2001: A Space Odyssey has been a personal obsession for years. Since I first saw the movie many moons ago, I’ve praised the genius and brilliant execution of its minimal, modernist visual aesthetic. From the futuristic look of Space Station 5, to HAL’s red eye of death, to the amazingly detailed and scientifically accurate spaceship Discovery One, I’m constant awe that these visuals were conceived and executed over 40 years ago.

Say what you will about the movie, to me there hasn’t been a movie that’s employed silence so well. Ultimately, though, this movie is all about the visuals, which brings me to my favourite scene of the movie. This scene unfolds as Dave Bowman boards an EVA Pod to save his shipmate Frank Poole, after the psychotic HAL (his psychosis is still up for debate though) had his way with him while trying to repair Discovery One’s failing transmission antennae. The overhead shot of Dave Bowman piloting his EVA Pod drives my eyes crazy, in a good way. The composition of his dashboard and colouring of the controls is what I love. It’s perfect eye Candy and just goes on and on while you hear a few bleeps and blips and Dave’s air supply in the background. A perfect tension building device.

So, after watching the movie on Blu Ray for the first time and seeing many details I could never see before, I decided to create a desktop background of this scene for my work and home computers. The result, with a little help from Photoshop, is pretty amazing. I’ve created a 1920 X 1200 version of the background so download it and set it as your own desktop background if you’d like.

Here’s a little tip if you’re missing the installation disks for your Mac and have another set handy from the same model or seriesl.

A couple of weeks back, a client asked me to reformat a couple of Macbooks. Both Macbooks were bought last year. The first was purchased in March 2008 (shipped with OS X 10.5.3), the second in June 2008 (shipped with OS X 10.5.4). Unfortunately, for me, the client had misplaced the installation discs for the Macbook he originally bought in March.

Not having the OS X 10.5.3 installation disks made reformatting the Macbook a much bigger headache than it should have been. While becoming increasingly frustrated, I forgot that installation disks that ship with Apple products (Macbooks, Macbook Pros, iMacs and so on) are all model specific. Upon reinstalling OS X, the installation disk will check your system to make sure it matches the embedded model profile settings on the installation disk. If everything matches, you can install a fresh copy of OS X on your Mac.

My problem is that I had two nearly identical machines, but only one set of installation disks handy. And for whatever reason, the installation disks that shipped with the Macbook bought in June of 2008 thought that the machines were different enough that OS X couldn’t be installed on the the slightly older Macbook from the available installation discs. I didn’t feel like calling Apple Care or heading over to the closest Apple Store to try to get replacement installation disks as I had had enough fun with Apple the last few months trying to get my iMac fixed.

So, I started to fiddle…

And how did I get around this problem? After fiddling around for a while and out of sheer desperation, I decided to connect the two Macs together with a Firewire cable, boot up the Mac purchased in March in Target mode and try to install OS X on the Target Drive. Thankfully, my little test worked.

Here’s a step by step of what I did:

1. Turned on the Macbook purchased in March (which didn’t have the installation disks handy) and booted into Target Disk Mode
2. Connected both Macbooks together using a Firewire 400 cable
3. I booted up the newer Macbook, loaded the OS X installation DVD and rebooted
4. Followed the installation instructions and made sure to install OS X on the Target Drive
5. The OS X installed disc checked the configuration (probably checking the hardware found on the local Macbook) and began to install on the hard drive of the Macbook purchased in March

I’ll be heading to Liverpool next year to pursue my Masters in The Beatles, Popular Music and Society.

Thanks for the opportunity Liverpool Hope University.

I’ve been in love with the Concorde since I was a kid. Yesterday was its 40th birthday. To me, the Concorde is the perfect example of 20th Century technological innovation.

However, it is the unfortunate loser of a critical fight for control of the skies. Boeing wanted to fly slower but fly more people with their 747. Aérospatiale and British Aircraft Corporation (with a ton of financial help from their respective governments) wanted to fly fewer but fly faster. Guess who won?

Check out this awesome site simply named Concorde Key Events for a nice listing of historic Concorde moments.

As a kid, ELO was one of my favourite bands. Although, I can’t exactly place my finger on what it was I liked the most about them. Maybe it was the fact that my parents listened to them, the combination of classical and modern compositions to produce a grandiose sound or just the amazing artwork that accompanied albums like Out Of The Blue.

Over the last year I’ve gotten back into Electric Light Orchestra and all things Jeff Lynne big time. Of the ELO catalogue, I’ve been spending a great deal of time listening to “New World Record,” “Out Of The Blue,” and the recently released “Zoom.” These days, much like when I was a kid, I’m into the wonderful, harmonised vocals, warm acoustics, great artwork, progressive song structures and arguably some of the best use of “strings (I’m always a sucker for the timely use of strings)” in contemporary rock.

