Don't Expect Much Posting Over the Next Coupla Days...

I will be playing World of Warcraft pretty heavy for the next couple
of days and then there is the Thanksgiving Holiday. So prolly not too
many postings for the next few days.

Take care and have a Happy Turkey Day.

This Past Weekend...

This Past Weekend...

I spent some of the day Saturday playing around with an Applescript I have been working on. I'm just getting started with Applescript and I am quite the noob. I have been reading Matt Neuberg's 'Applescript - Definitive Guide' from O'Reilly and just about done with it. So I've got the basics in my head, which of course I completely forget when it gets down to actually writing some code, and I spend alot of time looking things up and re-reading the code examples, and of course, going thru the Finder dictionary. Basically I want the script to watch a folder and when a new file is added to that folder and is an mp3 it will be copied into iTunes and added to a playlist. Still a bit of work to be done.

I have a bit of Python code that I lifted from Ray Slakinski's (who is now working on iPodderX) orignal pyPodder that contained an Applescript to move files to iTunes and add it to a playlist. I was going to use this as a model for a portion of my Applescript. I realized however that I had not yet installed Python for the Mac yet. Actually that is not entirely true, as I do not really need to add Python because Apple is nice enough to include the core of Python as part of OS X. Instead what I needed to do was get to the MacPython site and download and install the IDE, the Package Manager and the waste module that the other two packages depend on, the rest is already there. The MacPython addition installed easily and without trouble. I then went to find me a good programmer's type text editor as I prefer to use a text editor instead of the Python IDE. On the Powerbook 12" I had been using Mi. I liked it at first and it has all the features one would need, but after a bit the rather wonky syntax highlighting began to bug me and it was no longer being actively maintained, and just before I had purchased the iMac G5 I had put Sub etha Edit on the Powerbook. So for the PodBox I decided to start off with it. Not only is Sub etha Edit a good general purpose editor with all the necessary functions and a plethora of syntax highlighting, it also has the ability to allow for the document to be edited by numerous folks at the same time via Rendevous, each with their own color for text they have added or edited. I haven't played with this feature yet, but plan on soon when I will need to do some collaborative web editing. Sub etha Edit appears to be free for non-commercial use (although it displays a somewhat distracting watermark stating its non-commercial license), and it is also quite reasonable in price when the full meal deal is purchased. I'm gonna run it thru its paces a bit and will then probally opt for the paid version. Check it out.

After playing around with Applescript for a bit more I set it aside to go run some errands with the family. While out and about I picked up a couple of items I was wanting for the PodBox. One was a USB 2.0 hub.

I found one I kinda liked made by Kensington, the DomeHub USB 2.0, which also came with a free USB 'FlyLight'. Its a silver hemisphere about the size of half of a small grapefruit. It has six USB 2.0 ports arranged along the back of the hub and one port at the top of the hemisphere (the packaging illustration shows them plugging the FlyLight into the top port). Along the front are seven small green rectangular LEDs which light up when the associated port has something plugged into it. The hub, besides going along with the rest of my desk and its accessories, and the fact that it has seven ports, has a nice weight to it (it prolly weighs a half pound or more), which is very helpful in keeping the hub and cables in place. So when I plug my camera into it and then in turn pick up the camera to turn it on or just move it around in general, the USB hub stays right where I left it and tends not to get drug around the desk or get turned to one side like a typical lightweight hub will do.

But so begins an hour long comedy of errors and frustration. The PodBox's three USB 2.0 ports were occupied with the Seagate external drive, the color laserjet and the blue glowy USB 1.1 hub. I unplugged the glowy hub from the iMac G5, plugged in the new USB 2.0 hub, and in turn plugged the iMic and glowy hub into the new one and unplugged the Powermate from the glowy hub and added it the new one as well. The glowy hub began glowing again and the Powermate began to faintly glow, so I presumed things had been rediscovered. I attempted to wake up the PodBox from screensaver mode, it didn't want to come back to life, tapped on the keyboard a few times, jiggled the mouse around, waited a bit and tried again, the screen saver just kept Ken Burnsing its images of outer space. So I was forced to power down the iMac G5 and turn it back on (having just typed this I'm thinking maybe I should have attempted a forced reboot with some key combo, but didn't think about it at the time and not sure if they work without the system being fully awake anyways). The PodBox booted right up, but once back in OS X I noticed something was different about my desktop, "ah crap!" the Seagate external USB drive had disappeared (and it wasn't showing in the finder either). So I unplugged the the drive from the PodBox and plugged it back in, nothing, powered the drive off and on, nothing. I also attempted to turn up the system sound volume via the Powermate, it no worky either. Did another quick reboot.

Remembering the first time I attempted to connect the external drive and the issues I had with it not liking certain USB ports I decided I would try that trick again. Sure enough, plugging the external drive into a different port had it discovered and mounted in seconds. Now however, I had unplugged the new USB hub to plug in the external drive where it was and when I plugged it back in it wasn't recognized. So, I unplug it and the printer and swap their positions, and if you haven't guessed it, now the printer was recognized. I wasn't about to mess with that external drive again and I was outta ports to swap, so I rebooted the PodBox, still no printer. Tired of dicking around I removed the printer via the 'Printer Setup Utility' from the Applications:Utilities folder and re-added it. Ta, da! Back was the printer.

Now I thought all this USB stuff was supposed to be hot pluggable? I understand about the external hard drive and that I would need to unmount it or 'eject' it prior to unplugging it, but I never touched it and yet it still disappeared when I unplugged a different USB device. It seems like the USB ports on the back of the iMac G5 are all kinda daisy-chained together and removing a device from one effects the others; and once those ports get all funky they don't want to accept the device that was previously plugged into it. Will have to do some checking around and see it this is intended behavior or not.

