Missed a Day

Whoops! I missed a day. This post is therefore being posted retroactively.

Today (Yesterday, when I'm writing this) has been (was) very "full." I got up at about 10:30 and prepared to head out to the NAU Bookstore to pick up the T-Shirt I ordered back in March for Megan. (Oops, a bit of a delay in the delivery, but I can't say I mind too terribly much.) I also happen to have received the video card for flatdell and the hundred-stack of Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs yesterday, which was a nice bonus. I did also actually go shooting with the D300 and everything. There's even some nice images I think, but I haven't really had a chance to go through them yet.

Flatdell's new video card installed perfectly. I had to bring the machine and the card into the office to get it all set up, because I lack my own tools right now, but once Mel and I got the brackets rearranged, the card installed great and the drivers installed pretty easily.

Not too terribly much progress was made on the ThinkPad/OPENSTEP project. I burned the CD and the OPENSTEP boot discs seem to realize that the CD is there, but the machine seems still unable to read the disc -- that or I burned it wrong. I may try another (more conventional) CD to see if the machine is physically capable of reading the Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs, and I'm also getting a different CD image to try.

I also lacked progress on Meaghan's laptop, mainly because I had a bunch of other things going on. I'll work on that more today or tomorrow.

Progress on Projects

Today I finally went to my PO Box at NAU's Central Campus post office location, underneath the NAU Bookstore. It was after today's Freshman Orientation information session, Meaghan and I stopped in to check the prices of some books and for me to pick up a package I've been waiting for.

So tonight's project involves finally getting Meaghan's little old PII Dell Latitude CPi working. I've already got the new hard disc installed, and I had Meaghan drop it off at my room. I just need to put Windows 98 or Windows NT4 Workstation on it here. I'm going for NT4 personally, since the goal is something that'll be fast and reliable. I just need to find out where I put imager, and we'll be good. Imager does include a blank Windows 2000 Pro image, so I may install that purely for the fact that it's easily available.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to go to Postal Services again to pick up the new graphics card for flatDell, along with my hundred-stack of Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs. Part one of that project is to get flatDell upgraded with the graphics card, and get some games installed onto it, at which point I'm going to remove the bootcamp partition from my iMac.

After that, the next project is to install OpenSTEP 4.2 on the ThinkPad 760ED. I've already got the two install floppies made and they  both work well, now it's just a matter of burning the install CD. With luck, and the Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs, it'll all work properly, and I'll have OpenSTEP running on real hardware.

Plans for the 760s

Well, I've started working on the decision for exactly what I'm going to do to the ThinkPad 760 computers. One of them, the 760CD, will remain the same, because it's already nearly a museum quality piece of hardware.

The other two, a ThinkPad 760EL and a ThinkPad 760ED shall be combined to make one ThinkPad that I have decided will be nearly museum quality. I'm going to then throw the worst bits away, keeping the extra bay modules and anything else I think I'll need.

The exact plan is to make the 760ED the base of my new setup, because it's the fastest of my 760s and it has a nice big 1024x768 resolution display, compared with the 800x600 display on the CD and the EL. I am going to take the top case, the keyboard and the rear port cover from the 760EL and put them onto the ED. I'll also be keeping the floppy, battery and dead hard disc from the EL as a "just in case" pile of spare parts. One of the things I will then eventually do is put a new drive in the EL's hdd caddy, so I can have a drive for Windows and a drive for OPENSTEP4.2, which is the operating system I'd eventually like to run on the ED.

Tonight, I've actually gotten Windows 98 installed on the ED. It was surprisingly easy, and I'm pleasantly surprised with how easy the whole installation process was. Right now, I'm just copying the variety of Internet Explorer installers to it's hard disc so I can see how "modern" I can make Windows98.

