iPod Come and Gone

For a while now I've been singing the praises of Apple, Inc. I love my Mac. It's stable and lovely. And, until recently, I've loved my iPod. They do what I need them to do.

This spring, the left channel of my iPod started going all fuzzy. The channel would come and go, and as time went by it got worse. Keep in mind, this began to happen after nearly two years of continuous use. And by continuous use, I mean nearly every hour of every day the iPod was playing or charging. I figure, on average, it was playing music 8 hours per day. Also, I'm not the most gentle person when it comes to the treatment of gizmos (electronic or otherwise).

With the impending schooner trip coming up, I wanted to have my iPod fully functioning by the time I leave. So, I sent it in for repairs. These repairs are covered under the AppleCare program (read: extended warranty). I sent the iPod in, and today received a brand new one as a replacement.

I had just begun to sing further praises of Apple when I tried to boot up the brand new iPod. The silver apple of death appeared against a black background and would not budge. I tried all manor of tricks to get it to boot, to no avail. I called Apple again to tell them my replacement needed to be replaced. Mandy, the slueth she is, discovered a Mac store near our apartment. I told the person that I wanted to bring the iPod to the store instead of waiting for the return box to arrive, send it back, then wait for another possible lemon to arrive.

In short, we drove to the store, showed the iPod to a Mac Genius (how arrogant is that?) and got a replacement that actually works.

I'm still singing the praises of Apple because I love the iPod and its reliability. I hope that them sending out broken iPods as replacements for broken iPods is rare and isolated incident. Either way, my music is playing out of both speakers and I'm happy as can be.

Mac Reflections #4: Boot Camp Pt. 1

Mac Reflections #3: Boot Camp Works!

A warning to readers: In terms of a past posts, this one is long, highly geeky, and more technical than usual. Swim at your own risk.

A couple weekends ago I was able to get Windows XP to run on the new Mac Pro. I used the beta of Boot Camp with virtually no problems. First, I had to slipstream Service Pack 2 into Windows XP to get it to install and went through the setup process. I also ran some benchmarks to test the performance and stability under stress. These updates will come in a later post.

A quick note before considering trying any of this: You have to be running the latest version of OS X and you must run the latest firmware updates. Check the official Boot Camp page to make sure you're running the right firmware and OS X updates for the version of Boot Camp you're about to install. I've read absolute horror stories of people killing their hard drives and ruining the BIOS on their Macs by not having done this. If the term "Flashing the BIOS" is unknown to you, don't try this at home.

Step 1) Get your legally purchased and fully authentic copy of Windows XP (Service Pack 2) out of the vault.

This was the first hurdle. My copy of Windows XP Pro is old. To run at all, Boot Camp requires the copy of Windows XP being used to be at least to the Service Pack 2 level. This is tricky since the way it usually goes is A) Install Windows B) Run the Service Pack 2 update. I needed to update the Windows files to Service Pack 2 before I even installed it.

To get my old version of Windows up to the Service Pack 2 level, I had to slipstream the update into the installation disk. I followed this guy's tutorial, and it worked like a snap. It took a couple hours of downloading, running, and burning but it worked like a charm.

Step 2) Install a new hard drive.

While this isn't technically necessary, it is really helpful. I try to keep like-purposed files on different physical drives when I am able. It's an old habit hearkening back to the days when the operating system had so much processing overhead, that it was smart to keep the media files on a separate drive to speed things up and add a little insurance. Wait a minute! Have you seen the system reqs for Windows Vista? 1GB to recommended just to run the OS? What kind of madness is that?

I purchased a 320GB SATA-II (3gb/sec) hard drive for $79 through Tiger Direct. I installed it via the amazingly simple process detailed in a previous post. I formatted it to run just like any normal hard drive on the Mac. I rule.

