefox (duh!), and is actually pretty damn fast! Ive got to use it a bit more over the next few days before i make a final decision.

Firefox – My default browser on my PeeCee, not on OS X though. Its jsut not as fast and responsive on my Mac as it is on me PeeCee, i dont know why.

Safari – My default on OS X, its fast, its responsive, it does what i want.

Ill continuet o try them all out in the coming weeks. At this stage it stands like this:

1 – Safari
2 – Firefox (cause ive used it more the netscape currently)
3 – Netscape 7.2
4 – OmniWeb 5 (looks great like all omni apps – but needs fixing up)

They do look pretty sitting in my dock though

Heres some piccies…

Following on from a previous post, my weekly goal this week is to understand the XLib based window manager in the book i have well enough that i can modify it successfully.

Its one thing to be able to reuse something, its another thing entirely to understand it.

Made a new category specifically for my PHD – woohoo!

Today i actually did a bit of work. Ive got a book that builds a basic window manager, a lot like that i have to do. Ive thought about jsut copying the code and modifying it, and ill probably do that, but i thought first id try to understand it a bit.

So i spent the morning (whilst waiting for my PeeCee parts) stepping manually through the code in the book, and looking up any function i didnt understand. Most of the XLib methods have good names and you can kinda guess what they do from just the name.

So yeah, i did most of the main event loop this morning, and i can honestly say i understand it. Tomorrow will be looking at the otehr more specific methods that handle the window management and stuff. Fun Stuff

This is a lot more fun then writing a Confirmation of Candidature report like Thomas has to do. Im glad mine is basically done with.

Speaking of which, i sent off my modified report a few weeks ago now to two people to look at, so far ive heard nothing back. Maybe its time i send an ujpdate email to remind them

So i finally got the parts i ordered. There was a BIG ordeal last friday with them. I was told that i would receieve them by 1:30pm Friday. Anyway, 2pm comes and nothing, so i call up the courier and am told that i would get it definately by 4:30pm (after having to tell them my address cause for some reason they didnt have it).
4:45pm comes and nothing so i call again and get some dead shit of a woman who at first told me she was customer service but then couldnt tell me anything as she ‘didnt have access’ – bleh – i was annoyed.

So i spent the weekend wondering where in Rocky my new bits were…

Today, i call up the place again and get a call back around 10am telling me that the courier had apparently had touble finding my place on friday afternoon. Now, ill jsut pause here to ponder a few things:

1) A courier that doesnt know where a street is?
2) A courier that doesnt have a street directory?
3) A courier that can call their office and ask where a street is?

ummm, i dont think so. I would have been more likely to believe some ‘truck broke down’ story – sheesh.

Anyway, 1pm rolls around and a van pulls up out the front – woo hoo.

After looking at them for a while, i went about ripping my old motherboard out and putting the new one in. Everything went well – the new CPU clamp on the AMD 64 cpus is great.

So i get it all together again, and then i notice that the fan on my video card isnt working. I tried putting some degreaser on it to loosen it up and it worked for a while.

During that time i go about installing XP, Since im using a SATA drive and windows doesnt support them by default, i have to insert a floppy with the SATA drivers. Why cant i tell it to look on a cd?

Its then i realise that i dont have a working PC to copy the drivers with. No worries i thought, ill use my powerbook which can read and write to PC floppies. Put the support cd in the drive and find out that i cant just copy the drivers over to the floopy disk – i have to run a windows executable

Meanwhile my video card fan stops working again, this time its toasted. So i give up for the night.

Tomorrow ive gotta go and find a fan that will suit my video card, hopefully it wont be a big deal. Ive also gotta make a SATA driver floppy disk to use – which means i have to install a floppy drive in order for the winodws installer to read the floppy – even though ill never use the floppy drive again.

Again i ask, why cant i browse a cd for drivers??? *sigh*

Ok, thats it for now… more to come later.

NOTE: Forgive the spelling mistakes in this, i typed it fast…

Ok, im not making excuses, but here goes.

Ran into some slight problems earlier on in the week, but i managed to get them sorted out later on the week.

Heres the current status – ive got one of the admin pages done, the others are basically copies of that one page and just changing the sql queries, so shouldnt be that hard.

Didnt get it fully completed – but made good progress.

* dims lights *
* starts scary music *
* turns on light fog machine *

Now that the scene is set – Have a good (or not so good) Friday the 13th

* kill the fog *
* kill the music *
* and turn the damn lights back on! *

1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.

3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.

4) You’re getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.

5) It’s frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers toask you the questions.

6) Time may be a great healer, ! but it’s a lousy beautician.

7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

1) Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.

2) Wrinkles don’t hurt.

3) Families are like fudge…mostly sweet, with a few nuts.

4) Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground.

5) Laughing is good exercise. It’s like jogging on the inside.

6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.

1) No matter how hard you try, you can’t baptize cats.

2) When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don’t let her brush your hair.

3) If your sister hits you, don’t hit her back. They always catch the second person.

4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.

5) You can’t trust dogs to watch your food.

6) Don’t sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.

7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.

You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

9) Don’t wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.

10) The best place to be when you’re sad is Grandpa’s lap.

Ordered some PC parts yesterday. Ita time for the annual upgrading of the machines where me and my mum buy new parts and upgrade both our machines. In most cases i get the new parts and she gets my parts that have been upgraded – so we both get a speed and performace upgrade.

This year we have extended it a bit and are including my Mums neighbour Mrs Taylor, so Mum gets my spare parts and Mrs Taylor gets mums spare parts.

Although somewhat confusing, in the end everyone ends up with a substantial upgrade for the least amount of money.

Parts i ordered:

AMD 64 3200+ CPU – Ive always been an AMD fan, and the AMD 64 processors have the performance and price which suits me jsut fine.

Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro Motherboard – Ive never had a Gigabyte motherboard before, ive always had Asus ones, so im going out on a limb here. Other people i know have gigabyte boards and they say they are good, and all the reviews ive read have been positive.

Western Digital 120gig SATA HD – Ive currently got a Western Digital SE 120gig IDE drive, and its sweet. IM going to give it to my mum so she has 120gig of space to use up. Plus the new motherbaord has SATA so i may as well get a SATA drive – they are around the same price as an IDE drive with a lot better performance.

Cooler Master Case – Mum needs a new case. She doesnt like her old one much, but this one should do. It was rather cheap and has a nice looking aluminium front bezel, plus it has front usb / friewire / heaadphones / microphone ports – which is jsut what mum likes.

So parts are ordered and paid for. I got told 3 days, so fingers crossed i might get them before the weekend.

Some more photos from my iPhoto archive.
These ones were taken when i went home at the beginnning of this year for my sisters wedding.

The local river, Blue cloudy sky, Flower in the front pond and sunsets over the back fence.

enjoy.

Submitted my tax a few minutes ago with eTax, should get a decent refund.

One thing that annoys me with eTax is their predicatable ‘Windows has the highest market share so only cater for them’ attitude. eTax only runs on windows PC’s, their solution for mac people? Use Virtual PC or some kind of emulator – WTF?

It annoys me. No doubt they contracted someone to produce an etax solution. Why didnt they detail in the specification document that the solution had to be cross platform? Theres no reason why a Java / web based solution couldnt have be implemented.

Implement the backend with java and the front end with web standards and what you have is a cross platform solution for ANY platform.

Its not rocket science….

Goal – To get the website ive been working on for the past few months completed and out of the way.

easy? Lets hope so….