Catching up after the eye op...

Just after my last post I had the eye op. in Drammen. Susan drove me and all went well, but it was uncomfortable reading and writing for the rest of the week, partly due to the salve I had to use 3 times a day til the following Friday.

Anyway, now I'm back in business and there's quite a bit to mention.. first I updated Suse to KDE 4.1 RC1. That went surprisingly smoothly, though at first I didn't realize where you could select it, i.e. on the login page which normally is bypassed. Nvidia is working well and the fonts are better now, so Suse is really looking good when you compare its 1280x1024 resolution, approx the same as the Macbook, with the iMac which is much higher definition. There was also an update which included a kernel update. Luckily I had read the 'new posts' and noticed a grub error thread, as it hit me too. The new kernel entries were made in menu.lst, but slightly wrong.. hd0 instead of (hd0,1) in a couple of places.. made a new Eltorito CD and backed up using both Paragon and Macrium. The latter is distinctly faster on both the XP drive and the Suse drive.

Next was a Firefox - Dropbox fiasco. Oddly enough I had returned the PC to its normal profile a few days earlier without trouble, but both Macs refused to let me in after the change, saying there already was a copy of FF open. In the end I had to bite the bullet, Zap FF and reinstall from scratch. This went fast enough, but I had forgotten it would zap the passwords too.. so now I have clean copies which keep asking me for old passwords, until they have been re-entered :(

Next was July 11th, another of those absurd Apple days with people actually queuing up overnight for the privilege of buying an iPhone 3G in a store - that was the only way you could buy one! That I'll never do! And of course the systems crashed, the queues took ages to move as the servers were down, people were sent home to complete the activation through iTunes and had to sit there hitting a key for 4 hours or so in order to complete.. of course Apple gets a tremendous amount of attention as a result and even negative factors seem to benefit them! I'm waiting for the first Android, about which it has been very quiet lately, but I think an HTC model will be out in a couple of months ;)

MobileMe was updated at about the same time as above, and even that was a screw up, so much so that everyone is getting 30 days extension of their agreement! I'll try it again early one morning and see how it like updating my iTunes folder now.. bet its still running at 15-20KB/sec.

That's about it.. I removed Acronis True Image totally from the PC and am keeping both Paragon and Macrium images in easily recognized folders on the combo drive. Really must take 2nd level backups to the new REDNTFS partition.
 

Trials and tribulations as they say

Not sure if I mentioned the work done and time spent in front of the PC, but Gentoo copies have gone and now there is quite a snazzy uptodate OpenSUSE in their place! I ended up with back pain of course..

Then there has been the search for a better backup app than TI 9 (and 11 which is being returned) which only want to backup the Linux drive at very slow, full disk (298GB) only. No way or space!

I came across Paragon Drive Backup 9 Personal, a fairly new release, but I think they forgot to update the Recovery CD options.. their Bart PE plugin solution is not a solution! Its too complicated for the average guy to do, and it doesn't work. I spent days on it :( Their Recovery CD loads OK, BUT the Normal mode reaches a blue Paragon screen with nothing on it.. Failsafe mode works, but the mouse drive is from 1995 and only works for me if I wiggle it during all activities... laughable, but it came in useful when I tried another app ShadowProtect and ended up screwings Windows - finger trouble ;) - and restored a 4th July archive.  had bought it by then btw.

Next on the list was the Lifehacker tip, Macrium Reflect Free. I downloaded it and managed to backup XP to the F partition on hdb, check the Bart PE Recovery CD worked - the Linux CD hangs at the firewire drive section - and then thunder stopped play, both for me and for my recording of the Williams sisters battling out at Wimbledon. Happy to say Venus won! I don't like the look of Serena, or perhaps its the name, or both.

Thats it for now.. looks like I'll end up with three Backup apps!

A brief test from Diablo

Very surprised to find a new version for the N800 today! I downloaded a copy and tried to install it on the PC, but the FlashGui just crapped out. To cut this short, I got it to run in 256 colours... And now I'm using it. It seems faster, has a slick theme, and most important, future dl's will be more Mac-like - YES!

Tuesday and its Gentoo

Started the day with some sunshine on the balcony, having been up since around 3am! I sorted out the partitions on hdb drive and deleted hdb11 thro' hdb17. I should have stopped there and got on with life, but the brain is a canny device.. before I knew it it was 3pm, I had moved Portage to hda8, and I was updating it with 'emerge --sync' on the hdb Gentoo copy. This alone took over 30 minutes! I should have stopped there too, but having updated portage I just checked to see how many things an 'emerge system' would want to update.. it didn't look bad - updating my profile to 2008.0 and sorting the blocks with help of forum search and away it went updating system :) That went surprisingly fast until just before the end when there was some trouble with PAM that has been semi-deprecated. I should have copied the comments out to hdb10, there were some things to do with authenticate - as logwatch output shows, PAM is involved with root starting sessions. I sorted out the block, something to do with udev IIRC, and finished the system update, logged out and in again ok (not a restart) and thought I would leave it at that..

However... when I rebooted the machine the screen was blank as it proceeded for a while before giving up. F2 showed nothing.. I wasted another hour searching the forum and tried a couple of small changes to files updated by etc-update, but nothing helped. So, I have promised myself to use no more than an hour or so before either wiping the hdb Gentoo off the disk or restoring hdb8 from my pre-update state.

Curse OpenSUSE and Linux!

Re: testing gmail from iMac

It must be a Blogger problem

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 7:55 AM, gerry fraser <gerald.fraser@gmail.com> wrote:

will this get through ok? if so its a Blogger problem..

Firefox and Dropbox sync

I was surfing the Dropbox forum posts the other day, and came across an interesting one in which one could set up a Firefox 3 profile on Dropbox/Profiles (iMac's) and sync not only the two Macs, but also XP once it was updated to FF3 :)

It works well.. I also use Dropbox after downloading an XP app on the Mac, so its ready on the PC when next its booted up.

Gmail problems again..

I have sent a long Linux epistle this early morning, but so far it hasn't arrived. Come on Google!

Linux again and XP

During our recent rainy season I have been updating the XP system a bit, which led me first to looking at Linpus Linux, but when that couldn't communicate with iMac over Bluetooth, and wouldn't boot up on the PC, I wrote myself an overview of "what is wrong with Linux" and "what is right with Mac" :) and checked out the distributions on my Grub floppy. It seems that Kanotix lost track of its saved changes source, Slax booted but doesn't find the ethernet setup via Airport, but Gentoo worked on both 2.6.18.2 and .3.

Then I downloaded OpenSUSE - this of course couldn't talk to the Mac either - but it did surprisingly boot up after a couple of long delays while it probably sorted out the network, etc., and it looked quite good. I ordered the 11.0 DVD from Guillaume at Linux CD and started trying to sort out what was what on hda and hdb, prior to any plans of actually installing it on the PC.

This was made difficult by the fact that OpenSUSE has introduced a kernel feature which turns hdx's into sdx's! Something to do with 'libata'. Thats one of the drawbacks with Linux - you are expected to get under the bonnet and fix things like that. Searching for an answer on the combined new forum wasn't easy, but I did find a solution to put onto the boot line - its on Evernote now..

