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That moment when the mac mini that holds all your stuff doesn't start. You push various combinations of buttons, nothing. You begin to think of how old the computer is, how it's been on 24/7 for four or five years, all the stuff you keep in it (but that is kind of secondary in that it is all backed up). Reset SMC. Nothing. Leave it till after I've had a shower and a first coffee. Then, unplug everything from the USB ports, press the button... and it starts. Phew.
I was hoping this week-end would be a little more sedate than last. It was -but not by much. On Friday I went to Glitch, a little 80's night in a pub in darkest Hackney -all of which doesn't sound very auspicious but it was a good night with much dancing and catching up with friends old and new -and an encounter with someone from a previous life, something good, someone with whom it was good to reconnect.
Saturday brought lessons and a computer repair job. I hadn't done that for many years and then after sorting out a pupil's Mac she has been recommending me to people. This was the usual 'my laptop has become very very slow'. On checking it, trying to run a browser, MS Word and a couple of other things on 2 GB memory in these times wasn't going to be blazing fast in the best of cases. Then, looking into it, I begin to find start up items for the infamous MacHelper and Genieo -of course the machine was slow. It is often said by mac fans (like myself, although I'm not remotely as.. ardent as I used to be) that there are no viruses for the Mac and this is technically true -but there is quite a bit of malware out there, that often relies on our being off guard or on the same sort of instinct that tells us that our numbers will win, this week it is going to happen. Or that the nice man from the email really is going to give us a few hundred thousand pounds if we keep that couple of million for him, we only have to give him these advance and our bank details.
I left the computer half way through sorting it out, having replaced the slow spin hard disk for an SSD and having 8 GB to replace the original 2 later. Went to some birthday drinks at the Camden Black Heart -I've said this before, I'm off rock pubs. Anywhere where you have to shout to get heard and strain to hear what the other party says is not a place I want to stay long. Ok, so I'm getting old. From there I went to Yesterday's Shadow at the Pack and Carriage and danced a bit and conversed some more. On Sunday I had my nightmare lesson, which I survived ok, then a lovely little gathering for Sunday roast with people at the Water Rats. I didn't know most of the people but it was a very good afternoon. Came back to try the 8GB again (it hadn't worked the first time, not a good idea to try to do this kind of thing at 3:00 am after a night out) and this time it worked. Good thing I don't have to get up early on Mondays and work early.
Saturday brought lessons and a computer repair job. I hadn't done that for many years and then after sorting out a pupil's Mac she has been recommending me to people. This was the usual 'my laptop has become very very slow'. On checking it, trying to run a browser, MS Word and a couple of other things on 2 GB memory in these times wasn't going to be blazing fast in the best of cases. Then, looking into it, I begin to find start up items for the infamous MacHelper and Genieo -of course the machine was slow. It is often said by mac fans (like myself, although I'm not remotely as.. ardent as I used to be) that there are no viruses for the Mac and this is technically true -but there is quite a bit of malware out there, that often relies on our being off guard or on the same sort of instinct that tells us that our numbers will win, this week it is going to happen. Or that the nice man from the email really is going to give us a few hundred thousand pounds if we keep that couple of million for him, we only have to give him these advance and our bank details.
I left the computer half way through sorting it out, having replaced the slow spin hard disk for an SSD and having 8 GB to replace the original 2 later. Went to some birthday drinks at the Camden Black Heart -I've said this before, I'm off rock pubs. Anywhere where you have to shout to get heard and strain to hear what the other party says is not a place I want to stay long. Ok, so I'm getting old. From there I went to Yesterday's Shadow at the Pack and Carriage and danced a bit and conversed some more. On Sunday I had my nightmare lesson, which I survived ok, then a lovely little gathering for Sunday roast with people at the Water Rats. I didn't know most of the people but it was a very good afternoon. Came back to try the 8GB again (it hadn't worked the first time, not a good idea to try to do this kind of thing at 3:00 am after a night out) and this time it worked. Good thing I don't have to get up early on Mondays and work early.
