Archive for the ‘Mac’ Category

A short guide to blaspheming: running Boot Camp after replacing a MacBook’s hard drive

First, the background: a month or two ago, my MacBook’s hard drive had a minor liquid trauma and had to be replaced. I sent it to Apple to see if they’d replace it, but - as expected - it was accidental damage, not their fault, and so I had to pay $700 to replace the bottom casing, SATA cable, and hard drive (not an option right then, or now), or else have it sent back to me. I opted for the latter, and my MacBook returned to me… working?! Turns out someone in the know (as in, who can take it apart without completely FUBARing the laptop) needed to let it air out, apparently. I ran my MacBook for the next week straight… no difficulties. It seemed perfectly fine.

However, I was still a little leery… and had been itching to give myself more free hard drive space anyhow. I bought my laptop directly from a retail Apple Store, so I had no opportunity to go above and beyond the stock 80 GB hard drive that comes on the MacBook (well, the non-black ones, anyway). So, some research and a few purchases later, I followed these instructions (which have one small caveat, which I will mention after the jump) and replaced my hard drive with little to no difficulty (other than having to go out to Home Depot to buy a Torx T9 screwdriver), ending up with 150 GB internal hard drive and an 80 GB hard drive that could theoretically be used for backup.

The difficulty, however, arose when I tried to use Boot Camp to install a Windows partition. Read the rest of this entry »

July 30th, 2007 · Tags Apple, Computers, Mac, Windows | Comments Off

Lazyweb: looking for icons

Alright, internets: find something for me.

This page on cocoadev.com links to a zipfile of royalty-free (and, apparently, free-as-in-beer) icons by Matt Ball. The problem is that this zipfile has disappeared completely from the Internets, and the site that was hosting them is French, and the user’s site is gone altogether. (Yes, two of those links are 404s.)

So after a little searching, I managed to find where a different blogger was hosting them on his site, except… you guessed it, 404. They’re gone altogether. They are, in fact, the only thing missing out of his wp-content/uploads folder for the month of March. How odd, and what a frustrating coincidence.

Anyway - does anyone out there happen to have a copy of these icons? I need them for an app I’m prototyping. Thanks!

404

April 3rd, 2007 · Tags Annoyances, Development, Icons, Internet, Lazyweb, Mac, Software | 2 Comments »

For once, I’m glad I can’t read Japanese

And you should be too.

What the

(photo tipoff by jtzapp)

January 27th, 2007 · Tags Apple, Mac, Microsoft, WTF?, Windows, lol | Comments Off

You can almost smell Macworld in the air

If you’ve got as many Mac-oriented sites on your RSS reader (or your daily reading habits) as I do, you can tell it’s almost time for the Macworld Expo. The signs? Maybe it’s all the wishlists, announcements, predictions, predictions and counterpredictions, podcast segments, iPod guides, oh and who could forget: the rumors.

I think Mac people love rumors more than Gawker sometimes, I really do.

I wish I could get out there but, you know, job. C’est la vie. I can hope for a smaller MacBook Pro in the same form factor as the MacBooks (tiny but powerful!) and, well, when it boils down to it that’s about all that’s on my wishlist for Macworld. I’m hoping we’ll see some interesting and new stuff out of Leopard, and something tells me that there won’t be a damn phone (I’m not sure why people are so hyped over the phone anyway: I couldn’t care less).

We’ll see, now won’t we?

Update: Maybe I’ll have to stock up; Merlin’s posted a Macworld ‘07 drinking game. I’m hoping for the Danika Cleary one, myself.

January 8th, 2007 · Tags Computers, Mac, Wishlist | Comments Off

A moment of unfettered materialism

Last year there were a number of things I wanted to purchase; several of those goals were achieved, most notably the Nintendo Wii. Cellphone-wise I owned (and still own) a Blackberry 7100g. I also wanted to get a laptop; I ended up settling for the Toshiba Satellite A55-S1063, and was bitten - hard - by the results of trading performance for low price. (I’m looking to get rid of the damn thing, actually.) This year, however, there are a whopping two things I want to own, and my goal is to have both of them by the end of the year. What are they?

Read the rest of this entry »

January 6th, 2007 · Tags Computers, Gadgets, Mac, Shopping, Technology, Wishlist | Comments Off

Goddamnit Parallels

So TUAW mentioned that there’s a new version of Parallels out, and now - on top of the Coherence feature from the last beta - they’ve added Transporter beta3. What’s Transporter do? I thought you’d never ask.

It allows you to migrate an existing Windows install on a PC to a Parallels install over a network. It will also convert VMWare and Virtual PC disk images to Parallel Disk images.

Anyone want to buy my Mac mini and Toshiba Satellite for $1100? ;)

I’m suddenly itchin’ to replace ‘em both with a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

(Incidentally: there’s more about the Coherence feature here and here.)

December 29th, 2006 · Tags Computers, Mac, Software | Comments Off

And lastly, several stories in one go

Put YOUR slogan on someone’s lower back with ImageChef (via Lifehacker).

Spell your name in alphabet soup. Turn your slogan into a neon sign. Give your loved one a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. These are just a few of the cool images you can cook up with ImageChef.

image courtesy of Lifehacker

Then, if you think YOU’RE a Mac fanboy or fangirl, check out this guy’s OS X Dock pillows (via MAKE’s blog).

Dock pillows

I particularly like the Finder one, myself. Next up, China manages to kill off the white dolphin after twenty million years (via CNN):

An expedition searching for a rare Yangtze River dolphin ended Wednesday without a single sighting and with the team’s leader saying one of the world’s oldest species was effectively extinct.

The white dolphin known as baiji, shy and nearly blind, dates back some 20 million years. Its disappearance is believed to be the first time in a half-century, since hunting killed off the Caribbean monk seal, that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction.

And last but not least, someone’s killing English hookers (also via CNN):

Police in eastern England are combing through rural areas hoping to find out who is behind the suspected killings of five women — all believed to be prostitutes — that may be the work of a lone serial killer.

Prostitutes were on Wednesday warned to stay off the streets of the Suffolk city of Ipswich, fearing the killer or killers could strike again.

“I’m not sure what starker message there can be at the moment: Certainly three of their peer group have been murdered, now potentially another two,” Chief Supt. Stewart Gull of Suffolk police said.

“Clearly it’s not safe, they need to stay off the streets.”

A Jack the Ripper wannabe? Maybe!

December 13th, 2006 · Tags Animals, Internet, Mac, News, Sex, Technology, Uncategorized | Comments Off