In an interesting move (well, interesting if you sell software) Adobe have announced that you can now rent CS 3 Design Premium:
Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Subscription Edition
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Subscription Edition is available to customers in Australia. The box price of AU$129 includes your first month of subscription service. Subscription pricing is AU$129 per month for a 12-month contract, and AU$199 a month on an ad hoc basis.
You get full CS3 versions of InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver and Acrobat 8 Professional. All future updates are included as long as you are still subscribed. Coretech is taking preorders if you’re interested.
Be warned that the 12 month subscription can not be cancelled and automatically renews unless you turn off the “auto-renew-subscription” option.
At this stage this is the only product that you can get via subscription. I’m sure there’ll be more.
Good news from the rumour mill.
It’s old news that Vodafone will be selling iPhones in Australia (and lots of other countries) and now it appears that Optus will be as well.
With the US and UK running down stock and end-of-lining the first generation iPhones, it looks like we’ll be getting the second generation 3G iPhones! Yay.
Seems that none of these deals are “exclusive” so expect every telco and it’s dog to be selling these in the next few months. There is a vicious rumour that even Apple Resellers like Coretech will be able to sell them. We’ll have to hold our breath until June 9th for the low-down.
Some clients like to remove their MacBook or MacBook Pro battery when they are using their power adapter for a long time. The theory is that this will conserve their battery life.
Apple don’t like this idea:
If the battery is removed from a MacBook or MacBook Pro, the computer will automatically reduce the processor speed. This prevents the computer from shutting down if it demands more power than the A/C adaptor alone can provide.
Of course, if you bump the power adapter and unplug your laptop, you will lose all unsaved work. Not to mention that if dirt and dust collects on the battery connectors you may have problems later.
There’s an Apple article here explaining how to calibrate your battery - this should be done every couple of months.
Sounds kinda annoying to me, so I’m going to buy a second battery and one of Newertech’s battery charger and reconditioner units - gotta keep the MacBook Pro on 24/7….
I’ll let you know how I go.
If an application is playing up, it may be due to a corrupted preference file.
You can use the built-in command ‘plutil’ to verify any preference file - for example:
$ plutil -lint ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.plist
/Users/waffleblog/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.plist: OK
Please note that this utility will only check the syntax of the file, not the deeper meaning as understood by the owning application.
To check all preferences in your Library folder:
$ find ~/Library/Preferences -name “*.plist” -print0 | xargs -n1 -0 plutil -lint
(This uses -print0 and -0 to cope with spaces in filenames.)
I recently moved my 10+ years of Eudora email to Apple Mail.
The import worked well but I noticed that Apple Mail was really slow.
Thanks to Tim Gaden of Hawk Wings, it is now running much faster.
Essentially the following simple steps optimise the SQLite database (the “envelope index”) that Apple Mail uses to store indexes and subject lines of emails.
Here are the steps:
1. Quit Mail. Please BACKUP if you haven’t already.
2. Open Terminal (in Applications/Utilities).
3. Check your current ‘envelope archive’ size by entering this in the terminal:
ls -lah ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index
4. Then enter the following:
sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum;
On my 2.75GB worth of email (not including attachments) this command took about 4 minutes on my MacBook Pro - don’t worry if it takes longer.
Then check your envelope size by running the first command again. My Envelope Index went from 155MB to 134MB and the performance improvement was surprisingly good.
So we know that the humble Mac Mini can drive a SD TV just fine, but what about driving an HD TV? This guy played 1080p video with no dropped frames on a core duo Mac mini with only 512MB RAM. (Safari, Quicktime Pro and Activity Monitor were running.) Not bad for a machine with shared graphics memory.
There’s also his interesting comments on DivX versus H.264 codecs:
> you’re bound to hear a lot about DivX being better than h.264, some reasons are valid,
but for content providers (i do pro video work), h. 264 is preferred for a number of reasons - not the least of which is that its an open standard and the licensing fees are reasonable, and there is pro mac software for it. There is a ton of hardware that does broadcast quality h.264 encoding realtime - its what the pros are moving to for content distro. It streams better than anything else in its range (WM9, Real).
This is why DirecTV, Apple, Verizon, T-Mobile, Orange, Thales, and a ton of actual content makers are using h.264 rather than DivX….
This dude also uses his mini as a media centre running Vista so that he can use Microsoft’s latest Media Centre software and a remote control with more features than the Apple remote. This results in a richer TV interface than running a Mac OS X / Elgato solution but you do have to run windows.
Infinite Loop have a mini setup more as a media jukebox and less as a personal video recorder (PVR) (i.e there’s no Elgato digital TV receiver). There’s lots of good stuff in the comments here.