I haven't gone into Grub  and OpenSUSE yet.. that requires more mental gymnastics than I was prepared to spend late on a Monday!

Today, Tuesday I'll make sure there's a good Acronis backup of the hdb drive, and an MBRwiz, before starting to delete the multitude of partitions used by various Linux copies that don't work. What a lot of time goes down the drain by doing this! Thats my main quarrel with Linux, the time it all takes with details. Mac on the other hand, restricts the system hardware they sell to you as a 'system', BUT you gain the knowledge that it all works under the bonnet, and all Mac might do is ask you questions, and accept your answers before getting on with things like system and app updates... i.e. you simply use and enjoy the experience, rather than work on the system itself.

Thats it for PCs and Linux for now..

Firefox 3.0 day

Installed yesterday on iMac OK, and today on AIR after a long wait at various sites download went fast and I even have ColorfulTabs back, tho' the colours seem to be more tones than pure colours :)

Firefox 3

It being only a day or so away from the BIG day I installed FF RC3, and am quite impressed! A number of my addons are not ready, but those that count are ok..

Suddenly realized

..that I hadn't blogged here for quite a while. Why? Guess I have been back and forth to Rortunet picking up glasses a couple of times, but that only excuses a couple of days. Strange, and with all the 'news' about iPhone 3G and 2.0 to follow up. Must say I would quite like one in order to integrate it with the Macs, but I don't need one, and I don't like some of Apple's methods. If I buy a mobile, I want to be able to use it where and when I want, without having to invest in some partially used plan for 18 months!

Nokia are about to release an E71 which replaces the E61i and looks really nice, but I don't really need that either. No, I think it will be a longer wait for a Samsung Android :)

All the emails seem to have arrived

After a night and day of waiting I wake to find receipts for all the emails I tried yesterday.. back in business again. Guess there will be a few comments about this in today's news.

Yet another test from the mac email address

testing testing

Test from profimail

Yet another test channel

test from Mail

Should have tried this sooner

testing testing

The two emails I sent this morning have not yet arrived. The Help center reports overloading earlier in the day, that things are ok now, but... shouldn't emails arrive eventually?

Catching up again

The days pass too fast.. my trip to Slemmestad Optikk yesterday took a while and I have been viewing the Earth DVD which was really good.

Anyway, on the EyeTV front I have sorted out everything to do with Exporting twice when wifi was selected, so that is disabled now. The Playlist None issue was because I had no simple playlists.. duh!

After the Tiger security update I tried EyeTV and Turbo.264, but I never got past the channel set up because attempting to view one crashed it all back to square one again. I'll try once more after the backup of Tiger and rebackup of Leopard clone2 has finished - I made the mistake of SuperDuper'ing HD2Tiger to the latter, no wonder it was taking ages!

I am vaguely interested in the soon to be announced E71 replacement for the E61i, but have to admit to a loss of interest for S60. Can I wait for the first Android handset...?

Finally, Komplett.no sent an email with the new Voyager 32GB at Kr. 895, which I couldn't resist - dumb really, because a new passport would only cost a bit more and have lots more use..

Thats it for now

Turbo.264 working after all...

I was reading the Turbo FAQ and came across this:

"When the Turbo.264 is being used to export, the progress bar in EyeTV will change to red, and there will be a series of pulsing circles below the export bar."

Well I have the progress bar in red and the pulsing circles, so I guess this means Turbo is working after all, but then why is it an EyeTV process taking almost 80% cpu while the Turbo.264 process sits at 1%?

I pulled the Turbo.264 stick out, and ran the export again.. now the EyeTV process was taking everything two CPUs could give it, around 150%!

So, Turbo.264 IS integrated - my expectations were just too high. However, I am happy having my iMac running at 80% cpu rather than the double, so it stays plugged in..

Thank you Elgato

Leopard updated

Yesterday evening 10.5.3 was available.. I updated AIR first. The download went extremely fast. The actual installation took a while, and it restarted several times before the login screen finally appeared :) Haven't noticed any great differences, and after updating iMac this morning, I was disappointed EyeTV 3 and Turbo still weren't integrated :(

However, its good to be up-to-date with a bunch of security issues.

Big disappointment

I received the Turbo.264 on May 28th and this is my post ablout my experience at http://tinyurl.com/5to3zl

I'll add myself to this thread.. was pleasantly surprised when my Turbo.264 arrived today, until I tried using it.. to cut it short, EyeTV 3 and Turbo.264 1.3 don't 'see' one another.

If I try to export from EyeTV I get the -536870176 error, and if I drop a file onto Turbo.264, it starts flashing dots but soon fails with the 'encoding failed error 0xE00002E0'.

This is, to put it mildly, extremely disappointing.. what is the status on this problem?

Forgot to mention, I was trying to export to Best iPod mode.

Edit2: Some progress. I did a complete shutdown, plugged Turbo.264 directly into the iMac's USB slot (not via a cable extender), powered up with EyeTV 3 off, and tested files which failed before. They converted OK now, so that's something Will update as I proceed with EyeTV on.

Edit3: EyeTV recordings are at least exporting to wi-fi ok without error messages now, but Turbo.264 is not being used!

Edit4: Thought I would check out Quicktime Player Pro too. I was able to select a Turbo related export mode, but a QtPlayerHelper process ran while export was under way, not a Turbo process, and on both mp4 files I exported, Activity Monitor showed QtPlayerHelper had lost contact about half way through.

Latest: Updating to 10.5.3 didn't help the integration

A number of fixes found

I see I mentioned the Eyeconnect solution in the last post, but today I suddenly thought "why not try the same EasyFind method (finding all files which have anything to do with Gears, remove them , reinstall and cheer) on the long standing offline RTM problem". I did and damn me it worked.. so that's one more problem out of the world, and proof that my super faultfinding skills are still in place ;)

Another bit of news. After experimenting with EyeTV export formats, and finding the Apple TV format stretched things out like a comic strip, I ordered Turbo.264 for NOK 900. It should speed conversions up by 500% (12 minutes instead of 60).

Oh yes, and I moved the EyeTV Archive to the spare partition, now called EyeTV. It makes for quicker & easier backup, besides giving me 60GB to play with ;)

YES! EyeTV problems solved

It suddenly flashed into my mind that I had an Eyeconnect icon earlier in system preferences, some demo I had tried back in the Squeezebox days IIRC.

So I searched for remnants with EasyFind, removed them, de-installed EyeTV with Zapper, and re-installed from the CD. Even before the 3.0.2 update had completed, I could see Eyeconnect processes in iMac's activity monitor, and was able to access the recorded library via Safari on Madge and the iMac, though that will be of little interest as the picture is around  a third size.

iTunes and Syncopation synchronize recordings from either end, and viewing via iTunes on Madge is perfectly ok :)

Big question now is whether to invest NOK 1K in a Turbo 264 USB device which speeds up exporting and wi-fi preparation. I'll decide in the next week or so what's worth watching and whether its worth recording. Will also have a look at the Apple TV to see whether there's any benefit to be had from a storage &/or conversion point of view.

