Yes, I’ve been silent the last couple weeks. Work and school has been kicking my butt, but I’m about wrapped up. Poker on Friday, then I’m not going to know what to do with myself on Saturday!
I’m still working on my Marketing final, but I have until 11:59pm on Friday, so what’s the rush?
I’ve recently had some flakey behavior with my Hackintosh, and some of that has been traced back to incompatibilities between my Drobo using USB (FW800 is REALLY slow on it for some reason) and the version of OS X I’m running (10.5.7). The best fix would be to do a reinstall and get it back on 10.5.6. Even then, I know that it’ll just be a matter of time before something else pops up.
Luckily I was able to grab a refurbished 1GB 2.0GHz Mac Mini off of the Apple Store for cheap. Even better is the RAM I just took out of my MBP will bring it up to 4GB.
I’m looking forward to having a Mac server that will do everything (Bonjour, Back to my Mac, working video, fast FW800, security updates) and won’t require constant babysitting. Also, this now frees up the Atom hardware from the hackintosh to do my firewall project. It’s a win-win!
I’ll probably do another Hackintosh at some point in the future, but I won’t have it be something that I rely on daily, as it just requires too much care and feeding.
Look for some future posts on using the Mac Mini as a server and setting up pfSense on the Atom hardware.
Last week I hit a wall of frustration trying to run several VMs and always being at or near 100% memory and the swapping that resulted. Usually just one VM and the typical applications I ran in OS X were enough to bring everything to it’s knees. Well, I decided enough was enough and placed an order for an 8GB kit from Newegg.com. This is the result:
Just testing it out, I launched 2 XP VMs and a Windows 7 VM, along with every app I typically use. I didn’t hit 100%, but I did make it over the 6GB barrier:
Before doing this, I was really torn between a SSD drive and this upgrade. However, this appears to have solved all my woes. I’m sure SSD would be even better, but this is amazing as is.
Would I recommend this upgrade? If you use VMware Fusion heavily on your Mac, and especially if you do demos in VMs with your Mac, I would say with no reservations.
I’ll be very interested in finding out what they do. I both love and hate skill trees. I understand the purpose of trying to get me down a certain path, but it can also be very limiting. There may be strategies that I can dream up that the developers never did that would be possible without the skill tree.
According to Blizzard’s official Twitter, the revision of Diablo III’s skill system is in full swing, with an announcement that skill trees are completely gone from the latest iteration.
“Diablo: The skill system revision is in full force. Trees begone! I think it might be a winner. Jay says hi.”
My Google Reader feed just started working again (went public) and realized that it may be a bit spammy on twitter. Do you guys want me to disconnect it?
It was decided that last night I would attempt to upgrade our HTPC with some parts we had laying around. This would be a combination of cannibalization from machines that haven’t been touched since we got our Macs, and some parts that had been given to us by friends that were untested.
Here’s how the install went:
*sigh*
I was having fun with the install, up to a point. Now I’m wondering why I didn’t just go to the Apple store and pick up an Apple TV for $200 and call it a day. Right now I have no HTPC until I get something worked out. Plan B is to take some other known working parts that should work and get it going that way. Plan C is to start throwing stuff.
Once I get everything running, the plan is to get Windows 7 on there to use the Windows Media Center. I’ll post reviews of Windows 7 as a HTPC if/when I get it running!
This weeks pick of the week is iEyeNet. iEyeNet is a widget that allows you to see the network interface utilization on any SNMP-capable device. Why would you want this? Simply put, it allows you to see what your Internet bandwidth utilization is at a glance.
If you have DD-WRT, this will work with with very little effort. All you need to do, is go into the “Services” and enable SNMP. The default settings will work just fine, but you may want to change the community strings to something only you know for a little bit extra security.
Once you have SNMP enabled on your router, install iEyeNet and configure it as seen below. If your router is also your gateway IP address, it should enter that for you. If not, set the Router/Gateway address to the IP of your router. Set the SNMP community string to the string you set (or public by default), and then set the interface to monitor to vlan1, which corresponds to the WAN interface of most DD-WRT installs. It may be slightly different depending on the model you’re using (I’m using a WRT54g). If you can’t figure it out from looking at your router configuration, go ahead and try the each of the interfaces until you find the one that appears to match your Internet traffic usage.
Lastly, if your upload and download lines are reversed, you can just check “Flip Up/Down” to correct it.
That’s it for this week’s Mac App of the Week. Be sure to check back next Saturday for the next pick!
Now that you’re making some decent products, you should consider figuring out your marketing. Even if I wanted to buy a GM vehicle, I’d be confused as to which one I should buy because they’re practically the same with different body panels!
These two Google AdWords ads just showed up exactly like this on a website for me:
I assume I’d buy the Chevy Equinox if I want MPG, and the GMC Terrain if I want IPSI (ideas per square inch).