I’ve been watching The Clone Wars for the past couple of months and I’m happy that it’s actually good. I was skeptical. A Star Wars kids show actually being good? Aside from the occasional appearance from Jar Jar Binks, the episodes that are a part of the Clone Wars series are where I wanted the Star Wars prequels to go story and character wise. There’s lots of space action, no cheesy love scenes and even the occasional scene of good guy anguish thrown in (for example General Grievous killing the Mon Cal Jedi in the “Lair of Grievous” episode). Having the good guys fail adds immensely to the realism [some might say verisimilitude] that the series creates with each passing episode. I’m also a big fan of the Clones and the personalities that they’ve been given and the major role that they play in each episode.

Like the original Star Wars movies, I like that the series focuses on seemingly minor events within a much larger universe. To me, that’s what made Episodes IV – Vi so enjoyable and rewatchable and the very reason why I wasn’t able to connect with Episodes I – III.

George, thanks for giving this series the thumbs up and for sticking to trimming your beard and pressing your plaid shirts (except when you’ve emailed the producers at two in the morning to ask them to put Jar Jar Binks in the occasional episode).

Adding to my Star Wars nerdery, I also recently beat the Force Unleashed for the XBOX 360. Holy crap is this game awesome. This game lets me live out my childhood fantasies of being an ass kicking Jedi Master (or Sith Lord) when I was a proud member of the Star Wars Fan Club back in Britain, religiously wore my Return Of The Jedi patch on my favourite jean jacket and wanted to change my name to Luke.

Starting off the game as Vader is probably the coolest opening level ever created. On top of actually being Vader, getting to throw around Storm Troopers with your Force powers is also mind blowingly awesome. Add the ability to choose your own ending, kill Rancors and Jedi and play as a guy named Starkiller and you’ve got one of the best games of 2008. Of course there are some control issues and some weird bugs that froze game every once in a while, but by large and far this is an amazing experience from start to end and has totally got me back into Star Wars again. Mad props again George!

I was recently asked by a client to help research and ultimately set up a new fax machine that could simultaneously print and email received faxes to one or more email addresses. With it being 2009, I thought this would be an easy task. Unfortunately, it seems that having the ability to both create a hard copy of a fax and email it simultaneously is actually quite the ordeal – at least when trying to configure Xerox’s Faxcentre 2121.

The back story: I picked this machine because it was about the same price as subscribing to an online fax delivery service which would offer comparable features (although ultimately at a higher cost after about a year and half of service once the fax line costs are factored in along with the long distance forwarding charges and monthly subscription fees as the client receives 50 – 100 pages of faxes on a given day). Any other machine that allowed faxes to be emailed was in a much, much higher cost bracket.

I don’t want this post to be a total bitch fest so here’s what the Faxcentre 2121 does well:
- It scans quick
- Prints really quick
- Copies in a flash
- Can send SMS texts (Yes, really. But is it useful? Not sure.)
- It’s quiet

Now, here’s what this machine doesn’t do so well:
- Use language in the manual that actually relates to configuring the feature request at hand… What does “WITH, WITHOUT, and F@X” mean?!
- Convert a fax to a PDF file and send as an email attachment upon receipt
- Provide a functional, usable web based interface for the administrator (the login screen tells me that “this website is designed to work properly with Internet Explorer version 4 or greater. If you’re using another browser or a previous version, some pages might not appear correctly) that lets the machine get updated through a remote desktop or from somewhere else in the office.
- Provide any kind of feedback if the administrator has entered invalid feature configuration settings

Getting the simultaneous email/fax option has been a rather large time burglar as of late. My biggest complaint and ultimate reason I haven’t been able to make any progress getting the fax to email option up and running is that there’s no error message returned to me when I’ve made some changes to the machine. Sure, setting up the basic functionality was easy enough, giving the machine a dedicated IP address, name and turning on shared printing. However, the Faxcentre 2121 started to severely misbehave when I actually wanted to use the client’s ultimate power feature: the creation of a PDF copy of a received fax which is then emailed to the client’s primary email address.

To try to understand my frustration with this machine, look at the screenshot below. What do any of these options actually mean? To me, nothing.

Adding to this pain, all the configuration for this machine is done on an exceptionally long scrolling page that when stitched together is over 8000 pixels long. There’s no separation of major features, no encouraging language that will help someone configuring the machine move in the right direction and no way to test updated settings other than to send a fax to the machine and hope the updates to the machine’s settings have worked (ah, so much wasted paper has gone through this machine).

Fellow reader, why don’t you scroll along with me in 1/8th scale:

Wasn’t that fun?

