Vanvalkinburgh.org

The USB adapter I have from newertech, seems to be causing my mac to freeze up. Not using their driver though (can’t remember why I switched), using official ralink driver. Not sure if its the driver or the card, or both. The one on monoprice comes with a driver CD, says it works with OS X, so maybe it has driver on CD, or website to download driver from, don’t see it on their site. Not going to switch back to the newertech driver, pretty sure it was unstable, and its outdated. Don’t think I’ll buy anything from newertech again, I paid around 40 bucks for the USB adapter from newertech.

Its a pain taking SD card out of camera plugging it into SD card reader, then copying all the files… Could use USB cable, but that’s a pain too, wireless is way easier, not sure though if 50 or 60 bucks for 2 GB is worth it. I’d have to start taking more pictures if I bought one, well maybe I would take pics, if I had one…

Eye-Fi

Maybe it won’t freeze anymore now. If it still does, then it might be the hard drive, or USB wireless N card, or something else. Hard to say, if its the hard drive, I’ll wait till it dies, and then send it back if its still under warranty. Still have the old drive that came with mini.

Hmm dell just released a new netbook that you can configure with a touch screen, and you can get it with either ubuntu or windows. Hmm when clicking link it wants to know my segment though… I guess I can’t buy it then. I’m not in any of those segments.

Hmm just noticed the Dell Mini 10v is only $299… Damn it, not even going to open aspire one now, just going to send it back. You can get either ubuntu or windows on it. Wait if you add 6 cell battery same price, but you can get wireless N, so better deal, no need to use USB wireless N if you want wireless N. You can get it built in on the dell…

Newegg has a DIY bundle for $330 or $295 after rebates. I like the case they put in that bundle, and I like the fact that they put a bundle together with pretty much everything you need. Well you might need CD drive, I have plenty of those. Not really needed anymore, can boot ubuntu from USB drive. But I do have a spare DVD burner in enclosure that I’d put in it, if I bought that bundle. Not sure if I should buy it or not, if there’s no tax maybe. With shipping its $354.02. Hmm probably no tax, just $24 shipping. Guess turning the rebates in might be worth it to get shipping money back, if you ever get rebates back. Decent price for a custom built machine with no windows on it.

I could always get a dell laptop with ubuntu on it, not this month though, would want to configure it, add more ram, better processor, better battery, and bluetooth. Not sure if I want new desktop or laptop or wait and get iMac. Or I could get a new mac mini, not sure if the “improvements” are much of an improvement over the mac mini I have. Not sure if I’d notice anything, maybe if they start offering 4 GB of ram with $599 one.

Update
Still haven’t decided, might buy the bundle though, as newegg accepts paypal now.

Update
Not buying bundle. Might buy an iMac from newegg in future though, no tax is nice.

Got a refurbished Logitech Harmony 550 remote today, ordered it from amazon. Hmm must of been on sale when I bought it, I got it for $49.99, one day shipping is only $3.99 if prime member, total after tax and shipping was a little less then $59.99. Nice only having one remote instead of three, it can also control xbox 360. Easy to setup, just plug it into your computer by USB, and install their software, you just need to know the model numbers of all your stuff. Well the 360 doesn’t really have a model number, so you just put Xbox 360 in for it. You can get the Logitech Harmony 510 for $49.97, but I rather have the refurbished 550 for $49.99 at the time I bought it.

Just use doubletwist, works in OS X and I think on windows. I have my phone connected by USB right now, might just say generic device if you put the micro SD card in a card reader. You could use Finder, but that might be a pain if you just want to copy a playlist, instead of all your music, all my music won’t fit on 4 GB microSDHC card anyways.

Update
Another way is to use Nokia Multimedia Transfer.

Just got my LaCie iamaKey, ordered it directly from LaCie. Only took a day to get here by fedex. Oh yeah it didn’t come with that USB cable in the pic, I already had that.

No shit Nintendo, you should of emailed me that yesterday when it came out. Wait they don’t work Sunday, but release new product on Sunday… Oh yeah mine shipped earlier today from amazon, should get it tomorrow. No need to pay for one day shipping if you live close to Seattle.

The Nintendo DSi site has more stuff on it now. Cool free 1,000 credits, if I connect it before October 5th 2009.

*Important Note* If you wish to play online games with the Nintendo DSi, you need to have your router set to WEP security.

Fuck you Nintendo. Maybe I’ll just send it back or resale on ebay, still can’t play online, unless I want to disable or downgrade security, might as well just disable it. That quote is from support site. So I guess I can access the shop channel and stuff, but can’t play any games online. Did these things sell out yet? Cause then I can make a profit on ebay from it. Ahh well I’ll just keep it, and not play any games online.

No WPA for normal DS games because of backwards compatibility.

From a comment here. So I guess Nintendo DSi only games maybe, if there are ever any. Then Nintendo will need to update support site, as it says “games”. So I guess any online games in shop channel can’t be played online, according to Nintendo. Probably aren’t very many games in shop channel yet anyways.