Elgato EyeTV 3 DTT stick

Yes! It arrived yesterday at lunchtime with EyeTV 3 software, and, after an update to 3.0.2, it didn't take long to get excellent NRK images from 4 or 5 channels. There were another 20-odd encrypted channels coming through loud & strong but those are not (yet?) accessible.

There is much to learn about EyeTV 3 software, and I must say this is one hell of a product for the price! The only problem I was left with at the end of the day was getting recording sharing to work in both directions, particularly in the most wanted direction, i.e. recorded on iMac and watched on Madge. I tried everything, including some hints on the Elgato Lounge (forum) without luck. Today I am going to see if actually having the stick installed at the Madge end affects the outcome..?

ScreenRecycler & JollysfastVNC

The letters VNC caught my eye first, and I nearly dropped it when the web page didn't display properly on Firefox.. however I downloaded it and sure enough it was very fast and FREE, where Vine viewer/server package cost me about $35 some while back. So this allows me to view Madge from iMac another way ;)

This morning I got round to trying ScreenRecycler - first on the PC, but I couldn't get either RealVNC or TightVNC viewers to work with it. So, over to Madge..

There I started JollysfastVNC and up it all came! I could push iTunes for example over to Madge from iMac together with the iMac's mouse cursor, start and stop radio stations. It was all a bit too small until I set the ScreenRecyclerMac display size to the same as Madge's - 1280 x 800 - then it looked more correct.

Is it something worth keeping for $20? I don't think so.. on iMac 'spaces' provides 4 times the effective screen space, and I don't use that at all!

Interesting app though, ref. what you can do with it.

Mindnode and Evernote

I came across Mindnode on Cool OSX apps a few days ago, and was immediately taken with its ease of adding nodes. More so when I found you could have multiple nodes on a page, and export in Freemind and PDF formats... this allows import into Evernote, which has now been updated to allow just that, as well as having a new icon layout.

So, each morning I start maps on each machine, and in the evening I can merge the two by a currently copy&paste method only. However both are filling my current needs for noting things of interest, use, you name it.

Changes to XP

This is really about Mac stuff, but I found that SP3 for XP had been giving early installers some hassle, so I HAD to try it... and yes it gave me some trouble too! Microsoft is so sodding hopeless.

After downloading the 66MB at rather slow speed, and the usual dozen or so 'yes's' to Direct X messages on IE, it started to install, well it did a lot of checking first, and clearly one cannot sit for half an hour watching everything, so I got up to make a coffee or something, and when I returned it was to find that Online Armor had held things up waiting for an answer, but SP3 just said it couldn't install and backed everything out again - successfully - I had to try again. Luckily it didn't have to download again.. and this time I  made sure to exit Online Armor, AVG, et al first, and it completed ok. AND it actually seems to be faster!

Took another Acronis backup and that was that...

A while since

The fine summer weather has been taking priority over surfing and solving problems these last few days.. not sure if I clarified what was going on with the iChat and Syncopation issues, but after a lot of searching I came across a guy who clearly knows about security - securiosis blog - and he had analyzed the Leopard firewall back in November and some of what he found was what I have been experiencing.

Using the 'access to services and apps' mode, if the app changes in any way then it will fall out of being accepted without saying, eg like Syncopation. iChat is a weirdo... I have it set to open at login on both machines, but it needs to be quit & reopened, and then 'accept network connections' for screen sharing to work. I'm not sure if that applies only on bootup or also after sleep..

I tried using Patriot on the suggestion by 'Ralph', but that really screwed up and I had to restore from a SuperDuper backup an hour earlier :) Still I learnt about Patriot, which allows you to select from Apple CD contents and install just what you want.

The Great Synchronization Forum Thread

just a quickie from GR, after reading about the new 'share with note' feature, and this Forklift future is interesting too :)

 

 

Sent to you by Cintra via Google Reader:

 

 

The Great Synchronization Forum Thread

via Binarynights blog by csaba on 5/5/08

Hello Guys and Girls,

It has been obvious to us, that the most needed and asked-for feature in ForkLift is the possibility to synchronize folders.
We are now happy to announce that we have started development of our synch module.
As we want to make this the best damn synchronization tool that ever was, we are asking You, our Esteemed User, for input on what you would expect from such a tool. To this end, we are now launching this new thread in our user forum, and encourage you to make yourself heard.

What we are looking for most, is descriptions of the tasks where you need to use a synchronization tool; and your ideas about how you would expect to manage the workflow of these tasks. We would like this to be a very open and active discussion, one that we hope will result in a tool worthy of the general excellence of ForkLift.

We will hear out any ideas, however weird they may seem You are welcome to post screenshots, diagrams, filelists, links, anything useful to this discussion.

Thanks for contributing

BinaryNights

 

 

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Syncopation trouble again

Posting this now while listening to a new album from iTunes Koppel Piano concerto #3, like Prokofiev.. anyway after downloading the latter I tried syncing but ran into the rotating ball syndrome :(

To cut the story short although I had Syncopation allowed all incoming in the firewall, I had to open to all before it could get through.

I think a temporary fix may be to remove Syncopation and put it back again, in the firewall I mean. Did that at both ends and the spinning ball has gone for now. Will keep my eye on it!

Btw, this was found later as a suggestion on Discussions by an expert..

Macscan and ClamXav on AIR

I haven't been running the above on AIR itself owing to the extreme CPU use, which results in temperatures up above 80C!

So today, I tested an idea I thought up in a semi-meditative state. Run them on the newly made SuperDuper clone, and that is what I have done. Amazing that I've had MacScan for so long and not run custome scan! That enabled me to choose AIR clone2 and scan ok.. the same with ClamXav, where I simply dropped gerald fraser folder onto it and let it zip. It took 3.5 minutes only and iMac could tolerate the high CPU use better, rising only to the low 60's :)

XP Username change

I came across a couple of tips yesterday about really changing the Username (and profile) in XP. I wanted to do this to see if the reason for only the iMac's Gerry home folder being visible in the XP workgroup was the Username Gerry on XP. So I changed it to gfraser, like the iMac, and sure enough after a long copy profile process I could run workgroup and there was everything in the gfraser folder.. QED

1st May holiday

Well, it wasn't much change from everyday for me though it was quieter round here. Nice to see some real Spring rain again..

A lot of time went to trying to sort out Noscript problems with downloading compressed files. Eventually I posted an entry to the Noscript Mozilla site and got a quick answer from Giorgio..  after a number of posts he suggested an entry to Firefox about:config ref. application/octet-stream which fixed it. He also suggested Flashgot, another of his extensions, but I noticed on one of the comments expressed my feelings about the frequency of Noscript updates. He is obviously trying to force the field! So I got rid of it..

In the evening I decided to give OpenDNS another try after seeing an RSS about their new solution to 'DNS Rebinding attacks'. No great deal perhaps, but I'll give it another spin.