Anyway, back to why I’ve written this post. Xerox, I like your products. I’ve always been impressed with the Phaser and Docutech products and very soon I’ll be investing in new Phaser for the office. But, what I don’t like about you right now is your reliance on stone aged configuration interfaces and abstract use of the English language that make configuring your machines about as fun as visiting the proctologist. To correct these problems, I don’t think it would take an incredible amount of capital on your part to pretty up the web based interfaces for products like the Phaser or Faxcentre. You don’t even have to go all out with your support for HTML. Just mimic the web based interface for say a Linksys router or the web based interfaces the HP’s printer products are using to allow them to be configured. They’re clean, easy to use and although not crystal clear in the language department let me set up new devices or my network relatively easily.

On top of a new web based interface, it would be nice to have a help/tips section that would highlight some of the power uses that a product like the Faxcentre 2121 may have and how easy it is to set these features up and use them. It would be very helpful to have a page that asks the user what she’d like to do with the machine. For instance, a feature highlight could be something along the lines of: “I’d like to send a copy of the faxes my machine receives to an email account of my choice. How do I do this?” If I were to click on that link I’d be greeted with some friendly language that would walk me through the configuration settings that would need to be enabled to allow the feature to be activated on the device.

Finally, it would be great to have a way to test configurations to ensure that the feature that the user want to use is indeed active and configured properly. In the case of sending an email when a fax is received on the Faxcentre 2121 it would be amazing to click a “TEST” button to make sure that my network settings, DNS servers, SMTP server and email account are all configured properly to allow the machine do accomplish the task at hand. If something is incorrectly configured it would be great to know which setting needs to be changed or reset so that I can work towards getting my new device working properly with a minimum amount of fuss.

Somewhere down the road, a firmware update could create a web interface that is welcoming, usable and actually an aid in setting up a product like the Faxcentre 2121. Ultimately, though, to invest the time and money needed to create a better configuration experience I think Xerox needs to take a step back, take a good, hard look at the products the company offers and focus on making the customer’s interaction with the products, specifically during the set up process, as pain free and pleasureable as possible. It seems that setting up a device like the Faxcentre 2121 to take advantage of its advanced features is merely an afterthought to Xerox.

Until Xerox changes (if they ever do), I’ll have to wait for Level 2 Tech Support to help me with this machine and hopefully send a registered Xerox rep out to the client’s place of business to get this machine working. I just hope the Xerox rep has more luck than I have thus far.

Ugh. The bane of my existence.

I’ve had my 24″ iMac for a little over two years now. I’ve grown to love OS X. I haven’t grown to love my iMac all that much. Where do I start? Well, in October of 2007 I upgraded to Leopard. After doing a straight upgrade I was left with one big problem: My machine wouldn’t turn off. No problem. I sucked it up and did a clean install, even wiping the hard drive to ensure that I’d be using a fresh, clean platform.

About a month into using Leopard I started noticing a weird problem when visiting certain websites. The site that I first able to document the problem on was (embarassingly) Goarmy.com (hey, the site is awesome!). While on the site after the main Flash movie had finished loading and the first content wipe was about animate on the site, my computer would instantly turn off. I’d be left with a black, blank screen with everything dead but the fans in the back which I would have to reset by holding on the power button for 10 seconds.

Anyway, as Leopard was updated and upgraded the black screen of death problem got worse. I’d go to a random site with embedded Flash content and my computer would crash. The same would happen in Photoshop when creating a huge gradient of performing tasks quickly. It was a really annoying quirk (especially if I hadn’t saved my work recently) and was something I couldn’t really explain other than being a problem with the version of Flash I had installed on the iMac, which I endlessly tinkered with.

In December of 2008 I finally hit rock bottom. I upgraded to 10.5.6 and upon restarting the iMac it couldn’t even make it to the login screen. My computer would crash and I’d have to manually reset it to boot it back up only to have to repeat the process at every login screen. During this ordeal I wasted hours and hours of time. I tried repairing permissions, running Disk Warrior and pretty much every trick under the sun. It was at this point I sucked it up yet again and decided to reinstall Leopard. The good thing is that I keep both a Time Machine back up and I regularly image my entire drive contents so losing valuable content really wasn’t a problem. The biggest problem was having reinstall every program and customise my Desktop with all my OCD custom folders and aliased folders. That’s a huge time waster.

So, finally, it dawned on me that it might be my video card (NVIDIA 7300) causing the problems. I validated this thought by booting Leopard from an external drive and trying to visit some of the sites that cause my computer to crash. Well, even booted from an external drive, my computer would crash when visiting Goarmy.com.

Again, I did a big reinstall and, again, encountered the same problems when visiting certain sites with embedded Flash content and performing certain tasks in Photoshop. So, I called Apple Care and went through their whole diagnosis scheme and was given an appointment at my local Apple Store.

