Pheasant Coucal in Dampier

Just saw a Pheasant Coucal (Centropus phasianinus) in the Dampier townsite. This is my second sighting; the first was on the Burrup Peninsula (I got some very poor photographs). It is a very impressive bird, and fairly large as well. Alas, I was not carrying my camera...

For further information see here.

I wonder if this will run under Vista...

One of the software packages I use a lot at work (ProWORX NxT) runs a graphics server (in a 16-bit virtual machine no less). Here is a screen-shot of the about box. For those who don't know, ProWORX NxT is a PLC programming package.



It works OK under Windows XP.

Qantas Frequent Flyer Bling

I am now a GOLD level frequent flyer.

I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing...

Contemplating...

...whether I should upgrade my PowerBook G4 (12", 1GHz) to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. I currently have the original 40GB HDD installed, so perhaps I should upgrade that first (given Leopard requires 9GB to install). The G3s I have will all stay at 10.4 for the time being. They are all sub-500MHz so I don't think any amount of hacking will make 10.5 worthwhile on them.

For the record, I don't think Apple making the minimum processor required for Leopard to be an 867MHz G4 is unfair. And I have lots of old Macs that can run 10.4 :)

Edit: I will probably wait for 10.5.1 to come out.

Frog season has started in Dampier

Saw my first frog of the season on Saturday, peaking up at me from the drain in the sink in my room. It was a Desert Tree Frog (Litoria rubella), similar to this.

New Toys

Picked up a 3rd generation 20GB iPod for $140. It is in near-mint condition with good battery life. Will be useful for backing up photos as well (I am only using 2GB for songs at the moment).

Also have a 12" 500MHz G3 iBook coming - it will need some repairs but will hopefully be functional soon.

Lastly, my B&W G3 PowerMac (350MHz) is finally setup with 512MB of RAM, 40GB internal HDD, 250GB USB2.0 external HDD and a FireWire external dual layer DVD burner. This is now the backup server for all of our photos and other documents.

Ballpoint pen marks on LCD monitors...

...can be removed with Isopropyl alcohol and a little bit of effort. The sterilizing pads you can buy at the pharmacy do the job nicely. Thanks to Kylie for sourcing the pads and Cameron for providing the pen marks...

Added to the collection...

• PowerMac 9500/132 with broken power supply (but with stacks of RAM, 18GB hard drive, Sony SCSI CD-RW drive and two PCI graphics cards);
• Two 20" Apple CRT monitors (both work well - if you would like one let me know);
• Another PowerBook 100 for parts (non-booting complete unit in very good condition).

I am in the process of building a "hot rod" PowerMac 7500. Full details soon...

Breaks the monotony...

The plane I flew to Karratha on recently had to circle for 15 minutes or so waiting for fog over the airport to clear. When the pilot first tried landing the fog was so thick we had to pull out. If we couldn't land on the second try we were going to fly to Port Hedland for re-fueling...

Short-beaked Echidna (Photographed)

Finally - a photo of a Short-beaked Echidna. This little fella (?) was rummaging noisily which made him (her?) easy to find. Photographed on the Burrup Peninsula near Hearson's Cove.

Thoughts on birding...

For a while I have been meaning to write a post outlining my thoughts on bird watching/bird photography/twitching etc. This does not mean that I consider myself to be an authority on any of these topics.



Bird Watching: I have always been interested in bird watching. From an early age my parents and grandparents fostered a love of the outdoors and of wildlife. I don't use whistles or recordings to attract birds (although others do and I don't object). I also try not to disturb the birds in any way (although sometimes this is unavoidable).