And finally - Drop.io

Came across this on a video about Web 2.0, it looked interesting, so I tried it, of course ;)

Its basically a simplified blog point where you can upload files, notes, you name it, very simply. You then give the simple url to whover you wnat, they can then add/download/view what's there if you give permission. I have, as you see embedded the upload button here, and made a new point by sending mail to new@drop.io/cinval2 with a jpg attachment and there's a new point. You can also transfer between your, or others' points - I assume..

Only drawback is that its a bit slow, but they might fix that.

This was quite a day of learning

I was playing about again with the iChat method of screen sharing without B2MM (Back to my mac) active in .Mac, and having trouble, because, I found out B2MM was active and the two modes don't work together. Off with B2mm in .Mac prefs, and up it came. :)

Then I discovered all this buggering about with scripts and ignoring error messages was unnecessary - Chax allows you not only to auto accept, but to only accept from specific people!

What a joy to sort it out.. it works in both modes now i.e. with B2MM on or off!

Just a quick note

Have just stopped laughing after watching an old YouTube video presentation by 'The Fake Steve Jobs'.. what a story!

Anyway, as it is VERY power consuming and therefore HOT to run ClamXav on the MB Air, I suddenly had the idea to run it on the latest SuperDuper copy on the Passport drive, run it on the iMac that is! And yes of course it can be done.. its just another partition after all. So there we have a smart solution to my fear of running the Air at 80 degrees C for a long time.

What a couple of days

Yesterday at 7.20am adsl vanished so eventually I called Telenor to hear what was happening and they logged a case number to it. When it looked as though the day's close was approaching fast, I called 09000 again and received an automated answer that it would be fixed by the end of the next day! :(

It  came back while I was dozing on the sofa around 10am, and yes it was back. So I completed a few things, like trying Syncopation in debug mode ref Alan's answer to my email asking about the spinning ball delay at startup..  of course it all worked perfectly now, so I bought it via eSellerate and installed the activity code.

After a while I tried Profimail on the mobile, and to cut short another dragged out episode in which I was becoming too irritated for my own good, I fixed it by removing the ethernet cable from iMac to TC, connected Airport TC 5G, and noticed Mail couldn't access Gmail imap.. hmmm! Went in to TC setup, re-entered the online.no password, pressed update, all three devices went offline, and when they came back everything worked again... phew! :)

Desktop Transporter tested

I forgot to comment on this remote desktop app, so I've been through it again, and now I know why I got rid of it so fast without comment.. compared with all the other screen sharing apps/methods DTr gave awful wobbly quality, and although from iMac I could share Madge, the opposite was not possible. Just black screens.. so away it goes to the trash can!

Almost forgot

Another remote control/screen sharing solution for those whose .Mac account has run out - see http://tinyurl.com/yrnrhq and my Evernotes for more info.

"Back to My Mac allows a user log into another Mac remotely via internet. This is a great feature BUT it is only available if you are a .Mac subscriber. However, the new iChat supports Screen Sharing, so the only thing to figure out is how to auto-accept a Screen Share invitation and how to do it securely. This quick tutorial will show you how to set up iChat to do just that..."

Part of the setup requires changing an Apple script to enable auto login, which results in an Apple message every time you start iChat :( - however it all flashed into action, even if the Buddy explanation was unclear, and I wasted hours on trying to get the Buddy window to reproduce the tutorial.. it all worked though, which is the most important thing. I have added a couple of the practical comments entries which make some good suggestions which I haven't yet tried.

Why was I looking for more when I already have Vine viewer working like a charm..? A thirst for more knowledge I guess ;)

Farfinder experience

I installed this yesterday or the day before, and almost removed it at once, but tried again, set up gmail smtp for outgoing email, and away it went on the iMac. Over to the Macbook Air where one should just enter one's special URL and log in. At first it had some hassle with certificates, but accepted eventually both on Safari and Firefox, NOT Opera..

The tool bar had no tool tips, so it was a bit hit and miss, particularly as things are a bit odd ref icon images. Apps show their icons ok, jpgs and tiffs don't, and Preview pdfs show a default icon, whereas Adobe shows ok.

The important thing is that one can while travelling, get access to one's home (or office) machine, and either download or open an item. One can also send an item by email. Thats about it, but it runs on a browser, works on Tiger and Leopard from whereever with no installation on the browser machine... I emailed Susan about it, after a few emails back and forth with Adrian, who is support-cum-developer.

Use of afp:// and vnc:// to dvrdns

Now that things are woking pretty well between Leopard machines, I just checked use of the above for file-sharing and screen-sharing access. The former works perfectly on Safari, but not Firefox - a security issue? The latter works fine both on Firefox and Safari.. one is presented with a screen-sharing window showing the Bonjour machines available, and the Finder window for afp:// - great!

Finally got remote control of Tiger from Air

I spent a lot of time trying to get Vine and later Leopard screen sharing working towards Tiger, but no, I couldn't even ping Tiger or reverse..? I looked also for 802.11n activator software, but didn't feel like downgrading Extreme in order to get it from the extreme package, however, I'm pretty sure its working on N because my 'final solution' - using Vine Viewer on Air and Apple Remote Desktop on Tiger - worked both on AE 24 and TC 5G (only) wireless networks!

Clipboard sharing IS possible after all..

I don't give up.. came across ClipboardSharing an old app but it works! And on the same page I heard of DropCopy, an updated app which puts a dropzone on desktop for file/object transfers and a circle in the menu bar where you can grab the remote's clipboard! So, two working solutions, no doubt put together by developers for their own benefit!

Copy & Paste solution

OK, I found a reasonable solution to this between AIR and iMac, which could be used by anyone wishing to copy an item and pick it up on the other machine.. use drop box! Everyone should have one set up with an alias on their desktop.

Cutting and pasting text can be done either through Google Notebook or Evernotes simply enough, though style might be a problem.

Thats it I've spent enough time on remote control, and am left with the local solution iChat as the easiest bet after all :)

Remote control and screen sharing

Can't remember what started me off yesterday, but I came across Vine in /applications and decided to check it out. It worked fine with iMac able to control AIR very nicely. I got hold of a temporary key to enable the reverse, and that too worked fine, so I decided to transfer my single machine licence to the AIR, thinking that would be the logical place to do most remote work from.

The only thing I couldn't get to work was transfer of Cut & Paste between machines.. this set me off on a search which resulted in a trove of wealth! First from Lifehacker's Gina Trampani (a very bright lady) showed how a couple of lines in Terminal could turn the Leopard's screen sharing app into something a bit better. This worked very well, BUT although there were Toobar icons for getting and sending clipboards, it didn't work :(  see http://tinyurl.com/28jdu5


So I continued searching and came across a MacFixit http://tinyurl.com/2jk4yr tutorial with three or four methods of controlling a remote machine.

The one which did most was iChat! That allowed transfer between machines by drag & drop. Another was like Trampani's, and yet another was the one called 'Back to My Mac' this can be started/stopped in the .Mac prefs. It was already on, so I'm not sure whether it might have been in use in the above methods..

