transfixed but not dead! » mac

Patience is a virtue

draegtun — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:14:21 +0000

For about a year I’ve put off replacing my Apple iMac with a Mac Pro until Snow Leopard arrived.

But thats nothing because I’ve been hanging on to my old, tired and very battered Sony Ericsson mobile phone while I’ve been waiting for the iPhone to eventually come to my mobile phone network

Waiting looks to have paid off because the new 27inch iMac with the Nehalem processors certainly look sweet. I even got to play with magic mouse at an Apple store the other day and have to say first impressions were very nice.

So new iMac will be a nice Xmas pressie

The iPhone is a few months off yet but I can hold on a bit longer

The temptation to buy a Google Android phone was strong though. It came close especially when Google announced that Perl was available for it.

Gosh having Perl on a “mobile” device brings back memories. I had Perl running on my Psion Revo PDA back in the day.

Unfortunately no Perl on the iPhone thus far… unless its jail broken!

Still perusing the iTunes App Store does show up a few things Perl. O’Reilly have “ported” quite a few of their books to the store.

Amazingly i am still an app virgin on my iPod Touch! So I thought I’d give it a go and purchase Perl Pocket Reference app.

I can’t say its this e-book is going to set my world alight but for £1.79 I couldn’t really go wrong and you will never know when it will come in handy.

/I3az/

BBC to make iPlayer service available on the Mac

draegtun — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:29:49 +0000

Good news… http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6568163.stm

Shows what a bit of complaining can do… http://www.straw-dogs.co.uk/blog/02/01/advise-the-bbc-to-use-open-standards

Using an UPS with Apple iMac

draegtun — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:02:41 +0000

Always used an Unlimited Power Supply (UPS) with the Linux servers/workstations I’ve had so it was a no-brainer to continue this practise with my Mac.

I’ve always stuck with APC when it comes to an UPS and they’ve never let me down. Needed one with a USB connection so went with a Back UPS ES 500.

I was expecting to continue to use PowerChute to manage the controlled shutdowns. However I noticed some chatter and such which mentioned that MacOSX Tiger had UPS functionality already embedded.

So plugged in the UPS and switched on the iMac and hey presto the battery icon automagically appeared!….

So no need to have Tiger server and no need to muck around with core services. A dropdown appeared under “Energy Saver” providing a UPS option….

And only did a few changes to the defaults……

And we were good to go….

My workspace… with my shiny new Apple iMac

draegtun — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:02:26 +0000

Below is a pic of my brand spanking new iMac sitting on my desk.

I went for a 2.16Ghz (Intel Core 2 Duo) model because didn’t think the 2.33Ghz would really provide much of speed increase for the extra expense. However I did go for more memory and upgraded the vid card to Nvidia GeForce 7600 (256mb) because this should provide some extra umpf. Would have liked to have gone for 3gb memory upgrade but that was just too expensive… so upgraded to 2gb.

The cost saved on getting this iMac compared to the MacPro allowed me to also buy two external hard disks & a 80gb iPod and still have change left in my pocket

This Mac flies and leaves my Powerbook G4 for dead. It even feels much faster than my Linux workstation (two AMD CPU 2.0Ghz with 1gb memory).

Now to start tailoring my iMac to fit into my daily work & home needs.