Windows 98, at least the OEM version I installed, isn't really as bad as I remember it being so long ago. It's got some stuff I don't even remember in Windows ME, like "Windows Family Logon." (Although I may just not have looked hard enough, or needed WFL that long ago.) The cool thing about Windows Family Logon is that it actually separates profiles, and keeps them very mildly secure. You set up an initial profile, and from that point forward you create new accounts as needed, and you can determine exactly how much customization is needed for each account. You can also set passwords, but I haven't bothered with that yet.

Another thing I would like (but am unlikely) to do is recell and/or revive some of the spare 760  batteries. With as fast as the 760ED is, or as fast as the CD can be if I run a more slim OS, a 760 that's got two batteries would be a great notetaking machine. Two batteries that can get 3 hours each would be great for a portable system. Plus, since I have three batteries total, I could pop in a third and really get all-day computing.

PowerBook 520c

Today I've been playing some PowerBook, and have given some thought to exactly what I want to do with some of my older computers, because it was pointed out to me that I've got ten of them in the office right now, and another three in my room -- and that's not counting the two that I still haven't received in the mail.

One of my favorites of the old PowerBooks, purely for it's high specs, is a PowerBook 520c. Unfortunately it's hinge isn't in such great condition, and I need to consider whether or not I am going to repair it. I should repair it because I would like to have a nice fast 68k PowerBook around. I will probably take the hinges from the PowerBook 520c, and then sell the 520c later on.

At some point I will probably re-do the software installation on this particular 520c, it's running someone else's install of 7.5, with some software licensed to the university. I think it was used by a faculty member or a graduate student of French, in the department of modern languages. I should like to put my own installation of System 7.1 or Mac OS 7.6 on it, along with my own selection of software.

New Toys for Summer

Well, my summer projects are all mostly here. First and foremost is the Sun Ultra60 workstation, which I'm taking to work tonight. This one is just to have a Sun workstation, and because I want to host ULW locally again, on something that's ultra.

The other big part of today's shipment is some ThinkPad 760-series stuff. Unfortunately their epic amounts of memory aren't compatible with my 760CD, but I think that between the 760ED and 760EL, I can get at least one more very workable 700-series ThinkPad. My intent is to combine their parts to make one pretty ThinkPad, and install OPENSTEP 4.2 on the hard disc drive it's got. Maybe I can even find an OPENSTEP-compatible pcmcia ethernet adapter.

And on the topic of PCMCIA adapters, I got the Sony Ericsson GC83 GSM/GPRS/EDGE Network Wireless Internet PC Card, with the Cingular logo on it. I've already got it installed and set up on the R61i too, so that setup is ready for summer. I'll be able to blog and post photos in Michigan. I gave it a try today, and I'm really happy with it. Once things have started loading, it's faster than dialup, but there's huge latency issues, especially since my room can't get full signal with the EDGE card. I have no doubt that under any given situation where it's the only thing available, it will be no problem at all. It's not like I intend to rock out in the dorm with the EDGE card. (on a regular basis, anyway.)

PowerBook 520 and 520C

I know this is kind of a copy of my post on the 68kMLA Forum but I just thought I'd let everyone know that I picked up a few more PowerBooks. I just thought I might let everyone know about my recent actual liberation, from NAU's surplus store, two members of the 500 series of PowerBooks.

These are immense machines, they're bigger, thicker, more rounded, and have in general what feels like more horsepower than the PowerBook 180. Although I think much of this is just a result of becoming a bit too complicated, because they both have hinge problems of varying difficulties, and while the PowerBook 180 has some battery life, neither of these machines, despite having two nice-looking batteries each, has any life in the batteries. These seem to suffer almost from too much engineering, like a modern version of the Mac Portable, where if you don't maintain them "just so" they would be difficult to keep going, especially as mobile computers. It makes me wonder what sort of maintenance or treatment would be necessary to keep one of these machines running properly.

Anyway, configs!
The 520: 20 megs of ram, 120-ish meg hdd.
The 520c: 36 megs of ram, 1000-ish meg hdd. Global Village Modem.

Both are running system 7.5, and both are (other than the hinges and batteries) fully working. Which really surprised me, for $10-for-both from a university surplus sales store.

