I have copied the settings from my previous blog post into the device, and that works very well; Now just have to sync it with my iTunes and then I will have a working proper Phone, with email and everything .

Loupie can now have my Nokia 1661 to take to South Africa, and I wont mind as much if it is eaten by an elephant.

Also I have just managed number 31 in my 101 things, however Natalie beat me to her smart phone achievement.

So the question is Mac or PC, and to be honist its not a hard question to answer, I am looking to replace my MacMini (mid 2007, Intel core duo 2GHz 1~Ggi Ram), With Loupie having a uni-body aluminum Macbook (not pro . October 2008 – June 2009), so that gives me an idea of how powerful the Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 with 2gig of ram is; and the answer is much more powerful than the Mid 2007 Mac Mini.

Looking at apples current line up, and knowing I was after a laptop, I set out to chart the two most important parts of this desision, Cost V Power. Cost I could get from Apple, meaning power was going to be slightly harder. thankfully OSX Daily had been there for me [1] allowing me to plot Price, against benchmark. According to the benchmark for Loupie’s mac her benchmark  is 2706 and my Mac Mini’s is 2593, both well below the lowest benchmark of the current pros of 3390.

While I still have a number of people I know at university, mostly through TermiSoc, it may be worth using the Apple Education store, as there should be no reson why I may accidently be able to order the machine at education store costs…

I am looking at going for the 15″ Macbook Pro as that offers the Largest benchmark jump, for least jump in pennys requiring removal from my pocket.

Against my 4211, and Mac Mini it stacks up as such:

So the next challange is finding some pennys.

One general accepted way to speed up iPhoto is to vacuum the database using the inbuilt sqlite command. this is a bit like defraging the database and reducing the stuff contained in it.

1. Open Terminal and type cd and a space
2. Drag your iPhoto library into the terminal window and hit Enter.
3. Copy the command “for dbase in *.db; do sqlite3 $dbase "vacuum;"; done” and paste into the terminal window.
4. Hit carriage return, wait till the line prompt comes up and your finished. The larger the library the longer the time the vacuuming will take.

Mine took just shy of 15 minutes (did I forget to say I had a large library?) all in all it didn’t speed it up any where as much as I would have liked.

Another way of recovering a few bits of a second from iPhoto slowness is to remove the photo counts next to each album and library in the left-hand pane. The task of updating these counts whenever you modify your images appears to cause iPhoto to slow down sometimes.

To disable the item counts

1. Open iPhoto’s preferences,
2. Goto the General tab,
3. Uncheck the “Show item counts” box. (there may be a delay of a few seconds).

That may show an improvement for you; it also may not.

If iPhoto continues to be annoyingly slow for me, I may get desperate and try Fat Cat’s iPhoto Library Manager to see how that works with my iPhoto collection.

It would have been cooler to have posted this post from it.

Bolt(folio) is no replacement, if your an old Bolter and want to keep in touch please check here.

one where every one can fordge links to eachother and common inttrests or groups, I have both a MySpace, and a Facebook. Myspace sucks, mainly because its UI is attortius, Facebook is better, but i am guessing they would have learnt a lot from MySpace, this all goes towards making it a usefull way of keeping track of people.
The two complainte, One no pingbacks, or useable blog addresses, (this blog post will be sindicated in facebook, but you cant ping back to the origanal or anything), Two. no RSS feeds, call me sad, but RSS made me a lazy surfer.

Its Public AP i beleve runs in a VPN through your network to there servers, as such it totaly bypasses any of your network, making it imposible for a person conecting to it to get access to your network.

One anoying thing about them though, (reason that the Fon AP is not high on my prefered conection list) is that between the LAN port and its privert SSID is a Router, compleate with NAT and firewall, this stops me accessesing my own network in the open way i ushaly do.

Seth said yesterday that the One Year offer page had gone, and as such i dontated my invite to him. I think ben will be getting his soon, and then we should have a more technical autopsy of the free Router (including how to flash it and stop sharing your wi-fi).

Well they are one year old and are offering routers for free, so if you go here, you can sign up and get yours for free (Ben can tell us what free it is).

I signed up yesterday, and hope to be pumping-out gratis 802.11b/g soon!

1. It just works.

Windows XP SP2 just works, if it came pre installed chances are it works even better, just because Macs have a limited number of hardware configurations that they are delivered in, doesnt mean they just work, just means they know what drivers are required to wake up.

2. You can make amazing stuff.

Define amazing? Well iLife says “Make high-quality websites, photo books, DVDs, songs, slideshows, music CDs, calendars, cards, prints, podcasts, music videos, documentaries, and more.” ok, so Windows doesnt come with Office, and Publisher pre installed, (can you make a Make “high-quality website” with iLife? really?) but i can do some cool things, and some more with Vista.

