I just purchased a Belkin Flip (a two computer KVM setup). It works as advertised and currently shares my monitor, keyboard and mouse between my Mac Mini and my Power Mac G4 500MHz DP. I am impressed with the quality of most of the cables. My only gripe is the paddle that allows you to switch between inputs is a little flimsy (and the cable is very thin). For the price, however, it is excellent value.
I spent some of the weekend wiring up a switch for the train set. I now have two separate sections of track (joined so trains can travel between them but not joined electrically). I can control the sections from separate power supplies (allowing two trains to run at the same time) or control the whole board from the one supply. This is achieved using a switch and some fairly fancy (for me anyway) wiring.
On the list of things to do are:
An original Apple Airport Base Station (the “graphite” one). This was easy to reset (to clear the existing configuration and password) and set up. I have it configured in bridge mode, basically extending my wired Ethernet network. I’m not really planning on using it much (all my computers are in one room and most don’t have wireless) but it is a cool piece of hardware nonetheless.
This reminds me that I need to update the computer collection page.
(PS: if you understood the title of my previous post you qualify as a nerd).
Just scored a new Power Mac – a dual 500MHz G4. The machine currently has a 40GB HDD and 512MB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.4. For some reason I have always wanted a dual CPU Macintosh (the earlier 604 based models always seemed to be too expensive or rare). Thanks to David for this one – much appreciated. To top it off, it has on-board gigabit ethernet (although I have nothing else that has this, rendering it cool but redundant at the moment).
I am not 100% sure of what I will use this computer for, but I think it will fill the role of home server nicely. I have already installed my USB 2.0 PCI card in it (allowing it to access the 160GB USB 2.0 HDD I have already). I have also fitted a PCI SCSI card as I have a few 18GB SCSI drives lying around that it could use.
Just received my copy of Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds (by Les Christidis and Walter E. Boles) in the mail, purchased from Andrew Isles Bookshop. I can highly recommend this shop: the delivery was quick, email notification fantastic and the packaging top notch. This is the first bird related book I have purchased that is not a field guide. It should make for interesting reading.
I have finally seen Emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae) in the wild – we saw a group of them in the Stirling Ranges a few weeks ago. Spotted a Yellow-throated Miner (Manorina flavigula) at Joondalup Health Campus last week – this is my first metropolitan area sighting.
Just flew back on an Alliance Airlines Fokker 100 (although the flight number started with QF). Generally fly on the Boeings though.
On the last flight to Karratha I realised that I had flown in a few different Qantas/QantasLink planes. A quick check of the Qantas website jogged my memory so here is the list:
- Boeing 737-400 (generally the plane I seem to catch)
- British Aerospace 146 (great fun landing on the short Karratha runway!)
- Boeing 717-200
I am seriously considering building something like this.
Spent some time tinkering with some old PowerBooks recently:
I think the biggest problem facing people who collect old Macs (in particular PowerBooks) is the internal 2.5″ SCSI disk issue. These invariably fail and are getting harder and harder to find. Ideally, a SCSI to IDE converter should be made (or even a SCSI to CF adapter) but I don’t think this is going to happen. At least with desktop Macs the 3.5″ SCSI drives can be replaced by more modern SCSI drives (with the appropriate adapters).
NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a fantastic piece of software I have been using to create an installer for a project at work. It is highly customisable and handles both the installing and un-installing of files. From the website:
NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a professional open source system to create Windows installers. It is designed to be as small and flexible as possible and is therefore very suitable for internet distribution.
The software itself is small and integrates nicely with my favourite (Windows) text editor: NotePad++.
I am on a 5GB/month wireless broadband plan from Optus. For the purposes of selling the plan to you, Optus define 1GB as 1000MB (see screen shot below).
For the purposes of billing you, however, Optus define 1MB as 1024KB (also see the screen shot below). This means that they would define 1GB as 1024 MB for data used. Hence the 5GB plan is actually a (5000/(5 x 1024)) x 5 = 4.88 GB plan.
5GB should give you 5 x 1024MB = 5120MB.
Given that excess usage (not that we are at any risk of that) is charged per MB, not shaped, it would be good if they were consistent.