Once I get home for the summer I'm probably going to reformat them a bit and put clean installs of some older software on them. I might try to find the 520/520c original install discs and drop 7.1 on them, not completely sure yet. My other project with these machines will be to fix the hinge a bit on the 520c, and to see if I can't get any life at all out of the batteries. I may also try to source a second power adapter, because right now both 520s are sharing the same adapter.

Another interesting tidbit: These machines still had user data on them, research from the French department on this campus, I believe. It's all French stuff though, I don't even know if any of it was typed in English, so it's not terribly interesting to look at, or read.

I'm pretty excited about these machines and the 180, it's nice to be able to have some 68k power with me here at the university. This summer, I intend to try to find some more of my software and accessories for PowerBooks. I'm sure I've got an HDI30 adapter, and I'll probably bring back the external scsi hard disc, and-slash-or the USB floppy drive.

Windows NT 4.0

I'm writing this post for my blog to inform my readers, who may or may not care, that I've got the ThinkPad A21m booting and running Windows NT 4.0. If you heard about the project for this Pentium III machine running at 700MHz a few weeks ago, you'll know that I almost completely gave up. The main struggle was that everything was running perfectly with the exception of the Ethernet in the machine.

I was able to get the ethernet driver installed using a little bit of a trick. I installed the driver for an NT4 supported card so as to get the networking stack running. I then installed the Lenovo ethernet driver, and from there, I removed the driver for the card I didn't have. I'd say that it was a fairly clever ploy and that it worked fairly well.

Right now I'm in the process of installing Internet Explorer updates, after which I'm going to go through and install all of the drivers, the power saving utilities, and the Lenovo documentation. I've also got Visual Basic 6, and I'm pretty excited to say that I want to get Office 97 rolling on here.

Overall, I'm pretty excited about the machine. This is going to be one of the highest end machines I've ever had running NT4, and it's going to be running it in the most complete way I've ever used NT4. Add to that, it's in a convenient foldable slab format that I can take with me to the helpdesk, or wherever else I want to have NT4 with me.

Another thing I'm (quite oddly) looking forward to is playing with Visual Basic 6 again. It's been a very long time (gee, it was like tenth or eleventh grade I last used VB6) since I've used Visual Basic and I'd like to see if I still remember anything at all about it. If I do, I might like to write a few little applications, and who knows, maybe I'll put them online for other people to take a look at.

Best Buy

Last night, Megan and I went to Best Buy, where I was basically in wonder-joy land for a nearly an hour. We looked at such things as blu-ray players and high definition televisions, as well as hard disc and high def camcorders (but not too many high def hard disc camcorders), computers with monitors that can rotate, and some video games.

Megan seemed to enjoy the camcorders, the iPods and the video games the most; I'll admit it's certainly entertaining to see Megan play the singing game. I did try the singing game "singstar" but I don't think I'm very good at it. I actually think I did very badly at it, but that's just because the game can tell you whether or not you're "above" or below" the proper level, note, or whatever. I was fairly consistently above or below.

My favorite parts were the camcorders, the cameras and the computers. Luckily I didn't accidentally buy another computer, but it's always interesting to see what the vendors are doing, and it was nice to see their products in a retail setting, because most of the vendors have websites awful enough that it's not even worth trying to check up on their pricing, and the peripherals they offer like monitors and keyboards/mice.

Anyway, I bought a PC card adapter for CF cards and a 2 gig CF card, upon arriving home after spending a few hours with Megan in Wilson, I tried them out to find that they worked gloriously in the ThinkPad 760CD. Now the issue is just finding the best way to transfer data to/from the card and my newer computers. What I may need/want to do is find a DOS program that can create .img files based on the entire hard disc, and write them back out from the CF card, it would be a fairly easy way to switch back and forth between a few different hard disc setups. Plus, they don't even all need to be Windows – it would be awesome to get OPENSTEP 4.2 or a Linux/BSD variant set up and handy. I don't know, once I find an OS setup that I really like, how often I'll change – but it's nice to know that I could use a different OS on the 760CD every day if I really wanted to.

