bosconet.org: chocolately writings

I liek the new version of Camino but I noticed it was being pretty sluggish this morning. And not just when my RSS reader and iTunes was updating content. So I looked over at the output of top and saw this:

Processes:  69 total, 3 running, 66 sleeping... 250 threads            08:54:13
Load Avg:  2.39, 2.93, 2.64     CPU usage:  73.2% user, 25.7% sys, 1.2% idle
SharedLibs: num =  221, resident = 51.5M code, 5.72M data, 15.0M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 12150, resident =  433M + 27.1M private,  212M shared
PhysMem:   129M wired,  613M active,  255M inactive,  997M used,  154M free
VM: 6.92G +  147M   184754(0) pageins, 10907(0) pageouts

  PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE
  984 Camino      51.7% 11:35:31  23   840  1213   158M  73.8M   164M  1.06G

over a gigabyte of memory being used?!?!?! with 5 pages open? This crap is whay I switched back to Camino from Saari. Hopefully there will be a new build soon that will fix this.

Here’s what it looks like after I restarted Camino:

 3578 Camino      37.7%  0:04.86   6   >>>   284  11.8M  28.2M+ 26.2M-  157M

That’s more like it.

Way back in early December the hard drive in my Mac mini died. It was sad only because I think I lost one or two files that weren’t backed up. It wasn’t a HUGE deal because I mostly used it as a dumb system with all the files either backed up or acessed via a network file server. Still I missed it.

Right after it died I decided to fix it and upgrade it at the same time. As such I purchased a new HD double in size (new drive 80GB the old one was only 40GB), and getting more RAM at the same time ( I had 512mb in it previously and decided to upgrade to a full 1GB (that is the maximum my first generation base model, impulse buy supports).

I managed to take apart my mini with a bit of minor (cosmetic and only noticeable if you pick up the unit and look at it) damage to the case. I installed the new RAM and new HD but couldn’t manage to get the system to boot from CD and install OS X. Since I was busy with other things (work, holidays, dealing with a dead Dell laptop) and the mini was not a critical resource on my network I set it aside. Until this morning.

This morning Danielle expressed yet another dissatisfaction with how OS X is different from Windows. This one being she can’t tab between selection buttons like she is used to. In researching a solution to this I found the solution to my boot problem. Unlike PCs you need to press the ‘C’ key to boot you Mac from optical (CD/DVD) media. With that key piece of knowledge I got the mini back up and running.

The upgraded mini is running nicely and the extra RAM seems to be helping a LOT. The extra local HD space will be nice later but for now I don’t notice it much.

Now of course is the somewhat tedious process of re-installing applications and reconfiguring the system to be what I expect.

It is that time of year again, right before a big Apple Event and all the Apple Fan boys are trying to read every tea leaf for some idea what new products are going to be announced by Apple next week at the World Wide Developers Conference. This is of course nothing new and I have become accustomed to this since buying a PowerBook just about 3 years ago. It is still interesting that a company can generate this much interest in an event without spending a single penny on advertising.

What specifically prompted me to write this was a post on digg.com about a picture of the Apple banner at the WWDC and people trying to see if it revealed any new products.

The only 2 products I’d like to see from Apple right now are a new 12″ MacBook Pro (highly unlikely) or the oft rumored iPhone (Apple cell phone). Although I expect I will be disappointed on both those items next week.

My extra 1GB RAM stick had arrived when I got home tonight. I immediatley installed it and noticed a difference. Booting seemed to take a bit less time and performance seems better. I will really know in a day or two. But for now I like seeing this:

I forget where I found the initial reference to these devices but I have become a big fan. If you have more than 1 computer and need extra storage don’t bother getting a silly USB or Firewire drive get either the Triton Simple NAS (the TRI-NSS001 at $85) or the cheaper Argosy HD363N NAS ($55 from ewiz.com) and share that extra space with your whole network.

The form factor is the same size as a USB/Firewire enclosure and like those have an external power supply. It supports HD sizes up to 400GGB. The only issue I had whas according to the included documentation nd instructions you needed a Windows machine to do the inital configuration. That never sat right with me. So this evening I decided to investigate more. I plugged my Powerbook and the NAS into a hub and sniffed the packets. Within a minute or two of powering on the NAS I had the information I needed.

In the documentation for the initial configuration you are supposed to use this URL: http://storage/. Becuase of the magic of Windows this works. However OS X is a bit more…hmmmmm, .how shall I put this, strict in how it deals with things like that. If you plug that URL in your browser (even IE) you end up at www.stgorage.com. The solution to this is to point your browser (IE, Camino, Firefoox, Safari) at this URL: http://169.254.0.1/

You will then be prompted for the username and password (admin and admin by default). Log in and configure it.

So I recently bought an iPod shuffle. It is a nice little device. Better than my old Rio500 for running with and not just because it holds more music. I just noticed one neat feature for putting music on the shuffle, autofill.



So I can basically leveragge my smart playlists to fill the shuffle which I think is great and much easier than manually managing the playlist.

Oh and one more thing about the shuffle. For driving around town I have recently taken to bringing it rather than the 3G 20GB because it is far more portable than the iPod. It fits in my pocket easily and stores enouugh music to keep me happy.

Overall a well spent $75 (I bought a refurbished 512MB model).