REverberations - Hardware

Fully Sick

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:05:42 -0500

We're all feeling rather ill with cold-like symptoms (Liz is quick to point out they are not flu-like, and having dealt with suspected swine flue cases in quarrantine at her work I guess she'd know).
This has brought a return to the horrible nights of no Phoebe sleep, although worse because she screams for her mum who herself needs about a week of sleep.
We're mostly through this, having had Phoebe sleep through from 7:30 until 4am today, which is a huge improvement so we aren't complaining (much). Unfortunately we've missed a few occasions due to not wanting to go anywhere to spread our nasties around - sorry those we had to cancel with.
There are recent pictures added, with more coming soon (especially now that my new Macbook has a built in SD card slot, and I'm having a great deal of fun with the new 35mm 1.8 Nikkor lens ! ).

iPhoto Libraries in mythgallery (mythtv)

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:19:46 -0500

Here's some information about a personal coding itch I scratched recently, on the off chance that it helps someone else out there. Certainly my Google skills didn't turn up anyone else who had solved the same problem.

Problem Description
You have a Mac somewhere where you use Apple's excellent iPhoto to manage your huge digital photography collection.
However, you don't have (and most likely don't want) a spiffy but locked-down and feature-light Apple TV to display them on your TV, instead preferring the excellent and far more versatile open-source mythtv.
Mythtv has mythgallery which displays pictures from a normal filesystem reasonably well, but the poor thing has little to no understanding of the complexities of Apple's "iPhoto Library" on-disk layout. I'm talking Albums basically, plus an understanding of "Originals" versus "Modified". I just want it to be how it looks in iPhoto, but on my big LCD screen in front of the couch, controlled with my myth remote. Is that too much to ask??!

Research/Analysis
Can't find anyone else with this issue so figure "how hard can it be?". Not very, it turned out, at least to get something working, if ugly.
The perl Mac::iPhoto looks like a good place to start, but since it hasn't been touched since 2003 it certainly doesn't do anything much useful on my current (7.1.3) iPhoto Library.
It uses Mac::PropertyList to do the parsing of the xml file, which doesn't seem to work either. After much fiddling it looks like the AlbumData.xml file in the iPhoto Library actually is invalid - it doesn't have the proper header. First hack Mac::PropertyList to accept the dodgy header, but later decide to keep that standard and put the hack into my script instead.

Design
Decide to make a directory next to the iPhoto Library which is full of symlinks pointing into the actual library. Directories in this tree will correspond to Albums in iPhoto, and the links will be named such that the alphabetical order used by mythgallery corresponds to the order in iPhoto.
Try and get this working on the linux box and also via Samba but in the end it's simplest to run the code and create the symlink tree on my mac and then rsync both the iPhoto Library and the symlink tree across to the linux box.
Don't use samba, it stuffs up the annoying ":" that iPhoto uses in paths, at least for me. rsync handles it fine, it's not even that Mac-specific one to my knowledge, just whatever is on my Ubuntu box.

Code
You'll need Mac::iPhoto 0.1-timg, which is the modification of 0.1 available on cpan to work with iPhoto 7.1.3, and Mac::PropertyList 1.31 from cpan. I guess I should put my code on CPAN, but just wanted to get it all up here for now.
Once that's available, you will of course need the actual iPhotoToDirectories script. It's all hard-coded - but you wouldn't have made it this far if you couldn't edit it to work in your situation :)

Operation
You'll need the same directory structure on both the mac and the linux box as the symlinks get created on the mac but are de-referenced on the linux box.
Once it's all in place, run iPhotoToDirectories on your mac whenever you want. It takes a long time, so I wouldn't script it. Maybe an overnight cronjob if you keep your Mac on all night. I don't so I just run it when I remember.
Then rsync both the iPhoto Library and the symlink tree to the linux box.
Finally, chmod -R a+rx the linux directories if the uid on your mac is different from your myth user.
And then, assuming mythgallery can navigate to that symlink directory, it should work and the browsing should be significantly more useful than it was before browsing the raw directory.