ThinkPad Install Disks

I've got to admit that it's kind of annoying to create operating system reinstallation media. I'm currently doing that for the ThinkPad 760CD, in an effort to eventually reformat the system and hopefully be able to upgrade the operating system to Windows 95. In theory, I should just be able to "make the install set" by writing an image out to floppy, then copying that floppy to my flash drive using the other computer. Unfortunately, it seems that mid-set failures in creating the floppy are happening. I'll get it eventually, which just doesn't happen to be coinciding with "today" right now.

Another thing I've noticed today is that all of the users seem to want to use the computers in the little hidden room by default. There are only three working machines in there, although I'll admit that 4 of the 5 machines back there have the nicest monitors in this lab. I was extraordinarily tempted earlier today to swap one of those monitors with the monitor we've got at the lab desk here, which I'll admit isn't that great.

There's also the one monitor here in the lab that doesn't match the other student machines. It's unbelievably annoying, actually. Ah well, there are inconsistencies like that all over South Lab, I suppose I'm just paying less attention down there, since there are more machines, and I don't have to look at most of the student machines anyway.

… and I've got four more hours yet!

Floppies

This is one of potentially many blog entries from tonight's overnight shift, just as an advanced warning. I found a small stash of old students' floppies here in the Cowden lab, and after looking at least one of them up in LDAP (degree completed status), I decided it would probably be safe to take a look at some of them, and format them so I can work on transferring data to and from the ThinkPad 760CD.

Unfortunately though, it turns out that most of these floppies are old and impossible to use, I started the night thinking that the OptiPlex GX520 here next to me might have a bad floppy drive, but quickly moved to thinking it might've been the TP760CD, Although I am now favoring the possibility that the floppies themselves are bad – It's possible that I'll just have to get my own floppies.

The only real bad thing about that is that I just need one good floppy for tonight, to install the PCMCIA tools on the ThinkPad so I can format the MicroDrive I got today, with the intent of actually using it to backup the data from the 760CD onto the R61i. Failing that, I may just buy some new floppies, or a null serial cable and one of those USB to Serial adapters.

Instead of backing up the data from the ThinkPad's hard disc, I would love to be able to just pop in an alternate drive, but since I'm not made of money-for-eBay (yet) I'll just work on backing up the important stuff the old fashioned way.

Of Pismos and ThinkPads.

The Pismo has developed a few more lines on the screen. It's now got a vertical red bar 3 pixels wide in the middle of the screen, and just a few pixels to the left of that, a 1px white line. Add to that, the screen's hinge hasn't been getting any tighter in the past few months. (Although the lower half is, in general, quite reliable it seems. :P)

I was therefore thinking about possible replacement of the Pismo, just because it turns out that having a fairly reasonably-well working mobile computer is actually extraordinarily helpful.

And then "The Eternal Question" popped up. Would a Pismo replacement be used or new?

I don't need all the functionality of a brand new laptop, so something even as old as the Pismo would be just fine, but I do wonder whether or not the added cost of a new one would make it worth waiting longer and getting a new one.

I suppose the benefit of a brand new laptop is that (unlike a used laptop), I'm here in 2007 at the very beginning of its life, instead of here in 2007 possibly at the close of what could have been a very long life.

Recently I asked somebody online about an IBM ThinkPad T20 mobile computer they were offering for sale. It was a fairly upgraded unit, having 512mb of memory and a 40 gigabyte hard disc, as well as a CDRW/DVDROM Combo drive, and some PCMCIA expansion cards. However, what I observed from this is that older ThinkPad computers are inordinately expensive, purely because of their longevity I suppose, similar to how overpriced some PowerBook G3 models are, I suppose.

The funny thing here, I suppose, was that if I could afford the T20 at its asking price, I was already more than a third the way to a newer laptop computer. (A Lenovo ThinkPad even.) Unexpected, but welcome benefits include not having to buy extra batteries straightaway, less fumbling with expansion options to do the same things, and more room and speed for more, and more sophisticated programs. Of course, there's also the whole thing about it lasting for so long.

