Al’s WebLog

So how was your Christmas? Did you get all you wanted? I’m not sure that flu was on the list of my better half and kids, but they got it anyway. I seem to have missed out for the most part, just a head cold mainly. 3 days in bed seems to have helped the others, just in time to go back to work… Hmmm.

My sister made her flight and spent Christmas day in the air. I cooked for 6 and I’m told it was good (I liked it!). I do wish children would read instructions, as getting all stroppy when you can’t do something is a bit silly when the piece of paper you discarded tells you how it all works.

I got a nice pen from my parents and a funky looking desk toy from the other half.
The 32″ from the boxing day sales was a present from myself to me

Hope you all had a nice Christmas. Time to rest a little before New Years

ATM I have two keyboards and mice on my desk. One pair for the G4 and one pair for the Macbook. The monitor allows me to switch between two inputs, so thats easy, but I had thought I’d be stuck with two sets of input devices. However, whilst looking at USB hubs in Maplin on Saturday I came across this little device, http://www.acrox.com.tw/productdetial_specifications.asp?id=124 which lets you switch 4 devices between 2 computers. Now I know USB is hot pluggable, but I can’t help but wonder how this will cope in real life. I’m thinking now that for 25quid I should just have bought it, but I figured I could get one for less that 25quid online, seemingly not though since I can only find this device, or anything like it, at Maplin.

Morgins’ ISP has decided to up the cost of the colo, so I am looking around at alternatives. I need 1U, not much bandwidth (I have 100GB/month ATM and its fine) and 0.75amps. It is the amps that cause the problems it seems. Any experience / advice / pointers gratefully received

Through the joy of blog comments (see here) the Junipers Network connect VPN client is now working for me on Leopard. This is good, as I can now switch my MacBook over to Leopard. Sadly that is not as easy as I had hoped, because Apple’s Migration Assistant can’t copy my user’s data again to refresh the Leopard system data from the Tiger install. I could probably hack it with rsync but I figured I’d just reinstall Leopard… I don’t remember it taking this long last time.

I am looking forward to little things like using Spotlight as a calculator, To-Do’s in Map.app 3 and tabs in Terminal. Thankfully since I last ventured into Leopard many of the things I didn’t like have been (or can be) fixed, like the transparent taskbar and Stacks icons (I kinda wish you could remove stacks altogether  TBH).

Whilst I wait for my MacBook to finish installing I shall sort my pics from Paris at the weekend.

I’m still pondering desktop setups, but I have had what I think is a genius idea (like all my ideas, obviously ). If I get a monitor with dual selectable inputs, and better yet one with picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture, I can connect up both the Desktop and the Laptop to one monitor and switch between them as I need. I can have the best of both worlds… but still have a sync’s issue. Hmm. Further thought needed.

So I’m still pondering the best desktop set up for me, work-wise. At the moment I run an old G4 (1.2Ghz, 2GB) as a desktop and VNC my MacBook (orig 1.83 CoreDuo) so I don’t have to mix up my two Mail.App installs and because I want (need ;)) dual displays. I’m not unhappy but nor am I happy with this, so I am pondering how best to move on.

Thought 1 was to by an iMac and hang my exiting screen off it, then somehow sort my Mail.App mess out, freeing up my MacBook to be a laptop infront of the sofa and ‘lugabout’. Then Apple brought out Santa Rosa on the MacBook and, you know me, I started thinking again. Thought 2 then was to upgrade the MacBook and keep the G4, though I am unsure how this helps! Ho-hum. So then I saw these Asus eee PCs, leading to thought 3… all I need for sitting about is a web browser, a terminal client and the ability to connect with Juniper’s Network Connect VPN client. So, buy an Asus thing and an iMac. This means that I’d have my MacBook for meetings etc. I don’t need so many machines though, so sell the MacBook and swap the iMac for a MacBook Pro, which is thought 4. I wouldn’t have to sync Macs, I could take the MBP to meetings etc and have the eee PC for quick browsing etc on the sofa, or indeed round and about.