Step 3) Download Boot Camp

Boot Camp is a basic boot loader that lets the user, on boot, choose which OS they would like to load. In addition to a raw boot loader, Boot Camp also comes with a simple installation wizard that takes the pain out of building cross-platform driver disks, partitioning / formatting drives, and what to do once you begin the installation process. While I found it to be incredibly stable, Boot Camp is still in beta, so be warned. Beta just means that it's not officially released yet: If you have any problems with it, Apple will not provide support. A quote from the Boot Camp webpage summarizes it as, "We do not sell or support Windows. Duh." As an aside, the new version of OS X, Leopard, will come with the full, gold version of Boot Camp already installed and, by default, supported by Apple. By October (when Leopard is not reported to be released) they'll have worked out most of the bugs. So, if you're the paranoid type, wait until then.

Boot Camp can be downloaded right here.

Step 4) Install and run Boot Camp

The installation process is the same as any other Mac app. Unpack the .dmg file, browse to the mounted virtual drive and copy the .app file to the application directory. Run the app. Bonus!

Boot Camp will prompt you to do two things before you can install Windows. It will make you print a copy of the instructions and burn a disk of Windows drivers. I got around wasting the paper and ink by copying the instructions to our laptop via a handy 2GB thumb drive Mandy's parents gave me for my birthday (thanks!). Either way, you need to have access to the directions some other way than through the Mac box. You do have to burn the driver disk, however. The driver disk becomes vital in step 6.

The last thing it will do is prompt the you to choose the drive and partition size you where you want to install Windows. I chose the new hard drive I had installed and told it to split the drive in half, allowing 150GB of space to install Windows and 150GB for use as either storage in OS X or a Linux installation some point down the road. After the drive had been partitioned and formatted, it prompted me to put the Windows XP disk in the drive, reboot the computer and pray.

Step 5) Install Windows

Windows installs just like always. The terminal-looking blue screen, complete with the bad Courier font has the warm, nurturing feel of an iron pipe to the face. I followed the Windows on-screen instructions and the Boot Camp provided .pdf on the laptop until Windows was fully installed.

During this phase, Mandy read film trivia questions out of a book I received from my sister-in-law. I got every one of them wrong. Good thing I spent all those thousands of dollars on a film criticism degree.

Step 6) Configure Windows to recognize Mac peripherals

After several reboots and an hour of running the Windows installer, I was presented with the XP Desktop. The first thing you'll notice is the resolution is horrible, there is no audio, and the eject button doesn't work. This is because Windows doesn't come with the drivers necessary to run the hardware peripherals built into the Mac Pro box natively. This is where the driver disk Boot Camp forced you to burn in Step 4 comes in handy.

Simply pop open the disk drive and run the disk. Of course, the eject button on the upper-left corner of the Mac keyboard won't work. Windows doesn't recognize the keyboard layout, remember? To open the disk drive you have double click on My Computer > Right-Click on the DVD drive > Select Eject. Once the driver disk is inserted and the drive closed, Windows will run the driver package on the disk and force the system to reboot. Again.

If all goes well with the driver installation, the next thing you'll hear is the creepiest sound ever to come out of a Mac: The Windows Startup Fanfare. I literally felt a shiver run down my spine when I heard it played through the internal speaker.

And there it is: A Mac booting to, not emulating, Windows XP. To choose the operating system I want to boot to, I just hold down the Option key when the computer is starting up, and it will ask me to pick.

I will post some final thoughts and benchmarking figures in a couple days.

New Equipment Time!

I just received an order two new bits o' equipment: an Ultra 2000va UPS and a Western Digital 320GB hard drive.

Ultra 2000va UPS

What: An Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is a essentially a battery backup for electronics, in my case, computers and peripherals. Basically, how it works is it plugs into the wall and your computer plugs into it. While plugged into the wall, the UPS' internal battery is charged. When I use my computer, it draws power from the battery, not from the wall socket, that way there is a complete disconnect between the power coming out of the wall outlet and the power entering the computer. So, during a thunderstorm, if the power goes out, my system will stay on because it's already running of the UPS battery. Also, if there is a power surge, it will only destroy the charging mechanism instead of blowing up my computer.