On the other hand, getting another older laptop (even the insanely priced T20, or an insanely priced PowerBook G3) saves me a little bit of money, ensures I'll stay on-task while in classes, plus the whole thing is less valuable in case it's lost or something else awful happens.

Plus, with a new laptop, I lose the reputation of being efficient enough that I can do everything or nearly everything I need to do with the 8-year-old laptop. (It's 7 now, but it turns eight in January or February of next year, less than 6 months away.)

I suppose the real solution is just to wait until the Pismo dies, and I actually have enough money for a newer mobile computer. The Pismo isn't preventing me from progressing in my life, and admittedly while those lines are disconcerting, they don't prevent anything from getting done. I wouldn't be surprised if (even with the degrading condition of the screen) the Pismo really does still have another year or so left in it as my main mobile computer. So it's possible that at some point, I'll be "the guy with the ten year old laptop!"

Macintosh LC520 Liberation

I have had a bit of an opportunity to use the LC520 for any amount of time, and after a bit of writing about it, pondering it, and doing some research and reading the documentation, I’ve decided to a) write an actual blog entry about it and b) write a blog entry using this interesting machine. So here it is, a blog entry that I am writing on a Mac LC520, using a cool old word processor called MacWritePro 1.5v3, which is only about a year newer than the 520 itself.


My particular example of the LC520 comes in a stock 5/80 configuration, which means it has 5 megabytes of memory, and an 80 megabyte hard disc. Think about that for a second. Five megabytes of system memory. And the thing was expandable to a total of 36MB. An 80 meg disk too, maybe it’s only me, but I think that that’s amazing. Add to that, the fact that after installing the operating system (Mac System 7.1), two word processing apps, a popular graphics application and a popular desktop publishing application, the disk still has nearly 48 megabytes left over for user data.

Although the ratio isn’t the best one ever, this is including the fact that “user data” was a whole lot smaller in 1993 (when the machine was manufactured) anywa, and the fact that I’ve got awful disk space management skills. So if I were to go through and delete things like sample docs, extensions I’ll never use, and actually optimise everything, (including removal of one of the two word processors), I would probably end up with about 20 to 30 megs used, which is much closer to the ratio of my modern computers.

It’s a usable machine overall, words appear on the screen as I type them, the whole thing boots to a desktop and allows me to launch and use applications. As a whole, it’s a great little system really, the 14 inch Trinitron display surpasses most modern CRT and some LCD displays in text readability, the built-in stereo speakers produce reasonably nice sound, and in fact, I think the only downside of this system is that the keyboard leaves a little something to be desired, but I chose this one (as opposed to an AEKII, which I could’ve gotten) for the authenticity.

I may at some point bring this machine to the university. It’s good for writing, and since it’s floppy drive works, it is easy enough to transfer such little bits of data (as documents and screenshots) back and forth between the two machines. Even if I don’t bring it to the university, I do have it here and it is set up on my desk here at dad’s house, in the spot my iMac used to have.

Getting Things Done

On this luckiest of days, it occurs to me that this summer has been wasted mostly on trivialities, little things that don't matter much in the long run. That's fine with me, but I feel as though I should do something that I feel will have some kind of lasting effect.

More importantly, I've been thinking about the status of the 68kMLA, and the 68k User Base. What I've noticed is that the users of older 68k and PowerPC machines are really just that -- users. We've got very few mega-hobbyists who do programming on them, and get deep into the hardware and architecture of the machines. The 68kMLA/PPCMLA on their own aren't very conducive to those discussions, and most of the people around wouldn't be interested if it were there.

So I feel like I should do something for the retro Mac community -- but what? Should I be writing software? Lobbying for the simplification of websites? I personally don't think that either of those is a very great idea, but I do believe that there are things I can do to help the community.

