j4mie dot org » Hardware

Good Working Order

Jamie — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:08:30 +0000

Spotted in Warleigh Road, Brighton, 8:40am, 13th November 2007, shortly after rainstorm:

Accuracy of note debatable.

MacBook Peculiarities [UPDATE: Mystery Solved]

Jamie — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 23:44:25 +0000

Here’s a weird one – my friend Scott and I both have MacBooks, bought a couple of months apart. On his laptop, the Apple logo at the left-hand end of the menu bar and the Spotlight icon at the right-hand end are slightly, but noticeably, smaller than on mine.

I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for this, but I have no idea what it is!

UPDATE: Thanks to Flickr user MacGeek Pro, we have got to the bottom of this. It turns out that the small menu bar items were a feature of some versions of UNO, a sunken unified OS X theme. I had entirely forgotten that my friend had this installed, but even so it would never have occurred to either of us that an app designed to create a consistent look for OS X windows would have any effect on menu bar icons. You learn something new every day!

Rig Of The Day!

Jamie — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 12:27:44 +0000

My new bedroom setup just got Rig Of The Day on the Unofficial Apple Weblog!
Link

Click, squeak. Click, squeak.

Jamie — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:22:09 +0000

That’s the noise my iMac started making yesterday, just before freezing completely and subsequently refusing to boot. It was coming from the hard drive. I took it into GBM for warranty repair this afternoon. I’m fairly sure they’ll have to replace the drive.

Fortunately I’ve not lost too much stuff because I had recent-ish backups, but there are still some photos and personal stuff on there I won’t get back. Ho hum.

UPDATE: It’s back, and it was indeed the hard drive. Lots of stuff to reinstall!

MacBook can work in lid-closed mode without a mouse and keyboard

Jamie — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 10:26:21 +0000

Right, enough of the metablogging, time for some actual content around here.

I got a MacBook a few weeks ago and I’ve been using it connected to my TV with Apple’s mini-DVI to video adapter to watch movies. Having the laptop open next to the TV, with display mirroring turned on (so I can use Front Row) can get a little annoying. The movie you’re watching appears both on the MacBook’s screen and on the TV. Distracting.

Yes, there are a few ways around this. You can turn down the brightness on the MacBook’s display all the way to the bottom, so the display turns off. But that’s a bit fiddly. You could just turn the MacBook around so the screen is facing away from you, but then the remote doesn’t work very well. What would be really nice is if you could simply close the MacBook and carry on watching your movie on the TV.

The MacBook is quite capable of running in lid-closed mode. But according to Apple, you’ll need a keyboard and mouse – either USB or Bluetooth. Well, it turns out Apple are dirty stinkin’ liars.

Don’t forget your MacBook will need to be connected to mains power for this to work. You can’t run in lid-closed mode on battery power.

Plug in your mini-DVI to video adapter and connect it up to your TV. Set your TV to the correct channel (if necessary).
If it’s in extended-desktop mode, set your MacBook to video-mirroring mode (using either F7 or Fn-F7 depending on your settings). The resolution will change on your main display to match the maximum resolution of your TV and you’ll see the same image on both displays.
Close your MacBook. It will enter Sleep mode, and the picture on your TV will disappear.
Here’s the clever part. Press any button on your Apple Remote. Hey presto, your MacBook will wake up and the image on your TV will re-appear. Press your Menu button to bring up Front Row and start watching movies!

I would imagine this works just as well with the MacBook Pro too.

[UPDATE] Once you’ve set the MacBook to the correct display mirroring settings, you don’t even need to have it open (and awake) to connect up the cables. Just plug in the display connector cable with the lid closed, then hit a button on your remote.

[UPDATE 2] I now have a new TV with a DVI port, so I bought a Mini-DVI to DVI adapter. I can confirm that all these tips work just as well with that.

DVD Writer

Jamie — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:00:00 +0000

I bought myself a Samsung TS-E552 external DVD writer at a computer fair yesterday. It connects to my laptop via USB2 and will write DVD+R and DVD-R at 16x, DVD+RW and DVD-RW at 4x, DVD+R Double Layer at 4x, CD-R at 40x and CD-RW at 32x. It seems to be working fine so far – I’ve made myself a DVD of Napoleon Dynamite which I shall be watching later on. Extremely easy to install – no drivers were required, just plug it in and Nero recognises it automatically. I found some software called DivxToDVD for converting Divx files to DVD format, and DVD Shrink for making copies of existing DVDs.