Why: It will protect my equipment from power surges and outages. Our apartment has horrible wiring. Everything in it is electric; the dishwasher, stove, and furnace. All electric. When the stove is on, I can hear crackling through my PC speakers, and that isn't good. With the UPS, there will be a constant, even flow of electricity to the computer and components making for a longer, more reliable equipment lifespan. Even if the apartment power totally goes out, the system will still run for about 15 minutes on the battery. These are a good idea for any piece, or pieces, of home electronics you want to survive a power surge or outage. I would recommend doing some research about how much power the equipment pulls before purchasing one. A good rule of thumb is 1000va to 2000va UPS it plenty for a low to medium end home theater system.

The sucker cost over $200, but I look at it as cheap insurance to protect the equipment. The other catch is it had be a massive 2000va UPS because the friggen Mac Pro is a such a power monster that it can spike over 1750vas when coming out of sleep or when all the drives are spinning. On the plus side, though, I should be able to run my external Lacie drive and my monitors off of it along with the Mac.
Bonus!

Western Digital 320GB hard drive (7200/rpm SATA-II)

What: A massive, inexpensive hard drive.

Why: I bought this for a couple reasons. One, I really want to see if I can get Windows to run on the Mac. My main goal for this, honestly, is to play games. I do also have bunch of non-gaming applications (DVDShrink, Reason, and IMToo Converter) that are PC-only that I would like to run. The Mac has a nice graphics card (ATI x19000 XT) that is well-suited for playing games. However, since most computer games require Microsoft's proprietary DirectX driver platform, it will only be fully utilized on using Windows. The second reason is I want to install and play around with Linux. I'll probably opt for Ubuntu, but I would like to try Debian, since the Windows Manager is so friggen cool looking. Either way, it will be interesting to see how well I can get these operating systems running on what used to be a totally closed hardware architecture. The future is now!

I'll write a review of each after I've used them for a while, and sorry if the most boring post you've ever read. I wrote it in the traditional geek fashion, with pens in my pocket and tape on my glasses.

Mac Reflections Pt. 2

My PC started acting up. I had been playing Oblivion: Elder Scrolls, converting some .movs to .wmvs, and burning DVDs (not all at the same time) just fine. Then, a couple days ago, it just seized. The screen went black and the sucker wouldn't shut even if I held the power button in for 5-10 seconds. I had to reach behind it and flip the power supply switch. I tried a couple things. I used an entire can of blow-off to clear out the mountain flotsam and dust bunnies that had collected. I reset the mobo to use the factory configuration of the memory and I'm about to try some different voltage settings and front-side bus configs to see if one of those is wonky. It could be the power supply too. I bought the "Diablo" power supply because it had a cool blue LED in it, not because it came highly recommended to actually, you know, power my computer and everything. I'll play around with it; ask some friends for advice.

I'm writing this to you on my Mac. My trustworthy Mac. It hasn't died. It doesn't need voltage tweaks or memory flash sequences reset. It just works. And works well. So, when I get around to it, I'll figure out the problem with PC. Or, more likely, I'll bribe a friend or friends with cookies and beer to get it working for me. It used to be that I defined my ability to accomplish things on a computer by how well I could troubleshoot the myriad problems I came across trying to run a Windows PC. I think I've come to terms with my consumerist, hair-gel wearing self. It's so much easier to use a computer that just works instead of one that, well, doesn't.

It's also much more productive. The PC died right in the middle of converting the aforementioned files--a task I am doing for my client in Grand Rapids. If that was my editing computer, I would be rushing to fix it because failing to do so might mean missing a deadline and loosing them as a client. I can't afford the vanity or the time spent trolling through forums and message boards trying to isolate the problem and fix it/replace it. I need this project done. Period.

It could be a bad power supply. Might be a motherboard setting. Meh. In the meantime, I'll be getting my work done on my Mac.

slacking

We have a number of people write, call, and IM that we haven't been as prolific with updates these past couple weeks. While true, it isn't totally without reason. I have been crazy-busy these past two weeks. A massive computer crash (no, not the Mac), a deadline pushed up two weeks by my client in GR, and fun visit by Chad and Megan last weekend are all reasons why I haven't been posting, not excuses. I should be posting regardless. I'm trying to keep people amused and informed about our going-ons down here in the great sweeping Ohioan expanse, and I can't do that unless I post.