M3 Simply probably doesn’t work anymore, but I can use the DS Download Play service to try new games, get the Nintendo channel for Wii and it has demos for the DS, that it can send to DS systems, and DSi.

Just bought a MSI Wind Nettop 100 Desktop PC (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Dual Core N330 Processor, Barebone) Black from amazon.com, not sure what I’ll do with it yet. I wonder if it could record HD, probably not. Don’t even know if my USB eyetv card works in linux. Going to plug it into netbook, and see what linux sees it as. Also bought 2 GB of ram, the max it can have. Already have hard drive, have CD drives, won’t be putting any CD drives in it though. Might put xubuntu on it, or maybe mythbuntu, to see if it can handle HD. Should get it all on the 17th, free two day shipping for prime members.

Or about $70 after 2 day delivery. Bought it from mwave.com, thanks to uncle for telling me about it. Going to put it in my Icy Dock enclosure, pretty sure it supports 1 TB drives. Also bought a IDE and SATA to USB adapter from amazon.com. So I will be able to transfer data from current drive in enclosure to the new drive.

SAMSUNG 1TB HD103UI SATA 5400RPM 32MB (Bare drive) $60

Sabrent USB-DSC5 Serial ATA or IDE 2.5-/3.5-Inch to USB 2.0 Cable Converter Adapter with Power Supply $20

Update
Was cancelled because of a price error, got coupon, pretty sure coupon is tied to my account, so you can’t use it.

Thank you for placing an order with mwave.com. It is with our deepest apologies that we notify you of a pricing error that occurred on our web site over this past weekend. The price for the Samsung hard drive that is included in your recent order, was unfortunately advertised in error due to a vendor miscommunication.

Unfortunately all orders placed for this item, are regretfully being canceled, as our vendor is unable to fulfill the stock or price for this item. The item has been removed from our site, and any payments that have been processed by our automated payment services are being returned immediately. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you. It truly was an honest mistake, and mwave is deeply concerned about the situation.

All customers who placed an order for this item, will receive a $20 OFF coupon for any future purchase with mwave, as a token of our appreciation of your understanding. The following coupon code will be activated for your account on file with us by the end of the day.

Tried ordering a different drive, applied coupon, drive said it had free shipping, google checkout had no free shipping option, so didn’t place order. Perhaps you can only get one discount, in that case, guess I won’t get a hard drive.

Update
Bought the drive using debit card and their checkout system. Bought the HITACHI 1TB 0A38016 SATA300 7200RPM 16MB hdt721010sla360(Bare drive) for $74.64 after coupon, and shipping is free.

Today was my last day of school. Now I can sit on my ass and do nothing all day. Oh yeah I got a $50 Visa Gift Card, but I can’t access the site using Safari, because the site only works in IE. Thanks a lot you fucking cunts, now I have to open vmware, just to access your pathetic fucking website.

Update
Just bought a DRM free song off of amazon.com. Hmm I can order some condoms on amazon…

Update
Just ordered the following:
The Last Lecture
Kingston 2GB microSD Memory Card, Retail Package
Mobilelite USB 2.0 9-IN-1 Read

Update
To access giftcardbalance123.com in Safari type the following command in a terminal.

defaults write com.apple.Safari CustomUserAgent "\"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)\""

Or a better solution use TinkerTool, and enable the Develop menu in Safari, then you can choose the user agent, and change it back easily, without using the terminal.

I have to buy a damn USB cable for it, if I want to put any unsigned programs on my Nokia 6086 phone. The program is windows only, and bluetooth doesn’t work in parallels or virtual box. The USB cable isn’t very expensive on amazon, don’t buy from nokia, they want $50. The Nokia CA-53 Connectivity Cable is what I need. I need to use two programs, one called MobiMB v3.4 DP3 and the other BeHappy. Both can be found here. The BeHappy thing comes with an english readme, or you can use google translator to translate that link. Oh yeah my moms laptop doesn’t have bluetooth.

Update
Just tried vmware fusion, bluetooth works, but that mobi program doesn’t see the hidden folder. It only shows an inbox folder, I read that you need a usb data cable to see the hidden folder. So it looks like I still have to wait, until I get a data cable.

Since I have nothing better to do, I’m going to attempt at putting Mac OS Classic on a usb thumb drive. Basically the emulator and the required files, the emulator Mini vMac, is available for os x, windows, and linux. So I should put both the mac and windows version on my thumb drive. Wonder if simcity classic will run in that.

Mac on a stick how to page

Update
2263
Done looks like it works, that was easy and fast. Didn’t try the windows version of Mini Vmac yet though, not sure if it’ll work in wine. Can’t run simcity classic, not enough ram in emulator, have to use a different emulator.