Quite a day... I missed dinner and shovelled a handful of nuts in my mouth for sustenance ;) Off to bed and 9:30 pm feeling happy, having learnt so much, even if Cut & Paste didn't work.

Evernote, a Google Notebook alternative

I noticed a Tweet or a blog entry about this app a few days back, but today I received a beta invite, signed up and was off to a flying start on the iMacs and my E61, the latter first. One can run desktop versions on Mac and Windows (haven't installed on XP yet), but the idea is to sync with an online version, like GN. It looks smooth and it works slickly. So I added a thread on GN site, telling them to take a look ;)

And in its current form its free!

Airfoil speakers

I wasn't clear what this meant at first, i.e. until I ran the app. It came free with Airfoil, and is effectively a digital equivalent of an Airport Express! I was running WKSU to the stereo via iTunes, and could now effectively add the iMac 5:1 system as a destination :) There was a bit of echo but not too bad.. this is a fantastic product, my only complaint being that its a bit too geeky for most people to get their heads round from a spec/manual point of view, though simple in actual practice.

Now I have dual band networks!

The Airport Extreme (Gigabit) arrived by a huge DHL lorry around kl.12.. of course I had to go at it like a bull in a china shop, and an hour or so later I have both networks sitting on top of the PC and Airport Express in proxysta (bridge) mode working towards the iMac. I have also installed Rogue Amoeba on both machines (it lets you know when the speakers/stereo is in use)

Oh yes.. the E61 has been set up on the AE 24 network as default, as have the n770 and n800. All work ok, which is what I hoped for.

Haven't tried the E61 downstairs yet, but I expect it will be even better now that its seperated b/g out.

Airport Express in proxysta mode

Came across this mode in a Macworld review by Dan Drakes. I set up my AE by adding a tick in the allow ethernet clients box, and after that I have had no trouble manually accessing the configuration. Also the E61 still works ;)

Yesterday I had all sorts of trouble accessing the config, though I discovered a surefire way this morning by plugging the beast out/in and rescanning for devices until it appeared, then I could 'get in' to it..

So I have Airtunes working from iTunes to my stereo...

Found it!

At last, I discovered why Squeezebox was not making that final inch in the connection processs - I had changed the firewall settings to be 'essential only' :(

So, now I can start living again...

Latest on Squeezebox

At first I thought all was solved.. I updated Tiger to the 5th April nightly 7.0.1 and blow me it updated the firmware to 88 and took off :)

So I quickly posted the good news for others, and went to Leopard, updated but quickly got screwed up again with fw being downgraded to 86!

To cut a very long story short, I have ended up with preventing fw update automatically, its 88 again now, and Squeezenetwork works ok on Leopard but Squeezecenter doesn't make the final inch of being recognized by the web interface...

Am currently running the latest XP version 7.0.1, and that too works OK. So I have a couple of choices.

Big question is what is the difference between my TC setup and the other guy's who has 10.5.2 working with a single TC.

In a day or so, I'll have a couple more Apple devices so that I can set up both a 2.4 Ghz and pure 5 Ghz network, plus an Airport Express link to the stereo - so called Airtunes! :)

Still no fw 88 for Squeezebox

I have been going back and forth each day between Leopard and Tiger partitions on iMac to check out whether or not the firmware, which is supposed to have resolved the Time Capsule Squeezebox problem. fw 88 has been released or not.. today's version 7.1 would not start the server after installation so I had to dl today's v 7.0.1.. that worked OK, but it was still the old fw 86 :(

A few tired days..

I wasted a whole day recently on the Squeezebox issue, trying to get both the Time Capsule and Linksys routers working together. I managed to get them both working but I couldn't get Squeezebox to communicate fully. Later I did manage to get it working on the XP system when both were connected by ethernet cable to the Capsule. Likewise on the iMac when running it on Tiger.

According to the bugzilla firmware 88 should have resolved this, but its 2 days from that statement and still no update to 88 happening/available.

However, as I have learnt in my long faultfinding career, you only learn by solving problems. When things work smoothly your brain is not taxed, so no memory is formed.

Winter is back!

Woke up this beautiful Easter Saturday morning to -12 degrees C and light wind! Even after a full day of sunshine the temperature remains around -4C without the windchill.. I have been quiet on the Madge blog for a few days as the reading phase has returned. Have been reading one of the new (to me) authors on the Telegraph's Top 50 crime writers list.

Back to the tech. stuff anon ;) Oh yes, I am looking at a dual-pane file manager 'Forklift' -  a bit like Krusader from my Linux KDE days.

Added the PC to new network

This went well :) The only problem I had was caused by my being too fast! I changed the fixed IP address, glanced at the mask but didn't look at the gateway, which was still set up for 198.162.1.1... changed this to 10.0.1.1 and up it all came.

Updated the various AV and spam software apps and all that was left to do was set up the TC printer. This required repairing Bonjour, then the Epson on the TC was found and printed OK.

That was fast! No more tasks for today..

Time Machine (TM) scheduler

I had lunch with Susan at Vollen on Friday, but afterwards had time to check out TMscheduler. This allows one to reduce the frequency of TM's hourly backup to something sensible like 4 hours. Most of my data is on line at Google, and for system backup the only answer is SuperDuper!

Its now Saturday morning, and I have finished the usual maintenance routine with MacScan, Clamscan, and checked that Appfresh no longer turns up the trojan... all is well :)

At last! Time Capsule arrives

The 2nd package from TNT went astray for an extra day.. wrongly sent to Sætre apparently :)

Anyway, I unpacked it straight away, plugged it into the output from Linksysp4pe, said it was to be the extension of a wireless network, and up it came. However the backup throughput of iMac to TC was around 2MB/sec, and would have taken many hours. Connecting it on the end of Linksys was not giving me the highspeed connection thats needed for backup over net..

Out with it all, and what a job it was to restart. Pressing TC reset for 5 seconds clearly did something, but it needed to be done a couple of times and be powered down before the Air Utility setup window was available. I have removed the Linksys, using just the TC as an access point and NAS drive. The local IP addresses are from 10.0.1.2 to 200 so I started at 20 for the iMac and 30 for Madge. Had to sort out the pppoe gfraser@online info with the original k pwd and up it all came.

After about 2 hours of backing up Madge's 19GB there is about an hour left to go. Slow compared with USB/Firewire, but OK for NAS on the Air I guess.

So, I have lots of spare Linksys routers in case Hege's fails. Tomorrow I'll connect it up to the PC through ethernet and make sure it comes up OK after changing the fixed IP there too.

Found a virus/trojan

The first I have come across on Mac! It was either the app Iceclean - an LCC-like app - or the Appfresh update yesterday, or somewhere I have been yesterday. Its called Exploit.URLSpoof.gen and is a very old trojan. Clamscan caught it and I have quarantined it on HD1Leopard. It was hidden deep in an appfresh sqlite file. Am now checking yesterday morning's backup on Leopard clone, and will later check Air where I have run Iceclean, or at least installed it, but not Appfresh IIRC.

