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.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

Glide is a rapidly growing energy and telecommunications company specialising in looking after tenants, landlords, letting agents and property investors across the UK. They supply gas, electricity, telephony and broadband services to residential and commercial customers.

About Glide

They believe in hard work in an informal atmosphere that encourages people to express their ideas. They look for talented people who want to work with technology and can tackle problems in a smart and creative way. Their employees enjoy working in a challenging environment that brings out the best in them. Customers and customer service are at the heart of everything they do - their business revolves around their customers.

They have their own in-house development, customer support and sales teams and remain focused on keeping their costs low through automation and keeping customers informed through good communication. As technology evolves, they aim to bring new and improved services to their customers as early as possible.

About The Role

They currently have an opportunity for a full-time senior software engineer, starting immediately, as part of their in-house software team.

The role will focus on developing their bespoke systems. Their systems are written in object-orientated PHP with a SQL database. You will need to be a highly competent programmer  in PHP, SQL, Javascript, AJAX, Smarty templates, Model-View-Controller and in documenting your work. Good familiarity with Ubuntu/Debian based systems is required. Experience with invoicing routines, SVN or accountancy systems would be useful.

The role will involve working on projects to develop existing products, launch new products and services, improve internal customer service systems, update and maintain accountancy systems and invoicing scripts, debugging and diagnosing problems with their existing code base and working closely with their customer service teams. The role also includes integrating their system with multiple third party suppliers, redeveloping customer portals and revamping their website.

You will be enthusiastic about new technology, eager to learn, and will hold a degree in Computer Science or equivalent. You will be capable of managing your own time.

Application Details

The company is a place where everyone can be heard. If you like the sound of this opportunity, they'd love to hear from you. Please direct your communication and correspondence through my team or direct to me. Please view the website at www.glide.uk.com for more background information to assist you with your response.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

• Bar charts
• Line charts
• Meters
• Pie charts
• Radar charts
• Scatter charts
• Venn charts

The download contains all the classes, both in separate files and in a combined file (which one you will use will likely depend on whether or not you use class auto-loaders) plus a page of example usages to get you going.

As with AGCDR, this is currently being released as a beta so it's not perfect and I would welcome comments, suggestions and bug reports. Please submit any comments, suggestions or indeed any code you would like to contribute via the Google Code page in order that all information pertaining to it is kept in the same place.

Here's a gallery of examples:

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

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.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

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.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

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.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

Rack installed in the basement with 3x 24 port patch panels. It eventually contain a switch, router, server and amplifier for the garden speaker system.

I spent last weekend in Manchester finally completing the first phase of the IT and AV installation job in Salford that I have been working on on-and-off since February. The last time I was there was in June when the project was at second fix stage. Since then the builders have made great progress and the owner of the house has moved back in, requiring me to finish my work in order that he can start to buy toys to plug into the system.

All that remained was the installation of a few final CAT6 face plates that I couldn't install before (chiefly because the walls on which they were to be installed didn't yet exist back in June), the installation of the equipment rack in the plant room in the basement, and a complete test of all installed cables with a network cable test for the structured cabling and a multimeter for the home cinema cabling. Astonishingly, I'd made it to 35 years of age without buying a multimeter, which is something of an embarrassment for a geek, so presented with a genuine need for one I went out and bought one. A decent multimeter is only about ten quid. Regarding the structured cabling, out of 67 CAT6 cable runs, only three of them failed the initial test, which is a a good percentage for first test. They were quickly repaired and now all runs work perfectly.

These photos show the highlights of the work, since I'm obviously not going to post a picture of every single socket I installed. Apologies for the quality, they were taken with my iPhone (so, no flash) in artificial light during the evening.

Sockets in the "media room" behind where the home cinema equipment will be. The home cinema connections have their other ends at the appropriate places around the room. The hole in the plasterboard wasn't my fault and will be repaired by the builders!

The next stage is to consult on what my friend/client wants to buy to plug in to this impressive piece of infrastructure. Being a G.P., he doesn't have much of a clue regarding electronics, hence asking for my help, but does know that he wants a pretty kick-arse system and so is willing to spend a bit on it. However, since his house is still essentially a building site, regardless of whether or not he's living in it, I expect it's going to be a fair few months before we get to go shopping.

