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Mac Mini

Oh yes.

My new Mac Mini

Update (late, late in the evening): Oh no.

What’s good:

  • It works.
  • It’s beautiful.
  • Q: whereis ruby? A: /usr/bin/ruby. Yum.

What’s bad:

  • My shiny new 21″ flat panel monitor has died on me. Well, partly died. It’s not accepting any signals over DVI any more, only VGA. Crap. Fortunately, it’s still well within its warranty period.
  • The Mini isn’t automatically detecting the monitor’s native resolution of 1680 x 1050, and I don’t know enough about OS X to change the resolution to something non-standard. So I’m running in crappy 1400 x 1050 fuzz-o-vision right now.
  • Actually, I don’t know enough about OS X, period. (How does this dock thing really work? What’s the right way to install applications?) Anyone with Mac experience care to recommend a decent book?
  • I got myself a new Apple Pro keyboard aaaaand….mmmm…not convinced yet. I like the keyboard action, but I don’t like not having anythere to rest my right hand’s fingers nearby the arrow keys without them getting caught in the grooves.
  • And what the hell’s up with putting the @ sign over the number 2 key? Yuck. (Again, anyone with Mac experience…please point me in the direction of a keyboard remapping utility.)
  • And the mental gymnastics of getting used to a different set of command keys… Yurkle.
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Preparing for a Mac Mini

With apologies to those of you who think I should just SHUT UP AND BUY THE DAMN THING ALREADY, it’s much more complicated than that. For a start, there’s the whole issue of peripheral devices: keyboards, mice, monitors, external drives, iPods, printers, etc. It struck me the other day that the Mac Mini only has two USB ports, and one firewire port. It also only has an audio out jack, with no way to simply connect a 3.5mm-plug microphone. Given that I’m aiming for a dual PC/Mac setup, this is going to require some thought and planning.

My current plan involves the acquisition of three new items:

  • 4-port USB switching hub. There are several models on the market, and they’re substantially cheaper than a decent KVM switch. Also, my monitor is a widescreen LCD panel running at 1680 x 1050. Most analog KVM switches will handle a video signal of that resolution, but analog KVM switches also make your picture look like shit. And reasonably priced digital switches currently don’t do more than 1600 x 1200.
  • Either a PS2-to-USB adapter for my current (PS2) keyboard, or a new USB keyboard. The adapters aren’t cheap, and buying a new keyboard might even cost less. The problem with this is finding a keyboard I like. (Also, the question of whether to get a Mac or a PC keyboard comes into play. because they use different command and option keys to the left and right of the keyboard. Which option will be less confusing?)
  • A USB microphone. The Labtec mike I bought last month is a 3.5mm job, and that’s not gonna fly any more.

And they all fit together thusly:

  • Big (300GB) external hard drive: stays connected to PC via FireWire. PC will act as a file server over the network.
  • Printer: stays connected to PC via USB. PC will also act as a print server.
  • Audio out: I run the stereo output from my PC to an amp under my desk which drives my desk speakers. The Mac’s audio output will just go to another set of inputs on the amp. Switching audio between machines will require changing the dial on the amp.

  • External DVD writer (LG GSA-5163D): this has one FireWire connector, and two USB connectors. I think I can have this connected to the Mac and the PC at the same time. It’ll go to a free FW port on the PC, and directly to one of the Mac Mini’s two USB ports. Burning DVDs reliably requires good data throughput, and I don’t want any it to hiccup on any USB hubs in the middle.
  • USB switching hub connects to a free USB port on the PC, and the second USB port on the Mini.
  • Mouse, keyboard, and microphone: these all connect directly to the USB switching hub, so they flip back and forth between the Mac and PC.
  • Monitor: the Dell 2005 FPW has lots of different inputs, so it’s going to get a VGA cable from the PC, and a DVI cable from the Mini. (This may change depending on the signal quality from each machine, and which one I end up using more often.) Switching between video signals will be a matter of toggling a button on the monitor. The monitor is also a 4-port USB hub, so its upstream eand gets plugged into the remaining port on the USB switch. That way everything connected to the monitor can also flip between Mac and PC.
  • Media card reader, USB flash memory hard drives, and phone: will all plug into a USB port on the monitor when needed.
  • iPod: will connect to the FireWire port on the Mac Mini. For some reason, my iPod refuses to charge from a USB cable. And before you say it, yes, it’s definitely a powered USB cable I’ve been trying. I’ve tried it on several different machines, in fact, and it barfed on all of them. This is doubly annoying because (for noise reduction reasons) my PC is in a different room than my desk, and the FireWire cable that comes with an iPod doesn’t stretch that far. The Mini, however, will sit on my desk, and the iPod can snuggle up to it when it’s feeling lonesome.