Known issues

Mac::iPhoto's parsing is amazingly slow, ie. ~30mins for me
hard-coded paths
ampersands (&) in album names break things
empty albums should be not put into output
sorting could be much improved
would be nice to understand Events too, hmmm...
lots more UNknown issues, for sure. Let me know!

But hey it works! And with a full-time life that's enough for me right now.

Mac-free

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:01:10 -0600

Since day one, the DVD drive on my macbook has been pretty flaky. Doesn't read commercial DVDs properly, nor burn reliably. This never really bothered me, as a I have an external (faster) burner, and a DVD player on the home theater.

However, for a few months it has also had a nasty fan sound - the type that persists for a while but you know will eventually lead to fan death.

Between dealing with a new child, renovating and work I haven't found the mental space required to give up the precious device for the inevitable return to manufacturer for repair, since I use it for everything at work and everything at home. Sometimes it has been used every waking moment for several days.

But now, the fan has died it's death, and some monitoring sensor or other has decided that this means running the CPU for any length of time (>10 minutes or so) is not a good idea, and as such, the machine turns itself off.

So, it's off to meet it's maker, and hopefully be reincarnated better than it ever was.

But, that means I'm Mac-less, so email, contact info, IM, photos, the lot are all on hold for a while. Perhaps ring my mobile if you really need me.

iPhone!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:20:02 -0500

The world has gone iPhone crazy, with a peak of four stories per day iPhone related on the Sydney Morning Herald. Note the Sydney part - you can't even buy an iPhone outside of the US! In fact, as a write this now, there's still four stories linked there!

Being well known as a lover of Apple technology, you might expect me to be salivating over the new shiny toy, and perhaps even flying over the US just to get one like some people have.

No.

Here's Why.

I bought one of those instead. It's here, now, works on Aussie networks, and doesn't require a USD70 per month data plan at a minimum just to use it, locked in for two years.

And, as the link says, it has a whole lot more features.

But it isn't quite as shiny. I'll admit that.

Catchup Blogging

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:46:44 -0600

OK, News time. It's been a while.
I've uploaded some photos to my Flickr account which have titles showing a pictorial version of what we've been doing recently.
There's some from Adelaide (1 2 3 4), some from our recent weekend back up to the Hunter Valley to celebrate our wedding anniversary (yep, it's been over a year now...) (1 2), and even an ugly product of our veggie patch.

Margaret's house has been on the market for a while and is now sold, she's looking for a place to buy and has a few in mind. She may be moving in with us during the change-over period.

So we've re-organised the house a bit. We've now got a separate (small) room devoted to music. It's good to have everything out and in the one place, and I've been inspired to do some recording, helped out with a computer audio interface I found cheap on eBay. Still trying to decide what software I want to use with it though.

The junk that used to be in that room has now sort-of migrated to the spare room, but it could be consolidated to make room for Margaret should the need arise.

Around the house, I've been cleaning out gutters and getting things organised in preparation for the arrival of our water tanks. The fact that it's been raining a lot recently has been annoying us, thinking of the wastage. It looks like we'd have to vote capital-L Liberal to get the government to do something about water recycling, so becoming as detached as possible from it all is appealing.

Put some of the wine from our Hunter trip (came back with three cases!) under the house in a sort-of cellar arrangement. The conditions are good but it's hard to get to. Should be good for medium-long-term storage though.

We headed off to the Whiskey Experience again a few days ago - a great fun evening which we figure is just to raise brand awareness. Not that many people around us were aware of things around themselves by the end of proceedings!

One of Liz's birthday celebrations this year was a trip to the Löwenbräu Keller, something I haven't done for years and an evening we thoroughly enjoyed. The band there seems to do the same show every night, but it's very entertaining. Plus we get to drink great beer and practice our German.