As a further note Elgato’s software, EyeTV now works with iTunes so you can record TV shows and have them automatically loaded into iTunes for playback on whatever device your mini is driving (HDTV with DVI to HDMI cable).
I stumbled across this most excellent table of the electromagnetic spectrum from XKCD.com.
The photo above was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from Earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance…
From Voyager’s vast distance, the Earth was captured as an infinitesimal point of light (between the two white tick marks), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo.
Carl Sagan presented the photo at a lecture in 1994:
“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.
It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
More here: Pale Blue Dot
America votes Nov 2006:
“In many ways what’s happening … is what is going on nationally – a rejection of very polarised, conservative policies,” the director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Bruce Cain, says. “People are tired of the rancour, the failure to deal with important problems, such as immigration and Iraq. They want to give a signal they are ready for something more pragmatic and compromising.”
New Element on Periodic Table
A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named “Bushcronium.”
Bushcronium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311. These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
The symbol for Bushcronium is “W”. Bushcronium’s mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons in a Bushcronium molecule, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bushcronium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “Critical Morass”. When catalyzed with money, Bushcronium activates Foxnewsium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has 1/2 as many peons but twice as many morons.
Hi All,
Just finished installing four Seagate 750GB drives into a Quad G5 on a Highpoint 2320 rocketraid card. Created one RAID 0 volume which gives a 2.73 Terrabyte volume and man, does she fly - check the picture below for speed test results…
Next week we’re installing three 750GB drives into a Quad 3GHz Mac Pro and will create a RAID 0 volume using the logic board - test results as soon as we get the Mac Pro…
The test results are in bold. The rest is the required drive throughput (speed) needed for various video standards.
This is a photo taken over looking Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, August 15 2006….
With the four drive bays, extra firewire and USB ports, a bay for a second optical drive (or even more hard drives?) and the ability to natively run Windows on top of two very fast dual core processors - these machines get a big solid tick of approval with hearty handshake and slap on the bum thrown in for good measure.
If you’re running universal binary apps (Final Cut Pro 5, iMovie etc) then the Mac Pros hoon!
If you’re running PowerPC apps (Adobe CS suite) then expect roughly the same performance as a Quad G5 from the Quad Intel 2.66GHz and about a 35% increase from the Quad Intel 3GHz beast.
According to GeekPatrol the Quad 3GHz Intel Mac Pro is 35% faster than the Quad 2.5Ghz PPC G5. Their tests showed the Quad 2.66GHz Mac Pro to be 7% faster than the Quad 2.5Ghz G5. However this test used only two RAM modules in the Mac Pro and so is probably wrong. See below for explanation.
It is important to note that you will get dramatic speed improvements by striping (RAID 0) discs and these new Mac Pros make that very easy - no need to install expensive hardware RAID cards - just use the available bays.
Continue reading ‘Mac Pro - no need to wait for Adobe anymore…’
A really good way to backup all your users home folders is to use Network Home Directories where their entire home folder resides on your server. However if you have a slow server, network or too many users an excellent option is to use Portable Home Directories (PHD).
Using PHD the user’s home directory is synchronised to the server only at login and/or logout. This greatly reduces the network traffic, allows the user to leverage the full power of their workstation while also ensuring their data is backed up. Great for users who primarily use one machine and mobile users with laptops.
The following instructions are taken without permission from the Apple Discussions list. Many, many thanks to Derek (DY-E)!
Continue reading ‘Portable Home Directories - OS X Server 10.4′
Here’s a good article on how to finally get shared, editable calendars in iCal - YAY!
I’m depressed today.
This week our government is trying to push laws through that force all asylum seekers to be processed off shore and another that forces aborigines to swap title over their land for 99 years in return for basic needs such as housing and health.
I believe that reforming the Land Rights Act is necessary but we need more than a one day senate inquiry and disinformation from governement senators to determine what is the best course of action. This is a blatant and immoral attempt to open up the Northern Territory for the mining of uranium.
The Migration Act changes are simply horrible. “…between 1992 and 2005, Australia was the only country in the world to require the detention of both adults and children seeking asylum for the duration of their processing.” Now we’re going to do it again but this time in other people’s countries. We know the damage done to people kept in detention for years (especially children) and we now know that repatriated refugees are often killed.
But what are Australians worried about? The price of oil. Why is petrol so expensive? Well, apart from the fact that it is a scarce and diminishing resource we are also restricting supply from Iraq by maintaining a pointless and bloody war there. Greg Palast has some interesting points on this here. “The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil Oil alone by just over $666 billion. (The devil is in the details.)”
