The Mothership

Well, my iBook G4 is now just over four years old and was starting to show its age, especially with more CPU-intensive modern video and the ever-increasing appetite of newer apps for more memory. So, I had to get it a buddy:

And by buddy, I mean replacement of course, since my iBook will probably now sulk in the closet while a fine layer of dust accumulates on top of it.

It’s just the base 15″ version, since I wasn’t really looking for a full “desktop replacement” model. I debated a bit about whether to get an upgraded plain MacBook or the Pro; the main functional difference between them now is that the Pro has a much better video chipset, but was that really worth the $700+ price difference… I finally figured that having the better video would probably let me squeeze an extra year or two of life out of it and in the end the per-year cost would be roughly similar anyway, so I may as well get all the frills of the Pro.

There are some things that are going to take a bit of time to adjust to, simply because they’re different. The bottom of the keyboard has a hard edge rather than a smooth ramp all the way up to the top, for example, and the gap between the keyboard and the trackpad is a little bigger than I’m used to. There’s no gap between some of the function keys like there was on the iBook, so my usual reference for finding F5 (the all-important Refresh key) is gone. The ports are laid out a bit nicer for the way my living room is set up though, so I don’t have to criss-cross network and mouse cables in the back when I’m using them.

As for new features, the multi-touch is nice, though I’m going to have to get into the habit of using it, since I often find myself still going to the scroll bars. The magsafe power port caught me a bit by surprise since it takes quite a bit of force to pull directly out, until I caught on to the bend-it-away trick. And I haven’t done much with any new Leopard features yet, though I did notice that Terminal has improved a lot, to the point where I don’t feel like I need iTerm anymore. I might not even bother with Time Machine, just sticking with my rsync-to-the-Linux-server scripts instead.

Now I still have to finish migrating most of my data over…

There was another eclipse tonight, but unfortunately I couldn’t get any good pictures of it this time, despite having a much better camera now. It was higher in the sky this time, so I couldn’t just rest the camera on a near-flat surface like I could before.

And finally, getting to see some of the city itself:

And now, the main event:

Unfortunately by this point I was running low on space on my memory card, since I couldn’t get the video off of the camera without special software I didn’t have on me and that Canon wouldn’t let me download, so I didn’t get as many post-race shots as I wanted.

Fewer pics this day, since things start to get redundant after a bit:

Better late than never:

Thuderstorm season is upon us here, and we just had a slight bit of flooding. This was the worst storm I’ve ever seen here. No hail for a change, but there was seemingly non-stop thunder and lightning for quite a while, and the rain fell furiously.

This was the first time that the water reached right up to the edge of the building and I was genuinely afraid that the water might actually seep into my apartment, so I spent a lot of time just running around, checking the edges of the walls and carpet for dampness. Luckily I escaped unscathed, but the condos across the street from me were not so lucky — their basement suites and underground parkade got flooded badly.

And worst of all, the lightning caused a power glitch that reset my 360 while I was in the middle of an endurance race!

(I’ll have some video too, once I get around to editing it together.)

I’m not much of a shutterbug, but I had some older pics that I figured I should upload to Flickr, just for kicks. It was a tad tougher than expected.

The pics in question were taken over seven years ago, and I asked for digital copies on CD as well. I hadn’t dealt with PhotoCDs before, so I didn’t really know what to expect or ask for, and I wound up getting a disc with the photos in Kodak’s FlashPix format. Flickr, of course, doesn’t exactly want them in that format…
(more…)

We just had a fierce hailstorm here that left the area I live in slightly…wetter.

(more…)

On Tuesday I woke up to find that my carpet was a bit squishier than usual. It turned out that the water feed to the neighbour’s toilet had broken, and the water was leaking into my place as well. Fortunately it only reached half the bedroom, the bathroom, and one hallway, so the damage wasn’t that great. Just a bunch of cardboard boxes with wrecked bottoms, and I’ve got more boxes than I need anyway.

Cleaning up however, is taking a bit of effort. (more…)

…thanks to having to haul a heavier-than-expected box home from the far too inconveniently located Purolator depot. It was worth it though, as the box contained my new toy:

Not enough time to set it up properly tonight, though.

Thanks, Jenn.

Some photos of the rising river I’ve recently mentioned (click for full versions). This is after it’s receded a bit, even, but unfortunately I don’t have ‘normal’ pictures to compare them against right now. (Update: There’s a decent view of the normal water levels around the middle of this page.)

Normally there are a few sprawling sandbars around the base of this bridge pillar.

(more…)

I know it was windy yesterday, but…

(More likely due to some drunken SAIT students…)

We’re pretty much settled into the new place now. The offices seem to be about the same size in total, wider, but just a little less deep:

The view isn’t quite as nice though…

This is a stack of the DVDs I’ve burned so far since I started using MythTV, most of which are movies I haven’t seen yet or don’t care strongly enough about to buy the official releases (and it’s actually missing a handful I’ve lent out or forgot to include).

Now if only I could find the time to actually start *watching* them…

More kittens than you can shake a stick at. If you were inclined to shake sticks at kittens, for some reason.