... Which is good, because Sebastian Schnelle (whom we stayed with at least three times in Europe 2002-3 and caught up with again early last year) is back in the country to do his PhD in Brisbane. He and his girlfriend Jana flew into Sydney last week and we caught up a few times. She's still in learn-English mode, so we had a few conversations with me speaking German and her English, and my lack of skill there seemed to give her more confidence.

Oh, and I buggered my knee badly about a month ago, which is the worst it's ever been. I've had plenty of days working from home and far less cycling. I have a specialist appointment next week, so hopefully I can get something done about it.

Another Jersey Kerb gig happened last Friday - the first with Jono playing keyboards and me back on bass after Ed left for England. We played pretty well I thought, but the crowd was both thin and lacking energy. I think we have a job for our manager to get us sorted in a new venue or with some more aggressive advertising. Still great fun though.

Surely that's enough topic-hopping for now. Congratulations if you made it this far!

For Sale: Powerbook G4 15"

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 19:21:01 -0600

My old faithful Powerbook is up for auction on eBay.

Drop by and bid if you are interested!

Gadget Lust Strikes Again

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:46:19 -0600

I held out for longer than most around me expected - but the shiny things got the better of me in the end. I've just ordered a new MacBook, stacked to the hilt with good bits.
My poor Powerbook has been working nicely for a while, but the combination of wanting a smaller machine to cycle most days with and the slowness of the current one mostly due to lack of RAM meant that I've been looking for a while at what was on offer.
The fact that Apple has made the RAM upgrades much cheaper now, along with bunging in the latest Core 2 Duo processor (finally) meant that I'd run out of excuses.
Even the tax situation will work out as I've pretty much finished writing off the current machine.

I was thinking about the MacBook Pros but the new prices for those are crazy, and I can't justify the $1000 difference vs. the Macbook for what amounts to a bigger screen (that I don't want), marginally faster CPU, a Firewire 800 port (that I've never used) and a better graphics card. I have another machine for playing games on, so the awesome graphics card in my current laptop has been completely wasted since I've had it.

Anyone want a pre-loved-by-Mac-addict Powerbook before it hits eBay?

Greener Apples

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 09:19:13 -0500

Just to prove that I don't blindly love Apple's stuff, here's Greenpeace's campaign to get Apple to clean up its act in terms of nasty chemicals used in the production of their hardware.

I hate things that spin

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:53:13 -0600

Grrr. Woke up this morning, came into the computer room and heard a nasty grinding whirring noise. At first thought it was the fan on the laptop, perhaps gone bad with a dodgy bearing as they some times do.
Next, noticed it wouldn't get out of screen saver. They crash sometimes, so no worries really. Then noticed I couldn't connect to it in any way from my other computer. Also not too bad.
So, power it off, leave it for a while so that the fans won't have to run, and then start it up. Uh oh, this time a very sad looking "No home folder" icon flashing. Not good. By now some of you may have guessed that my laptop's hard drive has in fact crashed. I've tried target disk mode onto both my linux box and Liz's laptop but no luck there. The linux box shows me:

[292836.278829] ieee1394: Error parsing configrom for node 0-00:1023
[292836.278980] ieee1394: Node changed: 0-00:1023 -> 0-01:1023

Eeeck. So, I'm going to have to grab another disk, pull the thing apart and perform some surgery. Luckily, I backed up the contents of my home folder to a computer at work this week just gone, so I shouldn't loose too much.

It's amazing how costs spring out of nowhere when you think you have a budget for a wedding and travel all organised.

New iPod mini

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 09:32:56 -0600

Don't you hate it when Apple releases new iPods for $100 cheaper than when you bought one two weeks ago? With 10 hours extra battery life and 2GB extra space!
This was for Liz's birthday, so the timing couldn't really he helped, but originally I was attempting to find a way around it.
No great problem, she loves it and we'll make good use of it anyway, and to be honest there's not that much different that we would have made much use of - she's happy with her blue one. Now we just need to find earphones that fit her ears.