So what do you do if you actually care about the greater good and not just your hip pocket? One excellent idea is to get along to www.getup.org.au and sign their petitions. An even better idea is to ring your coalition senator and express dismay at the new draconian laws.
Fight the fear and get involved - these things only happen because we let them happen.
…cause a client asked…
There is no Utopia in lightning protection. Lightning may ignore every defense man can conceive. A systematic hazard mitigation approach to lightning safety is a prudent course of action.
http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lhm/lpts.html
The best you can do to protect yourself from lightning is to have all equipment and power single grounded and install a decent surge filter (or divertor) at your mains power panel. Note that if the house is situated in a dry or rocky area getting a good ground may be problematic. If you are in a heavy lightning area then a copper lightning rod (commonly called air terminals) may be prudent. On top of your low impedance, well-bonded equipotential ground system and mains power surge arrestor you may want to get (from Coretech of course) surge protectors for your computer and data equipment.
If you provide a list of the equipment that you will be using we can get a quote to you for surge protection equipment in your home office. If you want backup battery power included - please let me know how long you’d like to run what in a power outage.
“The importance of a single-point protection ground cannot be stressed enough. All equipment should be bonded to one single earth ground. If you have some equipment on one ground, and other equipment on another ground, it is quite likely that in a nearby strike that there will be a large voltage difference between the two grounds. This means that the equipment will be at different voltages, sometimes high enough to get arcing from one to another.
A Single Ground Rod is Seldom Enough: Tests done over the past few years show that in most cases, a single 6 or 8 foot ground rod is NOT enough, even when the ground is salted to improve conductivity. The problem is, in arid climates with dry soil, it could take as many as a dozen rods to get it down to the 10 ohms ground resistance that is usually accepted as the optimum (25 ohms is the NEC minimum). To get down to the 25 ohm NEC minimum, you may have to use 2-3 10 foot rods, all bonded together with #6 wire and copper wire clamps. However, if you cannot do this, something is better than nothing. In some cases you may have to go so far as to bury lengths of bare copper wire or copper pipe in trenches.”
http://www.windsun.com/Lightning_Protection.htm
Importantly you should also get the telephone circuit protected. Lightning striking 300 meters away will generate a large electro-magnetic field that will fry modems (and maybe computers) connected to phone and power lines - modems are especially sensitive to this. An external modem is usually a good idea (Apple USB External Modem at $79 is excellent value).
Most of the work to protect you from lightning strike should be done by a good electrician who knows the standards. Lightning strikes generate between 10,000 and 30,000 amps in a few microseconds so having a well grounded system is the first and most important step.
The PM & treasurer reckon that oil and banana price increases are behind Australia’s climbing inflation. That’s just bananas.
Austalians normally spend $14 million a week on bananas. Post cyclone Larry we’re spending $7 million per week. Whilst that is an impressively large number of the bendy yellow fruit - here’s a few other items on our weekly shopping list:
- Housing - $1.2 billion.
- Cars - $2.8 billion.
- Alcohol - $180 million.
- Cigarettes - $88 million.
Gee bananas don’t really rate do they? Adds new meaning to the term “Banana Republic.”
Based on 2003-04 ABS and 2006 NRMA figures and with thanks to crikey.com.
Whether or not David Hicks is guilty of a crime has yet to be determined.
He has been kept in a US military prison in Cuba for 4.5 years during which time all other western countries have removed their citizens.
The following from Major Michael Mori’s guest blog at www.getup.com.au
David has been detained for four and a half years without trial, and has been in isolation for the past four months. He sits in a concrete room for 23 hours a day. He is allowed one book per week and one hour outside his cell for exercise in what best could be described as a large dog kennel, and to shower….The Australian government keeps saying we can not prosecute David in Australia. That is simply because David has not violated any law, Australian or international - not that the laws don’t exist. If the charges against David in the commission system were valid international law crimes, Australia could charge him with these offenses. But the charges made up against David by the commission system are not real. Every time the Australian government says “we can not charge Hicks”, they are in fact saying “David Hicks has not violated any law”. But the Australian government tries to use this as a reason to abandon him. It should be reason to stand up for him and bring him home to his family.
There is an extremely important principle at stake here - people can not be held without trial. No matter what your opinion on David Hick’s motives or actions, he is being detained illegally and our government does nothing because most of us simply don’t care.
Get over to www.getup.com.au and sign the petition - we must protect our basic rights.
These sobering figures are from the United Nations:
January: 1,778 civilian deaths
February: 2,165 civilian deaths
March: 2,378 civilian deaths
April: 2,284 civilian deaths
May: 2,669 civilian deaths
June: 3,149 civilian deaths
14,423 in the first half of the year.
What a god-damned mess.
