Mac Mini (original case)

18 months ago I replaced my aged 2006 Mac Mini with an up to date model, which is still my main desktop computer today. The old Mac Mini was relegated to being a quasi-media centre, but of course because it was actually a desktop computer it really wasn't a very good media centre, but due to its age nor was it a very good desktop computer, hence why I replaced it.

I never used it as a media centre beyond the odd occasion and it's spent the last 18 months mostly consuming enough power to sleep and collecting dust. Until this evening, that is. I'm moving again soon (which I'll cover in full in a different post) and I'm trying to take as little as possible with me. I was using an old Dell PC as a local Linux development server, which isn't anything special but did the job nicely. There were three problems with it, however, specifically that it's as ugly as hell, chews through electricity because it was manufactured at a time when computer manufacturers thought it grew on trees, and it belongs to my housemate.

I don't really want to take it with me when I move because of all of those reasons, although I'm sure the last one could be eliminated with £30 or so. Then I remembered that I had this entirely idle old Mac Mini tucked away on a corner of my network doing nothing. I wondered if it would accept an installation of Ubuntu Server, given that it's an Intel-based Mac (the original Intel Core Solo model, no less). Sure enough, it turns out that it can, and it works a treet.

My old Mac Mini has a 60Gb hard disk and 1.25Gb of RAM. It's not going to break any records with its single-core 1.5Ghz processor, but for running a local Apache2 server it's nothing less than what I need. The only caveat is that it won't boot on its own into Linux straight from the hard disk, I have to keep an CD with rEFIt on it in the CD drive for it to do that; it's certainly not the end of the world.

From a cold-boot to getting a login prompt with all services started it uses just 85Mb of RAM and with all the software I need on it and my Git repositories in place it's using just 2.5Gb of it's hard disk. All this on a 65 watt power supply. In addition to this, and despite the fact that it's very different internally to my new Mac Mini, the two look identical from the outside and so look pretty good stacked on top of each other.

So don't throw out your old Mac Mini, give it a proper job to see out its old age! The only thing I can't do with this which I was thinking about doing with the Dell PC was putting an x100P card in it. I'll live.

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I have two computers, a Mac Mini with a 2.53Ghz Core 2 Duo processor and a 256Mb Nvidia Geforce 9400 graphics controller and a Macbook Pro with a 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, which actually has two graphics controllers. It has a the same controller as the Mac Mini for "normal" operations and then it has an extra 512Mb Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT controller which you then switch on (requiring a logout instead of a reboot) when you want some serious graphics grunt. The reason why it doesn't just have the super-duper one is that it absolutely hobbles the otherwise excellent battery life, so you only enable it when you really need it.

I've mainly been playing Half Life 2, which is available for the mac along with a plethora of other games via the Steam platform. Half Life 2 really puts my Macbook to the test, but it fares very well as I'm able to play the game at full screen resolution with nearly all the graphics settings turned up to maximum (meaning that it renders very pretty scenes) and still get a consistent frames per second (FPS) rate of between 30 and 60, which is good enough for me. The computer gets jolly hot whilst it's doing this but appears to be designed to deal with it.

The other thing I've been playing is an old favourite from the turn of the century, Quake III Arena, the source code for which is now freely available and can be easily compiled on Mac OS X. All you need are the PAK files from the original game disc (as the content in these files are still under copyright). This game runs at a consistent, unwavering 90 FPS even on my Mac Mini's relatively humble graphics controller with all the graphics settings turned up to maximum. It's by no means a clever game, but it's an awful lot of fun if you just want to blow off some steam in an unapologising shoot-em-up.

I'd really love to get Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas working too. There is a way, apparently, but it's flaky, difficult to play on a laptop and I can't play that game and enjoy it without all the mods cheats that I used to use, none of which will work on a Mac even if the game does. It'd be fabulous if other games publishers in addition to Aspyr used something like Steam to distribute their games to multiple platforms. It's clearly a system that's working very well and I think that publishers need to take the Mac platform more seriously as it gets more and more popular, especially amongst younger people who are their principle market.

