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Month: December 2010

XC Skiing from Home

Published December 13, 2010

Having my own cross country skis and with this weekend’s sudden snow fall frozen into hard pack I decided to see how well skiing the field next to my condo would go. Two laps (roughly a mile) later and I can say that I’m now able to have an enjoyable (albeit short and flat) ski from my house. There was even sufficient moonlight to make skiing perfectly fine without a headlight.

The snow is so firmly packed that it could be cut with a saw which allowed me to easily glide along on top of it, only occasionally sinking through recently-drifted powder. It was also deep enough that only once did I run into brush sticking through the snow and have to deviate course. Hopefully this means that the trails at Stony Creek will be open and groomed for skiing this weekend.

(Oh, and the footprints next to the ski tracks? Those are from Roxie heading out to go to the bathroom and then my fetching her deposit from the snow.)

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Free: Computer Stuff

Published December 11, 2010

Here’s some free computer stuff for whoever would like to have it and save it from the landfill or whatever the ‘recyclers’ end up doing with it. The cases also contain lots of useful steel if you’re in need of some epoxy coated (or painted) flat sheet metal.

Stuff is as follows and (to the best of my knowledge) all works fine. Computers are without hard drives, but otherwise (generally) include RAM, etc. I’ve probably got enough spare other parts to get you running as well:

· 2x 17″ CRT Monitors
· 2x enterprise-class switches (1x 10mbit, 1x 100mbit)
· 2x Pizza Box Gateway Computers (Excellent Firewalls)
· 2x PATA drive enclosures. Supports hot swap if your controller does.
· 1x Compaq Deskpro EN (Good Firewall)
· 1x AMD Athlon Computer (Don’t remember specs, decent gaming computer from ~5 years ago.)
· 1x Dell Dimension XPS P90 (real vintage 5V Pentium CPU!)
· 4x ATX Cases (InWin full tower, InWin mid tower, quality generic, Doggy)
· 1x Former Gaming Computer (O/C’d Celeron, metal flake blue case, etc.)

This is all available for pickup at my house in Shelby Township, or I’ll meet you at a local trail or whatnot if you know exactly what you want. Contact me either here via PM here, via email at c0nsumer@nuxx.net, Google Talk at steve.vigneau@gmail.com, or AIM at Iamc0nsumer.

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A New iMac‽‽‽

Published December 10, 2010

 

This past weekend I took my iMac back into the Apple Store to try and get the now-blemished (after another repair) display resolved. Per usual a part was ordered, and on Thursday morning I took the machine in to have the display replaced. Last night when checking on the repair status I noticed that the machine was ready, so I called Apple to see if I could pick it up. Extremely unexpectedly, the person who took my call explained that the data transfer was almost complete and that I should be able to pick it up in the morning. I found this very bizarre, as a data transfer is normally only done when upgrading a machine or replacing the hard disk.

It turns out that something went wrong during the repair and instead of having me wait on another part I was going to be given a new / replacement iMac and the data transfer was to get everything moved over. Talking to the tech when I picked up the machine it sounds as if someone “plugged something in wrong” or somehow made the logic board (motherboard in Apple-speak) fail and instead of waiting for yet another part to arrive Apple instead opted to just give me a new machine. This includes a receipt exchanging my machine for the new one, AppleCare transfer, and all.

The machine returned to me is the Mid 2010 model which has some nice upgrades over my original one (Late 2009), as shown here. Specifically, it has a slightly faster processor (2.96GHz Intel i7-870 vs. 2.80GHz Intel i7-860) and better video (ATI Radeon HD 5750 w/1GB RAM vs. ATI Radeon HD 4850 w/ 512MB RAM) and a comparable hard drive (Western Digital WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0 vs. Seagate ST31000528ASQ).

The nicest upgrade was the way the RAM ended up being reconfigured. When I took my Late 2009 27″ iMac in it was fitted with 4x 2GB 1066MHz PC3-8500 SO-DIMMs; two OEM Apple parts and two purchased from Crucial. When returned to me the new / Mid 2010 machine had 2x Apple 4GB 1333MHz PC3-10667 SO-DIMMs. This swap was necessitated by the newer machine’s faster RAM requirements, and it’s really nice to see that Apple replaced things in this way. Before this I had no free slots, which meant that going above 8GB of RAM would have required me to throw out two existing modules. Now there are two free slots, so whenever the next upgrade comes around I won’t have to toss out any parts.

This worked out pretty well, as the new machine has a just-fine display that came wrapped up just like new. There’s a slight small bit of what appears to be plastic on the inside of the glass in the lower right corner, but it’s so small that I don’t really notice it and can probably remove it with a slight puff of air; nothing to complain about at all. There was also a small black smudge on the front bezel, but this came off with a bit of alcohol.

While this whole experience was a bit frustrating overall, I’m content that it worked out this way. I received a newer machine, it appears to work fine, and my inconvenience was offset by a minor, but nice upgrade. And to think it all started with nothing more than a bad optical drive…

(As part of the upgrade I also received the disc set that goes with the machine, and this includes an iLife 11 install disc. This will be quite handy.)

Update on October 21, 2014: When at the Apple store attempting to get the GPU in this iMac fixed for free, I found out what happened to my original 2009 iMac: the LVDS connector on the logic board was damaged. Apple must have then opted to replace the entire machine.

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24.4°F and Emerald Ash Borer

Published December 7, 2010

Had my camera battery not died in the 24.4°F weather (confirmed by my bike computer while leaving the trail) I would have a better photo than this.

This place is exactly where Nick, Erik, and I spent the bulk of our time on Sunday clearing the trail, and there’s now another fallen tree there. Thankfully this one can be ridden under. It appears that this area had a number of ash trees all of which fell victim to Emerald Ash Borer, and this autumn is the time they are all falling. As they are still very solid internally, I hope that we’ll be able to chop them up in the spring and use them to build a few log piles.

