From the monthly archives:

January 2008

Sunday SATA Install hell

by taoski on January 28, 2008

I was expecting to have a nice relaxing Sunday, but after a friend dropped off his new super-duper-SATA machine for me to load XP onto for him, I was dropped into a spiral of despair.

The drivers for the SATA RAID controller on the motherboard needed to be installed from floppy disk during the XP installation, but the machine did not even have a floppy drive. XP was also being anal enough to insist that the drivers came from the A: Drive and did not allow me to obtain them from anywhere else!

I spent a little time trying to fool the BIOS into thinking that the A Drive was actually one of the memory card reader slots on the front panel - but this did not work at all.

In the end, I had to download the driver files to my PC and slipstream them into my installation of XP for the system to use them. At the same time, I made the installation totally “unattended” by entering the licence number, regional settings and options. I also slipstreamed in a copy of XP SP2 for good measure!

To do all of this I used an application called NLite which allows you to add all of the previously mentioned features plus extra patches, software and settings. It copies down your XP install disk, makes the changes you asked for and then burns direct back to a bootable CD!

Excellent!

Thanks NLite, you saved my sanity!

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A new man

by taoski on January 20, 2008

macheist header image

It’s official. I am a new man.

Yesterday - I bought some computer software - that wasn’t a game!

If you know me, you might think that this is a little odd and it may give you the impression that I never buy stuff for my computer (which I hardly ever do - working in the IT industry does have some benefits) - but this was almost too good to turn down.

Each year, Macheist sell bundles of Mac OS X software which would usually cost in excess of several hundred dollars - but under their offer, only costs around $40. Also, a portion of the profit from the sales goes to charity!

Simply put, this is the best Mac software deal in history.

This year, the bundle includes 12 applications for $49 (£25):

1Password - an application for storing your secure information - not just your web based passwords and information.

CoverSutra - a desktop based app for iTunes control and alot more!

Cha-Ching - a money/finance management application

iStopMotion - for recording stop-frame animations to the Mac. Something for me and the kids to do one rainy sunday afternoon.

Awaken - an alarm clock which starts up your mac and plays you sweet music from your iTunes library - or Barry Mannilow - which ever..

Speed Download - if you go anywhere near Rapidshare and you use a mac - this is really invaluable.

AppZapper - kills apps and associated settings/preference files with drag-and-drop efficiency

TaskPaper - a Mac based application for Getting Things Done. Something I definitely need!

CSSEdit - an application that provides a visual take on CSS file editing.

Snapz Pro X - a screen recording application for when you want to demo how to hack into something to all the other spotty kids on YouTube

PixelMator - A new(ish) image editing application

Wingnuts 2 - a fighter plane style game

So, whist not all of these are “must have applications” the majority such as CSSEdit, Pixelmator and Speed Download are worth the $49 alone!

I have been quite inspired by this act of “giving back” rather than taking. I am writing this post from the 21 day trial of Ecto - the best Mac based blogging application. With a new blog based project in the pipeline - I think I will be buying a license for this too!

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My Ring Hurts

by taoski on January 18, 2008

xbox 360 red ring of deathSo… it’s come to this.

I just finish Call Of Duty 4 and get ready for some serious online multiplayer killing and my xbox decides to go tits on me and display the dreaded Red Ring Of Death when I power it on.

Like a good corporate Microsoft bitch I logged it with their Xbox Repair website knowing full well that this particular issue is a common one and therefore forced Microsoft to give an extra 2 years warranty on top of the usual year.

I now await the Xbox Coffin to arrive to spirit it away to the Xbox Hospital to be mended. Hopefully they will seek pity on me and send back one of the slightly newer hardware revision models with a nice juicy HDMI port on too!

I can only hope.  They will probably pre-load Vista 360 onto it and that will be the end of my gaming days, as the included joypad won’t have any working drivers!

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COD4: I’m Done [for now]

by taoski on January 11, 2008

call of duty 4 sniper

Wow, a major milestone has passed in my life.

I have actually completely finished a computer game in Single Player mode!

Call Of Duty 4 is a totally excellent game and the graphics look amazing when running in top-notch VGA mode on my LCD TV. Even though the single player mission only lasted 4.5 hours - it was still a great story, good fun and bloodthirsty.

The image above is me sniping the brains out of Damo on COD4 Multiplayer. Your man-cold can’t save you now Derby-boy!

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Its Downgrade Week

by taoski on January 10, 2008

macbook downgrade screenshot

I recently posted about my upgrade week encompassing installing OS X Leopard on my MacBook and also the new update for the Xbox 360 that allowed DiVx content to play.After spending a few weeks with OS X Leopard, I have decided to uninstall and move back to using Tiger, the previous version instead for the following reasons:

  • Too slow - I just found that with my measly 512mb of RAM, my MacBook was just not as responsive and as quick as it used to be. Even with the Dashboard disabled and the 3D dock busted back to 2D it was still sluggish.
  • Wifi Issues - since the update to Leopard, my wireless connection seemed to be searching, connecting, scanning, searching… all the time. There are grumbles about this issue on the web but all of the fixes I attempted never worked. Back to Tiger - all is fine again.
  • Unused New Features - the features like Quick Look, Stacks and Cover Flow were all very nice, but not essential to my use of the MacBook. I was able to quickly search through all of my JPG files to try and find one particular image using Cover Flow, but I could have achieved the same result by using the normal search results. The new version of Safari is nice and I will miss that most of all. Both Spaces and Time Machine were not anywhere on my radar.

At the moment I am running a very basic OS X installation with nothing apart from the following applications installed:

  • Transmission - The best OS X BitTorrent client - link
  • Perian - a collection of codecs for Quicktime - link
  • Burn - for converting videos and creating DVDs - link
  • Quicksilver - an application launcher - link

Whilst OS X Leopard is a good and solid update for the Apple systems, it’s not for me at the moment.

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