As the holidays have now been upon me for almost 3 weeks now, I have finally got round to getting my iMac repaired. It would refuse to start up when there was a stick of RAM present in one of the slots, it was fine with the other slot filled up, but would not even make the startup chime with the first one. Thus I concluded that it was probably a logic board problem and that the logic board needed replacing. Oh and this also happened almost 6 months ago. The only reason I continued using it was that I found a temporary solution with only 512Mb of RAM. Fairly slow, but really not that bad once you get used to it; I’m now using a Celeron 2.67Ghz and 1.25Gb of RAM on my Hackintosh and in some respects it feels faster, which obviously shouldn’t be happening…

Still, when when you phone up AppleCare, try explaining that you pretty much worked out what the problem was, and found a temporary solution based on your diagnosis of the problem. It just doesn’t get through! Firstly I assume they are trained/told to regard the customers that phone them up as fairly stupid and ignorant: the majority of the customers
probably just say “Its broken… what should I do?” This should work well in theory as most people are like this and haven’t a clue what they’re going on about. Although in practice, some of us know what we’re talking about and thus in essence sound like we know considerably more than the ‘technician’ at the end of the phone. In that case it would be better speaking to someone who a) understands that we’re not stupid, b) is aware that we know something about Macs and c) doesn’t read through lots of flowcharts to sort out/attempt to diagnose the problem (I am making the brave assumption that they do this, it can’t be far off). One other problem that arises is the language difficulty. The call centre’s may not be based in India any more (apparently they were changed and I was sure Apple had at least one call centre in Ireland) but I was sure that the ‘technicians’ first language was not. This really isn’t a problem though, except when they fail to understand what you’re getting at. As in my conversation which went something like this:

Me: “Quite a few months ago I found that the problem was that the computer refused to boot up when there was RAM present in the top slot”

TechGuy: “So this happened to you just now?”

Me: “No, it happened back in January sometime, I found a temporary solution so it works fine currently as I’ve taken out the RAM from the bad slot and just using half the RAM.”

TechGuy: “What is the problem then?”

Me: “One of the RAM slots doesn’t work! I’ve just got it work temporarily by using half of the RAM. I’ve got it on and working as we speak.”

TechGuy: “Turn off the computer.”

… checks his notes I think …

TechGuy: “We are going to try resetting the SMC.”

Me: “Does it matter that I only have one stick of RAM in and that it is working fine?”

TechGuy: “Once the computer is off, unplug the power cable from the back of the computer and from the wall and wait 30 seconds.”

Me: “Should I put both sticks of RAM in?”

TechGuy: “You only have one stick in?” Sounds fairly surprised!

Me: “Yes, that’s why it was working, I’ll change it now.”

… I run upstairs to get the other stick of RAM, run back and begin changing it around with one hand using the end bit of the screwdriver as I’ve lost the rest of it for now! All whilst on the phone.

Me: “Its done now. I tried resetting the SMC and the PRAM back when it originally happened.”

He clearly pays no attention and/or assumed something must have changed thus goes through both!

Anyway, that was an interesting conversation I had, but at least it resulted in a guy being sent out to pick up/repair my computer. He, strangely enough, knew what I was talking about, then again he said it was a weird problem, blatantly hinting that I somehow did it myself, but then again if I was in his position I would say the opposite to reassure the customer. After all it just requires a new Logic Board. That can’t really (or didn’t used to) be a problem for Apple, have a look at some of the repair manuals from 1995ish. The solution was pretty much always replace the logic board. In most cases that didn’t fix anything as it was an underlying design flaw with the Performa Series, but that’s a story for another day.

Moving swiftly back to the problem of technicians not understanding you. If you happened to instead go to an Apple store, and go to the genius bar. Then the people there will speak your local language, whether it be Japanese, English, Italian or Spanish, they will also be able to see you in person and determine whether you have an idea about what you’re talking about, or if you’re lost… Its such a brilliant idea, pity they don’t have a store near me yet! What is so remote about Edinburgh anyway?

As my iMac is away, I’m using my Hackintosh, which I mentioned, it also looks very different and cluttered, so I’d thought I’d get a picture. Its annotated, but you might have to go to Flickr to see that bit!

In other news, I’m aware the ‘Album Of the Week’ has been around for almost 3 weeks, but I might get around to changing it soon, so hold out!

There’s a new version of Flock… yay! It has some awesome features such as tab restoring when you quit but most spectacularly a feature that allows you to restore recently closed tabs (I’m told that this is in Safari 3, but I’m more into Flock nowadays and haven’t tried Safari 3 yet). Even better, I has a cooler new interface with a split bookmarks bar with cool little buttons and other amazing features! I will try and get a writeup done sometime, but for now, do give it a go. I thought last release was great, this is spectacular!

I hope by now you’ve realised the new drastic change to the main page of mohoyt.com and the technicolour excellence it now possesses, its even on fire!!! I have been meaning to change it for a while, ever since I temporarily adopted Wolfgang Bartelme’s ‘dark’ theme for the blog… I completely adore that theme, but I can’t exactly use someone elses theme for ever can I?