Tonight’s ride was quite wonderful. While it was cold outside I was appropriately (and perhaps over) dressed, and this was only a problem when I stopped to use nature as my toilet. Due to recent rains before the cold the trail was packed hard and as grippy as brushed concrete (or slickrock?) which made riding quite fun. Road traffic was surprisingly light, and I had no problems with cars either on the (residential) roads or at intersections.

I’m really looking forward to being able to ride these trails in the winter. I’ll just have to go get that tree sorted out before it actually falls and keep an eye out for others in this area. I suspect that this trail will be outstanding with studded tires once the snow falls and ice is making everything slick. I can’t wait.

(Total ride time today 1:40:37, 18.71 miles, 11.16 MPH average, 21.76 MPH max. Rode up from home, 1x full single track, two-track as return trail, 1x regular loop, 1x backward regular loop, then back home with a loop around the neighborhood.)

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Manual Trail Work

Published December 5, 2010

This afternoon Erik, Nick, and I headed out to River Bends to remove the fallen tree mentioned here and to check out another reported downed tree. The other tree turned out to be this conflagration comprised of five downed trees and various broken limbs and deadfall, all in one spot. Thanks to Erik’s 4′ bow saw and his ability to quickly cut (Picture 1, Picture 2) what’s seen above was cleared in just under an hour and now looks like this.

This was a rather nice day for working outside. With the temperature just above freezing it was definitely cold, but being appropriately dressed once we got walking and working it was quite comfortable.

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Apple Magic Trackpad and MiddleClick

Published December 3, 2010

Unlike the Magic Mouse (which hurt my hand within minutes of beginning to use it), Apple’s Magic Trackpad is a rather nice cursor input device. It’s identical to the touchpad in Apple’s newer MacBook Pro family, where multi-touch is used in conjunction with an entire touchpad that clicks, eliminating the need for both buttons and tap clicking. I personally cannot stand tap clicking on touchpads, so I will normally disable it and either have one hand on the button and the other on the pad (when I need to work quickly) or lift my finger to move it to the pad to click. With this device one can simply use multi-finger gestures for scrolling and app switching while clicking the entire pad with one (or more) fingers.

As the Magic Trackpad ships, Apple has support for scrolling, primary and secondary clicking (left and right), application switching, and Exposé activation. What Apple (stupidly) did not include is any method of sending a tertiary (middle) click which is the de-facto method for opening links in new tabs in all modern web browsers. Without this one has to either hold Command (⌘) and click (a two-handed affair) or secondary/right click and select open in new tab (slow). Both of these make quickly reading web pages difficult.

Thankfully a guy by the name of Clement Beffa wrote a MiddleClick, a utility which makes three-finger taps (or clicks), an input not captured by Apple’s software, send a middle click. The version (currently) on the main page (MD5 checksum e7a7e1b5f5e55cb5ffac6d091f03f8c9) is slightly broken and the 3 Finger Click option in the menu doesn’t work. However, this version (MD5 checksum 1b02e356684c40bbbb21cf83f70c52ca) does work properly and I’ve been using it to three-finger click for a few hours now. This makes basic web browsing and reading pages a one-handed affair

The only complaint that I now have about the Magic Trackpad is that the pivot for clicking is near the top of the pad, which makes clicking the pad near the top more difficult than when it is pressed near the bottom. This isn’t terrible, though, as clicking the pad near the bottom does not feel abnormal and is what I (currently) find myself doing naturally.

For the time being I’ve unplugged my mouse, and I’m quickly finding the Magic Trackpad to be quite comfortable to use. It’ll take another week or three before I’m sure that I’m comfortable with it, but for now things seem to be going quite well. I’ll need to go back the a classic mouse when using EAGLE for PCB CAD, but that’s a special case because quickly using it requires the one to do things such as hold one mouse button while clicking another.

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Apple Damaged My 27″ iMac’s LCD

Published December 3, 2010

Trying to resolve the apparent smudge inside my iMac’s display resulting from a recent Genius Bar repair I bought two of these $2.99 suction cups (item number 46900) from Harbor Freight† and used them to open the display per these instructions.

Opening the display is trivial, as gently lifting on the suction cup handles popped the glass face upward and allowed it to be lifted off. Unfortunately, the mark noticed last night is not a smudge on the panel or glass, but instead appears to be in the panel itself. I spent time cleaning the panel because it also had a number of hand and finger prints on it, blew out some dust, then closed it up. It now looks perfect, save for the mark in the upper left corner. (Note, cleaning a display before closing it up is non-trivial and simply not fun.

Since this wasn’t there before the repair job I can only presume that something done by the Apple tech damaged the display. I guess I’m going to have to take it back again and see what they’ll do.

I’m rather disappointed by this.

† These suction cups, Harbor Freight item number 46900, appear to be identical to iFixit item IF145-023-1. The color, description (lifts 15 pounds!), and even details of the molding are identical between the two.

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27″ iMac Display Smudge after Genius Bar Repair

Published December 2, 2010

On Monday I took my 27″ iMac in to have its optical drive replaced. While at the Partridge Creek Apple Store Genius Bar being repaired the techs noticed that a fan wasn’t behaving as it should, so they replaced that as well. When I picked it up today everything seems fine, except there’s now a small smudge in the upper left corner of the screen (seen above) and a thin smudge line across the main panel a few inches below that. Both of these appear to be on the LCD itself, which is located just behind the flat glass front.

I’m a bit disappointed, but I may end up just cleaning this myself as removing the glass to access the inside of a late-model iMac is apparently not particularly complicated. I’ll need to do this myself in the future if I ever want to upgrade the hard drive, so I may as well buy some small suction cups now and do it.

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