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At the moment I am sitting in Gatwick Airport waiting for my connection to Paphos, Cyprus. It is interesting the difference in atmosphere between Edinburgh and Gatwick. Edinburgh seems fairly relaxed, with just a few police officers patrolling and small queues to get through the security. Gatwick on the other hand, is patrolled by firearms officers wielding MP5s and massive queues to get through security. As well as the usual security measures such as a clear plastic bags for liquids and the like, they scan your shoes, and swab the occasional laptop. I have no idea what this is supposed to achieve, maybe they were suspicious about my white Macbook’s cocaine habit.
The flight down was nice an smooth, and hopefully the next flight will be too. Already delayed by 25minutes…… :o(
Cables. Loads of them! I can’t be the only one with dozens of cables taking up foot-room under the desk, and tempting fate that something will get pulled off the desk. I have a fair few things plugged in, so obviously a lot of cables going on:
- Macbook
- Two external HDs
- Surround sound reciever
- Desk lamp
- Mouse charger
- Phone charger
Last night while I was tidying up, I decided to do something about it. Instead of having all the cables under the desk, why not put them on the outside? My desk sits against the wall on two sides, so this means the cables sit in the gap between.
Basically all I did was:
- Measure the size of the screw mount on the back of my power adaptors. Drill in the appropriate place, and screw in some round-headed screws. (Fig 1)
- Mount my power adaptors on these screws. (Fig 2)
- Plug everything in as you require. (Fig 3)
I also moved my subwoofer to the same side as my receiver, so the only cable that crosses my legroom now is the right-hand speaker cable, which I’ve taped to the underside of the desk.
Now I have loads of free legroom, don’t need to worry about pulling cables, and can plug and unplug things without having to reach down under the desk. Brilliant.
Todays pictures is just for the ‘banter’ as some circles might say. It’s Tim looking sexy as usual.
I finally got my Macbook back, a day short of 5 weeks after I handed it in. Apparently the hard drive had failed (I told them that) and they put a new one in. If I’d spent £60 to buy a new drive online, I could have fitted it myself, and probably have saved the money in gained work time. Suffice to say I am very unimpressed with Apples Warranty turnaround.
Yesterday I agreed to ride the Strathpuffer 24 hour. It’s yet another 24 hour race, but this time in January, and somewhere near Ullapool. It’ll be cold, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself.
I’ve already started collecting bits to put on the bike in March. Yesterday I snapped up a bargain, a pair of Avid Juicy Ultimates for only £220. That’s cheaper than I can get them at staff price. I’m loving the $/£ exchange rate at the moment. They’ll sit in their box for a few months, but I’ll be sure to give you some pictures on the meantime.
Job hunting isn’t terribly exciting, and thats before I’ve really got started. Any offers?
It’s been a good week. I’ve finally taken on some work after a month or so spent learning new stuff, plus I feel motivated about doing it.
Today it became a bad week. My Macbook wouldn’t start up this morning, the only life from the hard drive being some nasty ticking sounds. Oh dear I thought. A quick tinker with Disk Utility and System Profiler led me to the conclusion that the drive was in fact dead!
I dropped it off at my local Apple service centre and waved OS X goodbye for 1-2 weeks. Just as well I do regular backups and keep my working code in version control, I had only lost about 2 hours work at the most through the failure.
So what am I going to use in the meantime? I borrowed a laptop, and quickly set about replacing it’s Windows install with linux. I decided to go to my favourite distribution of late for my server, Ubuntu. A stroke of luck here, the new version came out today; 6.10 “Edgy Eft”. So now the AMD Athlon powered HP laptop in front of me is singing along updating itself with all the latest patches.
No doubt I’ll have more to say about my experiences in later posts, but for now I am left with the dilema; What IDE or editor for Ruby on linux?
The past few days I’ve been having a play with Ruby on Rails. After all the praise on the web for it, i thought it was about time I gave it a try.
Most languages and frameworks require you to have a server, either as a stand-alone or running on your desktop system, to test the code. Rails comes complete with it’s own server, Webrick allowing you change and test code very quickly, The shipped version of Ruby on OS X 10.4 is unfortunately broken; you need to compile it yourself using the Xcode Tools (a free download from Apple) and these instructions. The instructions tell you to install Lighhttpd and fastCGI, but I just used Webrick, as it seems to involve a lot less fiddling around when I don’t need a fully blown server on my Macbook. Thankfully OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’ is going to come with Rails already installed.
