Ten Hut!!

BootCamp...Drop and give me twenty!

Yeah, I finally got around to playing with a Mac that now thinks it's a PC. Unfortunately(or maybe fortunately), it was not a Mac I own.
To their credit, Apple has made it very easy to set up. As long as you have an XP SP2 disc, you're ready to go. After a quick firmware upgrade and a cursory look at the instructions(this makes sense later), I was off.

I was amazed once the XP installation completed and the MacBook Pro booted into the familiar "teletubbies" XP desktop...and even the XP sound. Weird. Of course, having not RTFM, I spent a while trying to figure out why the hell I had no network connectivity...then I realized you have to RUN the disk, not just point to it. That's why they provide instructions! Holding down the "alt" key on boot offers you the option of which "disk" to boot to...It's funny that the icons are these big ol' desktop hard drives...
The next hilarious move was realizing there was no "ctrl"+"alt"+"delete" combination on a Mac! Yeah, OK, it works with an external Windows keyboard, but this is a laptop. Did a little digging around and found the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, which has the 'remapkey' utility that allows you to do just that. I decided to christen the F12 key the Delete key for the purposes of logging in.

Voila, Windows on a Mac. There are still a few little annoyances,(trying to get LEAP authentication to work automatically), but it works and I think it could be a great move for business taht have developers using Unix/Windows and even Mac OSX!
I'm not convinced a bunch everyday people are going to rush out and do this though...especially the Maccolytes.

IP Freely

So, Paracelsus was out to visit recently, and when he found I was no slave to the Cable Company, he accused me of being a Luddite. It didn't help that I have no TiVo either.
Look, I'm no Luddite, I enjoy technology as much as the next guy. My problem is the money it takes to keep up with it all, which is why I'm intrigued by the advent of IPTV.I like that someone is stepping up to do battle with the Cable Companies. Not like the Telcos are real heroes either...
See Brian Clark's article on the first shots fired in the New Jersey Cable vs. Telco war. Of course, the Cable Companies are fighting tooth and nail to maintain their monopoly and hopefully, we'll all benefit from this Free Market slugfest. Wonder if the Invisible Hand will land a Sucker Punch....

No Future

If you long for the days (daze?) of early Eighties Punk, go to Strange Reaction.
What a find this was...I was looking for a version of "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" by The Damned,because I was trying to convince a co-worker that this song was the basis of "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand. I found way more than that, in fact I had no idea there were that many independent Punk bands, from so many countries back then.Not only are there short Bios of the bands, but included are at least 2 songs of the album in question. And with bands like The Hugh Beaumont Experience, how can you go wrong?

Go Fly a Kite

With all the talk of Boot Camp out there, it's little wonder that someone doesn't try to get OSX to run on a PC.Well, someone has...Sort Of.

I like it. What I really want to do, is load it on a machine at work and see how many people I can convince that I've done the impossible.

Do you LUV your SUV?

From Ars Technica:
OK, so it looks like GM, in spite of all of their other problems, is partnering with Donald Trump's "The Apprentice" and allowing everday jokers to create their own Chevy Tahoe commercials. To their credit, they allow something like THIS to get in and posted on their site...complete with a Chevy logo...Nice.

And of course, here's mine

The Vinyl Solution

Granted, if I really wanted to, I could rip all my vinyl through a PC then transfer all those files to my Powerbook...then onto the iPod. OR, I could just get an iKey and be done with it.
This cool litle gadget will allow lazy slobs like me to avoid actual work and get those great Sparks' songs onto my iPod, so i can embarras myself further, by singining along to "Angst in my pants" while taking Asher.Mental for a walk.