Time Capsule still not delivered

I'm getting very close to writing very rude things about TNT! I've already said them to myself in no uncertain terms... this is an almighty screwup from my point of view, but no doubt one of many from TNT's point of view. Nærsnes being on the edge of civilisation and all that. I called them early this morning to hear if it was on its way or sent by post, and could get no decent answer. She would call me back but now at 2:15 pm it seems a bit late. Don't these people take into account that someone is spending time being available for their delivery!? I've wasted a week already. Damn them!!!

Google Reader improved even further

While Google Reader doesn't support filters yet, there are some tools that might help, of which I liked the following.

Google Reader Filter is a Greasemonkey script which lets you define a list of keywords you're interested in, and a list of uninterested keywords. The script highlights the posts that include your favorite keywords in the title and grays out the posts that contain keywords from the blacklist. You can use regular expressions for defining complex restrictions, like dates or long titles. This goes partway toward the automatic duplicate remover I have been hoping for..

Not sure if I mentioned the other improvement which made GR instantly better for me. It is an extension by Gina Trapani called naturally enough "Better GReader". The key improvement is that it gets rid of all the stuff you are not interested in above the entries, giving more viewing space, AND when you click on a an entry of interest it previews the entry on the Greader page! Fantastic...

eBook investment

Yesterday, I decided to bring myself up to date on things Leopard, so I invested $10 in the eBook "Take Control of Permissions in Leopard, 1Ed" by a Tankara IIRC.. its very easy to follow and so far by halfway I have learnt a few useful things about Info and the cmd option I version. Also that Info only allows you to change permissions down through sub-folders, not ownership..

Wednesday, a pure write off..

Yes, for Time Capsule too, but this was more personal as I had suffered from diarrhoea since 3:30am until 9 am or so, one could never be sure for the rest of the morning...

I called TNT with my tracking number and was given a strange answer, Yes it had been sent, and would arrive tomorrow, Thursday, uh? Sent from Holland! Yet I had received "We are pleased to send you this dispatch regarding your Apple Store order W84920598. Your order was shipped on 28.02.2008." from Apple days ago!

I'm afraid my opinion of TNT is not very high.. & I doubt it will arrive today either.

Disappointed..

The post van pulled up in the drive, and I thought Time Capsule had arrived, but it was the Mac Mini hub I ordered from Amentio on Sunday IIRC. I tried it on Madge, but it wasn't having it! The Passport light flashed regularly, but no disk mounted. Couldn't log out with it connected either.

Tried it on an iMac port and there the hub and passport came up and worked ok. Hopefully it will work on the Capsule when it arrives...

Belkin 4-port usb hub

Have now found & read the Time Capsule manual, and assuming the Epson printer and the WD Passport drive work OK when connected to TC, I have found a usb hub at Amentio for 200,- which should do the job of connecting both..

Time Capsule shipped!

Finally, its on its way, and should arrive around Wednesday next. That will be exciting.. I have already installed a dyndns client on iMac, as Apple has not previously supported automatic updating of ddns like Linksys.

I installed the same client on Madge yesterday, and was suprised to find my IP had not been automatically updated since November when I changed the password at dyndns!

Reading a discussions post today, made me realize that the 500GB disk will be accessible by anyone on the internet with the address and password.. I think a stronger password is called for!

Excessive temperature

This was pretty scary. A syslogd process was using 95% cpu the fan started blowing and things got hot! 83 degrees C..

I emailed the LCC people about their engine & clamscan drawing 190% but the reply didn't really help.

I found a couple of tips which did though. First was to place a firm surface under Madge so the air vents could work, and 2nd install Fan Control which let me adjust fan on times.

Superdrive arrived

It was delivered by post, from UPS. Very nicely packed, a silvery square to match Madge. It worked ok on an audio CD via iTunes, but there was one big snag! Damned if I could eject the CD. Ended up powering Madge off, which is no solution to live with, should it happen again.

Scary...

Don't know what I did, probably tracked or dragged something halfway, lord knows, but it started to get hot, and I saw a 'syslogd' process up at 90% or so. Logged out/in again (or restarted) and decided to run LCC 'repair perms'.. it started OK but now I had lcc and installdb at 70%+ each, and a Google desktop daemon at 25% plus a few more so the temp soared to 83C.. didn't know whether to pull the plug on LCC or not, but in the end I let it run to completion.. OK. Phew

Now all is quiet again, and cool. I hope NOT to see that again!

Tried Snitter again, but..

My attention was caught by an Adobe AIR headline, so I decided to try Snitter again. Downloaded it and Adobe AIR, enormous licence Ts & Cs to accept - who on earth reads these things? Hopefully someone with time to do it justice and warn the rest of us. Anyway, it all installed ok, BUT after a while I noticed the fan was blowing, so I had a look at CPU activity and besides Firefox, there was Snitter using almost 8% CPU!

It didn't stay long.. even the front of Madge, either side of the trackbar was warm as mad!

Slimserver on Madge

After a bit of messing about, I found it was quite easy setting up Squeezebox on Slimserver running on Madge, using the 'remote'. Just go through the setup and pick whichever computer you want it pointed at. The snag I ended up with was after I had set up Madge to use the MyMusic folder on 'Music clone' ok, it was impossible to bend over for long with it on the table. Could probably arrange it on the back of my pillow tho'.. if I wanted to leave the iMac off.

Otherwise I finished off a Crais paperback, and dozed more than I should. Often seems to be the case at this time of year. Something to do with the light?

A quiet Sunday

Did everything on my RTM list.. found an answer or two about the audio CD trouble Madge has, but one of the workarounds allowed me to access the files as though sharing via 'Gerald Frasers Computer' - there was a folder named like the CD. BUT, transfer over wifi both to iTunes and VLC was pure jerk. God knows why because they have caches. Must be because the CD was actually jerking..

In the end I played the CD and used Wiretap Studio to make an mp3, copied this to HD4Music, arRsynced it to My Book4, and finally SuperDupered HD4Music to Music clone2 on the Passport. That plays ok, along with a lot more!

Otherwise, this was pretty much a reading day. I was going to go for a walk in the sunshine after a short doze around 10:30, but when I woke at midday the sunshine had been replaced by clouds. I did pedal away 50+ calories though.. would have done more but it was very uncomfortable ;)

Just time for a quickie

About to turn things off and go to bed with Internet radio, as usual, but wanted to note that I did get the ethernet setup between Madge and iMac working ok, using share my internet connection on the iMac to anyone on ethernet. I had both ethernets set to dhcp and away it went. Even VLC worked with no glitches, and I hope it will work ok when the Time Capsule access point arrives It should be shipping soon.. in fact I ought to check my Mac Mail acct and see. No, not yet, but the Slim superdrive for Air is shipping!

Only ordered the latter so that I could play audio CDs and DvDs..

Trouble with right wrist

Meant to write more yesterday and today, but my right wrist is painful so, briefly, today's SuperDuper backup using Smart copy, took 24 minutes and might well have been quicker if I had caught Sentry action sooner..