…And all of this is before I’ve even got started on the new software I’ll need…

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26 Malts

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society is currently running a very special series of 26 single-cask malt whiskies, each with a unique and creative label. The results are gorgeous, and very tempting…

Cheap Industrial Cooking Whisky
Whit Yoos Want?
Mouthful of midges

“Earlier this year, the Society’s Tasting Panel selected 26 malts for a groundbreaking project. Inspired by the malts, a tasting and an open design brief, 26 teams (each with a designer and writer) worked together to create 26 unique labels.

“The result? 26 different Society bottlings each with its own label design, presented in an elegantly slender 50cl bottle.

“An explosion of colour, wit and passion, each label is as diverse and evocative as the single cask malt inside the bottle. The 26 Malts project has inspired an extraodinary vibrant and varied range of poems, fibs, teasers, salutations, invitations, trompe-l’oeils, talking whiskies, responses inspired by tarot and alchemy, bananas and liquorice, rubber tyres and the sweetest of golden honeys.”

You can see the whole range at the 26 Malts web site.

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Software frenzy continues

New stuff not on my PC is ProfiMail, an email client for my Nokia 6680 phone, and Ta-da Lists, a to-do lists web app from 37 Signals.

Profimail is a lovely little app that makes great use of small fonts to squeeze a whole heap of emaily goodness onto a small screen. Multiple email accounts, POP3 and IMAP, predictive text–everything you’d expect from a mobile phone email client. Most of the clients I work at here in Edinburgh (large financial institutions) quite sensibly block standard email ports at the firewall, but they also block access to all webmail over HTTP. Having email on my phone means I can read my mail during the day, even if replying to it with just a numeric keypad is a bit of a pain. Can’t live without this any more.

Ta-da Lists is to-do lists over the web. That’s all. Nothing fancy, just a really smooth experience. If you want more sophisticated lists and note-taking capabilities, you can move up to Backpack, but I’m having enough trouble coping with the idea that I’m using any form of to-do list at all that the cognitive shock of using a more sophisticated tool would probably kill me.

It’s the whole “Getting Things Done” thing, you see. I have a severe allergic reaction to motivational speaking, and the GTD movement has hijacked a simple organizational tool and turned it into a cult of productivity. Thoughts of starting up a counter-movement under the “Letting Things SlideTM” banner have been running wild in my imagination. I’ve considered registering the domain “lettingthingsslide.com” and using it as a staging post for gathering tips on how to waste time, procrastinate, and generally loaf about aimlessly, but then I realized that actually getting it together to do so would be a horrific betrayal of the intended site’s basic principles. So I haven’t.

Nevertheless, in order to properly enjoy the benefits of structured procrastination, you need to have some way of keeping track of what you’re putting off. And sending myself emails to and from my home and work accounts to keep myself informed just wasn’t cutting it any more. Hence: Ta-da lists. It has the benefit of coming from the hands of 37Signals who build some wicked cool stuff, and really, really understand the web.

I can almost consider it as research into the current state of the art of web apps. Call it an antihistamine for the soul.

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Now running on Movable Type 3.2

For once, this was not a smooth upgrade. Or rather, it would have been smooth enough if I hadn’t got blocked on one particular step: running mt-check.cgi. I run MT under cgiwrap for added security, and for some reason the mt-check.cgi script doesn’t work for me in this configuration. It works fine if I run it directly (without cgiwrap) from the cgi-bin directory, but with cgiwrap it gives me a 500 server error. It’s not leaving behind any trace in my error logs, either.

All the other .cgi scripts that make up MT seem to work fine under cgiwrap, though. Once I’d figured this out, it was just a matter of running mt-upgrade.cgi as instructed, and it all worked fine.

Liking the new MT 3.2 interface. Very pretty.