Studio Seven

The Macintosh SE/30 is the most powerfull compact mac. It can take a maximum of 128mb of ram. Sounds really little by today’s standards but compared to the rest of the compact macs it is a huge amount.

Take for example the Macintosh Colour Classic which is the only compact mac with a colour screen. It takes up to 12mb of ram but can only address 10mb.

I managed to pick up one of these machines. It’s not in the best of condition and there are no cables or keyboard with it. I can’t wait to try and test if it’s working tonight.

Having been holding out for the iPhone to officially launch in Singapore, I was really ecstatic to know that it was going to be brought in by Singtel. I pre-registered to purchase it on the launch day but when I arrived the queue was snaking around the building.

It was only a week later that I picked up my black 16G iPhone. I decided to choose the black as there were reports of the case cracking easily and it shows up on the white coloured iPhones readily. Not sure if it is a design flaw or how rampent it is.

After a month has passed, there are still a few quirks that I still have not gotten used to.

• No way to forward sms
• Cannot check last call duration
• New contacts added from the phone cannot be added to groups
• Difficult to type sms or make a call without looking at the screen

There are also things I like and use a lot on the iPhone.

• Dedicated switch to turn off the ringer
• Sms in conversation style
• Web browsing with Safari

What’s your take on the iPhone?

Recently, the adsl modem at home stopped working. A friend donated a used modem but I could not get it to work. The contract for the broadband connection was almost up hence I could recontract and get a free modem. Now how am I going to update my blog and other websites?

I tried to use the internet at the office but was blocked by the firewall. In case the boss is reading, I did it during lunch hour. Seriously, there’s no free time in the office. Everyone is swamped with work.

Okay, so I remembered reading about using a web based proxy to access the internet where countries filtered the internet. I know what you’re thinking but Singapore is not one of the countries. A google search revealed many free proxy sites. I tried a few but some could not access the sites properly, many plastered my screen with advertisements or just loaded really slowly.

I decided to dig a little deeper and found that I could setup my own using a spare domain name I had registered recently. So if you’re ever at uni or work, feel free to use my free web proxy at the url below.

www.moobin.net

13 inch Black MacBook Rev.A 2.0 Core Duo (Upgraded maximum 2gb ram and 250gb hard drive)

15 inch PowerBook G4 1.5 ghz (Upgraded 1.5gb ram)

15 inch PowerBook G4 1.33 ghz (Upgraded 768mb ram and 120gb hard drive)

17 inch iMac G4 1.25 ghz (Factory upgraded 512mb ram, everything else stock)

Mac Mini 1.5 ghz Core Solo (Recently sold away…. why did i sell it?)

Cube G4 450 mhz (Upgraded maximum 1.5gb ram and maximum 120gb hard drive)

20th Anniversary Macintosh (Upgraded maximum 128mb ram)

12 inch iBook G3 366mhz non firewire (Upgraded maximum 576mb ram, 30gb hard drive, airport card and OS X 10.4.11 Tiger)

Snow Dual Ethernet Airport base station

The three laptops are used as the main machines while the Cube acts as a file server through external firewire hard drive.

The 20th Anniversary Macintosh or TAM for short with it’s integrated BOSE sound system is used for streaming music. Hey, you gotta have some music while working.

The iBook is used as an impromptu wireless base station. Extended lease of life for an 8 year old laptop. As the Airport Base station is also a wireless B, it’s time for me to upgrade to a new wifi setup soon. Perhaps a cheap 2nd hand wireless G network card will make it’s way into the iMac G4 to speed up the network. If budget permits than maybe a Time Capsule. However, since I still have quite a few older Macs I will not be able to take full advantage of the wireless N.

I’ve been having some trouble with my Macbook and was starting to feel quite frustrated. However, my computer at work was acting up too. For the past three months, it took longer to boot up into Windows XP Professional day by day. It now takes almost 30 minutes. There was no new software installed or updates done. Basically the computer just slowed down over time. I don’t have the same kind of experience with OS X. I have never faced the need to reinstall the OS on my Macs unless I’m upgrading it to a newer version. So overall, I am not going to ditch the Macbook yet. 