Got a few more things I did over the weekend, but I'm tired of typing. Stay tuned...

Blue Glowy (mmmmm...)

Below is the rig in full blue glowy mode. The blue is provided by the Powermate turned fully up, the little funky USB 1.1 hub and the blue illuminated USB 2.0 cable that is used to connect the color laserjet to the PodBox.



I picked up some nifty velcro cable ties made by Belkin to tidy up the cabling, but haven't got around to doing it yet. In the image above, the device to the left of the iMac G5 is the Seagate external hard drive, at its base, the bright light is the USB 1.1 hub (off to the left of it, that point of white light, is the Powerbook 12"'s heartbeat), and off to the right of the PodBox is the Netgear 802.11 Super G wireless router. The color laserjet is below the desk on the left and its end of the illuminated USB cable that is lighting things up under the desk.

Orcs and Dorfs and Undead, Oh My...

World of Warcraft Open Beta was winding down, so I've spent the last couple of evenings playing it, trying out various races and classes. This game is gonna be a real blast and looking forward to it coming out soon; supposedly November 23. Doh! That reminds me I need to pre-order a copy. If you are going to play WoW you have got to pick up the free Cosmos UI enhancement. This adds a lot of really nice features and some automation to the WoW user interface. From simple things like the ability to set the mouselook to a toggle, to a an ingame clock (with alarms, I suppose to remind you that it is time to head off to bed) that you hover the mouse over and gives you detailed stats on how much experience gained this session, overall experience, estimated time to next level at current experience rate, distance traveled by your character, &c. and all that is just part of clock and just scratches the surface of all that you can do with Cosmos. This is very deep enhancement and a great piece of work, be sure to check it out.

In an earlier post I mentioned that the iMac G5 was running the game very well graphically and with fairly high level of detail selected, well, this has changed a bit. After I moved out the starter town and went to one of the main cities, with lots of other player characters around and NPCs, and things started chunking a bit, making it more difficult to move around smoothly. So I had to crank down the detail a bit. I'm still gonna have to play with the video settings extensively once the game is released and really get things dialed in. There was one point when I was playing when a goodly portion of the peeps in the zone I was exploring went off to participate in a large scale raid. All of sudden my framerate really jumped up and things were ultra smooth. This made me realise I need to do some tweaking. I think the first to do will be to crank down the resolution a bit, I was running in that huge 1680x1050 resolution. The way WoW does things it scales the UI elements as your resolution changes (although this can be changed in either the options or via Cosmos. In DAoC when you began to run larger rezs the UI elemets shrank and in turn you saw a lot more of the screen empty of menus, chat boxes, &c. So in WoW I'm thinking I can go to a smaller resolution and not really lose any screen real estate and surely the FX5200 in the PodBox can push the pixels around a bit better. Now don't get me wrong, never did the game, even in the most crowded of situations, become unplayable (unlike times on DAoC when the PC just ground to a halt with what had to be about .5 fps), its just once I saw how nice and smooth it could be I want that, or close to it, all the time. Its kinda like the two mice I have, each has a scroll wheel on it, but one has a kinda notchy wheel that you feel clicking as you scroll it, while the other is smooth like butter. I never knew how much I liked the smooth scroll wheel until I actually used it. Its kinda the same with the graphics in WoW that I am seeing. The game basically played the same, when I swung the camera around it basically was at the same speed it was just that at higher framerates the swinging was very smooth, like butter, while the lower framerate was, click, click, click, click... as it swung around; you almost didn't notice it until you had seen what a higher framerate looked and felt like.

So far this has been the closest thing to a disappointment in my purchase of the new iMac G5, and I went into it fully knowing that this might be the end result. I really wish Apple at least offered the option of upgrading to a better video card. I'm sure using the card they chose saves some on cost, and I also know that alot of these newer cards run really hot, and that might have been more of the issue, but still, couldn't they have given us the option of more video memory? Of course this is only an issue when playing a graphically intensive game like World of Warcraft (you know, maybe I need to fire up the original Halo and see how it does). In all other applications that I have placed the PodBox the video has never been an issue; playing DVDs, mpegs and avi's at full screen things have never hitched once.

With the WoW beta done I'm gonna continue my setup of the PodBox, things on the plate are trying to share my iCal so the rest of the house can see it, some more playing around with the podcasting software, and many other things all that I intend to document here.

Stay tuned...

WoW Me...

Got home from work today to find the PodBox silently Ken Burnsing its screensaver of outer space. What a welcome sight. Things seem back to their error free ways.

Decided to take it easy tonight and spent the evening playing World of Warcraft with a buddy.

Installing the latest Airport update that just came thru on 'Software Update'.

Check y'alls action later.

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program...

The PodBox iMac G5 ran flawlessly the rest of the night. Hammered on it a bit with World of Warcraft where it performed very well. The 802.11g router does seem to help some as WoW seems less laggy in general. I have also noticed webpages seem a bit snappier, and moving things around on the internal network is much, much faster and a very noticeable improvement.

PodBox stayed up all night with no more panic attacks so I left it running today when I left for work. So I'm guessing that the file permission fix did the trick, either that or keeping that nefarious ne'er do well POS Winblows box from printing to the PodBox's shared printer was the answer.

Kernel Panic...

I have found that the multi-lingual error message informing me that I must reboot my machine is known as a Kernel Panic and I guess is analagous to the 'Blue Screen of Death' from Winfuckingblows boxes.