Decided to buy key for LCC and got Clip Doubler into the package for $12. Also downloaded MacScan, which I'll probably buy for AIR too.

Thats it for now.. I had another optical migraine an hour or so ago btw, while listening to a podcast about solar panel research! Weird..

WD Passport

Yesterday the Passport USB 320GB drive turned up in a scruffy brown paper bundle, and it was the usual struggle to remove it from one of those thick plastic display packages which can seriously damage at best your fingers ;) Eventually I got it out.. it looks great, is unbelievably tiny, totally silent, but not madly fast!

I plugged it in on the iMac, erased the current PC format using Disk utility, and iPartitioned four ca. 75GB partitions, which I labelled clone2 to avoid confusion on the iMac. Next was to try  SuperDuper on Madge, this was a bit scary after WD's email saying "The Passport hard drive's will require anywhere between 500 to 1000 milliamp's for proper usage." when the Air manages 500! It worked though, first time through using 'smart copy' was pretty slow at about 5MB/sec (perhaps I should have used erase/copy the first time), but after an hour or so it completed OK :)

From there I took it to the iMac and backed up Leopard, Tiger and Music partitions, finishing the latter at around 9pm...

Catch up on Wednesday's events

A lot of time was spent turning extensions off and on and restarting Firefox on the iMac, looking for the reason behind the RTM tab not loading properly. In the end I traced it to Google's Gears extension and the RTM entry! Removing the latter fixed things immediately, BUT it was not possible to use the 'offline' function which is what Gears is all about..

The strange thing is that I upgraded Madge's version of Firefox with nearly all of the extensions, but there RTM loads perfectly, and I can flip between on/offline with no problem!

I started a thread on this at RTM help ( I am now a paid up Pro member of RTM btw, $25 ) but so far no comments other than my own status reports. Oops, got sidetracked by people complaining about Twitter direct to RTM not working and had to post comments ;)

OK, the only snag ref. the above RTM tab fix is Gears keeps asking me to add RTM!

Gutenprint installed

Before I forget, just wanted to note that I installed Gutenprint remotely from My Book4 attached to the iMac, and all I had to do was select print, when the Epson was found by Bonjour and away it went. Most impressive!

When the highspeed access point-cum-print server-cum-storage server arrives, I'll be able to turn off the iMac and access Music, printer and internet..

Skoleferie round here

Thought it was quiet.. pure graveyard! Allows me to sleep better though :)

I have been busy gradually if that isn't an oxymoron.. adding various apps which I use on the iMac. Have paid for an extra copy of AppZapper which I find useful when looking for possible remnants, and I bought an extra copy of Little Snitch, which makes an effective firewall.

Its amazing how many good apps are donate- or freeware, like Adium, arRsync, Appfresh, ClamXav, Temperature Monitor, etc.. not to forget the Firefox extensions, many of which I have added to Madge.

Yesterday I installed and briefly tested iMindmap (after sorting out the license issue), yes it will be as easy to use as on iMac.

Today I fully intend to email Kevin and Peter, after which I will take RTM into more frequent use, assuming its useful.

Early Sunday morning

Powered up Madge as the AIR is now called, and paired the Nokia MD-7W Bluetooth 'loudspeakers' and am currently listening to a Rachmaninov piece.. they suit the AIR very well. I see also that Gizmo automatically uses them. Will try VLC next.

Am going to continue bringing Madge up to the iMac status where relevant. Its amazing what I have accumulated over the year. Next is iPhonesque, a Growl msg style, and then a few Greasemonkey scripts to find.

Couldn't resist..

I was reading a quite favourable review of the AIR, and got caught up in the desire to play Audio CDs and DvDs, so a quick trip to Apple.no store, and a superdrive should be on it's way in the not too distant :)

Greasemonkey script added

This takes me to the Draft Blogger page and gives access to a few 'draft' options, e.g. scheduled posting..

Passport ordered!

After quite a bit of research both in Discussions and WD's support site, I bit the bullet and ordered the 320GB Passport USB drive. It's a shiny black but quite neat..

So there will be quite a hierarchy of storage available, from the 500GB NAS access point Time Capsule, the firewire drives, and now the portable Passport..

So far so good

12:30 pm

Have just finished making a clone of the AIR drive to MB 3 (now AIR clone) using the AIR's Disk utility, and although the destination partition was smaller, all went well, and I booted up AIR clone to prove it.. now that I know it works, I'll try using SuperDuper!. This should be a simple method of restoring to the AIR drive.

NB! When I plugged the USB drive in Time Machine sprang into life asking to use it! So, one didn't need the NAS Access point after all...

Have been busy today

Yes, with the MB Air, but also haircuts, problems with Wiretap Studio, etc.

However I did manage to install Firefox with essential extensions, Opera too, VLC, Smart utility (more on that anon).

I also found that Air would play an mp3 CD from iMac ok. I have a nasty feeling Apple is using some sort of DRM which prevents Audio CDs from
playing.

More tomorrow...

It arrived just after lunch

What a surprise.. was just going to have a doze when I heard a van pull up outside, and sure enough it was TNT!

It was solidly packaged, both the external box and the inner one. Really well done..

I took it carefully apart, looking at things carefully as I went. Found which way round the power dinx should go though I have a feeling it goes either way. Powered on, answered the few basic questions, and up it came. Found the network with no difficulty, and while I was feeling my way around, thinking it was becoming rather warm, a Software Update popup told me a whole bunch of updates were ready to install. They installed in no time!

I had some difficulty getting Softsqueeze to start, it clearly didn't like the one from the iMac, but eventually it installed 3.6 and I'm listening to Andsnes thro' the Viba earbuds :)

More tomorrow

Yesterday was beautiful

Susan picked me up at 13:30 and we made a quick trip round Rortunet, picking up a couple of things from the Apotek - an asthma 'pust' monitor, and a rather special wrist support! Looks like it was made for martial arts competition :)

Today Tuesday is another kettle of fish. Grey cold weather, with colder in view towards the end of the week. Brrrr..

YES! Its on its way...

At last, the email I eagerly awaited arrived from Apple saying the MacBook
AIR shipped today. Should arrive this week!

Nasty fall

13:30

It's an hour or so since I got back from the shop, and I still feel ok, luckily. I hadn't got to the postbox when suddenly, bang, my head hit the ice. No stars but it was quite a shock.. I let Susan know I had got hold of a kr. 500 note for Zelda's present, and about the fall. She advised me not to lie down, which is what I had planned..

Anyway, I'm alive and it's a beautiful day! Am writing this on the N800 btw.

Where did yesterday go!

12:40

Oh yes, it was a real slushy mess outside, and I HAD to get milk. Made it without injury and ended up helping Susan with funding of an image in time for one of her key customers. DnB was certainly taking a long time to make transfers, but in the end all went well, and Susan obtained some new work in the process :)

Today Thursday is superb.. brilliant sunshine. I have been re-viewing Jyri Engstrøm's presentation at Innovate (on Google video, not YouTube!). I had sent Ruslan an email about a Google future area Android project 'Location' at http://tinyurl.com/2jgjmt

He replied with a semi-rude answer tempered with smilies - perhaps something was lost in the translation. I certainly don't think there is much of a future for Talkonaut outside of Russia, no matter how hard they have worked on it and overcome almost insurmountable obstacles in S60, Java etc., when high quality audio solutions like Truphone exist. The snag with Talkonaut for me and no doubt many others is that its 'unsigned' AND Russian, i.e. a trust factor which will take years to overcome.