A friend was getting married and we were going to put together a short video clip. However, my friends with a PC commented that they could not do some of the cool video stuff without purchasing additional software. The bundled iLife suite with iMovie could do all this with ease. So yes, the overall macintosh experience is better.

It’s been a pretty rough week. The hard drive in my Macbook just stopped working and I lost quite a bit of stuff from the last 5 months. My web hosting provider also recently upgraded their server and somehow this website could not be displayed properly after that.

Upon doing a little google search, I found that many people were having the same problem with their 1st generation Macbooks. This was my first Mac that was purchased new but has caused me endless grief. It suffered from the random shutdowns just before my presentations while I was still studying for my degree. I had to fall back on my old powerbook G3 pismo. It was many rounds of going to the apple service centre before they finally managed to fix it.

Lesson learnt is never buy a revision A product and always backup your data. 

When I was using a windows pc, it never seemed fast enough. It was a constant race to upgrade one component after another. First a faster CPU, than a better graphics card and than the price of ram drops and I find myself throwing more money into the system. Soon there are plenty of parts left over to build a second system.

My macintosh collection is also starting to grow. As most macs were designed more like a household appliance where end users were generally limited to ram or hard disk upgrades, I start to have a growing collection of older but still usable machines.

Some possibilities suited for an older computer include running an arcade game simulator to relive those retro games like puzzle bubble, lode runner, pac man and the popular daytona. All that is needed is a emulator program and the game roms. The only universal program that runs on both intel and powerpc macs is Mame OS X. Roms can easily be found through a quick search on google. Anything with a G3 processor and above should run the older games easily. Although daytona would require a relatively new macintosh with an intel processor as the only emulator available only runs in windows.

Another option for an older mac is to drop in a bigger hard disk or attach an external drive to run iTunes. That way, it frees up your main computer to get work done more quickly. If you are lucky enough, a 20th Anniversary Macintosh would be the ultimate mac for the job with the integrated BOSE speakers and sub woofer.

I just bought 7 spoilt apple pro mouse from ebay. 5 of them are the original first generation black color ones while the other 2 are white in color.

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When these mice were released in 2000, the design was just so beautiful. An elegant elliptical shape made of clear acrylic with a translucent black inner piece that emitted a little glow of red through the apple logo.

So what am I going to do with them? Well, a quick search on google revealed a mod turning the mouse into a belt buckle. Another person made a soap dish. There were a few sites about repairing it.

Possible ideas for now include:

A. Remove the guts and replace with a generic wireless mouse internals.

B. Turn it into a torch light similar to those ‘pop’ lights.

C. Make a frame to hold all 7 mice to create a bedside lamp powered through a usb hub.

D. Any other ideas?

Update:

One white mice has been nursed back to health exhibiting a healthy red glow. 

Another possibility for the remaining six was to modify the transparent shell to fit a mighty mouse. Anyone have a dead mighty mouse available for dissection?

Everyone is always going for the latest and the fastest computer. As a student, my first macintosh computer for my studies was bought through money earned during part time work. I like fiddling with computers and earned some extra income from fixing computers.

Before I started university, I knew that the school of architecture used only macintosh computers and so I thought it would be timely to switch to a mac. Technically speaking, my first mac was an Apple III. But that was eons ago and I only remembered playing lode runner and some other F1 racing game on it’s green monochrome screen.

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The year was 2003 and I could not find an affordable ibook for under a thousand dollars. I needed something small to bring with me and knew that the G4 Cube was the answer. It was not that small as today’s mac mini but it was the smallest desktop mac around. I found one going for $1100 and managed to bring the price down slightly to within my budget. Everything was stock standard.

Although it was not the fastest mac around, it sure was a pleasure to use. OS X 10.3 Panther was stable and everything felt snappy. Photoshop ran really well and seemed so much faster compared to windows pc’s of the same era. Another plus point was that the Cube looked really good on my study desk.

Time passes by and with the G5 processors out, I was contemplating an upgrade. The performance was still good but I upgraded the ram to the maximum 1.5 gb. I loved my Cube and it just kept on going. It sat in a corner working quietly unlike other computers with drowning out my thoughts with the sound of whizzing fans.

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My first mac, meet the G4 Cube. It’s hip to be square.