After me last post I first updated both the firmware of the printer and new drivers from HP's support site. I thought this might have fixed things, PodBox was stable and error free the rest of the night. I did have problems with the windoze machine trying to first connect to and then printing to the shared laserjet. It would eventually connect but good gawd, it would literally take five minutes or more to move off the last step or two of the printer setup wizard. Printing failed totally, finally coming back with a timeout message. I delved around a bit on the web for some clue to what the issue might be. Heading off to bed I turned the PodBox's iTunes way down and left it shuffling thru my music library.

I was woken in the morning by my wife informing me that the PodBox was making a funny noise and an error message was up. Sure enough, the fans sounded like they were running on high (but even then it was still queiter than my PC at its normal noise level) and the Kernel Panic message was up. I powered it down and rebooted, headed off to the server room for a smoke and some more web scanning. I'm new to this OS X troubleshooting/debugging thang, but gleaning some forums and blogs I picked up that I should check, and if need to, repair the startup disk's permissions. I understand file permissions to some extent, the ideas of owners and users and the things each can do, and some of the various file flags, but didn't realize that they became corrupted, or at least this easily, and in such a way as to destablize the integrity of the machine. Anyway, started up the 'Disk Utility' and began a check on the startup disk (under the 'First Aid' tab), after a bit a couple of errors about permissions popped up, then all of sudden several pages full of screen went streaming by, I could make out that at least the folder structure pointed to the newly installed printer drivers. After the check I ran the repair to fix all the errors. That all completed successfully, but now it was time to head off to work. I didn't want to risk the PodBox panicing again and sitting home alone all day with its fans screaming at full tilt, so I powered it down and went off for my shower.

So that is where I am at the moment. Got home from work and powered up the PodBox, synced my iPod, been playing iTunes for a while, the kids have printed from the eMac, I'm blogging... I'll leave it up tonight and see what happens in the morning, if nothing occurs before then. I'm not gonna print from the Winblows box to the laserjet while shared by PodBox, at least for a bit. I want to rule out that its not something via the SMB share that could be causing the prob, or just the evil touch of Bill at play. Ultimately I'm gonna get the printer disconnected from the PodBox and onto a wireless print server again. I don't want the PodBox acting as a part time print server and its one less connection sullying my spiffy Apple product with that frickin' SatanSoft POS operating system. Of course thats if its the printer, or some file permissions somewhere, that was the culprit for the crashes. I saw on some forums that folks had some panic attacks via a USB hub, but this was on earlier revs of OS X, and in my scanning I might have missed whether or not they were perhaps speaking to the underlying sytems software usb hub or an actual physical attached. Not ruling anything out until the PodBox has been up and stable for a few days.

Alrighty then, off to simultaneously de-stress and stress things a bit with a round of WoW.

L8

New Printer - Color Laserjet 2550L

I picked up the HP Color Laserjet 2550L today while out running errands with the family at Office Depot. Their price was comparable with what I had found on Froogle, but of course I had to pay tax, but didn't have to pay shipping.

I was tired of dicking around with inkjets and all the BS involved with their cartridges, prices of the cartridges vs. longevity, and all the other shite involved there. I'll pick up a dedicated foto printer for pictures once I've figured out what I want. I didn't spend a whole lot of time researching the HP, it seemed it was about the only one that was color laser, good quality and at the price point I wanted.

I don't know that the laserjet will end up being cheaper to operate in the long run, but if I can just get through a couple of reams of paper before having to replace an cartridge I will feel like it was money well spent. I might have to have just print in greyscale except when really wanting color for it to truly be economical, will have to see how the color toners tend to hold up.

I'm putting it through its paces right now printing iPodLounge's buyer guide. The guide appears to only be printable in a low rez version without a password, so I wasn't super interested in quality as much as just how the printer and PodBox performed with a fairly large print job, and what the toner consumption might be like. The guide has a pretty good mix of small color images and text, with a few larger images thrown in. I thought this would be fairly representative of the kinda printing I generally do; webpages and whatnot. Should be a decent burnin for the printer as well.

About the printer. Its quite a bit larger than I expected, it definitely appears a lot smaller in pictures. Its a fairly substantial piece of office machinery and I was afraid the spot I had set out for it was not going to be sturdy enough to support the printer over time. I'm at a glass 'L' shaped desk (Z-Line from Eurway, I bought two of these and one of the corner pieces to make an ell) and the connection to make it an ell is just a metal frame screwed into the desk. To place the printer so that it was somewhat supported by more substantial pieces of the desk it encroached up where I had been sitting the powerbook and took over the desk, drawing way too much attention away from the PodBox. Luckily I had picked up a glass and metal printer cart that matches the desk well; I was using it, along with some bookends, as a bookshelf for user guides and stuff, and somewhere to stick unused cables and general crap. It rolled right under the desk and out of the way. It was also the perfect size to hold the the new laserjet on its lower shelf and still slide under the desk. So re-arranged things a bit, putting the bookends and books up on the desk.