If I had more time I would probably play games a lot more as they're a great (and relatively) cheap way to escape and blow off some steam. That said I wouldn't want to spend every spare minute playing them, I know what happens to people who do that.

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Carrie always was fond of the piano stool.

Right, I've torn my hair out over this for long enough now and so I'm pleading for help. I must be missing something very basic and elementary, but I cannot for the life of me find what it is.

First some back-story, which you will need to know if you don't follow me on Twitter. I have recently inherited my late mother's Technics digital piano (model PX9), as my Dad is moving house and there is no room for it at his new place. I've had my eye on it for some years now and my current home does have room for it, so he brought it up last week for me. Given that I cannot actually play the piano, I wish to connect it to my laptop using its MIDI ports.

My reasons for this are simple: All I want to do is:

1. Download music from the Internet as MIDI files.
2. Connect my laptop (Macbook Pro, Mac OS X 10.6.6) to the piano using a USB MIDI interface.
3. Play the MIDI files on the digital piano from the laptop.

So far, I have achieved the first two goals, but I am having serious trouble with the third. Please note that I do not wish to compose music, create MIDI files or use the digital piano as a MIDI keyboard, all I want to do is have the laptop play the piano.

I have tried using the following software to achieve this:

• iTunes - will play MIDI files, but not via MIDI, only using the computer's speakers.
• GarageBand - will play MIDI files on the laptop and will use the piano as a MIDI keyboard. I see MIDI signals being recognised, but it will not use the piano as a MIDI output and I cannot find any settings or options to that effect. Various Google searches suggest that GarageBand does not support MIDI output, despite supporting MIDI input.
• Reason - this baffled the hell out of me, I couldn't even load my MIDI file into it, much less find any MIDI output options.
• Logic Express 9 - again, this is a complicated piece of professional software and I still could not find any MIDI output options. This surprised me given that this is supposed to be Apple's professional composition software (in contrast to GarageBand which is aimed at amateurs), so I may well have missed them somewhere.

My question to those who know about this sort of thing is simple: How do I achieve what I want to do? What software do I need and which settings do I need to set? Surely it cannot be that difficult? I would imagine that it would be a case of having an option somewhere that changes the output audio device from the local sound card to a MIDI device. I know it's possible because, back in the day, I had a similar interface for my Acorn Archimedes, and I distinctly remember achieving this with some considerable ease using basic bundled software.

I have confirmed that my USB MIDI interface is working correctly and that it is connected to the digital piano correctly. I think the fact that GarageBand recognises input signals from the piano confirms this. I would welcome help and advice from anyone who can help me.

Incidentally I think it's amazing that an up to date laptop is able to connect and talk to a 24 year old piece of equipment using nothing more than a smart cable that cost £2.50 from Amazon.

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The script, which supports a single Twitter account, supports the following actions:

• Update (tweet), with option to specify an existing update ID to reply to.
• Retrieve your public timeline (your tweets and those of who you follow).
• Retrieve your own timeline.
• Retrieve the public timeline.
• Retrieve your recent mentions.
• Retrieve recent re-tweets of your updates.
• Search Twitter.

In order to work, you must authorise your Twitter account with SuperTweet, and provide the script with the username and secret that you specify in your SuperTweet account. This is because the script does not support oAuth (at least, not yet). Also, if you use Twitter to post URLs (and you probably do) you will also require a Bit.ly API key. Edit the script and provide both sets of credentials at the top.

The script is self contained, containing all the various classes that it depends on in the same file. I've verified that it works "out of the box" on Ubuntu Linux 10.04 and Mac OS 10.6. It will probably work on many other systems too, assuming they have PHP installed. With a small modification to the first line you can probably get it to work on Windows too, but that's as far as I can advise, you're on your own from there. The version I use doesn't contain the included classes as I link it to my local class library.

To get started, download the script, unpack it with gzip -d, add execute permissions with chmod +x and then type ./twitter.php commands for a usage summary. Some commands when called without arguments will present further usage summaries which will tell you how to use them. You'll probably want to start with something like:

./twitter.php update "Testing @stuartford's pitiful command line Twitter script."