I downloaded sabayon linux last night, left it on over night. Burned the dvd today. First time I booted it, I couldn’t hit enter, as the keyboard wasn’t working. Read on apple’s forum to unplug everything but the keyboard from usb, and that worked. Then I plugged everything back in keeping the keyboard plugged in to the first usb slot, rebooted and the keyboard still worked. Then after it started up all I saw was a gray screen with a mouse pointer, so I clicked ctrl alt f1, and typed killall kdm, and then clicked ctrl alt f1 again, and typed gdm. I also read that kdm doesn’t work right on mac’s, read that on sabayon linux’s forum. After I logged in with “sabayonuser” and “sabayonuser” for the password, I connected to the internet by the wireless card, which worked right away, without doing anything. Just had to enter my wpa password. Sound didn’t seem to work, didn’t try to get it to work. Compiz works, kind of laggy on the live dvd, might work better if it was installed, no plans on installing it. After you enable compiz, you have to logout and log back in, for it to work.

Took longer then 3 days as always from newegg. Didn’t get it until 8 pm tonight. Burning dvds doesn’t seem any slower then when it was internal, reading dvds seems a little slower. Doesn’t matter because my mac can read dvds too. I burned ubuntu 7.10 64 bit to a dvd, because I have no cds, and I wanted to test it. The dvd booted fine on the internal drive, but not on the external drive, don’t really care, bought the enclosure for burning dvds.

The system profiler says the below:
MAD DOG MD-16XDVD9A2:

Firmware Revision: 1.F0
Interconnect: USB
Burn Support: Yes (Generic Drive Support)
Profile Path: None
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: Insert media and refresh to show available burn speeds

My mom just ordered a SYBA SD-U2PLA-525 Rugged aluminum 5.25″ USB2.0 B External Enclosure for me, I had some left over money from Christmas. I’m going to put my dvd burner from my other computer in it, hopefully it’ll work. Then I can burn dvds on my mac. It doesn’t say it works with os x, but it probably does, because one of the reviews says it works with their iMac. If you look on the product page on their website, it shows an os x image.

Everex is making a CloudBook, which will be sold at walmart.com on 1/25/08, which will sell for $399. It uses a via processor and has a 30 GB hard drive.

1.2GHz, VIA C7®-M Processor ULV, 512MB DDR2 533MHz, SDRAM, 30GB Hard Disk Drive, 7″ WVGA TFT Display (800 x 480), VIA UniChrome Pro IGP Graphics, VIA High-Definition Audio, 802.11b/g, (1) 10/100 Ethernet Port, (1) DVI-I Port, (2) USB 2.0 Ports, (1) 4-in1 Media Card Reader, (1) 1.3MP Webcam, (1) Headphone/Line-Out Port, (1) Microphone/Line-In Port, (1) Set of Stereo Speaker, (1) Touchpad, (1) 4-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery

Found out about that on eeeuser.com, and they had a link to their new site cloudbooker.com.

Downloading gOS, the operating system the CloudBook will use. Downloading from bittorrent is to slow, thanks to comcast.

Update
gOS is based on ubuntu 7.10, it uses e17 for the window manager. I like the look of gOS compared to the OS on the asus eee pc, hell install gOS on the asus eee pc. If you go to run command, you can type in xterm, and run xterm, if you need a terminal. It already has the synaptic package manager installed.

I had to purchase Data Rescue 2, as I screwed up the partition on my external drive. I got all the data I wanted, could of got it all. Took a while to copy it to my other computer, by USB 2.0. I screwed up the first time, so it took twice as long. Copied everything but my downloads folder to my other computer, don’t have enough room, for the downloads folder on my other computer, had to delete files, on my other computer, just to get the data on it. Just finished making one big partition, now I need to copy all the data back to it, oh yeah just remembered, I have to disable journaling, so linux can write to it.

Update
My music doesn’t have ID3 tags, filenames, aren’t correct. Guess I’ll have to ask Jeff to bring his iPod over. Hmm videos are messed up too, good bye videos, don’t want to sort through em. Should open a text file, like a .php file, and see if its screwed up too. Yep, I wouldn’t recommend buying Data Rescue 2.

Good thing I haven’t deleted any important files off my other computer.

The new beta has been released for the Paragon NTFS driver for Mac OS X. Can’t try it until I’m done copying around 9 GB of data over the network. Probably should of plugged it into my other computer by USB. I have around 7 GB with 18 minutes left.

Download Paragon NTFS driver beta 2
Fixes in Paragon NTFS driver beta 2

The bad news is “Dear Forum Visitors, please note that beta 1 and beta 2 are 30-days trial versions.”. Now I think I’m gong to copy all the data from the NTFS partition to my Mac OS Extended partition on the same external hd. I’ll provide new speed test results with beta 2, after I’m done copying data to it. Hmm I think I’m going to copy all the data from the NTFS partition to the Mac OS Extended partition, before running a speed test. Copying the downloads folder right now which is around 53 GB, says it’ll take about an hour. Wonder how long that would take with USB 2.0.

Disk Speed Bench X
22 MB/sec

Xbench

Results 39.71
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.4.10 (8R3014)
Physical RAM 1024 MB
Model Macmini2,1
Drive Type ST330062 0AS
Disk Test 39.71
Sequential 49.70
Uncached Write 41.83 25.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 54.65 30.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 39.51 11.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 77.08 38.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 33.07
Uncached Write 11.79 1.25 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 66.10 21.16 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 85.83 0.61 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 106.64 19.79 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I’m going to remove this driver, because it isn’t stable.