Connecting the printer to PodBox was relatively simple once I got to it. I was a little suprised that the laserjet had a parrallel port on the back of it along with a USB 2.0 port. Since it did I first wanted to use the wireless print server I have laying around from DLink that only connects via parrallel. Unfortunately it also didn't support WPA encryption, it did WEP but not WPA and there didn't appear to be a firmware update that might have upgraded it. So I connected it via USB. HP does not supply the USB cable so I ran up to Radio Shack and picked up a cool blue glowy (mmmm, glowy) cable and groovy looking little USB hub (only 1.1) that was also blue glowy (mmm, glowy). Once plugged in and the driver disk inserted into the optical drive the printer just kinda automagically installed itself. I fumbled thru setting it up as my default printer using the 'Print Setup' utility. Printed a few test pages and then went to the sharing applet in the System Prefs and enabled printer sharing. Setup the eMac and all its accounts to use it as their default and they had no problem at all printing to it. Kris' office laptop took a little more work as it lives in a different domain than how I have SMB setup, but by connecting to the PodBox via its ip address it was able to see the shared printer and connect to it. My Windoze box connected pretty easily. I first connected to PodBox through 'Network Places', then went into the printer setup applet, walked through the wizard, PodBox displayed his list of shared printers just as soon as I typed \\podbox in the dialog. The printer setup wizard finished after answering a few dialogs about not being able to find drivers do I want to look for one, &c. I forgot to mention that I had downloaded and installed the drivers prior to running the setup on the Winblows boxes, so when the printer wizard wanted to go looking for the drivers I just browsed to where they had been installed.

Other things about the printer. The printer is not overly fast, I haven't played with any settings yet, this is just the defaults, but it seems to take a while for the thing to get started; I'm sure the heater thing in there has to get up to temp if its been sitting idle for a bit. Once warmed up it runs thru black and white stuff pretty quick, color is pretty slow. It does come with 64megs of RAM which is pretty nice I guess, I've not looked at printers for a bit so not sure what would be considered standard. Print quality is good. Webpages and similar type content look great, photos are very passable if just needing to print something, and should work well for smaller sized images if making up a small run of business cards, labels, placards or the like. Things like reports, charts and similar should look great. The thing is pretty noisy though with a lot of mechanical whirring and clunking as the toners rotate around to lay down their color. When I get it up on another wireless print server I might consider moving it somewhere a little more outta the way.

Overall? Its a slightly less than $500 color laserjet. Color quality is good for what I need it for. The annoyances and drawbacks I found in the short time I have used it would elimnate it as a choice if I did something that depended heavily on a printer (primarialy the speed and noise), but for general use I'm hoping it proves more cost effective than the inkjets I've been shelling out for with their too quick to run out or become out of date print cartridges. I'll let you know how it goes.

Woah!? What's this? Twice now I've gotten a multi-lingual halt message from the PodBox when apparently it starts to go to the screensaver. I haven't actually caught it doing it, but that is kinda in the state it looks to be when I find it. My only option is to power down and start it back up.

Couple of things come to mind. One, of course, is something related to the printer since this has never happened prior to installing it today. I'll go get the latest drivers from HP and give them a try. Two is that PodBox is not liking something to do with a combination of sharing the printer either to the other Macs or the Windoze machines, or both and the screen saver coming on (which has password enabled to come back from).

Gonna do a little debugging and will post later with what I find.

Out.

New Wireless Router...

the WoW servers were having issues with connections, so I took the time to tackle installing the new wireless router. I had picked up a refurbed version of the Netgear WGT624NAR Wireless G(Super G) in Frys the other day on the cheap. It is supposedly able to do 108Mbps with the correct card. I'm not messin' with that and just have it running in 802.11b/g and the 'Extend-a-Range'(tm) enabled. This is an improvement over my strictly 802.11b setup I was running. No big noticeable effect but i'll see how it does when I fire up Azureus to grab this week's shows, or the next big file transfer. Would like to find some software that gives me an idea of my thru-put.

I was a tad apprehensive about making the change in my network. It worked well enough speedwise, had been in place for a while, nice and stable, had all my port forwarding setup, addresses reserved for various devices, &c., so I was not quick to eff with it. I made note of all the above things like the port forwarding and began the install. Much to my suprise the change was quite painless. The PodBox picked up its new ip immediately after selecting the new network from the wireless menu. I then logged into the router to check things out. Poked around a bit and noticed that it hadn't picked up an address from RoadRunner yet. So I went out to the server room and reset the cable modem, when it came back up the new Netgear was waiting on it, grabbed an ip and all was good. Checked the netgear site and downloaded the latest firmware for the router. Installed that without issue following the instructions from the website. This particular router was a v2 (version 2 I guess), there are seperate firmware updates for non-v2 and v2 routers. The label on the underside of the router will have either nothing or v2 after the WGT624. This brought the router firmware up to version 4.2.4 which is the latest. After the router rebooted things began to grab ips and all was well on the network again. I went thru and re-entered all the port forwarding info and whatnot and things are back as they ever were, and hopefully a bit faster.

This go round I enabled WPA-something encryption for connecting. I hadn't used this on the previous router and it had been wide open to anyone who happened to find it. But as more and more of my computers were connecting wirelessly I felt it a good idea to tighten things up a bit. Enabling the WPA was painless as well, came up with a passcode after clicking the 'Enable WPA' checkbox on one of the router's admin pages and clicked the 'Apply' button. Of course I had to go around and reconnect all the wireless machines and enter the passcode when prompted, but all the Macs allowed the passcode to be added to their keychain and at least the powerbook connected and disconnected from the network a few times without ever again being prompted for a passcode. It freaked me out for a minute when the PC connected right away without a prompt for a password and I began to think something was wanked, but then I remembered that the PC is wired to the router and wouldn't need WPA authentication.

Off to check on WoW again...

Software continued...

Well the Horns won but just barely and I can't say that it was a very impressive win.

