October 2007 Archives
I installed Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" on my Mac Book Pro this weekend. I've had little time to play with it, mind you, since the past two days were taken up preparing for and then celebrating my son's third birthday.
I seem to have hit a snag with my iMac Leopard upgrade, though. I bought a new 24-inch, 2.8Ghz iMac about a month ago, and spec'd it from Apple with a 500GB hard drive. I then proceeded to buy a 1TB Seagate disk drive from NewEgg, with the intention to upgrade the iMac when it came time to install Leopard.
I subscribe to an upgrade strategy much like John Gruber's, and I'd been dutifully cloning my iMac to an external drive with SuperDuper for a few weeks now. Yesterday, I ran it for what should have been the last time before doubling the internal storage on the Mac. When I logged into Apple's Support site to download instructions on upgrading the HD in a new iMac, however, I was surprised to find no technical articles available.
Turns out, the disk drive in an iMac is not user-upgradable without voiding the warranty. How I missed this when I bought the machine is beyond me, and frankly, I'm feeling kind of dumb for making this mistake.
My plan for today is to talk to a Genius at our local Apple Store and see what my options are. I really don't want to go without the protection of a warranty on a brand new computer, so I'm hoping I can have Apple install the drive for me.
I knew that going with an iMac meant I was giving up expandability, but I didn't quite realize that the only thing you could touch was the RAM (now maxxed out at 4GB). Maybe I should have bought a Mac Pro after all.
Technorati Tags:
apple, technology, mac os x
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A very interesting new rainwater storage system from Australia. A much larger and more discreet storage method than the old "rain barrel" approach.
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Until Apple offers HD programs on iTunes, this might be the only way to watch HDTV on the AppleTV. I use the eyeTV, but have only limited success with getting a good, artifact-free recording.
Okay, consider me in.
Everyone is talking about their 50mm lenses. I'm not sure if it's a rebellion against expensive glass, or the result of a sad realization that 90% of the stuff shot on DSLRs and 18-300mm zoom lenses and posted on Flickr is crap. Turns out good photography is hard. Go figure.
Suddenly, the "it" equipment to own is the basic 50mm 'normal' lens. It's light, it's fast, and by removing the ability to use the zoom to compose the image, everyone's forced to get off their ass and actually move to get the shot they want.
Well, halleluiah, I say (for the second time in a week, actually). And count me in.
Today I dusted off the wonderful Nikon 50mm f1.4 in my bag and put my current 17-55mm f2.8DX to rest for a while. Maybe I'm just trying to be part of the 'in' crowd, but we'll see how this goes.
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Very interesting development that uses traditional forms but somehow creates a modern aesthetic. Probably is the all-white pallette.
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First part of a tutorial on Aperture's image adjustments. This is a pretty complex set of controls, so any assistance is welcome.
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I love Dornbracht's fixtures. Simple, beautiful, incredibly expensive. Two out of three.
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Tips from top design blogs on getting your product, concept or idea featured on their site. Does not cover bribing and concubines.
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A very cool faucet from Bandini of the "waterfall" variety. I wish the surround around the handle were smooth, however. I find the embelleshment takes away from the simplicity of the design.
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Beautiful designer kitchens we can use in our remodel if we win the lottery.
Someone want to call John about his ad and ask if there is any rust?
Ian Rodgers, The Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo Music, speaking at the Digital Media Forum in LA on why Digital Rights Management is a failed experiment. A must-read coming at the same time Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead announce their split with the "traditional" record industry and a few scant weeks after Amazon's glorious DRM-free MP3 store goes live.
The writing is on the wall. DRMed music will be gone within a year and music sales will rise for the first time in ages.
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A great tip on using black and white to adjust an image to get a better end result.
Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist. Creator of Mike and Ike, Lala Palooza and other comic series at the turn of the century, his famous "Rube Goldberg Inventions" were the product of another of his characters, Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. Yes, "Butts." My three-year old would be much amused.
A Rube Goldberg invention was an intricate, elaborate machine created to accomplish a simple task. A commentary on the value of technology, perhaps.
His legacy lives on with an absolutely stunning video that made its way onto the intertubes today. My favorite sequence shows the contraption sending a text message to another phone, whereupon the vibrating notification sets off another sequence, presumably at an entirely different location.
Source: College Humor (Note: Much on this site is NSFW)
This video may just replace the Rube Goldberg machine from the Honda commercial, Cogs, as my alltime favorite. Click here to check that one out.
Monospaced fonts usually look like ass. Courier, anyone?
Today, Raph Levien released his gorgeous new font, Inconsolata. It's crisp and light and won't make you want to poke your eyes out with a pair of toenail clippers when you are reading those terrible "plain text" emails.