It was an enjoyable weekend away from home back in Manchester. I've not been there since Manchester Pride and I used the opportunity to catch up with H and see Saw 3D, which I enjoyed but was a bit "more of the same". I also don't think it'll be the last one, there's still loose ends. Given my recent pattern of visits it'll probably be another couple of months before I make it back.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

It's provided me with a career if nothing else, although since I'm an old-school educated software engineer I can in theory turn my hand to any kind of software development, regardless of the application. It just happens that I cut my teeth on web software applications.

When I was coming out I didn't have access to the Internet and neither did the Internet have the sort of resources for gay people it has now even if I did have access to it, so I was pretty much fending for myself. I can only imagine how different my life would have been had I been born ten years later.

Glamourous visions of the future in old films told us that we would have flying cars and have almost everything automated. They never predicted that the whole world would one day be connected in the way that it is now. A flying car would be great, but I wouldn't swap it for the Internet.

Decided to give Formspring a go. I will answer most questions but if you want to insult me then please do it to my face.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

As I mentioned in my previous post, instead of paying separate suppliers directly, who will insist that accounts held with them are in one name only, house-sharers all pay a fixed sum every month to Glide who then handle the rest. It makes for easy budgeting and reduces household administration which can otherwise be a bit bewildering to people who are living separately from their parents and not in university halls for the first time. Glide is currently unique in its market and by all accounts seems to be doing very well.

My job is, with another member of technical staff, to maintain and enhance the somewhat complex software system that runs the company, which does virtually everything from internal company administration, accounting and billing right through to live ordering and status checking of utilities from suppliers. As with any existing system being started on by a new developer I will need a suitable gear-up period, but I'm making great inroads into it and I reckon that by the end of the week I'll be able to make some initial recommendations as to procedure and future development.

It's really good to be doing what I do full time again. It occurred to me on Monday morning that the last time I got up in the morning to go to a full time job in an office somewhere my life was very different, better in some ways and worse in others. It's very different now, still a long way from ideal, but I do know that I'm going in the right direction to get to where I want to be. Doing what I am good at every day is a critically important step towards my goals rather than wasting time on the amount of sales and marketing that self employment demands of me, because I'm absolutely hopeless at both. I'm creative and technical, always have been, always will be.

I've been told to get the train in on Friday and not drive in. I can only assume that this means there's going to be some sort of new-starter party in the afternoon/evening. It's a young company and everyone who works there is around my age or younger, so I think it's a fair bet that that's what it's going to be.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

The company is unique in its market. It provides a service to landlords and tenants whereby all members of a shared rented household pay one fixed monthly sum for all their utilities, including gas, electricity, water, telephone and broadband. Primarily aimed at the student market where house-sharing is most common, the company uses its buying power to negotiate cheaper rates from utilities providers and passes a portion of those savings on to their customers. It's an exciting young company and I believe that I can make a difference to their operation and improve it through the ongoing enhancement of their existing software systems.

It's an 11 mile commute into central Birmingham every day, which is fine, it should take me around 45 minutes each way. I don't have to be in the office until 10.00am each day so that should allow me to avoid the worst of the traffic, which is ironically enough on the roads leading into and out of Sutton Coldfield rather than central Birmingham itself, once I'm past Sutton it becomes a lot easier. The equivalent train journey is less pleasant at 90 minutes in each direction including the two walks from the start and destination stations, so using the car is the way to go.

I'm looking forward to it.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

All but two of the speaker cables terminate on this one plate, which all has to be soldered.

The next and final stage before equipment install (i.e. the final infrastructure installation stage will take place in a few weeks once the builders have finished the basement, where all the cables terminate and the equipment rack will be situated. Although I have all the bits we need to finish this I can't do it because the basement to the house is not yet secure. Once the walls are finished and the external doors to the basement are fitted I can move the equipment in and finish it. Then it'll be the big test.

There are also 12 runs of CAT6 that I've not yet been able to do anything with simply because the walls on which they will sit haven't yet been built, so I've just run the cables to the ceiling or floor at the point at which they will eventually be and left sufficient length coiled up ready. Part of that was lifting up huge slabs of concrete out of the floor in the new kitchen which, with hindsight, would have been better done wearing a pair of gloves.

Once it's all done my "client" can then think about home cinema and computer networking equipment. Right now he just wants to concentrate on getting the builders finished and out so that he can move back in again. I hope he doesn't think that he "over-egged" the installation. Certainly, a 69 run CAT6 structured cabling system is definitely on the upper end of what you would normally put into a house, even of that size, and he may not even be able to buy a Dolby 9.1 home cinema system for a while. The point is that the infrastructure will make the house very future-proofed, which is what he wanted.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else

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.

Share on Facebook, Twitter and goodness knows what else