Back to the software. Well with iTunes set up I needed some music in there. I was dreading the idea of moving the 13gig music library off the eMac over the network, or dicking with burning it to CDs. Serendipitiously(sp?) I read on, I believe it was engadget, maybe gizmodo, about 'iPod Downloader'. I'm not entirely sure about the story on this software so I'm not going to post a link, but a sufficient google search should find it. What 'iPod Downloader' does is allow you access to the songs on your iPod is such a fashion that you can move them off of the iPod and anywhere you would like, as well as the ability to do this from an iPod that is not married up to the current machine you are connecting to. What you see after installing and upon the connection of your iPod is another item in the left sidebar entitled cleverly enough as 'iPod Download'. Click on it and you see your iPod's music library, from there you can drag songs from the iPod to the iTunes library. So if I remember correctly I just selected all my songs from the 'iPod Download' and drug it to the PodBox's iTunes Library. A few minutes later I had my library intact on the new machine; must faster than the previously mentioned methods and easier than dragging the eMac over to the iMac to act as a Firewire drive.

Couple of drawbacks that I found to 'iPod Downloader', one, it doesn't bring across your playlists. Two, Apple broke the software with one of the recent patches, but some conniving individuals found a work around. But to get it going you have to hex edit iTunes. As part of my whole finding of 'iPod Downloader' was a page with step by step instructions on how to do this. This in turn led to another piece of software being installed. Hexedit, recommended in the article, is just that, a hex editor. Install was easy and it worked well. It did come with one annoyance however. It hijacked the PodBox's .dmg association. Everytime I dbl-clicked a disk image it wanted to open it in Hexedit. I would have to right click/cntrl+click to get select 'Open with' and select 'DiskImageMounter' until I found that in the file info dialog I could change what application opened a particular file and the option to globally change the association for all files of that type. Just do a 'Get Info' on the file and make the change under the 'Open with:' section. Once iTunes has been edited 'iPod Downloader' showed up in the sidebar each time I connected my iPod. Word on the street is that there is a 1.1 version of 'iPod Downloader' which gets around the Apple breakage.

Let's see what else, oh, the bittorrent stuff. I have become a big fan of bittorrent and for a variety of reasons I'm not going to go into right now. I installed the default bittorrent client from bittorrent.org and then and went and snagged Azureus. Azureus works well and being Java based it works on both OS X and Windoze with a very similar interface, a benefit when I sometimes am on the PC.

Then for my podcatcher I am trying out iPodderX. If you are unfamiliar with podcasting a good overview and all the software you need as well as a podcast directory can all be found at ipodder.org. In short though, think Tivo for your iPod.
iPodderX keeps crashing on me when I go to add a new feed (after having selected a bunch of feeds during the initial setup). It still appears to be pulling in content on the schedule I chose, but would like to add some more feeds. I haven't spent too much time with it, and will have to check back at their website and see if there is mention of the issue there. iPodder the Lemon version is supposed to have a new version out or very soon and I might check it out. I am a big advocate of this new medium and will be discussing it and the software associated with it in more detail.

Lastly, you might have noticed in the last post in the Whiteout screenshot that I had Gimp open. Gimp is my graphical editor of choice. To get it to work on OS X I first had to install the X11 user client, as Gimp is not a native OS X app.

Whew, think I'm just about all caught up. Now I should be able to make more daily posts of just what I've done that day, a single piece of software installed, interesting news blurb found, &c.

Software?

Looks like I might finally get to blog a bit about the software I have installed on the PodBox so far. Some is stuff that I had on the powerbook and liked, and a bit is stuff I have recently read about or found on the web somewhere.

The very first piece of new software I grabbed for the PodBox was Mozilla's Firefox. I have been using some flavor of Mozilla browser since they have been releasing such. I have nothing against Safari at all and think it is a great browser, but I just dig Mozilla. The fact that I get the same browsing experience from Mac to PC to Linux is a plus, but more than that I just want to support the folks at Mozilla; I've been trying to convert folks for what must be years now, and its good to see Mozilla getting mentioned in the press more and suggested as an alternative, on the PC anyway, to Internet Exploder. Rock on Mozilla!

Of course the day after I install Firefox PR1 and get it all set up they release 1.0 , but to my suprise, after the install, all the previous changes I made were in place.

The next piece of software I put on PodBox was Whiteout which is hosted by suicidegirls.com I don't know if they created it as well. Whiteout replaces the brushed metal look on UI elements with the original Aqua pinstripe, well everthing except for iTunes. The Aqua pinstripe works really well with the PodBox. It would be a nice touch if Apple provided this as an option somewhere in the system prefs. Whiteout makes it real easy to change back to the original brushed metal look by running a small shell script. Check out the screenie below for an idea of what the look is like. You'll notice iTunes in the background retains its brushed metal look.



Next up was an iTunes plugin/addon that places controls in the menubar for next, previous, play/pause with the nice option of displaying an overlay that displays on the screen indicating song name, album and artist. This nifty bit of software is 'You Control: Tunes' by You Software. From what I remember installation was hassle free. Preferences are plentiful and easily performed. The user can control which buttons are displayed in the menubar, where on the screen the overlays appear, what information appears in the overlays (including album art), how long the overlay appears for, the color of the overlay and its text, the overlays opacity and can select from a variety of transition methods for the overlays to appear and disappear (transporter being my favorite). The software also allows you to assign hot keys to iTunes commands and your iTunes library even shows up as a menu item in the menubar. A nice piece of work worth checking out.

Powermate from Griffin makes for a worthy companion to 'You Control: Tunes'. Its basically this sweetly made aluminum knob that connects via USB to your Mac or PC and sits on your physical desktop. The knob is of high quality and reminds me of big volume knobs off a good quality home stereo. It has a nice heft to it and is silky smooth in operation, best of all it has a lovely blue glowy effect as the base of the knob; mmmmm, glowy. You plug the powermate in, where it immediately begins glowing, mmmm, but it doesn't do anything other than that until you install the software. The cd for the Powermate is the one I mentioned that produced the horrible buzzing noise from the optical drive. Other than the noise the software install was easy, and they also give you a folder of Applescripts to use with the Powermate.

