Any landing you can walk away from is a good one

And any landing where the aircraft can be used again is a great one

This, Qantas, was only a good one.

(Ok, in fairness, they'll probably have it in the air again in a few months, but they can't /immediately/ fly it out of Manila)

I've been writing a lot of Perl lately for work/play.

Work's Perl has been to interrogate our Cisco network and update our Configuration Management DataBase with the details from it. This is nifty, trust me.

Last night's fun Perl was for making the wedding invitations. I did the design in Illustrator, which alas, does not have a Mail Merge function. So instead, I exported them to SVG (thanks to davyd for the idea) and put "AAAAAAAA" and "BBBBBBBB" and "CCCCCCCC" for the names and an XXX for a sheet number, and wrote a Perl script to merge our wedding guest list (from Google Docs, natch) and output the merged SVGs. I then tweaked the layout as needed, and saved and got them ready to print. Total time taken was about an hour, including writing the Perl script.

Mmm better wedding planning through Perl and Google.

I'm convinced there's a whole bunch of dead chickens in bizarre voodoo rituals coming out of the VMWare factory.

We just upgraded our VMWare ESX cluster from 3.0.1 to 3.5 and added two new machines. All while I was able to remain logged in with a home directory on virtual machine hosted on there. I am reminded of the time I was able to upgrade the RAM in both of existing servers, the while remaining logged in to virtual machines running on there.

To make this clear: You have two machines. You turn one of them off (with warning..) and the servers running on it migrate to the second one. You upgrade that machine, turn it back on, migrate the virtual servers back, turn off the other one, do the upgrade, turn it back on, and hey presto, you've kept your virtual machines running despite turning off both of the servers they were running on. This is very cool stuff :)

You know me and my links.

Link the first : http://lifehacker.com/398961/get-your-computer-online-using-your-iphones-data-connection .. very nifty!

Link the second: http://www.esquire.com/features/heath-ledger-last-days .. a first-person narrative of Heath Ledger's last days and thoughts on the afterlife and how he ended up there. I find this sort of thing interesting to read/hear (like in American Beauty), but reading it about Heath does really snap the old sentimental heart strings a bit. I know his death touched a lot of people, including people reading my LJ, but to the vast majority of you, he was, after all, a ghost on a screen, just one who did his job really well.

It gets to us from Perth because we are really just a big country town. It is hard for people outside of Perth to understand just how small Perth is. Sure, it has about 1.2 million people, but they all know each other (ok, not literally, but surprisingly close). To put it in perspective, if he had not been a star, if he had just been a regular joe like me, and had died the way he did, it would have still gotten in front few pages of the local newspaper. Needless to say, Dark Knight sessions have been sold out in most of the cinemas here for days and days running.

He and I weren't friends, but we'd met once, when I spent 5 hours sitting behind him during a TV show shoot in his early career, I have some friends who had friends who dated him and I had a BBQ with some of his school friends earlier this year. This town is _small_. Reading these narratives of his life written by some writer in New York who may not have ever met him is odd. Not bad, just odd. To many of us, he wasn't the international superstar many people lauded him as, he was just a Perth boy who'd done well, and we miss him representing us.

So, you may recall how I was a little annoyed at not getting a free trip to WWDC this year in San Francisco, right?

At the end of each WWDC, they have a concert. Last year was Ozomatli, who were pretty cool.

Had a chat to my newly returned boss, who did go to WWDC this year, and asked casually who the act was.

This year?

Barenaked. Ladies.

sonofa...

I found myself pondering iphones again today, but again I am reminded that some of the sacrifices made for carriers/ease of use piss me off, as do a few other things about them...

1) MAJOR - No bluetooth send/receive of photos/ringtones. While you can email photos, it is a pain
2) MAJOR - No flash on the camera - I use mine as a flashlight all the time
3) MINOR - Phone with a data plan that I can't tether (either by bluetooth or cable) and use as a modem. But how often will I have and need to use my a laptop somewhere without a wireless connection?
4) TRIVIAL - Only 2MP Camera.. I have one of those on my current phone, but the iPhone one seems better

But it does have some pretty big pluses..

1) Internet! Anywhere! The number of times I've wanted to just check something quick online (I don't mean LJ, I mean prices, reviews, bus times, etc) and haven't been able to..
2) GPS! I love geotagging stuff I take for flickr
3) iPod!

Hmm!

This Google Document from the Internets shows various plans and options. I'm looking at the $49/month Yes Cap Plan. Hmm!

Regardless of what else happens today, the day cannot get any better.

I'm sure the internets wants to see this, but this is the bite I got yesterday from the march fly/horse fly. It's quite red and itchy, and feels rather warm. It's also grown slightly (about 1cm across) during the day. Yay!