When I actually got down to doing some code, it was pretty easy to pick up. Compared to the time it takes to prototype and build a blog app or similar in PHP, it took about 15 minutes in Rails, and that’s with no previous Rails nor Ruby Experience! It’s very impressive how Rails matched your database with your business objectts, and I look forward to trying to build some more complex web apps using it.
A lesson I learnt today was to make sure there are no small metal objects around the magsafe connector, especially when it is unplugged. The picture above was taken just after I removed the connector. The small screw must have been near the connector as it was instantly pulled into the female part. If you’re like me and like to take things apart, make sure you keep all the screws safe and tidy. Saves loosing small important parts also.
After reading a Blender benchmarking, I decided to benchmark my new Macbook to compare to the other results.
I tested my Macbook and my flatmate’s Dell PC, just to give a comparison. The specs of these was as follows:
- Dell – Intel P4 2.4Ghz HT, 512MB DDR 400. Windows XP Home SP2.
- MacBook – Intel Core Duo 2.0Ghz, 512MB DDR2 667. Mac OS X 10.4.6.
For each build/machine two test were run, one with multiple threads off, and a second test with multiple threads turned on. This is a new feature which is part of the new render pipeline 2.42.
First up, the Dell running with Blender 2.42 RC 1" – One thread- 2:12. Multi threads- 2:13. (All times in M:SS format)
Next up I benchmarked the Macbook running the OS X PowerPC version of the Blender 2.42 RC1 release, requiring the use of Rosetta to translate the PowerPC instructions to Intel instructions. Times – One thread – 4:37. Multi threads- 3:22.
Lastly I benchmarked an Intel native version of Blender on the Macbook. This is a rather old build from around March. Some of the UI isn’t working as well as it could currently, with menus requiring you to hit F9 (Expose All Windows) twice to get them to render. Times – One thread- 1:37. Multi threads- 1.15.
As expected, the render times for the Intel Version were much faster than the PowerPC times. The times for the Dell were probably hindered by the fact the Windows renderer is known to be much slower than the Linux and OS X versions. I’ll try the linux version on the PC tomorrow, and Windows and Linux versions (If a live-CD exists yet) on the Macbook.
If anyone can point me in the direction of a newer Intel build, that would be greatly appreciated.
After about 20 hours of compilation, my Mac Intel build of the NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha 3 source code is ready to go. I’m not really sure if I can distribute this build, as I think it may infringe on NeoOffice’s trademarks. If you want a copy, I ‘may’ be able to give you a copy if you ask nicely in the comments.
It certainly is faster than the PPC build running in Rosetta, and is faster than PPC Microsoft Office as well. Now is the time to encourage people to use NeoOffice over MS Office, while MS Office is behind with their Intel transition.
If you want to try building this yourself, you’ll need the XCode packages, which are downloadable from Apples developer site. You’ll need to register, but it’s free. I then followed the build instructions available on the NeoOffice site. It took about 20 hours to compile all the packages on my Macbook 2.0Ghz 512MB, but it will be faster if you have more RAM.
If you need to be on the cutting edge, and use Java 5 instead of Java 1.4, then follow the instructions documenting the required changes on the Apple Developer mailing lists.
You can get an Intel binary directly from NeoOffice, but only by paying into their early access program. Think of this as a donation. If you build your own copy, that probably means you use this software, so consider making a donation. If anyone knows about whether or not I can distribute this software, then please get back to me in the comments.
Note: When you build this on an Intel machine you get an Intel binary, when you build it on a PPC machine you get a PPC Binary. As far as I know there is no way to make a Universal Binary outside of XCode, or by using Intel’s own compilers.
How’s this for frequent updating? I’ve not updated my blog in a while, mostly due to doing other things. I’ve got a good few things to tell you about in the next few posts.
First up will probably the nearly-a-hospital-trip crash I had last week, and then the epic Tweed Valley ride I had only a few days later. I’ve got some nice pictures from both.
Currently I’m building an OS X Intel version of NeoOffice, which will be ready in a few hours. I’ve release it if it works, so other people can sample the goodness.
Did he say Intel? Yes I did, I got myself a nice shiny new Apple Macbook 2.0Ghz! I got a white one, as paying almost £90 for black seemed really silly.
More later.