After the software installs the Powermate will then work in iTunes as a volume control, if you press the knob it will mute iTunes and if you press the knob and turn then you can advance to the next track or move back to the previous track. When not in iTunes the Powermate controls the system sound volume. The Powermate also works in things like video editing software as a jog control. Commands are user configurable and new ones can be created. The blue glowy can be set to pulse at a user selectable rate when the machine is asleep or all the time. Otherwise the glowy varies with the volume level; although this isn't consistent, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't with the glowy staying the same level until some point in time when you adjust the volume and it begins to vary with the level again.

I primarialy use the Powermate with iTunes and as the system volume. The nice combo of 'You Control: Tunes" and Powermate means I can generally leave iTunes minimized and not cluttering up the screen, volume, mute, and track control are all handy and quickly gotten to.

Alright, the Horns are on TV and I have some errands to run. A good start to my software run down but still plenty of stuff to come.

Check ya later...

iMac G5 First Week Impressions

Its been just over a week now that I have had my new iMac G5, the
PodBox, and thought I would note a few of my first impressions.

First, it was sweet that the local Apple store was carrying them in
stock and had a Bluetooth configured one. I was really expecting to
have to order it and wait for delivery, particularly since I wanted
the builtin Bluetooth module. The fact that it also came with 512megs
of RAM and in one stick was just gravy. The salesperson, Dani, was
very friendly, helpful and low pressure. She didn't try to sell me a
bunch addons and accessories, and was very patient as I roamed around
the store deciding if I needed anything else.

Setup was a breeze. The packaging was great. And it doesn't get much
easier than plugging in a power cord and turning on the machine. The
only part of the whole setup that might have thrown off a newbie or my
Mom was in getting the Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to associate
themselves with the PodBox. As I mentioned earlier this might have
been as a result of me not following the startup instructions
perfectly. Unless I missed it, it might be good to at least have a
note in the manual about possibly having to turn the mouse and
keyboard on and off to get them noticed by the iMac, or maybe I was
just impatient and should have waited longer for the iMac to find the
devices, but if that too is the case then a note to please be patient
would be welcome as well. Regardless, I have messed around enought
with Bluetooth mice and other devices to know to cycle the thing off
and on, not sure if Mom would know to do the same. This step happens
so early in the setup cycle and is crucial to have working right if
you want to use the machine that every effort should be made to ensure
the user has the information needed to properly associate the mouse
and keyboard with the iMac.

The only other slight glitch I have experienced was when installing
the Seagate external drive where the first two USB ports I plugged it
into didn't recognize the drive. When I finally plugged it into the
last USB port on the back (the topmost one) the drive immediately was
found. I did a quick google on that but nothing helpful came up and I
haven't researched it much more. Those two USB ports that didn't pick
up the drive also were dead for anything else I plugged into it until
after I had rebooted the PodBox. I am curious what might have gone on
there, is there a particular order that things should be plugged in;
drop a comment on me if you have experienced this or know anything
about what might have caused it. This is the only other issue I have
experienced so far that might have stumped Mom.

I am still amazed at how quiet the iMac is, in fact the couple of
times I have had to turn it off I had a hard time knowing when it had
shut itself off until I clued in that its glowy sleep light was no
longer on. There's no power supply clunk when it shuts off, no hard
drive or dvd/cdrom spin down noise, no fans suddenly going quiet,
nothing. Even dvds and cdroms spin up pretty quietly when inserted,
just a slight whirring. I did have one cdrom that looked fine and
inserted and played fine and visually appeared no different from any
other, but once inserted and spun up it made a very audible buzzing
noise, like annoying loud. I don't know if the disc was slightly off
balance or what, and its the only disc so far that has done this, but
it was a bit disconcerting.

The screen is beautiful and very bright, I had to turn down the
brightness abit as it was near blinding and the blacks were not all
that black. So I think the brightness is set just about the halfway
mark right now and could prolly even go a notch or two lower. Full
screen dvds are awesome and I'm preferring to watch them on the PodBox
over our standard analog tv right now. The native 16:10 resolution is
sweet as well, leaving maybe a half inch black bar at the top and
bottom of the screen. Playback from either a dvd or the external drive
was smooth as silk at full screen with no hitch in its git along at
all. I also have not seen any smearing of the image that I have heard
could be a problem on LCDs when playing fast action games. So I guess
the pixel response must be pretty good as well.

Sound too is impressive considering what you are dealing with. I
haven't actually seen the speakers but they can't be too large. Firing
em out of the bottom of the box seems like a good idea. There is
decent enough bass, it ain't gonna rattle the windows, but certainly
the sound is fairly rich and full featured, not at all tinny sounding.
Stereo seperation is very good and on older music where they loved to
play with the stereo panning, like Led Zep and Jimi Hendrix, you can
really hear things panning back and forth or seperate instruments in
each channel. Still plan on hooking up some external speakers to
really rock the house, but the builtin speakers are more than
adequate.

Performance-wise I have been more than impressed. Other than a couple
of games I haven't put too big a strain on the PodBox but in general
use it is very responsive and some things almost happen too fast, you
get used to a few second delay to do something and this thing is done
just like that. The games I have played on it, 'Marble Blast Gold',
'Knights of the Old Republic', and 'WoW' have all played flawlessly.
KotOR I play at the biggest rez (only 1024x768 stretched) and with all
options on and there is no visual lag at all. WoW I have the rez
cranked up all the way (1660xSomething) and the detail turned up
fairly high. Game runs very smoothly at this setting and looks great.
There is a hitch every once i awhile, but it is hard to know if it the
vid trying to keep up or just internet lag. With no noise it seems
like the PodBox is hardly working when performing general tasks, it
just does what you ask quickly, then silently sits there waiting for
you to appoint it another task.

