Posts by Murray Pearson

Ah yes, the clamshell iBook

I had one of those; the day after the warranty expired I whipped out my Torx drivers and ripped the little bastitch apart in order to upgrade the three gigabyte hard drive. I could see why there was only one repair depot on the planet for them as I got inside it; the whole thing was hung on this wacky trapeze setup that allowed the forces from the handle to disperse evenly through the components; it was rather neat. You can make it out, more or less, in the CT.

In order to get to that 3GB drive, I had to remove every single component. Finally, exhausted, I removed the drive and compared its size with the drive I contemplated to replace it. The replacement was 10.5mm tall and the existing one, 9.5mm tall. I was crushed flat as a bug.

It took me almost a month to gather the spirit to reassemble it. When I was done (only three screws left over!) I plugged it in and the charge-indicator light did not light up, to my staggering dismay. So I crashed out and, in the morning, with a heavy heart pressed the power button expecting I had a tangerine paperweight. Bong! It started and worked perfectly, with the exception of the charge indicator light. I have never been happier with a hardware malfunction in my life.

Ah, that ain't so hard to open!

I had a generation 1 iBook (a tangerine one, with the curvy case) and THAT was a bitch to open.

When its warranty expired I cracked it open to upgrade the appallingly tiny hard drive and, though I was impressed with its clever trapeze-like structure that avoided baning things while it was carried around with the handle, I was *not* impressed that I had to remove every damn component to get down to the hard disk.

When I dissected it down to there, I took the drive out, and found it was 9.5 millimetres tall, while the replacement drives I could find were 10.5 mm tall. This sucked so massively that it took me over a month to gather the mental wherewithal to reassemble the damn thing. Then, when I finally did, I plugged it in and the battery charging light didn't turn on. I was, to say the least, monumentally sad.

So I went off and crashed out for the night, figuring my computer was dead; and then in the morning, with a heavy heart, pressed the power button to confirm it was, in fact, deceased.

It bonged and started up! The only part that didn't work was the charging indicator light. I have never been happier with a malfunctioning conputer in my life.

Well, almost...

They should have SAID they crushed it. Then enjoyed their new garage-car! It reminds me of the Ferrari in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off".

AA?

I have a suggestion for people concerned about having their @$$es sued by American Airlines: Anytime you need to use "AA" just put "PAHOEHOE", which along with aa is a form of Hawaiian pillow lava............

Sinclair available

Well, if they're flooded out, I have my dad's Sinclair ZX81 downstairs. That's about a 1MHz Z80 CPU and 1K of RAM built in, but it includes the boffo 64K RAM expander, and a data acquisition and relay control setup. He used them as PLCs for settling tanks at a mine in the Sierra Nevada; he could buy them for $30 in 1983, and even a ZX81 was fast enough to control filling and draining a swimming pool.

Density ≠ viscosity

It's much MORE viscous* than water; it's a foamy matrix of solid material interspersed with vacuum, making it less dense than water in the same way as pumice. A brick would not sink in, because Hyperion's gravity is much too weak.

* high viscosity is low fluidity.

Maybe Pascal hasn't noticed...

....but if it was a regular seasonal change, wouldn't it happen *every* year?

Or are there more springs and summers happening now in the shiny new 21st Century?

No, there's no need to panic, until the Sahara desert reaches Norway.........

Kids & electronica

I'm setting up my son's first computer this week. He's three and a half. It's a Mac (he upped his standards, as the shirt says).

I was, like, EIGHT before I got to use a computer.

3D for photographers

If you don't have 3D glasses but do have black-and-white photo gear, you can view the images with either a red and green or a red and blue pair of filters, used in B&W.

Oh, give me a break.

Nobody who's knowledgeable says Macs are invulnerable. They just have a modicum of security which is very hard to achieve on Windows. Moral of the story? DON'T USE SAFARI, it's a piece of poo; use Firefox.

Go, Huskers!

Right on, U of N. IU hope you get your 11 grand from those bastiches. :-)