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Lovely evening spent with the Mac heads of the old u.c.s.m -that is, uk.comp.sys.mac of the old Usenet. (who include of course quite a few geeks, but also an ex producer of 'Panorama' and a magician, as well as other interesting people) at Merkato, the Ethiopian restaurant on Caledonian Road, like every year since about 2000. This started with the Apple Expo at the Design Centre in Upper Street (which is how we started going to Merkato). It went more or less like this: you would turn up, meet with them lot, look around ('ah, yes, there's computers in here'), maybe have a slightly closer look if there was anything interesting but more normally retreat to the Chinese place near, come back, look again ('ah yes, computers still here') and then head off to Merkato for a lovely and amazingly cheap Ethiopian dinner and getting to know better people you'd only met before in plain text on a computer screen. So eventually we gave up on the Apple Expo (oh, ok, the Apple Expo also died at some point) but we carried on meeting once a year in November, catching up on what everybody did in the meantime, maybe greet a few new faces and, also, lament the parting of some old one, maybe in extremis also discuss something geeky. This year our resident magician put on a show, entertaining not just us but the whole rest of the constituency of the restaurant including the people who run it. His name, by the way, is Martin S Taylor and he's very good, if you happen to need a magician. I nearly missed it this year, I was so tired when I came home that I was dozing off in complete oblivion, but one of them phoned and I ran, picked the car and took myself there pronto...
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I had had a semi-dead iPod nano first generation sitting in a drawer for years; the battery would only last minutes. Then a few weeks ago when I was just about to throw it away I saw somewhere that there had been a battery problem with a lage batch of those and Apple were replacing them (rather than repair such an old device). Checked at the Apple support page, sent it away to Apple and yesterday I got a lovely Nano previous generation (wrist-watch style) arrive via courier. Win!
If you have one of those old Nanos in the same condition it might be
worth the while to check at:
http://www.apple.com/uk/support/
If you have one of those old Nanos in the same condition it might be
worth the while to check at:
http://www.apple.com/uk/support/
Initiating the move to a Mac mini -which is mostly because it would be handy to have access to more than the 6GB that my current 2008 iMac can have. The mini can have 16GB. Also even the slowest Ivy Bridge mini would be a bit faster than my early C2D iMac. Apart from that there isn't really anything wrong with the iMac -which I have to sell, of course, to help pay for the new little box. So, I might have an iMac available for sale in a couple of weeks' time.
Not trusting Apple's Migration Assistant -failed to copy across the soundfonts in /Library/sounds and ~/Library/Sounds; what else has it failed to copy that I won't have noticed? Cannot do a straight clone (or indeed use the iMac's SSD as is) as the mini wouldn't boot from it. There are other things that will take a little while to sort out. The idea is in any case to put an SSD instead of the poky HDD that comes with the mini, probably the one I already have.
Not trusting Apple's Migration Assistant -failed to copy across the soundfonts in /Library/sounds and ~/Library/Sounds; what else has it failed to copy that I won't have noticed? Cannot do a straight clone (or indeed use the iMac's SSD as is) as the mini wouldn't boot from it. There are other things that will take a little while to sort out. The idea is in any case to put an SSD instead of the poky HDD that comes with the mini, probably the one I already have.
This is probably only of interest to ![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bellajonez, shadowphiar and countb but, hey, just in case.
The pictures of the ucsm meet at the Mac Expo and the dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant which followed, are here
bellajonez, shadowphiar and countb but, hey, just in case.The pictures of the ucsm meet at the Mac Expo and the dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant which followed, are here
This is probably only of interest to bellajonez, shadowphiar and countb but, hey, just in case.
The pictures of the ucsm meet at the Mac Expo and the dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant which followed, are here
bellajonez, shadowphiar and countb but, hey, just in case.The pictures of the ucsm meet at the Mac Expo and the dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant which followed, are here
.