Lookswise I don't think it is nearly as stunning or eye catching as
the Luxo lamp iMac, but its lightyears better looking than most any PC
box. I like that double shot plastic (the clear layer over the white)
and wonder when they'll begin offering different colors. The 20"
sizewise is pretty substantial, there is no missing it sitting on the
desk there, but then you see it from the side and everyone does a
double-take, "nice monitor, where's the box?" folks ask.

To sum up, I am very happy with my purchase and don't regret it in the
least. Fit and finish are top notch. The one concern about how it
would handle games has been resolved and I'm looking forward to many
hours of pleasant and trouble free computing.

WoW

WoW installed and fired right up with nary a hitch. First thing I did after creating a character was to play with the video options. It defaulted to fairly mid quality settings. I turned everthing up to max. Restarted the game for the texture detail to take effect. You start out the game in a small town so there were quite a few peeps running around plus lots of NPCs and buildings and such. The game was fairly chunky at these settings, although still playable and possibly quite passable out in the wilds away from town and other folks. I really didn't expect to be able to play at these settings but wanted to see what the PodBox would do. Pretty impressed, the PC chunked much worse on the same settings, as did the eMac. I turned things down a bit, where the games still looks good, clip range is far off and the game plays smoothly. I'll make note of what those settings are and post them. Still a chunk or two when the screen gets really busy, but very good overall in my opinion. Doh, forgot to mention all of the above is at the max rez of I believe 1660 x whateveritis, its even a widescreen mode. Game looks great.

Later when I've grown accustomed to the eye candy I'll prolly turn things down just a bit more for a super smooth play experience, particularly in PvP where you want minimal lag time.

Another thing of note. The game installed really fast, much much faster than the PC or eMac which literally took a couple of hours, couldn't have been much more than half an hour or so. Some of this of course could be optimization by Blizzard of their code as it nears production status, but still the overall impression is much smoother gameplay than my albeit somewhat aging PC and the general feeling that the machine just isn't working nearly as hard as the other machines I have played the game on. Definitely WoW on the iMac G5 is more than just playable and you can really enjoy the game at an above average level of detail. I had pretty high expectations for the PodBox and Wow and it doesn't look like its gonna let me down.

Woot!!!

User Servicable Parts and Software Installed

Here's a link to an Apple document page which lists the User Servicable Parts. Doesn't really look like there is much which can't be replaced, as far as main assemblies go. But I don't see any direct mention of the graphics adapter so I'm guessing its probably part of that mid-plane assembly. I suppose that could be an upgrade sell at some point, you just purchase an upgrade mid-plane assembly which has your faster processor, better graphics adapter, &c.. Of interest is the fact you can replace the LCD Display DIY. That has got to entail pretty much emptying the case. I really like the fact that Apple is at least letting you pretty much rebuild your box and by yourself; just wish they would fit a slot in there for a graphics card which could be upgraded yourself.

Well, I'm gonna cut this short for the moment and still not get to my bit on the software I have installed. The WoW open beta just finished installing and I'm itching to see how it runs on the PodBox. I played in the closed beta, mainly on my PC, where it ran great with most all options and on our year old eMac, where it was able to run quite well if you turned down the graphics a bit. Knowing how my PC is setup, particularly in regards to the graphics card, I'm hoping that WoW is gonna run really well. I'll let ya know.

iMac Interview and quick take on the Seagate external

Here's a link to a nice interview with Apple's VP of Hardware Marketing. Some interesting information on the design ideas that went into the iMac. Things like the general design (double shot plastic, yum), the cooling system, speaker placement, and the decision to not include Firewire 800 plus more is all discussed.

Another interesting thing I read somewhere was the idea of this Apple DIY repair. I don't know if it is an actual program at Apple or not, but they sent some fellow a new midplane for his iMac and instructions for installing it. I like the idea of that and something I am used to, being able to fix it myself just gimme the part.

The new Seagate external USB 2.0 drive that I installed last night is working well so far. I downloaded a couple of TV series I have been following via bittorrent and watched 'Lost' earlier this evening. Nary a hitch in the video as I watched it full screen. The drive is really quiet and you never even really hear it with the normal noise around the house.

A Big Backyard...

got the Seagate 160gig external drive hooked up. Took a bit longer than I expected. It just was not being recoginized by the PodBox. I had plugged it into the bottom most USB port and after running through all the troubleshooting in the meager install guide and at their online support site I tried plugging it into the next port up. Same thing, no recoginzation, couple of checks in the Disk Utility application, few more readings of the suppport pages and finally unplugged the drive and plugged it into the topmost USB port. Bingo! Immediately it showed up on the desktop, in the Finder and in the Disk Utility tool. It is in the latter where I reformatted the preformatted FAT32 drive with Mac OS Extended (journaling). This took just a minute or two if that and all was good. Going to have to check into that about the ports, I thought all three on the back of the case were USB 2.0, but maybe since the bluetooth keyboard doesn't have the USB 1 ports they replaced two of the USB 2.0 ports on the back; but why?

Also found out that the Seagate external was also cheaper than its firewire ported brother because it does not have the one button push backup (a requirement for use with pushbutton backup it appears is firewire), this doesn't bother me in the least as I didn't really intend to use it that way and was even feeling a bit like I had this stupid button there on the front of the drive that I wasn't going to use. So somehow I cheaped myself into the drive I really wanted. Let's hope it lives up to the Seagate name in reliability.

