What makes you happy ?

I got an email from my ISP earlier. It told me that I had already used 19gig of transfer this month. That’s a HUGE amount for me and I know when I’m using a lot anyway. Checking the router I see that Access Control is off. Normally it’s on but a while back when the Wii and the DS’s were being used I switched it off to allow them to connect. And whoever it is – neighbour I assume – leeched. So Access Control is back on, and my network has a sparkly new name – Fuck-You. I’ll ring Zen tomorrow anyway to have a chat and check other possibilities. And no I can’t use WPA or whatever because whenever I do the 2 older PC’s crap out and cannot connect.

http://www.blackviper.com – if you use Windows bookmark this site. Excellent guides to tuning your machine.

I’m not entirely sure how I got Disk Utility to do it, but the 160GB External drive which was NTFS and unwritable by the mac is now Mac Journaled. So I have a backup solution which is good – it was something I had to have to trust it. Now…. pointless having a backup solution if the drive sits there waiting for me to do it. That’s not a backup, that’s a “hope I remember before it goes wrong”. On XP I have a program which every day at 1pm makes a backup of My Documents. I don’t have to remember anything.
Now I know the mac can do that – I don’t need telling that, I’ll figure it out. But the ext drive is noisy. It causes the hum through the wood. I’ve tried sitting it on various surfaces but the hum continues. It’s a Diamond Max and it’s in a cheap aluminium casing (I got the thing from eBay). It does the job, but it’s a bit noisy. So I’m wondering what I can do it shut it up. I could suspend it under the work surface but the cables would get messy and I can’t drill any more holes in this. I could pop some hooks from the ceiling so it dangled, I could create a small frame or buy a box and use thick elastic bands to have it wobbling quietly in the centre.. I could drill a hole through to the garage and stick it in there even. Or I could spend cash on another drive.
I think what I first need to do is establish how quiet the drive is outside the casing and go from there. There is a small fan in the case because the drive does get really hot so without that, and with more air that should make it quieter. Maybe I should just drill lots of holes into the case….. that would work I guess…. have a drive exo-skeleton-case.

Mike Schroepfer, vice president for engineering for Mozilla ……. Firefox 3.0 will also have a small, embedded database ……. “The advantage of the database is that we can search your cache,” Schroepfer said. Yahoo News

How comforting.

According to the electricity people, it costs £54 a month to run a mac mini. She didn’t ask about monitors or any extra stuff that could hang out the back. It’s been years since I worked out that stuff but 54 quid a month?

I had a mouse-shaped pain in my hand the other day so it makes sense to learn some more shortcuts. These I use daily. I don’t need a boss key or a print key. I also use ctrl-alt-del to keep an eye on processes sometimes.
ctrl-a
ctrl-c
ctrl-v
ctrl-z
ctrl-x
ctrl-s
alt+tab
ctrl+tab

I need to get Launchy more tuned somehow (maybe I should RTFM?). Any other useful ones I should be looking at?

Somewhere I have a kb shortcut (I think) that is restarting windows. I’ve not made it, I’ve not had it installed by anything but as I’m typing apps will suddenly start closing and then it restarts. Very very odd. It’s not a malware issue and xp is other performing well but I cannot find what is doing it. Maybe it’s just random – the one this morning I have just typed a line into xchat and the machine decided to reboot. The event logs show nothing. Weird.

This is a work machine, it is not meant to be enjoyed.

iTunes. Open Network. Find folder. Select All. Click to play. Several minutes later iTunes opens. It has 3 copies of each track and decides to start with track 7. Given I have no fine control over the mouse it is impossible to change things. Close window.

Firefox. Download. Run. Disk Image icon created on the desktop. To unmount I have to drag it to trash. So I have to trash it but not trash it? I think I get that. Just.

Finder. I KNOW where stuff is on my machines. I am supremely tidy on a HD. If I were that tidy IRL some would call me a freak.

I really hate the dock.

Middle click. Would it really destroy the mouse aesthetics to put another button there? And no Cmd+click is just a cop out.

Widgets. Even on a PC I’ve never seen the point. Bloat?

And it’s all so slow. I don’t mean performance-must-get-3gig slow. I mean click …. yawn… open…….. I like clickopen. That fast. If I want to do it I wanttodoitnow.

That bar at the top. No matter what I open I need to quit it from there. Can’t mac coders get over a right-click menu phobia? That top bar is very irritating. If I want to quit I want to quit. Cmd-Q is my friend. I use it lots.

This is a work machine, it is not meant to be enjoyed.

Maybe if the mouse had been good and behaved as a mouse should then things would be better.
But it didn’t.

I really want to like it. Explore around a new OS, learn new stuff. But then if the mouse is screwed……..

Later:
There may be an improvement……. more news soon!

And the news is.. I reinstalled the OS. I have not installed the Mighty Mouse drivers. Now with the MM and a scaling of 14 it’s okay. With a real mouse (Logitech mx7) that 14 is way too fast. So – two mice. Same setting. One piece of hardware is crap. Guess which? So I still need a new mouse because MM is of no practical use whatsoever. (I own an iPod shuffle and a MM. Both made by apple, both crap.) So my frustrations are lowered.

And this is not a Win / Mac thing. If I’d got a new PS2 controller and a thumb switch didn’t work I’d be annoyed. If someone gave you a new car but the steering wheel was ever so slightly wrong you would be annoyed. Fact is that a piece of white hardware is useless and were it not for that I wouldn’t have had this anger at it.

Just fired up a mac mini.
It wanted my name, address, postcode and phone number. I’m sure Windows never did.
And it’s found some updates. 300mb of them.
And even at full speed the mouse isn’t quite quick enough.
Hmm….

Later:

Conclusion

The mouse acceleration and tracking speed under Mac OS X are sufficient to allow an experienced operator to traverse an arbitrarily large desktop without exceeding the bounds of an ordinary mousepad. Any difficulties experienced by users are likely due to a lack of familiarity working with the mouse or operating system in use.

Whoever wrote that – I assume he rides a bike because why would he need to go any faster? Idiot.

Windows:
Update. Reboot.
Mac.
Update. Wait. Wait. Shut down. Hold power button in. Wait. Wait. It starts.
Hmm…..

That bouncing. Killed as quick as I could.

The mouse is still slow. Feels clunky. Maybe opening a terminal in the Applications folder didn’t work. Command line. For a mouse?

Still, it’s playing Starship Troopers well :)

Even Later:
defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling 20.o is what I have. The speed across a clear uninterrupted screen is just about okay. But if goes over ANYTHING it slows to a crawl. Can this be speeded up? Should I chill the hell out and get used to a task-a-day ?

1 new (Mario inspired) favicon and 98 new header images. I needed some colours but only a few…

I bought a domain a few weeks ago. It’s not for me but for someone else. I said to grab the name now – so I bought it. It’s a .co.uk and I bought it from Namecheap where all my others are. D’s domain is a .co.uk too. Yet today I get a letter from Nominet confirming my ownership of the former. I even have a PIN to login and change details. So why didn’t I get one for the other? And it’s only paper – it matters not does it?

FeedDemon.The new beta. Very nice – paging in the news pane. It’s that good I’ve closed the summary pane.

I’m running Xampp. I also have subversion. What interesting things can I do with them? Anything? (Apart from not downloading WP stable because I always have svn?).