Yet another short night

13:20

This is becoming a bad habit - 2 something am this time.. however I made the most of it around 5 am by starting to erase and re-backup HD1 to MB1, HD2 to MB2 and HD1 to MB3 an extra copy which can be taken over by AIR when it arrives.

Still no news from Apple on that front, but I'm beginning to feel excited. Hope its not going to be a letdown from a usability point of view. Btw, I see Launch2net is making the most of how their product allows you to connect anywhere. Odd I never got an answer to my short email from them though.. Sightspeed came back saying that nothing between builds 6908 and 6913 should affect Mac (Leopard). Perhaps they thought 6908 worked for me on Leopard.

Sightspeed troubles

16:30

Following on the problems seen when trying video chat between N800 and the iMac's Sightspeed, I tried the latter between PC and iMac, and was surprised when it failed with apparent firewall problems on one or the other machine. Trying the Fish Tank video call proved that it was the iMac's Leopard version which was failing.

Trying Tiger's Sightspeed connection to the PC worked perfectly, proving to me that Sightspeed have a problem with Leopard. I posted to this effect on their forum and it will be interesting to see what kind of response I get. The only other Leopard post was from Nov 9th when build 6908 was released... the latest one is 6913, so it looks as though they have re-introduced the problem :(

Another short night

Woke at something past 0:xx first and drifted back to sleep again ok, but then I woke at 4:xx with a blocked nose and an aching wrist. Sleeping on it no doubt.

So, it was up at 4.30 am and on with the day's first cuppa. Perfect quiet outside for meditation, but my head was another matter :( Very loud tinnitus hiss together with the good old  'Caravelle' roar in the background.

Booted the iMac up into Tiger eventually and did an HD1 to MB2 Superduper smart copy ok. Then restarted HD1 and checked things out. One spam message offering the lot in its subject line had slipped through to Gmail's inbox. It was also on the GReader Notebook RSS feed, twice in Mail and twice on E61, for a total of 7 copies! What an unholy waste of bandwidth.. I'm extremely happy GMail filters the majority for me.

At last!

I tried calling the N800 from Sightspeed on the PC and I actually managed to get all four windows working properly for the first time! The N800's video quality as seen at the PC is terrible, but the PC's video window on the N800 is very smooth.. this was after trying Sightspeed on the Tiger partition MB1. Little Snitch kept popping up asking for low level OKs, such that it timed out once before I could sort it all out :(

So theoretically one could use the N800 to talk to some Sightspeed users, but the quality makes it not worth it...
 

Another aura

6 pm

I had just finished listening to half a dozen  podcasts leaning back in the armchair , turned on the lamp and started to read the article by Larry Elliot of the Guardian "Crude awakening for capitalism", when I noticed the words were unfocused.. yes, another aura! and so soon after the last.

Possible triggers: my neck could have become graunchy from the listening position I had adopted. This ties in with a recent aura where I also noticed a graunchy neck afterwards. Slightly less likely, I had just pigged 3 chocolate liqueurs, leftovers from Christmas :)

Enormous snowflakes

They reminded me of my childhood in England. Huge flakes that would splat onto the windows, where one could see their fantastic shapes. A first introduction to beauty perhaps..

Under the weather

The day started with another Aura, lasting 25 minutes this time. As usual this rather knocks the stuffing out of me.. I have managed to suck around downstairs prior to changing the bedclothes, but all I really want to do is lie down on the sofa. I'll try reading another chapter of 'musicophilia' by Oliver Sacks. He usually manages to grab my attention :)

Ref Christopher Hitchin's conclusion

"The ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, taught his students that the pursuit of truth can only begin once they start to question and analyze every belief they ever held dear," said Dr. Pastore. "If a certain belief passes the test of evidence, deduction and logic, it should be kept. "If it doesn't, the belief should be discarded.

"The ruling elite have always tried to mislead the thinking of the masses. Socrates was tried for subversion, corrupting the youth and eventually forced to take his own life by drinking poison. As history tells us, it's never easy to be an independent thinker."

Tuesday 1 pm

What a beautiful day! Temperature around 6C. Went for a walk around the area to get some exercise, and can feel that either the recent lack of walking exercise or taking full selo-zoks recently does affect my calf muscles, as they were more painful today.

Have just finished reading The Dimbleby lecture by Craig Venter - A DNA driven world. He's quite a personality.. bit of a megalomaniac apparently, but his lecture was excellent.

"...In order to survive, we need a scientifically literate  society willing and able to embrace change - because our ability to provide life's essentials of food, water, shelter and energy for an expanding human population will require major advances in science and technology. ..."

Blogged with Flock

Looking at Flock

One of the buttons at top left triggers this 'Blog Post'.. we'll see where it leads

Blogged with Flock

Sunday afternoon

2.30 pm and its a beautiful day! None of yesterday's health worries with sunshine like this.. Actually I feel pretty good, but am not chancing the outdoors just yet.

Listened to a few chapters of Christopher Hitchin's audio book - he is not so easy to follow though, speaking fast and with varying intensity. However, its worth it.

Little of interest on Google Reader so I took the opportunity to clean up the HD1 downloads area. This became a mess  after Speed Download was installed. SD had its own ideas about splitting downloads into various subfolders, and I ended up with 3 download folders (so far). Today I moved all dls to My Book4 and deleted the HD1 copies. Then enabled Spotlight to search & find the latter, though its probably waiting for some idle time before doing so. Thats it for now

Don't want to worry anyone unduly, but..

I went out to the postbox just after writing the first post on this blog, it was pretty icy in places so I was careful where I went. I had my autumn rain coat on and a thin jumper, as the temperature was +2C or so, and no wind.

On my way back into the house I felt the kind of upper abdomen sensation which I have experienced before when the weather has been much worse. This time it didn't go over as soon as I came indoors but got steadily worse, almost as though someone had hit me moderately hard in the upper stomach.

At the same time I have this slight pain in my upper right back, like a pulled muscle which has been around for a week now, though it was better earlier today.

An hour later at 4 pm I still feel a bit scared.. am making some fish soup with salmon filet, and have taken a selo-zok. Hopefully I'll be around later to continue the blog..

New blog

2.30 pm

This is at first to be a comparison between using Google Docs and a new private blog as a daily journal, in place of spiral notebooks. I'll be looking for how it feels mostly. Ease of entry from various devices and locations. Limitations of one over the other.

Gmail is something I am used to, it can be used from anywhere, typing seems to go a lot faster than in Docs, I can attach images easily, and Blogger automates things pretty well.

Here goes with the first post then. May future generations get something out of my now readable scribble, and may MacBook AIR live up to expectations!