3. Everything-ready.

“Mac is the only computer in the world that can run all the major operating systems, including Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Vista. With Software like Parallels or VMware you can even run them side by side” and you say i cant on a PC? if i wanted to get a Mac on my PC i can use PearPC. (Walktrough), Linux and VM-ware also come as options…

4. 114,000 Viruses? Not on a Mac.

Ok hands up the last time any sensable PC user got a virus, Rich? Dan? Seth? Ben? Ruth?, oh and while you are waiting for an answer free virus checker,

5. Still the most advanced OS.

ok, so i begrugingly say yes to this, but i am sure ben can tell me of something that will beat Mac OS (I still like the Cube program)

6. The latest Intel chips.

So can a PC, and the latest AMD chips.

7. No hunting for drivers.

See “it just works” My Windows XP SP2 and Vista Unlimited RC2 pc dont ask me for drivers, they have all the drivers to get them to work, some times, i use Driver CD’s but thats only because they are better drivers on the CD. Digital Camera, PDA, USB mass storage, all included, SATA drivers for a SATA card, well they were in the box.

8. Design that turns heads.

its in my room, under my desk, My Keyboard VDU, and Mouse are on the desk, my server is on the shelf in my desk, and if i had a Mac i would give it the same amount of deskspace….. Its out of my way, hiding….

9. Instant video chats.

I dont have Video Chats… and Skippy Cam is awating fixing, so not high on my buying points for a computer

10. More fun with photos.

…wtf?… ok, so i want to do cool presintation things with photos, i guess photoshop elements, or google picassa?

11. Hollywood-style movies.

Windows XP SP1 and SP2 come with Windows Movie maker 1 and 2 respectfuly, and vista RC2 as well.

12. One-click websites.

with only one mouse button, right clicking may be a two handed job, but i dont see how this is a good point? with all the free serveses out there, and all the 12 year olds making websites, do we need this as well?

13. Amazing podcasts.

I can podcast from a PC as well, i have chosen not to yet.

14. Rock star tunemaking.

I can make music from a PC as well, i have chosen not to yet.

15. Awesome out of the box.

Define Awesome?

And there we have it, My Personal Computer is a Personal Computer. and a Mac is also a Personal Computer.

And a Quick Question for Rich (or any other Mac users out there):- Do Macs come with a Word Processor already installed? (simmaler or better than MSWorks.)

Protect your freedom!

Help spread the word, and take part in maintaing your freedom to use digital media as you wish to!

If you are down in Plymouth See what TermiSoc have Planned and join in if you can! or Check out Defective by Design’s site

Oh and another part of the action is, this googlebomb:- DRM

• #105 We recommend that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) bring forward appropriate labelling regulations so that it will become crystal clear to consumers what they will and will not be able to do with digital content that they purchase.
• #113 We recommend that the OFT labelling regulations we proposed, in #105 above, should ensure that the risks are clearly spelled out, at the point of purchase, whenever consumers could lose access to digital content if systems are discontinued, or devices fail, or players are replaced by systems from a different manufacturer.
• #118 We recommend that OFCOM publish guidance to make it clear that companies distributing TPM systems in the UK would, if they have features such as those in Sony-BMG’s MediaMax and XCP systems, run a significant risk of being prosecuted for criminal actions

My Stickers came yesterday, so i think i will have to find some thing to do with them, like help inform the public of the dangers of DRM (as defined above).

For some reson it looks more like Publisher, than a web design tool…..

I have a few photos of the lass demonstrating it, it would be lovely if it was a DTP software, and not Web Authering Software,

[Arkku](http://www.flickr.com/photos/arkku/50012122/in/pool-make/) made this glowing Keyboard using a just one Blue LED!

I didn’t take any pictures while I was installing the LED, but it wasn’t difficult. Basically, I opened up the keyboard (three screws in the bottom), located the +5v and ground leads (red and black wire in my keyboard) and soldered a 3.3v/30mA 5mm bright blue LED to them, with a 68ohm resistor.

To make the light reach the clear base of the keyboard, I also made a small hole in the white plastic that touches the clear acrylic at the bottom of the keyboard and taped the LED in that hole with electrical tape. (Note that the hole only goes deep enough to reach the clear base, not through it.)

All in all, I’m very happy with the results. The mod took about 30 minutes to install and cost practically nothing (had the LED and resistor lying around

I think i will have to mod my Mac Keyboard when i get some spaire time, it certanly beats my plans for making mine glow,

I had thought about using EL wire, and wrapping that inside the base, but an LED is certianly a lot les power hungry, and wont require an external power source

The money is almost in the right account, just got to wait the customery too long for the check to clear, then i can place my online order to MAC and get myself the Rather Spangaly 1.42GHz box of shiney:-

- 1.42GHz PowerPC G4
- 512MB DDR333 SDRAM
- ATI Radeon 9200
- 32MB DDR video memory
- 80GB Ultra ATA hard drive
- Combo drive (DVD/CD-RW)
- DVI or VGA video output
- AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth included
- 56k Internal Modem optional

As such we will have to wait and see