Bird Photography: Only recently have I had a camera capable of doing decent bird photography. My first camera was a Nikon F50, which is a wonderful camera. I soon found the 35-80mm zoom lens inadequate, and the cost of buying a bigger lens prohibitive. Developing film also started to get expensive. I then moved to digital, buying a Kodak DX6490 with 10x optical zoom. This was better but ultimately the cheap construction (zoom toggle doesn't re-center properly, main switch is broken) led me to buying a Canon 350D. This is a brilliant camera. I purchased the camera cheaply (just after the 400D was announced) with a twin lens kit. The 75-300mm zoom lens is perfect for my level of experience and is still portable enough to head bush with. Recently I have added a low end Manfrotto tripod to the kit. I recommend buying a good camera bag as well (I have a Lowepro).

I use bird photography primarily as a means of bird identification. Being able to look at the photo close up on a computer and compare it to a few field guides is invaluable (and nearly impossible to do in the field). I do rely on taking notes as well (although not as much as I should).

Twitching: I am not really that much of a twitcher. I do keep a life-list and I would love to increase it but I do not go flying across the country to see a rare vagrant. My lifestyle doesn't really permit this sort of activity (I work and have a wife and children). Twitching would be cool though (if this book is anything to go by). I believe that the data obtained through twitching has significant value.

Feel free to comment on this post!

Footy Tipping

I finished the season with 120 correct tips and won the company competition!

You are ranked 179 out of 30,766 tippers in the 2007 AFL home and away season.

The competition was hosted on the Fox Footy Tipping website.

(120 / (22 rounds x 8 games per round)) x 100 = 68% success rate!

Zebra Finches are nesting

While dropping a car off in Karratha, I saw a dozen or so Zebra Finches building nests. They were building their nests in the hollows created by old fronds in a row of palm trees. It was a hub of activity, birds flying backward and forward every 60 seconds or so carrying twigs twice their length. I wish I had my camera with me as they were not at all concerned about my presence.

Fun and games with Power Macintosh G3s

After spending some time trying to configure the Beige G3 Server mentioned in my previous post, I gave up and started working on one of my B&W G3s (see here and here for specifications). I suspect my Beige G3 Server has IDE bus issues as I could not get it to reliably boot from the CD-ROM drive (I tried a few different working drives). It is a bit sad that this machine doesn't work as it is a very nice machine otherwise.

My B&W G3 is a 35oMHz model with a USB 2.0 PCI card and SCSI PCI card fitted. It is running Mac OS X 10.4.9 and I have replaced the stock 6GB IDE HDD with a 40GB IDE HDD. RAM is currently at 512MB (2 x 256MB chips, 2 spare slots) although I may increase this to 1GB (the specified maximum). It is currently configured as a VNC and FTP server (as described in my previous post) and will eventually run headless with an external 250GB USB 2.0 drive for storage.

Newton 2100 on the web!

I managed to connect my Newton 2100 to the Internet yesterday (using a 3Com 3C589D Ethernet card). Copied the network settings from my laptop into the setup on the Newton, connected the Ethernet and fired up Courier. It all works quite well (actually much better than I expected). The next step is to try Email and perhaps some RSS news feeds...

Tonight I will attempt to setup my 300MHz G3 Server with Mac OS X 10.2, a PCI USB 2.0 card and a 250GB external USB drive. Unsure of how much RAM I will add to it however I will be upgrading the 10Base-T on-board Ethernet with an Apple 10/100Base-T PCI card. The plan is to use this machine as an FTP server for backups of photos/files/music. Once it is set up I will use VNC to manage it (Vine Server for the server and Chicken of the VNC for the client).

RetroChallenge Step #4 (final)

The RetroChallenge has finished. Check out retrochallenge.net for the results. Due to work commitments (and spending a fair amount of time away from my retro-collection) my involvement was negligible. Thanks to dale and the crew for putting this on. I may have to arrange annual leave for the next one...

RetroChallenge Step #3

Due to work commitments my involvement in the RetroChallenge has been somewhat limited. I had great plans but little spare time. I now have 2 days at home to see what I can come up with. I will probably focus on developing something for the Newton. Stay tuned...

Short-beaked Echidna

I saw a Short-beaked Echidna on the road to East Intercourse Island in Dampier yesterday. I slowed down and made sure the oncoming truck saw it as well. It was larger than I expected and walked across the road quite quickly. For those that don't know this is the animal that is on the Australian 5c coin. No photos unfortunately.