Some Additional Hardware

Was going to start talking about the software I was putting on the PodBox, but I stopped by Frys at lunch and picked up some items I have been wanting to get and that was holding me up from installing some of the software I wanted to use. So instead I'll mention what I picked up today.

The big purchase was a Seagate ST3160026A 160 gigabyte external hard drive using USB 2.0 for $189. They had the same thing for $40 more which also had Firewire support. Actually hadn't noticed that until just now, the one I got was high up on the shelf and I had to get the sales assistant to retrieve it for me, and I thought the one down below was just mispriced or an older batch. No worries as I was planning on using the USB 2.0 connection anyways. From the information I have seen it is a bit faster than Firewire.

Others things I picked up were a 512 meg stick of memory, raising the PodBox's total to 1 gig (this was an easy install and very similar to the Airport card install I did earlier), and a deal they had on refurbished Netgear WGT624NAR Wireless G(Super G) router for $37. The NAR part of the part number must designate it as a refurb as there is no mention of it anywhere on the net. The link above is to it in its new condition. I plan on just using it in its 802.11g mode. Will be interesting though to see if I get any extra added range.

I'm gonna attach the hard drive and see how that goes. I have been wanting to install my ipodder software and Azureus bittorrent client but didn't want to dick around with moving the downloads and that shite so have been waiting on getting the external.

Back in a bit...

Test

Just a test of the post via email feature.

Hugs!

Crackin' the Case

Ready to install the Airport Extreme card I began following the instructions in the 'iMac G5 User's Guide' for performing such an operation (the other upgrade demonstrated in the User's Guide is for upgrading the machine's memory). The guide suggested placing a soft towel down to sit the iMac on while it is face down. Since mine was still in its shipping wrapping I decided to just use that. The screen itself is recessed within its frame about an 1/8th of an inch so it is not actually sitting on the surface. In the picture below the sticker in the upper lefthand corner reminds me that by using the iMac I'm accepting all of Apple's terms and conditions and what not.




The back of the case is opened by undoing three captive phillps head screws which are located in the bottom of the case where the speakers are located, then you grab hold of the base and tilt upward toward the top of the case. The case itself has some slots which fit tabs on the case back, acting as a hinge. So you hinge the bottom end of the caseback up until the tabs clear then you can remove the case back. The aluminum? base is suprisingly heavy. In the foto below notice how nicely the ports and power switch are layed out; from the bottom is the power switch, ethernet port, modem port, 2 firewire ports, 3 USB 2.0 ports, video port, analog/digital line-out jack and line-in jack. It is suggested you route the cables through the hole in the base.





Here's the inside of the iMac G5. Nice design and after years of building up PCs doesn't much resemble the familiar motherboard and internals layout of those things. The CPU itself is hidden under the cover/heatsink labeled G5. The machine came with 512megs of memory. Dani, the very helpful Apple salesperson who assisted me during the purchase of my iMac said that the 512 was in 2 256meg sticks. I was suprised to find only one slot occupied once the case was cracked. I was afraid that the machine only had the base 256megs, but I double-checked the invoice and it looked correct, so I figured maybe Dani was just mistaken. Once fired up I confirmed that the box did indeed have 512megs with the System Profiler. This is sweet because now I get it up to 1gig of memory, just purchase another 512meg stick of aftermarket memory for about a $100 and not be wasting a 256meg stick.

That's the hard drive in the upper right corner. The mainboard is mainly all the blue circuit board. Notice the couple of fan housings and air tunnels moving and routing air around to keep things cool. I think there are a coupla three more fans hiding in there somewhere. You would not believe how quiet this thing is, you hear just about nothing from it.



Airport Extreme card ready, just outta the box. Not much to the installation, plug in the antenna and snap the card into its slot.





It took a bit of fettling to get the tabs back properly seated in the case's slots. After that, tighten up the 3 captive screws and things are all buttoned up again.



Plugged it in and turned it on. Went through the usual new Mac setup without incident except for the bluetooth mouse and keyboard and this was probably my fault. While unpacking I had installed the batteries in both the keyboard and mouse and had powered them on an off. This might have messed with them a bit, as I had to turn them on and off a coupla three times before they would associate themselves with the iMac. Had I followed the start up instructions and not installed the batteries and turned on the mouse and keyboard until told to they might have found the iMac a bit faster.


After that it was time to get to installing all my most used software and such. I'll detail that next post.

Unpack and Setup

I purchased my iMac G5 at the Apple store located in Barton Creek Mall here in Austin. They had them in stock, and even had one already pre-configured with the bluetooth module I wanted. I had to get the bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse along with it, but also got 512megs of memory instead of the standard 256. I purchased the 20" model and the total cost as was $2073 before tax. I also picked up an Airport Extreme card, one of those cool Griffin Powermate volume controls and a game 'Knights of the Old Republic'.

Here's a couple of pics of the box. A little scuffed and dinged from shipping but nothing which called me any concern.



The handle on top definitely aided in lugging the box around. You have to hand to Apple for their packaging; top notch.


One interesting thing was the FedEx label on the side. Who the hell is Tech-Com computer and did this thing really come from Shanghai?



More proof of Apple's nice packaging...



...and there she sits.


First thing was to get the Airport Extreme card installed. I wanted to do this before I first fired it up. I'll document that in my next post and give you a peek inside the iMac.

Hello World

First post from me new iMac G5.

This blog will be the home of my views, reviews, comments and various other blatherings about my spankin' new machine.

Back with more later.

Hugs!