G5 RAID problems
Posted by rae in General
at 11:24 am on Friday, 31 March 2006
My G5 won’t boot.
When I boot from a Tiger install DVD and run the disk utilities, it claims that one of the RAID disks has “failed”.
Reminder to self - get **3** drives and use RAID 5. Oh wait, the G5 only supports 2 drives. Oh well.
The good news is that I was able to get the G5 to boot in FireWire’s “target mode”, and the volume actually mounted successfully on my PowerBook.
So I am using my PowerBook as my main machine again.
And the loud fan noise is back, again.
I suspect it’s because I am burning DVDs all the time to back up the data on the G5..
at 11:24 am on Friday, 31 March 2006
Ants! It must be spring
We have ants in our laundry room. I didn’t notice until I had pushed the big pile-o-towels over to the washing machine to do a hot wash. I picked up a facecloth and noticed there was black fluff on it. Then the black fluff MOVED. I had inadvertently squished a whole train of ants when I moved the towels. So I had to shake out all the towels before I put it them the washing machine. About a dozen stunned and confused ants dropped to the floor. So I have laid down several drops of our AntBeGone stuff, but I can’t remember if it works very well or not. I then had a thought that I should find out more about where they are going. So I set up my powerbook running iStopMotion:
My PowerBook recording ant movement
The iSight keeps an eye on the ants clustered around the drain.
If you read only one movie plot summary..
Let it be this one for Star Trek: Nemesis. Warning: contains naughty words that rhymme with “firetruck”. It kinda reminds me of how Andy used to review fine movies with Goldie Hawn in them. Here’s a choice snippet from when Picard beams over to the Reman ship to confront Shinzon:Great. I whacked some guy with my rifle and it broke in half. Who built this #$#%ing thing? Well, now I have an excuse for yet another contrived scene: hand to hand combat with Shinzon. I hope the audience won’t think to ask why I don’t just pick up a gun from the floor, since I just killed a whole room full of Reman crewmen. Then again, if they’ve suffered through this much of the movie, they’re probably de-sensitized to the bad writing.
Google Earth somewhat inaccurate
Posted by rae in software
at 2:39 pm on Wednesday, 22 March 2006
If you click the picture below to see its larger (1205×980) version, you will see a screenshot of Google Earth with a view of Greenwich Observatory with overlaid lines describing the inaccuracy of Google Earth.
Of course, perhaps like the speed of light, the Prime Meridian of Earth has been redefined recently and I am just out of the loop..
at 2:39 pm on Wednesday, 22 March 2006
Click to see larger version
UI from Hell
Posted by rae in software
at 6:37 pm on Tuesday, 21 March 2006
Wow, as pointed out on #macdev, here is a UI from Hell (you may have to widen your browser a bit to fit in all of its 669-pixel-wide glory):
at 6:37 pm on Tuesday, 21 March 2006
Look at all those tabs and options!
Upgrading the DVD drive in my G5
Posted by rae in hardware
at 7:45 pm on Sunday, 19 March 2006
A while back, my G5
s internal DVD burner started to burn discs that other hardware would not read all the way through.
Specifically, the LG DVD player (and the PC’s and other DVD players) were unable to play the last few shows burned on a DVD.
I started to use the PowerBook’s DVD burner in its place to ensure newly burned discs are not similarly unreadable.
I also bought a new burner top put in the G5, a Pioneer 110D.
I’ve been putting off installing the new drive because I’m worried about old burned discs that can no longer be accessed except with the bad drive.
I’ve ordered a FireWire enclosure for the old drive so that I will be able to still read otherwise-unreadable files.
However, it appears my procrastination has paid off somewhat.
An
article on HardMac.com
shows how to convert a Pioneer 110D into a 111D (with better DVD-RAM support)
by upgrading the firmware.
Cool.
at 7:45 pm on Sunday, 19 March 2006
Computer Languages
Michael is studying computer langauges at school. Maybe I should point him at this little ditty. Hah.Crafting the perfect search URL
I spent a while getting this URL juuuuuust right. These sites don’t make it obvious how to do things like “or” or “and” in a search, so you have to experiment.Best. Quote. Evar.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel on the idea of government prescribing regulations for bridge design in 1847:In other words, embarrass and shackle the progress of improvements of tomorrow by recording and registering as law the prejudices and errors of today.Particularly appropriate with regards to DRM. via Boingboing
Even *noisier* PowerBook!
It has gotten worse. I may have to go visit Apple sooner rather than later.