New to the collection

An original Apple Airport Base Station (the "graphite" one). This was easy to reset (to clear the existing configuration and password) and set up. I have it configured in bridge mode, basically extending my wired Ethernet network. I'm not really planning on using it much (all my computers are in one room and most don't have wireless) but it is a cool piece of hardware nonetheless.

This reminds me that I need to update the computer collection page.

(PS: if you understood the title of my previous post you qualify as a nerd).

NERD_POINTS++

Just scored a new Power Mac - a dual 500MHz G4. The machine currently has a 40GB HDD and 512MB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.4. For some reason I have always wanted a dual CPU Macintosh (the earlier 604 based models always seemed to be too expensive or rare). Thanks to David for this one - much appreciated. To top it off, it has on-board gigabit ethernet (although I have nothing else that has this, rendering it cool but redundant at the moment).

I am not 100% sure of what I will use this computer for, but I think it will fill the role of home server nicely. I have already installed my USB 2.0 PCI card in it (allowing it to access the 160GB USB 2.0 HDD I have already). I have also fitted a PCI SCSI card as I have a few 18GB SCSI drives lying around that it could use.

New Book (and a few new sightings)

Just received my copy of Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds (by Les Christidis and Walter E. Boles) in the mail, purchased from Andrew Isles Bookshop. I can highly recommend this shop: the delivery was quick, email notification fantastic and the packaging top notch. This is the first bird related book I have purchased that is not a field guide. It should make for interesting reading.

I have finally seen Emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae) in the wild - we saw a group of them in the Stirling Ranges a few weeks ago. Spotted a Yellow-throated Miner (Manorina flavigula) at Joondalup Health Campus last week - this is my first metropolitan area sighting.

Updated Planes to Karratha

Just flew back on an Alliance Airlines Fokker 100 (although the flight number started with QF). Generally fly on the Boeings though.

On the last flight to Karratha I realised that I had flown in a few different Qantas/QantasLink planes. A quick check of the Qantas website jogged my memory so here is the list:

• Boeing 737-400 (generally the plane I seem to catch)


• British Aerospace 146 (great fun landing on the short Karratha runway!)


• Boeing 717-200

Is there anything Lego can't do?

Check this out.

I am seriously considering building something like this.

680x0 PowerBooks

Spent some time tinkering with some old PowerBooks recently:

• I now have 3 non-working PowerBook 100's. All seem to have failed in the same manner (motherboard issues I think). The good news is they are really easy to take apart. The bad news is they use 2.5" SCSI hard drives... I should be able to sort the motherboard issue out (hopefully).
  
• I now have a working PowerBook 54oc. I repaired it using parts from a busted PowerBook 520c. It has a 320MB 2.5" SCSI hard drive and 12MB of RAM. I have installed Mac OS 7.6 on it (will upgrade to 7.6.1 as soon as I can). It is a very nice laptop - especially the active matrix screen. I really like the PowerBook 540c, on-board ethernet and modem (mine has an internal modem installed). Having SCSI, ADB and a serial port is cool also.

I think the biggest problem facing people who collect old Macs (in particular PowerBooks) is the internal 2.5" SCSI disk issue. These invariably fail and are getting harder and harder to find. Ideally, a SCSI to IDE converter should be made (or even a SCSI to CF adapter) but I don't think this is going to happen. At least with desktop Macs the 3.5" SCSI drives can be replaced by more modern SCSI drives (with the appropriate adapters).

NSIS is very cool

NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a fantastic piece of software I have been using to create an installer for a project at work. It is highly customisable and handles both the installing and un-installing of files. From the website:

NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a professional open source system to create Windows installers. It is designed to be as small and flexible as possible and is therefore very suitable for internet distribution.

The software itself is small and integrates nicely with my favourite (Windows) text editor: NotePad++.

ISP Mathematics

I am on a 5GB/month wireless broadband plan from Optus. For the purposes of selling the plan to you, Optus define 1GB as 1000MB (see screen shot below).

For the purposes of billing you, however, Optus define 1MB as 1024KB (also see the screen shot below). This means that they would define 1GB as 1024 MB for data used. Hence the 5GB plan is actually a (5000/(5 x 1024)) x 5 = 4.88 GB plan.



5GB should give you 5 x 1024MB = 5120MB.

Given that excess usage (not that we are at any risk of that) is charged per MB, not shaped, it would be good if they were consistent.

First new sighting for the year!

Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater (Acanthagenys rufogularis ) seen near the Rio Tinto West Angelas mine camp (23°07'53.96" S 118°41'39.18" E). They were reasonably difficult to find and identify but thankfully I got a few good photos. This is my first new honeyeater for a while.

Happy New Year

A (somewhat belated) Happy New Year to all!

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...