Stupid bugs.

Hmm this looks cool, but not for $385 - http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/9955/

However, it seems pretty much the same as this $85 beastie off eBay - http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Portable-Microscope-USB-1-3MP-Video-Camera-Gemstone-Gem_W0QQitemZ180263025114QQihZ008QQcategoryZ7321QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Like, the plastic moldings even look exactly the same.

Mmm got bitten by a march fly today. It was painful. Ouchies.
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This series of three slashdot comments is awesome - http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=613723&cid=24187395

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Amazingly, Project Kuta as it was originally called, by me, is going well. I started bugging people about providing Central Email and Calendaring last year, and with the departures earlier this year of most of the troublemakers in ITS, it's got off the ground, and looks like it will be available by the end of the year. Yay!

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The MacBook Necromancy project is going well. I'm waiting on some parts, such as two USB hubs and a SATA extension cable. The USB hubs will be canibalised and spliced into the two internal USB buses, so I can plug in stuff like front panel card readers, etc. For one, I will cut the cable to the Bluetooth adaptor in half and use that connector, and for the other, I will be using an old LVDS cable from an iBook (which thankfully uses the same .5mm pitch 20 connector as the MacBook) to pull out the USB that usually goes to the iSight in the bezel, without destroying the MacBook LVDS/USB cable. I also need to confirm my theory on exactly how transistors work, before I start modifying an ATX power supply for it.

The one part I'm still debating on is the MCE Optibay.. at $90 for a converter worth $10 and some plastic worth 50c. Unfortunately, the ODM's I've contacted to make a clone, wanted minimum order quantities of about 5000, at about $3 each. Erm, yeah. Maybe 250, I could accept as a risk, but not 5000. In fact, I don't think there's that much market for them. Oh well, I think I'll just buy an OptiBay if I need it.

I also need to get some fine enamel insulated wire and practice my fine soldering on the dead PC motherboard I have, before soldering in wires for a power switch for the MacBook logic board.

I'm cleaning out many of my old Macs, and I have some old ones in need of a good home..

- 1 x Macintosh Plus
- 1 x Macintosh 512K
- 1 x Macintosh Classic
- 1 x Macintosh Classic II
- 1 x Macintosh Color Classic
- 1 x Macintosh SE

Otherwise, they will be committed to the e-Waste recycling bin at UWA next Monday, and thereupon crushed and recycled, despite surviving in working condition for around 20 years.

Think of the poor old Macs :(

This was my (and frenchiephish and non-LJ using co-worker)'s day. You can see my leg in the left of this photo plodding away at a serial console to the switches.

We got in at 10ish, started unpatching everything, then untangled everything. We all went to lunch between 12:30 and 1:30, and then I piked out at 5:30ish, when most of it was plugged in and up and going.

Yes, this is the hard way, but we needed to move some switches to install a redundant core for this building, and if we were going to that, we may as well make it neat, because, you know, we're Arts. Click the link to check out the before and after photos too.

I also left in the middle to answer a request to buy an iMac for my grandma ($1250 from Digilife Mt Hawthorne for 20 inch/2ghz/1Gb/250Gb!), which we're setting up tomorrow (and she is paying me back for it, I'm not /that/ nice).

Made the mounting plate I mentioned yesterday, so I didn't have to hold the heatsink on with my finger. I'm not sure what I'd do without all the M2 nuts and screws I bought in Japan.

Got MacOS X installed on it without a hitch, using an external DVD drive. The only problem now is that it always thinks the Internal LCD screen is there, even when it isn't. And turning on mirroring if the internal screen /isn't/ actually attached makes everything go weird.

I might have to look into somehow doing the reverse of "Screen Spanning Doctor" or something.

I've done some poking around on various websites, including virginmobile to see how much I currently spend, and am looking at iPhones, of course.

Currently, I'm spending about $30/month on phone calls, and I own my own phone outright. I paid $600 for it at the beginning of 2005 I think. I'd be looking at purchasing a 16Gb iPhone for (gulp) $849 and going on the $50/month cap, then in two months time, getting it unlocked for free.

For $50/month prepaid, I'd get calls at 78c/minute, vs 80c/minute on the $49/month contract, 500MB of data (vs 250MB on the $49/month contract).. I fail to see why one would want a contract...

Further reading also shows it will be cheaper to call the UK, USA, Canada or Singapore than it would be to call another Australian number (wtfbbq?)

Mark Twain asked, What is a Man?

An easier question is, What is a MacBook? I recently bought one for a pittance, after it had white wine spilt on it, on the proviso that I would get the data back off it. It seemed quite dead, with a white goo all over the logic board and RAM.