Instead I thought, lets design my own theme, again I know, but the last one was hardly a brilliant success was it? At the moment, the them which is currently being called ‘red’ is loosely based around ‘dark’ to the extent that it uses the same fonts, has the same/similar icons and has some other similar features to do with the background styling. This will probably slowly change as I drift away from ‘dark’ and ‘evolve’… The only reason that I could not hold in the current design is that I was so amazed that I pretty much created my own theme (albeit borrowed symbols) from scratch and am thus quite a bit better at CSS, the XHTML has a long way to go though! I will eventually change the rest of the blog/site to look the same way. It shouldn’t be too hard considering most of the layout and colour is already sorted with the style sheet of the ‘intro page.’ What I didn’t realise is how fun this can be.. Designing websites was always sometimes good and sometimes bad (kinda like Marmite… you either love it or you hate it!) but now that I really have a bit of time, and also some effort (it usually helps!) I am enjoying myself.

By creating your own site/stylesheet, you now realise how much effort other people put into sites and see why interface design is such a brilliant thing. Certain sites to look at include Sofa (www.madebysofa.com), which is the company that produces Disco, Versions and Checkout, all of which have excellent websites, but also the most amazing UIs on the actual apps. Check out the smoke effect on Disco! One other brilliant webpage is Pixelmator (www.pixelmator.com), and application that looks incredibly promising, pretty much a replacement to Photoshop on the Mac, and almost completely powered by CoreImage and with a sweet interface design. Its just all so amazing. Isn’t it strange how the Mac developers always have some of the best websites?

The unfortunate thing about looking at other people’s sites just after you’ve done lots of work on your own is that it can really overshadow what you’ve done. Then again, the people that make some of the aforementioned sites are probably genii. I spose I shall have to check out some of those interesting books on the art of web design using XHTML and CSS. It really is an art it seems…

While I was away at T in the Park watching various artists, and having a brilliant time, there was Live Earth on in all continents. This also had some amazing artists, including Wolfmother, John Mayer, The Red Hot Chili Peppers (they only played one song though), Jack Johnson and many others. The great thing about this is that you are able to watch the concert online whenever and where-ever you want. This is really quite brilliant, as in my case I was away in the middle of a field, thus unable to watch it live on TV, so I watched all of the music that I thought looked good last night at my own freedom. This is a great idea as currently with T in the Park they don’t broadcast some of the artists… Brian Wilson in particular! which meant that I wasn’t on TV even though I was in the front row right against the barrier the whole time! It would be much better if they did this, giving me a chance to see a) myself on TV b) the concerts that I wanted to see again and c) and the concerts that I missed due to other ones being on at the same time… Then again if they did this in its entirety, then it would remove the need to go to the concert for some people, thus they would lose money and a downward spiral etc. But nonetheless it is a good idea AND wishful thinking…

One annoying thing about watching the Live Earth concerts on MSN video thing, is that they have so many adverts!!! Seeing as they are trying to save the earth with this concert, why have Chevy advertising. Fair enough they are advertising the ‘Hybrid’ models and an ‘Electric’ car that can’t actually be bought!!! (read the small print!), but they are also advertising that they have good fuel efficiency!! They state this good fuel efficiency as being better than 30MPG on most of their models. This is truly obscene. In Britain, the majority of cars have efficiencies over 30mpg, even if they run on Petrol as opposed to Diesel, but still, it is completely wrong to boast that cars get better efficiency that 30MPG when it is such an extremely meagre amount… Fair enough boast that it is more than 45 or 50MPG if it is petrol powered or more than 60 or 65MPG if it is Diesel. My last car, the Peugeot 106 Diesel got double that efficiency and it was at least 10 years old. If you read it closer too, it says that they have better than 30MPG HWY (which I assume means Highway), thus the European equivalent of Extra-Urban, the best/optimal figure that can be achieved. Most fuel consumption figures in Britain are quoted as the Combined Cycle, which is a mix of the two values (Urban (worst) and Extra-Urban (best)). Thus not not only is Chevy quoting a terrible value as being good, it is misquoting it, by stating an uncomparable figure. Absolutely terrible…

I have been away the last few days at T in the Park, a 2 and a bit day music festival at a disused airfield in Scotland. Its been going since 1994, and this has been my second year going. Luckily this year I brought my camera, so as a result I have some photos and also some terrible videos (which I’m not going to show you) due the fairly heavy bass at this concert killing (or at least maiming) the small mic on my old camera that I use…
The first evening (the Friday) had a few bands. This is the first year that there is music on the Friday, so it was only a small amount, but there was some.

I ended up catching Lily Allen, The Coral and Bloc Party. Although the Arctic Monkey’s were headlining, they are a terrible band and don’t really deserve to be watched… The weather on that day was pretty dire, causing some fairly large mud pits and mosh pool as opposed to a mosh pit…
The next day I saw such acts as

The Arcade Fire,

Albert Hammond Jr.,

The Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars

and the legendary Brian Wilson. I happened to be at the front for all of Brian Wilson’s set, so had an awesome view of the stage, and also of Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell being asked to leave from sitting at the front, in front of the barriers… tee hee. Brian Wilson played pretty much all of the Beach Boys classic songs, and even played Johnny B Goode. He had an awesome backing band, and was generally just brilliant!

The weather got better thru the weekend, and by Sunday it was blazing hot and sunny!
I saw such acts as The Cribs,

Avril Lavigne, Ocean Colour Scene, Interpol, Maxïmo Park and

Kasabian.

Overall though, despite the huge volume of mud present everywhere, it was a brilliant laugh, and I have already booked next years tickets!