Cuddling up to Windows

I suppose I can say that.

As my MacBook Pro is in the hands of my parents right now (Got in a bit of an argument, more on that later), I’ve been having to resort to my backup setup, a recently-revived Dell Dimension 2400 with 256MB of memory. Serving the wireless internet to it, a Power Macintosh G4 with 768MB of memory.

The Dell is slower than hell. Even though it has a nice 2.6GHz Celeron under the hood, which should be plenty fast, it’s all gone to waste due to the low amount of memory in it. As I speak, I’m down to 30 MB of PHYSICAL memory left.

The Power Mac is too slow under Mac OS X 10.3 to be of any use.

So I left myself with the choice of cuddling up to the Dell and possibly learning Windows all over again. In a way, it’s almost comfortable to have a break from the Mac OS for a bit.

A news article I saw

I caught a bit of a news article in the contra costa times yesterday. I thought it reeked of bullcrap, and thought I’d post my thoughts about it.

The article is about how a catholic school endorses corporal punishment against young children. The curch’s opinion on corporal punishment is that it is “god’s will” (No, I don’t capitalize “god”. Get over it.). And this church also believes that if you do not smack your kid around on a daily basis, you are openly defying god’s will.

My english teacher’s opinion pretty much summed up what I thought at first. “What a crock of crap”.

So here’s my piece on it.

Seriously, if all these religions are advocating that god is such a loving person, then why do they keep turning around and saying that it is god’s will to treat our children like total trash?

It is god’s will to call down the wrath of the child protective services? Wow. This must be the most elaborate religious bull ever.

Microsoft betrays its loyal XP customers? Laaaaame.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. I love the Halo games. I own Halo 1 for the PC, and have been waiting FOREVER for Halo 2.

The good news? Halo 2 is headed to the good ‘ol PC. Rejoice all.

The bad news? It requires Vista.

I mean, seriously. What the hell, Microsoft? You are so quick to make all of us who shelled out $200 on a copy of Windows XP pay another $200 for Vista? and then another $50 for Halo 2?

Then again, we’ve been through this before. Microsoft won’t release DirectX10 for XP, yet another blow delivered to XP by Microsoft.

Why would we want to upgrade to a really shitty OS when what we have is just fine enough? I like XP, I think it is stable, and it is extremely usable. Vista just seems like a huge piece of nagware, nagging you that your security isn’t good enough, or what have you.

Microsoft’s strength was backwards compatibility. They’ve always hung on to Win9x up through Windows XP. Now that Vista’s out, they’ve only held on to XP for what, 3 months? And now they are already requiring us to upgrade for all these juicy benefits?

IIRC, you can still get DirectX9 for Win98. Why can’t we get DX10 for XP? Is it seriously that hard? And is it really that hard to allow XP users to run Halo 2?

Honestly Microsoft, cut the crap. You guys are totally screwing over your installed base of customers. And those are your strongest customers.

So my nano died

Today in Animation class my iPod nano started acting weird. Unfortunately, the screen began wigging out and died, and so I took the thing apart to find the problem. Unfortunately, it’s quite dead.

iPod earbud unboxing photos

Well, as a nerd, I’m obligated to show any unboxing of any geek stuff I buy. Unfortunately, not a big expense, but still, must show off.

The reciept

The box

The warranty booklet, and plastic bag

Lastly, the earbuds themselves

All in all, for a pair of comfortable earbuds, worth my $30.

Wow, I hardly noticed.

Wow, my iPod is almost full. I never noticed that my music library topped out at 3.5 GB, almost hitting the 4 GB limit of my iPod (Actually, due to the stupid GiB unit of measurement, 3.68 GB). Meaning I’m going to have to start micromanaging my iPod.

Also, in music, I reviewed VNV Nation’s Judgement. Slide on over to my last.fm and have a look:
http://www.last.fm/user/itoilet9

10.4.9 Afterthoughts

Wow. Just wow. First 10.4.9 was totally awesome, now it seems to be breaking my Mac in more ways than I care to count.

For one, my Mac’s temperature has spiked since I put 10.4.9 on it.