One of the things I've tried to do before is work on a database of software titles for Macs. This is important for a lot of reasons. It gives me something to do, for starters, and I think it's a fairly important contribution to the community. Especially if I could find information on things such as intro and discontinuation dates on various pieces of software, plus prices to help indicate to people just how much software actually cost.

We'll see though. I'm working on setting up a spot on my own website where potentially, a few people will be able to post information as they get it, but with any information-gathering project, it's not just something we'll be able to do and say "oh cool, done now." It's something that we'll have to work on, pretty much for a long time, I don't think that archiving all of the information about 68k Macs, even just about the software, will ever be done.

Another thing that was pointed out was the fact that the information about Apple's systems is really inconsistent, not only between Apple's website, but given the fact that there were a certain, well-known range of models released, I find it less important to release yet-another specs database.

Anyway, maybe one day I'll start on my Software Titles database, but for now I'm just going to write blog entries about how I think I should. Plus, I'm not entirely sure how I'll coordinate it yet.

Relief.

This probably sounds lame, but I'm now relieved. My mobile computer, which suffered from a spate of... mental retardation, let's say, is back on its own two feet. More accurately, it's back to booting from its own hard disc, and luckily enough, its remaining battery still works. With this, there'll be no more talk of selling the PowerBook G3, probably very little if any talk of buying any new batteries, and I won't need to worry about using the Toshiba Satellite laptop (the one with Windows 3.1 on it) as my main mobile computer.

Not that anybody cares, but for some background, my PowerBook G3 is a "Pismo" model, the last G3 PowerBook before Apple introduced the PowerBook G4 computer. It has a 500MHz PowerPC processor, 512mb of memory and a 30 gigabyte hard disc. (Those are upgrades though, it originally shipped with 128mb of memory and a 12 gigabyte hard disc.) The model was introduced in February 2000, and discontinued in January 2001. My particular model is from early 2000. This means it's 7 years old!

Old and slow it may be, but it remains a very trustworthy machine, with very good expansion capabilities for its time, and some really great battery life.

One of the unique things about this computer, compared with more modern laptops/notebooks, is that the CD drive is removable, and can be replaced with another device, such as an Iomega Zip drive, a Floppy disc drive, or a second battery. Even the primarily battery is very easy to remove. When they were new, Apple suggested that a machine with dual batteries was capable of achieving 9 to 10 hours of battery run time. In my experience, with newer third party batteries actually brings me closer to 20 hours, with the battery meter reading between 17 and 19, and actual runtime being between 14 and 17 hours. It is somewhat difficult to do, but it can be done.

Even if replacing the one now-dead battery is a $150 proposition, or $300 for two, it costs less than a new laptop, and I somehow think it might last just as long anyway.

So here's to you, Schraubenschleussel, and here's to at least three more good years.

No more PowerBook?

What a fitting revenge of the machine. Officially "almost one year" after I got it, my PowerBook G3 seems to be officially dead. For everybody who placed bets, let's just say that you were all wrong. The culprit happens to be the IDE controller. I'm not sure whether or not this is something that will just smooth over somehow, or if my PowerBook G3 will be crippled in that respect for the rest of its days with me.

I knew it would die, I did not know it would die this quickly. I don't know if it needs to be said, but I'll say it anyway. I am considering getting a Mac Portable to use for note taking and novel-writing. Nice, simple machine with weapon status, and really long battery life.

I am kind of sad that the PowerBook G3 can't remain useful the way it was before. Last fall, it had awesome battery life, wireless networking, good storage, and was generally usable as my main computer. It was originally acquired as a stopgap machine, purely because it had a display that worked, but I found that even after getting my iMac, I did somewhat like having a mobile computer.

How ironic that after two (or more?) years of posting on this blog (whose title is "Life:: Strapped to a Desk" for those of you reading this from any other websites,) I am now for the first time, actually without a fully mobile computer.