A Versatile Little Machine

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:00:00 -0600

have been watching the Apple Keynote where lots of very interesting things have been introduced. I won't go into detail about them here because pretty much every media outlet from nobodies like me through to CNN and BBC is reporting on that.
What I do find interesting however is that the Mac mini seems to be fitting in many many niches.
Their obvious target is those who want a computer that just works for not much money, or perhaps already have an iPod and understand what Apple is all about. I intend to get a couple for this purpose - those older-generation people who's computers I seem to be constantly working on are prime candidates.
But these could also work really well as a PVR (Personal Video Recorder). For those not really aquainted with that term, think of a VCR where you say things like "I like The Simpsons", and it records The Simpsons for you whenever they may be on, whatever channel. Also, it can suggest that since you like the work of Matt Groening, you may also like Futurama and record that for you too.
All this stuff gets saved onto a big hard drive, which you watch when it suits you, not when it suits the broadcasters and/or advertisers.
Speaking of advertisers, they loose out even more because you can skip through the ads while you are watching your show later. Nice, huh?
So, all we need is a decent mac port of something like MythTV, and the Mac mini fits into that role too.
Or, if you need a nice little silent, low power, cheap yet versatile server, this box will also be worth a look for that role.
But perhaps the most important use for this machine will be in propping up Apple's poor 2.5% market share, which the investors at least seem to think it will do.

Rumour: Apple to drop sub-$500 Mac bomb at Expo

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:38:00 -0600

From Think Secret: EXCLUSIVE: Apple to drop sub-$500 Mac bomb at Expo
This would be cool. I'd even buy one.

iMac G5

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 00:32:00 -0500

Some of the perks of being Apple's favourite customer in the country include when a new computer is released and there is only one in the country just sent from the Paris expo, it tends to arrive for you to play with pretty quick smart.
I'm more impressed with the machine in the flesh than I was from looking at pictures of it. One would go very nicely into our new home next year. Then again, we won't have any money, so scratch that idea.
The model was a 17" Superdrive 1.8GGHz, still loaded with Keynote presentations from the Expo, which Anthony demonstrates for you here complete with his "No NT" sign.

Father's Day

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 05 Sep 2004 17:58:00 -0500

OK, so it's fathers day today, the weather is great. By that I mean lots of rain, storms, and I got a call from Liz before on the way to her Dad's place saying that she got caught in a hail storm. No great problem, our car isn't worth crap anyway. We got some cabling fixed on the boost relay on the starter motor the other day which address the issue of me having to clutch start it the other day, and things are much better now. The silly old thing only has to last us until some time early next year when we intend to whack a bit extra on our home loan and buy something better.
The rain is great, soaking up our brown parched lawns and gardens, and meaning that the seven months and counting since we washed the car can wait longer yet again. In fact, right now I'm typing this sitting outside watching the rain fall around me, just enjoying the sounds of rain and storms. And iTunes. Of course, the poor powerbook and I are under a cover, but it's still quite a bit of a break from my computer desk. Especially since I was there all day yesterday making up for other people's poor planning at work which left me with about -3 days to get 10 days of work done. Packs of fun.
Normally when I work from home I'm not all that productive (at work I have three desktop machines and piles of papers), but I found the combination of Desktop Manager and and external 17" monitor for extra desktop real-estate gave me plenty of working space for my Tarantella connection into work. I might even convince the boss that I need to do it a bit more often...
Whilst on the topic, he mentioned the other day that he should be able to keep me on past January next year (my current contract end date), making our long-term planning just that bit easier.
Last but not least, congrats to Kung for finally paying off his loan. Don't crash any more cars dude!