Don't forget to add your Twitter and Bit.ly credentials to the top of the script otherwise it definitely won't work first time for you and I'd rather that didn't happen.

If you don't understand most of this post then this script probably isn't for you, sorry, it is what it is, no warranty, etc.

* I say it required some thought because it's rare that I make my code available for public use. I don't know why, because I believe I am a talented software developer, I guess it might be the slight family creative gene within me that might be forcing a behaviour equivalent to an artist who's perpetually reluctant to show people his work, who knows, that's one for the shrink's chair. Certainly the script isn't my best work, it grew out of something quick and dirty, and as any developer will tell you, anything that grows out of something quick and dirty will always be quick and dirty at its heart.

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It's the 15" 2.8 Ghz Intel Core Duo model (the fastest processor currently available in a MacBook Pro) with 4Gb of RAM, a 500 Gb hard drive and the second separate NVIDIA graphics controller with the separate 512Mb VRAM, although I don't see myself using that too much since it absolutely hobbles the battery life and I'm not a big games player. It's nice to know that it's there should I need to though.

I'm very pleased with it, it's a nice bit of kit that'll last me a fair few years. If a base model original Macbook can last me three and a half years then I should get a fair amount of mileage out of this one before needing to replace it.

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One of the main advances of the face-lifted Mac Mini over the old design is the fact that it supports dual-monitors. Up until the release of this model last year if you wanted dual-monitors on a desktop machine you either had to get a Mac Pro or connect a second monitor to an iMac, both expensive options if you've already got your own monitors from a previous machine, so it was a dream come true when they added two monitor ports to the Mac Mini because it's such a cost-effective option.

So yes, I'm very happy with it. Next is my Macbook as mentioned before, which gets replaced with a 13" Macbook Pro later in the year, or whenever my Macbook gives up, whichever comes sooner.

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I'm a little underwhelmed with the iPhone 3GS, if I'm honest. Although I will take advantage of a free upgrade to a 3GS in January (because why wouldn't I?) I certainly couldn't justify either buying out the remainder of my contract now, or indeed the extra cost of a 3GS over a 3G if I was buying a new one.

The 3GS has four advantages over the 3G. Two features, the faster processor and the much improved camera (with video capabilities) are fair game, I'm not going to argue with those. But the other two seem virtually useless in comparison, those being voice control and a compass, of all things. I guess these two features might help people who use their iPhones whilst driving, but it remains to be seen just how useful they prove.

The OS 3.0 software update, however, is much more valuable and important than the hardware update. Although I'm disappointed that there's still no support for running applications in the background, OS 3.0 has a plethora of improvements that make using an iPhone generally better.

Most notable amongst the new features is MMS, which is fantastic, but I'm still annoyed with Apple for having taken nearly two years to implement it on the iPhone platform; there was really no excuse for not having it from the start. Other features of note include Spotlight search and cut and paste facilities, something else that people have been crying out for for ages.

Internet tethering is another feature that would be amazingly useful had O2 not made it virtually impossible to use by applying punitive "bolt-on" prices to anyone who actually wants to use it. iPhone users are supposed to be on an "unlimited data" tariff with O2, but if you want to download that data to a device other than your iPhone then you have to pay for it again.

There are hundreds of other improvements. I've found a comprehensive list of them and a detailed guide about how to get the best out of them if it's not clear to any iPhone owners who are having trouble noticing the changes after updating.

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Myself and H received our free iPhone 3Gs the other week, and they're absolutely great. I wasn't displeased with the original iPhone, which I bought in January, but there were some notable features that were missing from it, in particular 3G and the ability to install third party applications. Both these shortcomings have been resolved with the new version and also has proper GPS now too instead of the poor-man's version which attempted to triangulate your position from mobile masts. The best thing about the upgrade was that it was free and Envirofone are giving me £115 for my old one, so, result!

I've a mandate from work to think about developing applications for the iPhone, because my boss has one too and is very fired up over it. Unlike Microsoft, Apple give their development platform away for free, rather than charging thousands for it, so that's a good start. The only problem is that Apple software development, whether for Mac OS or the iPhone, is all done using Objective C and C++, which I have absolutely no experience with, so I did a fair amount of shopping on Amazon for some suitable O'Reilly books last week with the intention of getting to grips with it, if myself and my lackey can fit it around our current commitments.