Visit to Mom's

I just got back from visiting Mom's house. It was better than over Thanksgiving, but I had difficulties in getting to my 68k Macs. Apparently a whole lot more stuff has been added to the garage, as well as the office, making neither location suitable for playing with old Macs. Additionally, it was very difficult to get to the Macs.

Luckily, I was able to find my 17" VGA monitor, the displaced PC133 memory (128mb sticks from the Dell/500, apparently) and the SGI Octane. I didn't, however, seem to be able to find my Powermac G3. Unfortunate, but I am sure it'll show up. That, or I'll use the Dell/933 as my main Mom's-House computer.

While I was there, I found out that Intel uses really cool codenames for their processors. Examples include Deschutes, Banias, Dothan, Cedar Mill, Conroe, Merom, Merced (boy do I remember the Merced!) , among others. (Prescott isn't that great, but I suppose I have to say "whoo for prescott!" because I have friends from that particular location. -- At any rate, I intend to give my unnamed computers names from a selection of Intel codenames. I may even give one to my iMac.

Schlangenbeschwoerer, however, is still a very tempting hostname for the iMac. Truthfully, who can resist something like "Snake Charmer?" It is currently named PRAGMA-II after the PowerBook G4 it officially replaces. (The PowerBook G3 being considered a stopgap machine, and now filling a different usage slot.)

Also, I really like Initial D music now. The Eurobeat stuff they use is nothing short of excellent. I will probably use this stuff for NaNo Writing Music this coming November.

Apparently I am old enough, or I seem enough like an old coot to be called grandpa on the Internet. I was having a discussion in #68kmla on FreeNode about web browsers and Mac OS 9, and somebody actually called me grandpa. Needless to say, I was quite surprised. It wasn't as offensive as it was surprising, and it certainly made me realize that as far as computers and technology go, I have been around for a lot of it.

I even vividly remember in November or December 1999, being in a CompUSA with my parents pointing out the various pieces of Apple software that would be cool as christmas gifts. Mac OS 9 was new then, and surely enough, Mac OS 9 and AppleWorks 5 were under the Christmas tree that year.

[cory5412] IE5 and wamcom can be okay, I've just had a lot of bad luck over the years.
[patrickool93] Ok Grand pa. back to bed ;)
[multifinder17] lol @ Patrickool93

Action News Update!

Heya Everybody! I have news about a variety of things. Firstly, classes start tomorrow, and I am insanely happy about it. Tomorrow, I have GER102 and PHO281 - those were two of my favorite subjects in high school, so I'm interested in what I will think of them at the university level.

Nextly, I have a laptop so old that it is considered to be quite epic. It is an old Toshiba Satellite 486 laptop with 4 megabytes of ram, and a disproportionately large 2 gigabyte hard disc. It will dual-boot Windows 3.1 and IBM's OS/2 Warp 3. I hope to use it for word processing and other retro things. In fact, I may get the CaGNoWriMo group to use it so that we're all writing using the same computer, so that there isn't any issue if some of us use Macs or PCs or whatever. Plus, I bet this thing would withstand being dropped or tossed in case of clumsiness or frustration. Plus, backups onto a modern computer would not be very difficult using floppy discs.

In other news, Brandy and I want to get CraGNoWriMo started by the beginning of February, so we hope that anybody who is going to participate will be able to make it to an Introductory meeting sometime soon. This way, we'll be able to hammer out some of the details, and get going on the upcoming novel. With luck, each of us will be able to have a few characters, and have a lot of say in the overall feel of the novel, we were even thinking of having a very liberal amount of time available to work on your segment, and with luck, with that amount of time, we'll be able to have two full rotations of the novel. That'll be great.

Also, I'm working on moviemaking projects, and probably a lot of other things. Anyway - Happy Tuesday!

Last Post of 2006!

Oh my goodness! I can't believe it's my last post of 2006! I've had 60-or-so posts on this blog since January, probably more than two thirds of which hve been since August, so I think I'm getting better at this blogging thing. Also - it helps that there's a bit of a reason to use this blog - every other piece of software I've tried on almost every other hosting service has been massive fail, plus now that blogger is out of beta, it integrates with my Google account quite nicely, and I can compose posts in Google Docs, or just email them from my gmail page.