Battlefield 1942

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:00:00 -0500

I've now joined 2003 and purchased a copy of Battlefield 1942 Deluxe Edition for Mac. Even the popular mods are available. This is good - one less reason to upgrade my PC, as the Powerbook has plenty of graphics grunt.
Still waiting, id...

C'mon id, get those Mac binaries churning

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 17:59:00 -0500

This update brought to you on my new Apple laptop, as promised last update. Much better than poor old bianca who hasn't had much of a look-in since, and it looks like the deal I got at work was a once-only because nobody else has been able to get the same!
This should do me for quite some time yet, although now that Doom 3 is out, I'm just waiting for the Mac version to hit the shelves to see how that runs. Hopefully well enough, as I don't really want to upgrade my PC.

Splash that cash

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 18:28:00 -0500

Well, the deed has been done. Despite having been a daily workhorse on both sides of the world, and maintaining a digital photo collection and the journal while we travelled in between, two and a half years has taken its toll on the poor little iBook of mine called bianca, and she is about to be replaced.
I've ordered a shiny new Apple 15" Powerbook. Quite an upgrade on the old model, and the last big thing we intend to purchase before a far larger thing - a house.
I opted not to get the Superdrive model (the added expense for a soon-to-be outdated drive wasn't worth it), instead putting in the fastest hard drive (the major bottle neck on modern computers) and as much RAM as I could afford.
The only problem now is what to name it, and that is where the jury is still out. Or, should I say, Liz and I are yet to come to some agreement.
So, if nobody wants a iBook with broken-keys, dead-battery, slow G3 processor but lots of history, it's going to be a cheap music/video client for around the house. Which means I don't have to splash the cash for Apple's newest toy, which does basically the same thing. Much cooler though...

RTA iMac rollout gets press coverage

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 20:06:00 -0500

The project I've had a lot to do with recently has got its first press coverage on Computerworld and also over at MacNN.
Nice to see your work (ok, not just my work :)) be acknowledged and praised world-wide. To be honest, I've had more to do with the accompanying Solaris 8 to 9 upgrade and the rollout procedure, but I am told that it was me first buying an iBook (first in the RTA!) and showing the management that it would run our applications with almost no effort at all that convinced them to explore further. And look where we are now.

Cool Mac OSX Apps

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 19:59:00 -0500

Just a quick heads up on some of the incredibly cool software that exists for the Apple OSX platform which I have stumbled across recently and changed the way I work:

OK, so I've been using this for ages, but Salling Software's Clicker is still totally awesome. Impresses people day after day with the way that I walk away from my Mac, it locks the screen (and hence blocks access to two other computers - see below), and when I come back, it knows it's me and unlocks the screen. Even pauses iTunes, advises me of incoming calls, ...
I actually caught up with the author, Jonas, in Stockholm last year, and bought him several beers. The man has done something I haven't seen in any other software for a long time - actually created something new. True innovation, not just using that word as a marketing ploy.
If you have to work with more than one computer on a day to day basis (I have my iBook, an iMac and my Dell Gentoo box at work), you need to use osx2x. Billed as an "Excess keyboard remover", that's what it does. I use one USB keyboard and mouse connected to my iBook, and push the mouse off the left side onto my iMac's screen, or to the right onto the Linux box. Keyboard follows. Cut and Paste between machines works. Total magic. Oh yes, and Open Source, so we have actually been able to modify the code and change some of the functionality. Great stuff!
Open Source virtual desktops done right with Desktop Manager. Supports the skins made to work with the expensive Codetek Virtual Desktop too - how's that for sticking your tounge out?
Kiwi-made visual traceroute with WhatRoute. Pretty graphics!
Annoyed that your nice shiny new Powerbook (or in my case tattered world-travelled broken-keyed dull-coloured iBook) only has one mouse button? Stop whinging and get yourself Sidetrack. Assign the button to left click and pad tap to right click, put vertical and horizontal scrollbars on the sides, put tap actions in the corners and you're better off than any Wintel laptop owner will ever be.