This leads to my wondering though, what the heck, other than .2GHz more CPU and 128MB more Graphics RAM, does the 250quid difference (HD size excluded) get me between the two 15″ MBP models? I am puzzled.

Its Halloween tonight. This usually doesn’t concern me because for the past several I’ve lived in a flat with a gated courtyard to no one could ever know. Now, however, I live in a house, with kids living all around. Annoying kids at times to, that like to knock and run or kick footballs against the side wall all day. I suspect if I stuck one of those notices on my door the locals would object, so mini chocolate has been acquired for anyone that knocks and has made an effort. I am thinking anyone that isn’t dressed up will be asked to sing a song or something to earn their treat. Mostly however, I just wish the little blighters wouldn’t do this whole trick or treat bollocks. I blame the parents.

So  being the Mac fanboy I am, my Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) family pack arrived yesterday morning. Amusingly the courier delivered to my sisters work about an hour later and said to her “I know what you’ve got for Christmas, its one of them new iPods I’ve been delivering all day.”. My sister put him straight; that there isn’t a new iPod, its a new operating system. Apparently TNT had loads to deliver  on Friday, which is nice.

Being busy with work during Friday day I didn’t get round to installing (onto an external drive on my MacBook) until about midnight - surely the best time of day to upgrade an OS, no? Unsurprisingly it installed fine, it booted fine, it worked fine. So this morning I swapped the internal and external drives over, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while as I was low on free space. Lovely then, all sorted.

Sadly though, in a bit, later today, I’ll be swapping the hard disks back over and going back to Tiger. This isn’t because Spaces isn’t as good as VirtuDesktops, of because the Finder isn’t all jazzy or because of anything like that, no, it is because the Juniper SSL VPN software I need for work at the moment plum doesn’t work on Leopard.  Juniper acknowledge the issue and say it will be fixed, in Q2 2008. Suck.

Its a shame, 10.5 seems nice (well, TBH it seems like Tiger with the addons I used added in.).

For my birthday earlier this year, my girlfriend, sister and parents bought me a track day at Castle Combe. What with work going under and such I didn’t take up the day until last Friday.

I must admit to being a touch nervous on Friday morning. I am a wonderful driver (*ahem*) and I like driving, I like my car too, but its my car, its not a 400bph Evo VI that spits flames when you change gear - its a factory standard Ford Focus, which the chap in scrutineering later described as “formula biscuit tin”… So yes, after a minor navigational error my sister and I arrived at Castle Combe circuit and I signed on, picked up a helmet and attended a safety briefing (don’t crash, pass on the right, have fun) and then went for a ride with an instructor round the circuit in a Impreza. I know they drive the circuit most days, I know they know the car, but when the car is drifting all four wheels round a corner at 80mph I’d be happier if he used two hands and looked at the road! Still, now I know what it is supposed to be done like..

I lined up in my lane, ready to head out and noted that I might not die, there was a Zafira here too. Out on the track it took me couple of laps to realise that it wasn’t a stock Zafira and that a Lotus 7 is a very quick car. Also, when you are not going that fast, braking hard at the braking cone is not necessary, ‘cos otherwise you stop. After three dry sessions it started to rain. This, it transpired, is a good thing. The people with more horses than the US cavalry now had real trouble getting them down onto the tarmac through their mostly slick track day special tyres… my road tyres didn’t much mind. I didn’t get lapped for the whole 15min session! Woohoo!

So at the end of the day I must admit that its a huge laugh. I will never, deliberately, get my car all out of shape and flicking about by pressing/releasing the accelerator on the public road, but on a track its fun My car survived and indeed worked well! My brakes still have pad and my rear tyres are worn, but not that much. I can see why people have “track cars” and if I had the time and money I’d quite fancy it, but for now I’ll go back to watching the touring cars and believing I could do it better (which I so can’t!).

Pics and Video from the day here.

So I have switched to Wordpress. If you are reading this on LiveJournal it is because I’m using the crossposter plugin (you can leave comments easily via OpenID too). Mainly I switched because I wanted better control of how I present and deal with stuff, but also ‘cos I just fancied a change I have not sorted my template properly yet, but it’ll do to start with. Let me know if its all broken for you.