RetroChallenge Step #2

Installed all of the drivers required for adding a PCMCIA Ethernet card to my Newton 2100. Followed these instructions. Transferred the files from my work PC to the PowerBook using a floppy disk (how retro). Haven't tried connecting to anything yet but it should be OK. One thing of note is that while inserting a modem card causes the Newton to alert you that a communications card is installed, inserting the Ethernet card does not. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

[Edit: According to this site, this behavior is normal as I have 3Com Ethernet card].

Also took some time to set the PowerBook 190cs up a bit better - cleared out incompatible Control Panels and Extensions.

Remote RetroChallenge

Back in Dampier again for work - carrying a fair amount of retro Mac gear. In my luggage I have my PowerBook G4 (12" 1GHz /768MB / 40GB/Combo Drive), my rebuilt PowerBook 190cs (16MB / 500MB with a few 5300 parts) and my Newton 2100 with various cards and adapters. This is on top of my work kit and PC laptop (which is not light). Needless to say my bags were flagged with the Qantas "heavy" label...

My first task is to get Ethernet working on the Newton and connect it to the G4 (this looks like a good guide). Then I will have a hack at developing a bit for the Newton using the 190cs (Newton development tools are installed). Later I will try writing some software for the Mac (System 6 and up hopefully). I have done this before with some success.

Stay tuned for more...

Mega-update

I was spending a lot of time working up north (away from home) so I decided to take two weeks off. Spent last week travelling the south-west of WA (staying at Wagin with family and at Cheynes Beach Caravan Park). This week will be spent sorting out things at home and doing some coding (for both my masters and the RetroChallenge).

Olivia has started crawling (well sort of) and is much more vocal and animated. Cameron had a great time down south and can now climb ladders (with ease) and loves slides. He also likes puddles (we bought him some gumboots while we were away). Kylie and I enjoyed the time away (although it was very cold). I will post more updates later (photos and bird lists - Cheynes Beach was great again - I heard the Noisy Scrub-bird finally!).

Two books from eBay arrived while we were away - Volumes I and II of the Macintosh C Programming Primer. Both are great books that outline how to program ToolBox based software for the Mac using Think C. Should be fun.

Bought a handheld GPS while we were away - a Magellan eXplorist 300 - haven't used it a lot yet but planning to. It has a temperature sensor, a digital compass (seperate from the GPS), a barometer and an altimeter. It will come in handy on birding trips.

Zebra Finch Behaviour

I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon chasing a reasonably large flock of Zebra Finches (about 100 birds in total) around the dunes and rocks near the Dampier beach. Every time I disturbed the flock (they appeared to be feeding) they moved a few hundred metres away and stopped again to feed. There seemed to always be one or two birds that performed "sentry" duties, perching on a nearby branch watching for danger (me in this case). If I could avoid being seen by the "sentry" finch I could generally get close enough to have a chance of taking photographs.

Has anyone else observed this behaviour?

Site Engineer’s Calendar

• Monday: Every day you are on site (except the last);
• Friday: The last day you are on site;
• Saturday: Every day you are home (except the last);
• Sunday: The last day you are home.

I have spent way too much time on site...

PowerBook 100 Internals - Retro Challenge Step #1 continued...

The 16 MHz 68HC000 CPU.



Part of the track-ball assembly (made by Logitech). Note that "Derringer" was one of the code-names for the PowerBook 100.

PowerBook 100 - Retro Challenge Step #1

After tinkering for a few hours last night I have finally managed to build one complete PowerBook 100 out of two partially complete ones. The complete unit has a good screen (replaced the screen that was missing a column of pixels down the left hand side), 4MB of RAM, an 80MB 2.5" SCSI hard drive with Mac OS 7.1, three batteries (none of which work), an external floppy drive (working well) and two functional fold-down feet (each unit had one foot broken, thankfully on opposite sides).

