Nov 04

Truly Addicted

Computer Geek, Odds and Ends 2 Comments »

Here I sit in peaceful bliss…

I’m sure you know the rest of that one. If not, I’m sure you can find it on Google.

It was an odd intro I know, but it leads to the topic of today’s post. Being so addicted to your phone that you talk, text, chat, surf the web, or write blog entries from the bathroom – while you sit in, well I said look it up if you’ve never heard it.

I know you’re wondering and the answer is yes. I’m in a restroom typing away…

You don’t have to admit that you have done it too, but you would be lying. Everyone has used their phone in one way or another from the restroom.

Being connected is an addiction, and I’m addicted.

Which posts have been or will be written in the bathroom – I’ll never tell, but the number might be larger than you want to believe.

Cheers!

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Nov 02

Vacation is over

Apple, Computer Geek, Flying No Comments »

My vacation week has come and gone. It was a nice mix of productivity and worthlessness. It was heavy on the worthlessness, but that was the intent.

I did manage to rearrange and clean up the home office space upstairs. I incorporated the new 24″ monitor and, of course, built the new Hackintosh (which I’m using right now).

Other than a couple of short flights, I didn’t do a whole lot – and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I highly recommend a “stay-cation” to anyone.

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Oct 29

On Making a Hackintosh

Apple, Computer Geek No Comments »

O.K… I finally did it. I’ve been talking about getting a netbook to put Mac OS X on for awhile now. I have finally done it. I chose the Dell Mini 10v. Our friends at Gizmodo have published a great How to Hackintosh a Dell Mini 10v article on their website. I’ll be using that as my guide as I make my very own Mac OS X netbook. Side note: I’m going to mention all the steps, but leave out most of the how-to details as the Gizmodo website does a great job (pictures included) of giving you the nitty gritty.

Disclaimer: I understand that though I am using a perfectly legal copy of Snow Leopard, this does, in fact, violate the Apple EULA and though I’ve not checked, I’m sure the folks at Dell would frown upon this as well. There is also that small chance that something could go wrong during the install and brick my netbook. This all being said, I choose to move forward with the project.

Step 1 – Procurement

Procure a Dell 10v. I chose to use the Dell Outlet website to get myself a refurb in order to save a little money. Signed sealed and delivered you should be able to get one on your door for less than $300.00. Keep an eye out for coupons and free shipping offers. Once the FedEx person arrives you will get to have a little unboxing party. Here’s what mine looked like.

IThe Box
The Packaging
The Goodies

You have the box itself, which is very light… This will be easy to carry around compared to the 15″ Macbook Pro. The basic “refurb” packaging, nothing fancy. Finally, the stuff (minus the power adapter which I simply forgot to add to the photo). Next we move to Step 2…

Step 2 – The Setup

I set up the Mini next to my Mac Pro station so that I would have everything I need in one place. Side note: Unfortunately, my nice 24″ monitor that I had died recently which is why you will see the old 20″ in the pictures (until the UPS man get here with my new one). Anyway, here’s the setup:

The Setup

The first order of business is to make a bootable USB drive with the Snow Leopard Install Disk image on it. I will give you a hint – do this in advance. There’s nothing worse than having the Mini on the desk ready to go and waiting an hour for Disk Utility to do its work. You can use a flash drive (8GB or larger) or, as I did, you can use an external USB hard drive. I have a 100GB bus-powered drive at my disposal so I put it to use.

While Disk Utility is doing its thing I fired up the netbook going through all the Windows XP setup stuff just so it would be done and not cause any trouble down the road. With that out of the way, it was time to prep the BIOS of the netbook so that it would be happy to accept the drive Disk Utility is busy making.

Again details are posted on the Gizmodo site so I won’t bog you down with them, but here are a couple of pictures detailing my process.

Confirm BIOS Version
More Details

With the netbook ready to go, we continue to wait for Disk Utility to finish up. Once it is done, it is time to run a handy little program that does the final prep on your boot drive to get it ready for action. You can find the file here. I’m not sure entirely what it does, but it worked like a charm. Now it is time for the magic to happen…

Step 3 – Installation

At this point – with the mini off – you connect the USB drive and start up the mini. Provided you remembered to set the BIOS to start from USB instead of the HDD you should see this
The beginning of the transformation

From this point it should be a fairly typical OS X install with one small exception. This was even different from the Gizmodo post so keep it in mind should this pop up on your install. When OS X asks you where to install, obviously you want to pick the internal HDD, but I got the !Triangle and it wouldn’t let me choose it. Apple, being cool like they are, did give you the hint to launch Disk Utility which I did. I formatted the drive Mac OS X journaled quit Disk Utility and poof, it was ready to install. I chose the options I wanted and hit the install button…
Installing

Then it was more hurry up and wait. Honestly though, for a tiny little computer with only 1GB of RAM and an Atom processor, it didn’t take that long at all. When it is done you get this…

Welcome to OS X

It started right up, the internal speakers worked great and the built in camera worked to set a picture for my account that was created during the setup. I immediately chose software update and got that going and when all was said and done I had myself a Mac OS X 10.6.1 netbook courtesy of Dell and some creative people on the web that figured all this out long before me.

Ahhhh

I have removed the Windows XP and Intel Atom sticker and also used a silver Sharpie to color in an Apple sticker which nicely covers the Dell logo on the front of the computer. I’ve synced with Mobile Me and I’ll install DropBox soon to have access to all my stuff and I predict I will live happily ever after…

Cheers!!

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Oct 21

Apple Updates

Apple, Computer Geek No Comments »

I know, I know… It’s been a long time. I’m sorry. I thought I would get back into the swing of things by reminding you all to go check out the new Apple products.

Apple updated the iMac, Macbook and Mac Mini lines today. They also introduced a new mouse – the Magic Mouse.

For me, I’m intrigued by the Magic Mouse and the new “server” option with the Mac Mini. One I can afford, and one I can’t… wonder which is which :-)

Anyway check out The Apple Store for all the details.

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Oct 01

Atypical

Computer Geek, Odds and Ends No Comments »

This has been a fairly atypical week for me in that not one evening have I taken the laptop out of the bag and spent a large portion of the evening surfing these interwebs. Yes, I’m writing on the blog, but this is the first I’ve been on (at home) since my last blog post. I sat for a minute trying to put a reason behind this oddity and I must attribute this to television. I was surprised when it hit me. TV was keeping me from sallying forth on the web. Can the current TV obsessions (Fringe, House, NCIS, Bones, NFL Football, and the Food Network (to name a few)) be greater than the draw of the seemingly infinite chasm know as the internet – more to the point; Facebook, Twitter and a laundry list of “daily must visit” websites on my toolbar. Logically, I would instantly answer: Not hardly. However the evidence certainly points to the contrary.

Now I sit here and wonder why is TV is hoarding my “leisure time?” How have a handful of 24 or 44 minute weekly video stories (with 6 to 16 minutes of crap) overcome the draw of everything else that I could possibly be doing. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret watching the shows, but why now and not 3 weeks ago or 12 weeks ago. These questions are not rhetorical, and I don’t have an answer. Yes, I realize that I am watching new episodes of programs but don’t consider that the sole reason because there are dozens of channels that I never watch that would have “new to me” episodes on constantly. I could go even further. There was a time in the recent past when I didn’t watch any TV (with the exception of a few NFL games at a bar or friend’s house).

So why am I watching TV now when I didn’t then (then being any stretch of time where I wasn’t watching TV)?

Hmmm I say. Hmmm indeed.

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