Visit the Apple Store was a great experience because they were on time and the tech was on point and knew his stuff. We even booted OS X from one of their external drives and, lo and behold, when visiting Goarmy.com my computer screen went blank. Yikes. My computer ended up being at the Apple Store for about 10 days over the Christmas break, which was bad for working but good because I was taking the time off anyway.

At the beginning of January I got my iMac back after having the video card replaced (actually upgraded to an NVIDIA 7600 card) along with the Bluetooth module. On my first boot up I visited Goarmy.com and the computer didn’t crash and thought my troubles were over….

As I slowly but surely started working again I began to notice some of the recurring problems I had before. Photoshop didn’t like big gradients or fast movements. Websites like Engadget.com, The Palm Pre Promo Site, and The Windsor Star, just to name a few, cause the black screen of death.

So, as I sit here typing this post after another crash I think of what I have to do. I’ll need to call Apple Care again and explain my problem, tell them that it’s not fixed, go to the Apple Store and then leave my computer for repairs. This whole ordeal doesn’t sit too high on my list of things to do right now, mostly because of all the time resolving this issue will take and especially when I have a mountain high pile of work to do. I just hope that I can get this problem fixed once and for all and at the same time find any others with a similar problem and if they’ve had any resolution (so far, I really haven’t found too much evidence of my problem). Right now I’m almost certain there’s a flaw in the graphics card or Leopard’s video drivers because the black screen of death is constantly happening even with fresh, new installs and when booting from external drives.

Stay tuned for the results…

Update 01/31/2009:
Visited the Apple Store. Booted computer and was able to visit a site that caused me problems previously on the iMac and was successful in loading the website. Pushed the CPU and GPU with some terminal scripts. Went to Goarmy.com, iMac crashed. Tech assured me that Apple would thoroughly test the iMac, install a new logic board and NVIDIA video card.

UPDATE 01/31/2009:
Took computer back to office and decided to do a fresh install of OS X just to investigate. Before reinstalling OS X I erased and reformatted the hard drive. Initial installation of OS X 10.5.0 was successful. Upgraded to 10.5.6 through combo update, iMac informed me that boot caches would be updated once 10.5.6 was complete. iMac restarted and crashed upon hitting the login screen. Did a hard, manual reboot and computer crashed again. 3rd time, which turned out to be a charm, the computer booted normally.

UPDATE 2/01/2009:
Decided to do a fresh install of OS X again. Erased and reformatted hard drive. Installed 10.5.0 again. Rebooted to ensure I could boot up the computer had success. Then tried to upgrade to 10.5.6 and upon rebooting after upgrade computer failed. Could not get past login screen after 5 tries.

Reformatted and installed 10.5.0 again. Decided to do a combo update to 10.5.5. Had success in installing the update. Have had no failures while booting up since. However, computer will still crash when visiting certain websites.

UPDATE: 3/02/2009:
Wow. I’ve had one whole week without crashes. After taking my iMac to Apple again and having the computer in my hands for a week I can report that I haven’t had a crash since I got the computer back. Apparently my logic board and video card were exchanged. However, I couldn’t get any kind of straight answer from Apple as to what was done to make my unit work again. I’ll say Voodoo is keeping my iMac running right now. This is the longest I’ve gone without a crash since I upgraded to Leopard back in October of 2007.

Just watched an amazing documentary on the theories of Hugh Everett and a son’s quest to connect with his deceased father.

The Nova documentary, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, follows Mark Everett (aka E from the band Eels) on a quest to find out who his father really was some 26 years after his premature death.

Specifically, the documentary highlights Hugh Everett’s controversial theory of Many Worlds (or Parallel Worlds) which he wrote for his Ph.D. dissertation in 1957. Unfortunately, Hugh Everett’s revolutionary theory was shunned by academia and influential scientists such as Neils Bohr and was forgotten for many years. It wasn’t until the mid 1970s, with the help of a few fringe physicists, that Hugh Everett’s theory began to pick up steam as a possible working model to explain some of the basic principles by which our known universe exists. Almost 20 years after the original theory, Hugh Everett was finally getting the respect he deserved from the Physicist community.

While watching Parallel Worlds, I really enjoyed the intimate connection I felt as Mark Everett traveled around America to better understand his father and some of the unfortunate events in his young life that caused him to become distant and disconnected from his family. The emotional journey that follows as Mark Everett talks to some of his father’s colleagues and tries to better understand the ground breaking theory his Dad presented to the world back in 1957 is some of the best television I’ve ever watched.

The first publicly launched rocket has made it into orbit. 10 minutes after lift off yesterday the Falcon 1 entered Earth orbit.

There’s nothing more mesmerising than watching a rocket lift off into space – Especially when you’re listening to Midnight Juggernauts.