I am still alive!  Still working on the ERTMS project in Machynlleth which is going well and with each new software update the system is getting more and more stable.

Outside of work I am working on some bits in the virtual world of Second Life, a good friend of mine creates objects and I have started writing scripts in the Linden Scripting Language to make his objects more interesting/interactive.

OH!  I’ve got a new iMac!  A sexy 27″ beast, equiped with a 3.4GHz Intel i7, 16GB RAM and an AMD Radeon HD 6970M (2GB).  It replaces my three year old Mac Pro which I wasn’t using to its full potential – so if anyone wants a 2009 Mac Pro (2x Intel Xeon 5500, 6GB RAM) let me know!

Right, now I’ve got to work on something interesting for me next post!

Just over two years ago I bought myself the ThinkPad X32.  I initially installed OpenSolaris 2008.11 on it, and it got upgraded to the latest dev builds, which turned into 2009.06 stable builds.  However, when I got it out on Monday, it failed to upgrade to OpenIndiana and was running horribly slow.

The reason I grabbed it out was that my trusty MacBook (of five years now) has a problem…The fan that cools the CPU has died.  I noticed this on Monday afternoon, but I’m fairly certain that it had been dead all day – just a testament to how good these machines are, even though they do get quite toasty, they still plod on!

MacBook out of the picture, I take my ThinkPad to work with me.  I struggle with OpenSolaris a bit more, then give up and put Ubuntu 10.10 on.  It’s a very nice system.  I’m not one to advocate Linux and it’s alien commands, but so far, as a general user, I am happy with it.  Software installation doesn’t seem quite as straightforward as Apple’s App Store, but it is all very usable.

I especially like the fact that I can use Dropbox with Ubuntu.  I rely on Dropbox to keep all of my work document in sync across my two Macs (sometimes my MacBook doesn’t get out of my bag in the evening to do a profile sync).

So, I’d like to raise my glass and say: Well done Canonical and the Ubuntu community, you have impressed me beyond what I thought I’d be.

It’s true that Apple have been pumping out some great mobile devices since 2007, but each year at WWDC we see more and more iPhone and iPhone OS stuff than we do Mac hardware and OS X development.  Since the iPhone launched back in 2007 we’ve had two revisions of OS X in the form of Leopard and Snow Leopard (while there has been three (almost four) releases of the iPhone OS), and these have been treated somewhat like an afterthought to the big iPhone/iPod Touch news.

Even in the Mac hardware we’ve seen Apple take a very mobile attitude since the turn of the century.  Look at TV, you’ll see MacBook Pros and PowerBooks and TiBooks all over the place.  All the while the iMac has really taken over as Apple’s main desktop system, even that came with a handle when it was first introduced in 1998 and now the iMac is so slim that it’s very portable in itself (OK fine, you couldn’t sling it in your rucksack, but slinging it in the car is a hell of a lot easier than slinging a Mac Pro in the car!).

In January Apple announced the iPad, and in less than 60 days it has sold 2,000,000 of them!

I’ve just been watching some of the videos from the D8 conference and Steve Jobs was asked this questions by Walk Mossberg:

“Is the tablet going to eventually replace the PC?”

This was Steve’s reply:

“PC’s are going to be like trucks, they’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value. But they’re going to be used by one out of X people.  And this transformation is going to make some people uneasy, people from the PC world like you and me, it’s going to make us uneasy because the PC has taken us a long way, it’s brilliant.  And we like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, I think it’s uncomfortable for a lot of people.  And because it’s change, and a lot of vested interests are going to change and it’s going different.”

Check out the video here, the question pops up around 3:53

So, Steve at least can see a time when the PC is going to be less important.  He is reluctant to give an estimation, but could we see Apple starting to roll the ball now?

With the increased attention on Apple’s mobile devices such as the iPod, iPhone, and now the iPad, increased portability of the Mac platform, the mobile hardware, and dropping the Apple Design Awards for Mac applications, I think Apple are stating their position for the future: Computing is going mobile, and we’re here to lead it.

So what’s new?  I’ve left Camberley, worked for the MoD over the summer and am now back in Aber living with Faye (hopefully a film of the flat coming soon).  Since being in Aber I have bought a new desk, a new chair (which is annoyingly not here), a pair of new monitors and a new shiney computer.

Let’s talk about the monitors to start off with, two 22″ things from Samsung (SyncMaster T220 apparently), here they are:

As you can see from the picture, a nice wide desk that is also quite long.  Plenty of room for lots of crap!

So, that are these screens attached to?

• 2 x Quad-Core Xeons (5500)
• 6GB of RAM (DDR3 1066MHz)
• 3 x Hard drives, (1 x 640GB, 2 x 500GB)
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
• 2 x DVD±RDL/DVD±RW/CD-RW drives
• Wi-Fi & Bluetooth

Guessing that you’ve either heard me shout it about, or have guesst that, yes, it’s a Mac Pro!  Here’s some pics of it:

I do love it,  I’ve quickly found that 6GB of memory isn’t very much at all, not once you start ripping DVD’s and starting up virtual machines….I’ve found that the 64-bit apps do run quite a bit faster, and don’t really take up much more memory than their 32-bit equivilants.

I still have my trusty MacBook, I’m running ChronoSync to keep the two machines in check, though I’m hoping to develop an open alternative in the next year or two.

Some last pictures before I finish this off, one of my main desk, and another of my desk from last year:

Just over a week agao I found that my Macbook wasn’t charging, but the charger was plugged in and on. I inspected the cable and found that it had melted just outside of the transformer!

I temporarily fixed it with some blue insulation tape, but today, it failed all together

I have already ordered one off of eBay, ordered on Tuesday and dispatched the following day. Should hopefully be here anytime soon.

In the mean time, I have fixed the transformer A fair bodge job, but it seems to work now.
Prior to the work, I spent about an hour trawling the internet for a how-to, couldn’t find one, so here’s my own.

My burnt area was right up close to the transformer, so I needed to get in to sort out this problem. First, I cut the wire close to the transformer, so the magsafe adaptor is connected to the wire and burnt/damaged wire. I then set about forcing off the little clips the pop out enabling you to wrap up the cable. I couldn’t find a way of preserving these, so they were snapped off. Also, snap out the little metal clip which makes them springy.

After this, I needed to break into the casing. This is hard as it seems to be one, moulded unit. So I forced the rubbery flex protector where the little stub of cable clinged and managed to fish out the rubber material. I then had several holes into the case. To get the case open ‘simply’ take a screw driver and a hammer (that can’t be good?), then chisel away at the plastic in the gap. After about two hours, you should have chipped through the casing. Well done! You will hear cracking as you chip away. Don’t be worried!

With the case off, you will see the little transformer, wrapped in copper, guessing this is to dissipate the heat. You can carefully unwrap the copper plates, and slide out the inner board. With the top exposed, you can nip away at the white and black wires just at the base of the last of the rubbery flex protector.

White is the core, black is the shield, terms may be wrong, but essentially, the white wire will be connected to the innermost set of cables, and the the black wire will be connected to the outer cables.

Now, some of my crap soldering. I soldered the core first, then the shield. I wrapped some insulation tape around the core so that the connections didn’t touch.

Wrap the copper casing back around the board, I taped it down with some more insulating tape. Carefully putting everything back into the case, I then put loads of insulating tape around the case to keep it all together!