http://blog.blackrobes.net more personal stuff Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:08:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Avatar is a very pretty movie. Overlooking the story, my issues are with the avatars themselves and the program surrounding them. A lot just didn't make sense to me. Think back to the first Terminator movie, where we learn only items surrounded by living tissue can time travel. But in Terminator 2, ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/12/hollow-avatars/ I bought the base Mac mini last week: the $599 unit running at 2.0 GHz, 1 GB memory, and 120 GB of hard drive. For the same $200 that Apple wants for the $799 upgrade (2GB, 320GB @ 5400), I purchased 4GB of RAM from Crucial and a Western Digital ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/06/the-ten-hardest-screws-mac-mini-upgrades/ I bought the Apple wireless Keyboard to go with my Mac mini. It's Bluetooth and much smaller than the previous generation keyboards. Although it doesn't have contoured keys as on a traditional keyboard, and they keys feel slightly wider apart than standard, it types surprisingly well and is extremely portable. ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/06/the-apple-wireless-keyboard/ More clutter-free, more work to be done. I love my MX1000 laser mouse, but it needs new feet, and gives OS X fits sometimes. Various generations of the Western Digital MyBook series. I've found that FireWire drives are harder to come by these days, the two drives on the right ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/06/new-cleaner-desk/ I'm working on a fun post on the various hard drive's I've owned through the years. Here is a sneak peak. [gallery link="file"] http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/06/some-hard-drives-sneak-peak/ I was researching some other issues last night and came across this tidbit at Spotmau. As I mentioned in my previous BootCamp post, I manually updated boot.ini to fix a partition issue. Alternatively, one boots with the XP install disc and select the Recovery console. Temporarily remove the system, hidden, and ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/06/the-right-way-to-fix-broken-bootini-links/ With my latest hard drive swap, I wanted to bring BootCamp back into my life. Previously I created a custom XP install disc with USB support, which I used to boot Windows from an external USB hard drive. (See the Resources section at the end of this article.) Tech specs: ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/06/bootcampin-the-night-away/ I had the opportunity to get a 7,200 RPM notebook drive for my MacBook Pro, so I swapped the drive last Thursday, and have some additional notes on the swap. The first article detailing a drive swap is here: http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/05/replacing-the-macbook-pro-hard-drive/. The RAM modules do not need to be removed from the laptop ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/06/swapping-the-mbp-hard-drive-again/ in 2008, I bought a Western Digital MyBook Studio 1TB with triple interfaces - USB 2.0, FireWire 800, and eSATA. Along with this I bought a Dynex eSATA ExpressCard for my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, eSATA was not nice to me: specifically, the combination of the triple hard drive interface (rumored ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/05/esata-adventures-2009-edition/ Author's note: This article was originally published on blackrobes.net and macpro.tv in April 2008. I read about the Western Digital 320GB Serial ATA drive and its compatibility with the Mac. Most posts were along the lines of “no problem, but disable the Sudden Motion Sensor.” So I took the plunge on ... http://blog.blackrobes.net/2009/05/replacing-the-macbook-pro-hard-drive/