It's strange doing this blogging thing. Both Mandy and I will go through periods of creativity and interest in it, then just as suddenly loose interest. What I need to do is during my next bout of creativity, write a few posts and just keep them in draft, so when I'm not feeling up to writing, I can just post one of those.

To recap, here's few things we've been up to since the last post:
1. Chad and Megan came down to visit last weekend. It was great to hang out with some them.
2. We had a really successful cooking club last weekend. The theme was fondue, and there was much dipping. A special thanks to Chad's parents for the use of their awesome ceramic fondue pot.
3. We saw Grindhouse last night. Words cannot describe the experience. It's so unlike any other movie-going experience I've had, that I'm reluctant to even call it a movie. It's something has to be seen to be believed, both in a good and bad way.
4. Mandy and I have been thinking of adding another member to the family. Keep looking back for more updates on this...


(One of the many amazing scenes from such a wonderful movie. Too bad YouTube resolution is so crappy.)

Mac is arrive.

Hopefully, by the time I get home, my Mac will have arrived. My hope is that I will be posting this via Safari or Firefox 2.0 running on OS X.

The demo is coming along as well as it can while waiting on the computer I'm going to use to finish the composition. I've been scanning through a ton of music I found at Archive.org. Some of the music has the most liberal Creative Commons copyright, the share-alike, derivatives-friendly, no commercial use license. The problem is, most of the tracks aren't really conducive to a fast-paced promotion piece. The vast majority of the tracks released under the license I need are generally ephemeral ambient music. I need beats and lots of variation so I can transition between clips, using the audio as a cue or to help keep a sense of pacing as a flip between shots that often have nothing in common.

In other news, Mandy and I are preparing for the long crossing. There is good reason to believe that this trip is going to be slow-going due to inclement weather. We're still planning to leave Thursday after work, but when we arrive in GR is anyone's guess. Accuweather calls for clear but cold down here and snowy up North. Since there is an escalating possibility of getting stranded up North, we're bringing the cats.

Cooking and Waiting

We had a fun potluck last night. Some work friends came over and we all shared food. Most of the people were Indian women, so the food was amazing and diverse. Mandy and I made egg fried rice with veggies, some basmati rice, cinnamon bread, and focaccia bread with sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella. They made idly with coconut chutney, tandoori chicken, golab jamun (little deep-fried donuts in a single sugar syrup), onion pakoras, and Kentucky Fried Chicken... yes, KFC. It was cool to hang out with everyone and swap stories about cultural differences, movie likes, and recipes.

I've received by new monitor, Final Cut Studio 5.1 software, and 320GB-friggen-hard-drive for $79. The only thing that's missing is the Mac. The tracking number was last updated on February 1st and it places the date of arrival here around February 7th, but I think it will show up before that--hopefully tomorrow.

I've been hard at work on my demo reel. I created a cool 10 second intro clip and another 8 second conclusion clip. I started splitting the scenes out that I want to use, but with a Mac on the way, and having to convert everything from MPEG2 to Quicktime when it arrives, I've been dragging my heels. I figure one long weekend push will get into a form that I wouldn't mind showing to potential employers. Taking Josh's advice, I'm going to put just the video clip, my resume, contact info up on a basic .html page while I work on the more in-depth flash site that will showcase my writings, photography, and audio work.

After the reel is done, I'm going to move full-force into working on Mandy's parent's cross-country bike trip video diary. I'm going import that footage, break into sizable chunks, and figure out how to pace it based on notes that Casey left me. I think that's going to be fun since it will give me an opportunity to relearn FCP, Soundtrack, and Motion - the Mac apps I haven't really been playing with since I left school.

This week we're packing up and getting ready to head North to see the premier of Chad's documentary "Little Thumb" and to see our nephew, Zach, for his fourth birthday. I'm really anxious to see Chad's film. He's been working on it for a over a year. I've seen various drafts of the outline, shot some of the footage, and debated the theme over many a pint. It's always so gratifying to see people accomplish the goals they set for themselves. Woot!