I have of course installed all sorts of new applications on my iPhone, ranging from arcade games to news feeds to website specific applications, such as those provided by Facebook and Google, but the "killer app" that I've found is Apple Remote. This application allows me to play music from either my iTunes library or H's (on separate computers) to any set of remote speakers in the flat (we have a set in the living room and a set in the bedroom), as well as on the computer on which the library resides, of course. So we can sit in bed and summon up any music we want, including Internet radio, and have it play wherever we are. Either of us can control it, at the same time, using both our iPhones too. It's brilliant, and I actually don't understand why it doesn't ship with the iPhone since it's written by Apple and made available for free anyway.

Still no picture messaging on the new iPhone though, which surprises me, I would have thought that would be very easy to implement, especially given the 3G support.

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Lift like TARDIS that only goes to the 70s

We're moving offices at the moment as we've completely outgrown our small serviced offices and have signed a lease on an entire floor in the building literally across the road (so no wacky races with vans and things will be required). The building across the road is perfectly fine, but the landlord hasn't quite finished refurbishing it yet and has a few things still to do, including the refurbishment of one of the two lifts. One lift is all modern with digital controls and voice floor announcements and all that jazz, but the other, although functional, is still as it was installed when the building was built in the 70s.

It's totally retro, with big clunky buttons, wood paneling, an old fashioned floor indicator panel above the door (which doesn't work) and inside the emergency phone cabinet is this fully functional dial telephone (pictured). It actually works too! It's like going back in time 20 years.

I've also added a third monitor to my Mac Pro at work, because I'm greedy and I can. It was a spare monitor I had at my Dad's house, liberated from the Rhydio office in 2006, and so I thought I'd put it to good use. Very soon I'll wonder how I worked without it and be wanting a fourth one, which will be entirely possible since my Mac Pro has 4 monitor ports.

Because I am greedy

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I'd been holding off getting an Apple iPhone until the New Year anyway and the death of my old phone combined with the death of my last iPod in October left few excuses not to then get one, so I did. I absolutely love it; principally because it combines an iPod and a phone into one single device that's 100% compatible in every way with my Mac computers, rather than some sort of third party bodged compatibility as provided by other manufacturers. It's a total dream to use and allows me not only to make phone calls, listen to music and send texts but also read and write e-mail in a way that's actually easy and works properly, and also to surf the web using what's stops very very short of being a proper web browser.

Of course, I've had derision from many people for buying it, whose complaints tend to be centred around the same few issues:

1. You can't send picture messages.
2. You can't text more than one person at the same time.
3. It's too expensive.
4. You can't record videos.
5. It doesn't have 3G.
6. You have to use O2.

I'd like to officially submit the following responses to these points so that people can shut the fuck up about them once and for all:

1. I've never sent a picture message in my entire fucking life.
2. Incorrect. Firmware 1.1.3 allows multiple text recipients.
3. I could have easily spent more on an iPod Touch and a separate phone of similar quality. I'd also have ended up with two devices in my pocket.
4. Oh noes! How will I fill up YouTube with meaningless rubbish now?!
5. It connects to your wireless network at home and the EDGE data connection is plenty fast enough for what you need it to do when you're not at home.
6. Frankly, anything's better than the utter piece of shit that it's T-Mobile's awful cellular network. I can now make phone calls from inside my Dad's house.

Any perceived compromises made are outweighed by its clear and irrefutable benefits. It's great, for example, being able to listen to music and then have a phone call put through directly to your headphones without having to change devices or have a second device embarrassingly ring away in your pocket because you can't fucking hear it. The iChat-style text messaging system is splendid, taking what Blackberrys do to a more logical conclusion. Google Maps works exactly how you would expect it to. It's also frighteningly easy to download music off iTunes with it, although whether or not that's a benefit is subjective of course.