The PowerBook 100 is an impressive design - three screws (Phillips head - yay!) hold the whole unit together, the screen hinge seems bulletproof (neither showed wear or damage), the motherboard is easy to swap out and the RAM and CPU cards are easy to access. In terms of expansion, the PowerBook 100 is limited (I noticed what looks like and internal modem connector - that seems to be the extent of expansion) but it has an ADB port (unlike the PB150), a serial port and a SCSI port (as well as the special external floppy drive port).

It was a lot of fun rebuilding this - now I need to find some old software and starting putting it to use.

Rainbow Bee-eater

Rainbow Bee-eater (Merops ornatus), photographed at Lake Gwelup with my Canon 350D digital camera. I cropped the photo as it is one of the few that has reasonable focus.

Signed Up!

I am now signed up for the Retro Challenge 2007! I aim to do some Newton development (OS 2.0) and 68k development (maybe using a PowerBook 100). Should be fun. Keep an eye on this blog for updates!

(And I have started labeling posts to make it easier to find all Retro Challenge stuff).

June Already...

I can't believe it is June already. So much of the year has gone past and I feel like so little has been accomplished. Here are a few highlights of the year so far:

• Cameron has started to recognize some numbers (in the 0-9 range);
• We bought a 2005 Toyota Tarago (please, no comments about filling all of the seats);
• Olivia has started to sit up unaided.

Here are a few highlights "planned" for the rest of the year:

• Another trip to Cheynes Beach for a holiday;
• Spend some decent chunks of time in Perth (spent a fair bit of time in Dampier with work);
• Get back into a regular Bible Study (see previous point).
  

Blog Title

Have a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propeller_head if you are wondering about the title of the blog.

Projects

This is a list of projects that I have planned:

• Masters coding and development;
• Get my Quadra 950 going properly with more RAM, MacOS7.6 and some big hard drives;
• Get a PowerBook 100 going (to have a shot at the Retro Challenge 2007);
• Get ethernet going on my Newton 2100;
• Start doing some basic Newton (probably OS 2.0) development;
  
• Build and configure my home office server (I picked up two 18.1 GB SCSI drives for this). It will be my G3 Server (beige, 300MHz, as much RAM as I can find). I will be using it for backups and storing photos.
  

As always, more time is required :(

Long time no update

• I now have a Flickr web page. People seem to be visiting but not commenting... It contains photos of birds I have taken using my Canon 350D.
  
• Still collecting old Apple/Mac computers (collection getting huge). I recently had a lot of fun with an Apple IIc that I picked up from the Quokka. All of the equipment and disks worked perfectly (and they were dated 1984). I also picked up 2x 350 MHz B&W G3 machines, a QuickTake 100, a 24-port 10/100 BayStack Switch, a PowerMac 5500/225 (along with numerous other bits and pieces).
  
• Building a HO scale model train set (mainly LIMA gear) with Cameron (although he tends to specialize in stress testing). I will post photos soon.
• My birding life list has now passed 100!
  

McNaught Comet

Saw the McNaught comet last night - quite spectacular despite the clouds that were around.

Tawny Frogmouth

Late last night I noticed a Tawny Frogmouth sitting on the line going to our house. I have never seen one of these in the suburbs (I haven't really been looking) so it was a bit of a surprise. It was quite happy to sit there while I got a closer look and took some photos. Quite an unusual looking bird up close, the bristly feathers above the beak were clearly visible.

Kylie identified it as a Tawny Frogmouth (I initially thought it was an owl of some kind) and held the torch on it so I could focus the camera correctly.

A bit of an update...

Things that have been occupying my time of late:

• Taking bird photos with my newish Canon 350D (mainly at Pinnaroo Valley);
• Reading through a stash of old Mac magazines I picked up out of the Quokka;
• Watching cricket (in particular the Ashes) on TV;
• Reading Steve Wozniak's autobiography. This was an excellent and highly motivational read.
  

Happy New Year everyone!