So I parted it out, but just in case, I washed the logic board and RAM with tap water, and gave it a bit of a scrub with an old toothbrush.

And left it to dry for a week.

Because you know, I'm never one to pass up an opportunity for some Mac necromancy.

So the first question, what would you need at a minimum to see if it boots?


Then, some way to turn it on, as the power switch is in the keyboard/top case..

Oh, I wonder what these pads labelled "RST BTN" do? :D

And will it blendwill it boot?


Great Scott! And yes, that is my finger pushing down on the heatsink, as there aren't any screws to hold it in place. If I wanted to do this longer term, I'd grab a piece of acrylic (of which I think I have an offcut of just the right size) and drill holes in it to mount this all in place.

Of course, the keyboard (which includes the power button) had failed, as has optical drive, but it does seem to power up at least.

This is a bit of a study for what the bare minimums to boot a MacBook are. This is pretty much how I started with the Photo frames, elsewhere on my flickr site.

I'm not sure what I'll do with this one.. I don't need a MacBook, and a new keyboard and optical drive and power adapter will set me back almost $500, on top of the money I already paid for the scrap, vs the AUD$1349 for a new one, and there's always the likelyhood this one isn't going to last as long as it should otherwise.

Maybe I'll make a server cube or something. Hmm! I wonder if it will boot without the Internal LCD attached? An experiment for another day, as I don't have any mini-DVI converters to plug an external display in with. I will keep you all posted.

Co-worker Chey's sister's 14 inch iBook G4 1.42ghz had a broken screen (one of the demux chips down the side had blown or something.. very funky looking, but fatal :P). I have a 14 inch iBook G4 1.2ghz for scrapping (dodgy logic board), so I offered to swap over the LCDs for $cheep$. In theory, this is the easiest thing to swap on an iBook, except the keyboard and battery.

First, the easy way..
- Remove back cover of screen
- Remove 4 screws holding the panel in place
- Unstick EMI sheilding, unplug LVDS cable from LCD
- Swap panels, replug, re screw, all back together in 15 minutes total
- Easy!

Except, that between the 1.2ghz and 1.42ghz models, Apple had gone from using a LCD panel with a 20 pin connector, to a panel with a 30 pin connector.

The hard way..
- Remove iBook top case, bottom case, screen module
- Swap entire screen modules, not just LCD panels
- Reverse activities
- All back together in about 45 minutes to an hour

But, I get to step two, and find that Apple has changed a LOT of things between the 1.2ghz and 1.42ghz models, and so I can't just do that

Apple's stated changes:
- ATi 9550 Graphics

What else they changed:
- As mentioned, 20 pin to 30 pin LCD connector
- Went from Airport card and internal USB Bluetooth wadget, to internal combo bluetooth airport card
- Changed length, connectors of Antenna cables for above (these are part of the screen module too)
- Changed pin count of motherboard to LCD inverter cable
- Changed location of sleep sensing reed switch from screen module to main case, so also a bunch of magnets
- Changed location of modem connector internally,
- Changed location of LVDS data cable connector on logic board

So, we're left with just one way to affect this repair, without ordering in the correct Chi Mei LCD panel.

The Alex way.

- Dis-assemble entire screen module, x 2 (6 tiny thin cables, lots of tape, screws, clips)
- Re-assemble into one new working screen module, despite changes in dimensions and lengths of cables
- Re-model LVDS cable bends to fit around new modem location on logic board
- Re-assemble
- Test
- Done, and it only took 3 and a half hours!

I'm pleased to say that the MacBook is a lot easier to do stuff on than an iBook, because really, they are diabolical.

To lose one 747 could be considered bad luck. To lose 2 x 747s in two months, looks like carelessness.

With apologies to Oscar Wilde..

Dear Optus, Telstra and Vodafone,

I know you all think you're being smart, and coy, by not releasing useful details on iPhone plan or handset pricing, despite the face we're only 6 days out. I'm sure you are all waiting till the other releases theirs. You want to ride the crest of popularity of the device, with not little distractions like people complaining about how much it costs on one network versus the others.

But there's a problem. People buying iPhones, by and large, aren't cretins. Some carriers have made references to this by comments about understanding the iPhone market segment want pay as you go and outright purchases of handsets. We will analyse your plans, far more than you'd like.

Delaying the release of the plans will only delay my purchase of the iPhone, not make me choose something that is more beneficial to you than it is to me.

Regards,
Alex.

Happy Canada day you punks :)

I've just got around to clearing a bunch of photos off my phone camera and put them on flickr. Many of them are funny things I've seen in my travels. Check them out! :D