If I had any complaints about it it would be that the camera isn't particularly good and that they've been a bit slow in opening it up to third party developers. The former I can't do anything about, but the latter will be resolved in February, apparently. I want an SSH client, an IRC client and an iChat client without having to use some sort of web application bodge. I expect my wishes will be granted relatively quickly.

So no, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but then nobody is being forced to buy it. Indeed, because of its price many people are being forced not to buy it, which I suspect is more of a motive to pick holes in it than people will admit to. It reminds me of those pricks who bray "oh yeah, well, I could have got a BMW but I got something much better instead", whilst driving a fucking Passat or something.

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The bust DIMM is still in warranty, in that I bought it less than 12 months ago, so I shall see if they'll replace it. It would be easier in this situation if it was the new one that had broken, but they might find it a little suspect that the old one stopped working during the upgrade procedure that put the new one in. At the end of the day it would only be another £15 to replace, but still, it'd be a waste.

I've also Leopardized the five Macs that Chris and I use between us using the stonking "family pack" that Apple offer, whereby if you want to install Leopard on five computers then you only pay £130 instead of £80 x 5 = £400, which is what Microsoft would make you do, except the £80 would be £240 in their case. I don't mind paying for software if it's reasonably priced, but £240 for Microsoft Windows is just fucking ridiculous and I'm glad that I'm no longer subjected to the Microsoft upgrade path.

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New iMac

Apple have released the latest version of the iMac, the "all in one" computer where you get what looks like just a monitor with a keyboard and a mouse. It's not a new concept, either in terms of Apple themselves (since the original iMac came out nearly ten years ago) nor in terms of computing in general, making reference to the days when many computers and terminals were manufactured in this format.

The new iMac has clear evolution with its predecessor, which is a departure from the predecessor's own evolution; until now, with the exception of the third and fourth generation iMacs (which were outwardly identical with different guts), each iMac has been significantly different from its predecessor. I think it looks quite nice apart from the black surround on the screen. I prefer the glossy white Mac style, as does Chris, but I do like the aluminum design; that's working well with a number of models in the Apple range at the moment.

The new iMac brings with it the latest designs of Apple keyboard, which are shipped with the new iMac and Mac Pro and are also sold separately. As far as I can tell and ignoring eBay, you can now no longer buy the old style keyboards. This I have mixed feelings about, for two reasons.

Firstly, here is the new wired keyboard. It's nice looking and very slim, but is basically a laptop keyboard. Indeed its keys are identical to those on my Macbook. This is not to say that I dislike my Macbook keyboard, I don't, but using a laptop keyboard with a desktop computer doesn't feel right and I think I'd prefer a "proper" keyboard.

But then we move on to my second concern. The wireless version of this keyboard really is just a Macbook keyboard in an aluminum case, with the same number of keys and the same keyboard layout. Previously the wired and wireless keyboards were identical in their appearance, size and layout, so why Apple have chosen to force a differently sized keyboard on those who want a wireless model is beyond me. I could just about cope with the "full size" wired keyboard, laptop keys or not, but this would just piss me off.

But this happens every time. Apple are very good at trumping themselves with the design of their products and they're not afraid to be radical. Every time they bring something out that looks unusual people are either totally in love with it straight away or say that they'll never get used to it, but always do.

Returning to the subject of the iMac, I think that Apple could improve the scope of this product very easily. iMacs come with a built-in monitor, as you can see, but they also come with an extra monitor port on the back to which you can connect a second screen. The trouble with this is that no second screen, even Apple's standalone displays, will match the iMac and you'll always have this odd juxtaposition of mismatched equipment if you do choose to connect a second display.

The solution to this is simple. Apple should sell a range of monitors that look just like iMacs. They'd be easy to produce, since they would actually use iMac shells and iMac screens; they'd just not put the guts of a computer inside. They already have all the tooling and components available to do this, and I think it would be a great way of allowing people who use their iMac as their primary work computer to use a matching second display without having to plump for a Mac Pro which, although nice and fast, are expensive when compared to the iMac.

I've done a mockup of what such a setup might look like. Tell me that this isn't a good idea? If it happens, you read it here first ;)

Mockup of dual-screen iMac

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