Well... enough about the wonders of blogging, eh? What exactly do I want out of 2007? Well, hints from the gifts would say that my family wants me to go jogging or walking or something, so I might say that one of my resolutions is to go jogging.

Of course, year-round, my resolution is 1440x900.

Another thing I'd like is for working at the TV station to go well, or for me to find an actual paying job somewhere on campus. Naturally, I'd also like for my application to become a residence assistant to be accepted, and to get into that - it'll help tremendously I think.

I've got a few creative projects I want to work on more in 2007. Given that I now have a super-fast computer and a legal copy of Poser 7, I think that it is necessary I start working on such creative projects as 'A Man and his Mac' (the necessary props can be created with Shade LE or something.) I'd also like to start on more ueberfriends projects, including writing some episodes of the anime, and possibly starting to come up with the characters of it.

Another thing I'd like to do is work on my ideas for CraGNoWriMo, and NaNoWriMo - I've got a few interesting ideas, but I am not totally sure how they'll go over. I want to start making notecards of the plot for at least my NaNo idea, and see how far I can really take the plot. My next NaNo novel will really depend on the ability to create compelling characters that, if introduced in the right order and in the right way, that they can create their own compelling storyline. I have at least one idea that is somewhat feasable for my writing needs, but I've got ten months to come up with some things, right?

In 2007, I'd like to make a movie. Luckily that's been made possible for me by way of an old camcorder and a DVD recorder, so digitizing analogue video will be fairly easy. In addition, there isn't much of an excuse not to at least use iMovie for sequencing shots, and I can use GarageBand for the audio portion of my film, if that's the direction I am going in. (Though, Final Cut Pro is much more impressive, and I think it offers more options for me.)

I'm sure there's more I have to say, but I got caught up in a project helping mom, and I want this blog post to show up before 11:30 so that it has a chance show up on facebook before the new year.

Sayonara, 2006! I'm ready for 2007!

My Week at the High School

I just got done with a week and two days at the high school. I got a bit of a different perspective, because I spent almost all of my time in one classroom, which really gave me my first almot accurate impression of what teaching at the high school level is really like. It's certainly interesting, but I think that it is somewhat restricted. I noticed that Kate spent almost all of her time behind the desk helping students with various things, so at this point in her class (Photo I at least) it is all helping with the Series Project, and no actual instruction.

Another unfortunate thing about Kate's job, especially compared to university instructors and professors, is that she must manage all of the equipment that her program uses. This includes ordering things, maintaining them or hiring maintenance, as well as disposing of broken equipment, and dealing with the state department when it comes to things such as her old video equipment.

In addition, this year she's got a new helper or two, both of which are very interested in video equipment. So it turns out that they've been doing some "fundraisers" in the form of recording Choir and Band concerts on video, editing them, and theoretically selling DVDs or tapes of the finished product at a profit. However, what I have noticed is that these few are causing quite a few problems for Kate. So by the end of her day (this year), Kate spends about 40% of her time interacting with her students. 20% of her time interacting with the school and taking care of business related to that, and 40$ of her time doing fundraisers and working with the video people. I think that it's unfortunate that that's the breakdown, because her students deserve more time, and she deserves more time to just sit, or to do things other than taking care of some sort of business.

Compare this to a standard teacher who spends probably 60% of their time with students, 20% of their time working on school business, and 20% of their time doing other things such as more student interaction, grading papers, etc.

Ahwell, it seems to work for her mostly, so it surely isn't my place to judge. I would probably try to spend less time during the actual day working on equipment, and more time interacting with students or getting other business done.

Luckily, I was able to help Kate (and Mr. Burden) with some things. I helped Kate start to import her old audio tapes to iTunes, with the goal of eventually putting them on CDs. I helped get things a bit more organized in the room. I am also going to help Burden get some of his computers fixed.