And now, it seems on every window, my minimize button is disabled! Here’s a screencap of the damage:

What’s going on here?

Leopard pushed back? NO!

Well, Apple today has announced that Leopard has been pushed back to October 2007.

So there’s mixed reaction to this. Could the end of the Mac be approaching? Is this the sign of the apocalypse?

Well, I do know what may be happening. Apple removed the “computer” from their name because they may be giving priority to the iPhone/AppleTV/iPod, since those will be their main money-makers. Even though Apple may have just graced us with a few more “Get a Mac” ads to try to make up for it, hell, I’m the the same boat as the people who think the Mac is going to get the cold shoulder in favor of the consumer electronics.

I myself am a tad ticked off, because I for one do not plan on getting a phone anytime soon, but the Leopard upgrade was a planned purchase, and only to find it got shoved off way into the fall disappoints me much. My 2G iPod Nano, my landline, and my MacBook Pro are all the things I need right now, and I’m sure many feel the same.

Apple, please focus on your current, established customers, not some in a future market, please?

So, what now?

Now that I have Phoria 1, 2, 2enhanced, and 3, and Phorium done, what’s next?

I was working on a nice desktop a while back, unfortunately, all the data was lost. It was called Anachron, and I think I will go back and redo it from scratch. It will definitely include and might even mix in elements from the previous ones, and will include more unique touches.

Another one I should possibly do is Phorium 2, but I’ll save that for another time.

Here are Phorium, and Phoria:

Phorium by ~itoilet9 on deviantART

Phoria2 Enhanced by ~itoilet9 on deviantART

Phoria2 Enhanced

I just finished enhancing an old desktop I did, Phoria2. I added a few renders, some more effects, and made it look purty. Follow the link and download it!

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/53039045/

First post

Welcome to phoriumblog, I am going to move here from my livejournal, so expect more content.

Moving to WordPress

Once again going to attempt moving my blog over to WordPress, over here:

http://phorium.wordpress.com/

There goes the AirPort

Wow, it seems like the computer deities from up above really like taking a dump on poor old Phorium (The MacBook Pro).

First the hinge.

Then the temperatures.

Then the dead pixels.

Now the AirPort card.

The wireless reception of my MacBook has been declining in recent days. It can’t hold a connection anymore at all. Some things won’t even load, such as Rooster Teeth’s website, the iTunes store, DeviantART, etc. The wireless receptions dips from 4 bars to 1, then back up again. It’s really shaky.

Meanwhile, my Dell laptop chugs along nicely on its wireless card.

And it seems I can never get the time in to go to the Apple store to get repairs done.

Diminishing Marginal Utility

(About the title–I just learned the term, it means that for each additional unit of something you have, or the longer you have it, the more dissatisfied you become with it. I felt it was appropriate for this post.)

As far as my MacBook Pro goes, I’m almost done with it. I’m getting seriously ticked off each day that passes. Problems over the last month or so have been crawling out of the woodwork, and it’s getting annoying.

First off, the hinge begins making this really horrible sound each time the MacBook is opened. Okay, I can ignore that. No biggie.

Second, the MacBook begins getting REALLY hot, hotter than the regular Core Duo MacBook Pros. I can’t stand this, but I work around it with SMCFanControl. That’s fine with me. I’m getting slowly pissed off, but I can continue to be productive.

And now, the screen begins displaying a small clump of dead pixels. At this point, I’ve had it.

I’ve contacted a few friends, and they said that Apple tends to be not so kind to people’s screens suffering from dead pixels.

So, if the Apple Store throws the old “x amount of pixels does not mean a dead screen” at me, I’ll probably sell my MacBook Pro and buy a regular MacBook, and cut my losses.

24478

Amazingly, though my MacBook Pro has been a fine computer, it has been coughing up again. Last time, it was the hinge creaking, now it’s the temperature for the second time.

No matter how high the fan’s RPM is, this thing won’t cool down. It hovers around 130F. At 6000 RPM. Usually, it’d cool down to around 110 F if I set it there. Now it doesn’t.

Oh well, the thing’s going into Apple soon because of the hinge, maybe they’ll fix it.