Most of the time Bach is using the keyboard not to suggest itself, but to suggest something that lies beyond it. - Ralph Kirkpatrick
Computer
2006, December 02
More Macs in my Life
After the Classic, there have been more Macs in my life.
After I outgrew the Mac Classic in 1994, I upgraded to a refurbished LCIII, with a color monitor. This was a big step; I remembered a woman doing a MacDraw tutorial had said, you should always get a color monitor because it is so much easier on the eyes. I thought, Oh, no, I'm not a computer person, so I don't need to spend that kind of money. Well, here I was 3 and a half years later, a computer person. And she was right. On the LCIII I learned html and put up my first web page, the first version of jsbchorales.net, on March 31, 1996. I did not have storage for the ftp files so they were stored on a server at a college in Texas, thanks to Henry Howey. I covered a lot of territory on that little computer. My daughter used it while studying for her Masters degree, then it was given away.
Eventually I outgrew the LCIII after I had upgraded the RAMM, put in a new hard drive (750MB - so huge) and installed a floating point processor. This computer was connected by an AppleTalk network to a printer and another computer. I had phone lines running all over the place, mostly held in place over the doors with masking tape. Not so aesthetic, but effective.
In April 1997. I moved to a Very Large Computer, the PowerMac 9600, with a 4GB hard drive and 128MB of RAMM. This seemed so large I couldn't imagine that I would ever need another computer. I could run FrameMaker and any other program I wanted. I seemed to have arrived at the top of the world; I didn't yet appreciate how fast change happened in the computer world.
And of course, a new operating system was around the corner, OS X in March, 2001. So while I continued running my main programs on the 9600, in December 2001 I got a Mac iBook to start learning OS X and more about ethernet networking, web serving and databases.
Then in 2003 the new G5 PowerMac was introduced. I fell in love all over again and had to have one. So I gave away the 9600 which for all practical purposes I had stopped using and bought the G5.
Open, the G5 is as beautiful as the outside. It is easy to upgrade and easy to clean.
Three years ago this was the ultimate machine, with a 250GB hard drive and a GB of RAMM, and two 2Ghz processors. I expect to use it in some capacity the rest of my life. Here I make web pages, mess with MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Gallery, and work with music files.
2006, November 01
A Mac Anniversary
Today is the 15th anniversary of my first Mac, a Classic.
In October 1991, I was assigned an essay for a bird study class at the University of Washington in Seattle. My daughter, who had been to college recently and knew about current trends on campus, asked me how I was going to write it. I told her, the way I always have, pen and paper then type it out.
She said, No, no. Lets go down to the computer lab and I will show you how to use the Mac.
Now, I had used a few computers before, at work, without feeling anything about them. But the minute I touched that Mac keyboard, I knew I had to have one. So on November 1, 1991, I walked out of the computer store in Ballard (Seattle) with a printer and a new Mac Classic. It had a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAMM (the maximum).
I did the paper, then went on to bigger and better things. I bought a modem and was able to hook into the University network, took free classes in Pine, the Unix mail program developed at the UW. By January I was on Compuserve and by June I was a member of the Berkeley Mac Users Group. I was learning about shareware, operating systems, and a lot about Microsoft Word 4, probably the best version they made. This meant learning about fonts, style sheets, layouts.
I would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and start thinking about what I was working on and of course I had to get up and get going. Sleep went by the wayside for a long time.
Besides Word 4, I was learning Quicken, a small page layout program from Aldus (remember them?), Music Prose from Coda, FileMaker, the Mac operating system and odds and ends of shareware. All of this on a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAMM. It was amazing what that little computer could do.
I loved that little Mac, and how it changed my life. For the first time, I felt I was part of a community. Neither my family of origin or being married had ever given me that same sense of connection.
Here is a great little picture of the Classic with OS X running - sure, sure. Wouldn't that have been something?
2006, October 21
New DeskTop Picture
DeskTop picture from AstroPic of the Day
Here is my latest DeskTop picture for the G5.
2006, July 09
Kernel Panic revisited
After the reformat and install, the panics have gone away.
The problem seemed to be asking iTunes to do too many things at once. Now I ask iTunes to do only one task at a time and the system is again working without a glitch.
2006, June 25
Kernel Panic
The first kernel panic in OS X yesterday, another today.
I have experienced my first kernel panic on OS X, once yesterday and once today. A very scary thing, the first time that gray shade comes down over the monitor screen, then the black dialog box appears with “You must restart your computer now, hold down the power button for several seconds” in four languages.
Both times I was working in iTunes, renaming files. The first time the iPod was connected, so I thought maybe there was a hardware problem, but the second time it wasn’t. Both times I sent the undecipherable report to Apple. Only they know what is going on. And they might not.
So I don’t know what the problem is. So now to housekeeping. Back up. Reformat. Fresh system, fresh software, rebuild the files. Put no unnecessary stuff on the drive.
This will keep me busy for about 2 days, plus. So even the posts that were rolling around in my head aren’t going to see the light of day for longer than I thought.
I hope that this problem, whatever it is, will be solved. This is the first time I have had any problem with OS X. Though I have noticed that iTunes crashes a lot.
Well, to work, now I have a to-do list. A long one.
2006, March 22
Library Thing
LibraryThing - addictive
Go to LibraryThing.com and start cataloging. It is fun, an interesting way to compare collections, and a way to meet (virtually) other owners of favorite books.
Tim Spalding has put together a very attractive site, with a database that works with only occasional glitches, and a fairly intuitive interface. One thing that would be better would be a way to make the back-up option less hidden. In case the server crashes, which I take it did happen once, you should download your library as a text file, and keep it on your computer.
Then, to reconstitute the library online, you can just upload the books.csv file. To make the books.csv file, you go to the Extras tab at the top of the page, then Export Data. Click the "Export all data as text" link, and you will have a comma separated text file. It did not work for me in Excel as he suggests, but did load easily into FileMaker.
So far I have cataloged 300 books and am now taking a break to make graphics of covers not available, and perhaps to do some reviews. Tim says he is preparing to add a CD database; that will be at least as addictive.
