Well, first thing - ‘Yes, Im alive’ sorry for neglecting not only the blog, but also face to face communication with so many people, the story goes as such…

I ordered a mac pro, the rest of the world seemed less important - actually, thats about it, whoops ! lol, nah… Just kiddin.

Its been quite a few busy weeks since the Diggnation show up in London (which in hindsight wasn’t the best idea), when i returned to Plymouth, I was oblivious to the fact that one of the most pathetic modules this year had handed out his coursework in that Wednesday’s lecture… Whoops, well for the last 4 days, iv been bricking it and trying to get it done… Phew, hand in was this evening, all over ! (now for the other 3 i actually know about lol)

Well, enough about my stressfull life… The Mac Pro, well theres only one real thing to say “Jesus feckin christ its fast” from the second it booted its been nothing but fantastic at everything iv throw at it (including windows xp lol). There were a couple of small issues though, but with a little gentle pursuasion (kicking) iv managed to get it snuggled under my desk and humming away nicely !

[Correction] First problem, actually getting the thing delivered. Id like to take this opportunity to say i did actually put the wrong address into the delivery details in the first place, so it kinda is half my fault… BUT when i spotted this mistake BEFORE apple had actually dispatched anything, i just kinda assumed it was a case of ringing and saying “Hey Mr Jobs, i need to change the delivery address, oh whats that, its fine, thanks loads, address is ~~~~~~, Confirmed, Thanks so much”… And i assumed right, it was just that simple… but then all the problems started, u see it seems that apple cant actually call TNT to say ‘Change address’, they have to email them (or fax, or fucking carrier pigeon by the sounds of it), cus TNT never received anything (for either parcel). So you can imagine my confusion when i logged into apple’s tracking service and saw it was out for delivery 220 miles away, at my home in the midlands. Well, about 10 phone calls later and im still arguing with, what must of been the 13th Customer Support agent at TNT and Apple, when finally the penny drops and TNT manage to stop their truck and bring the Mac Pro back to the depot, redirect it to Plymouth. BUT, the saga is not over, i also ordered an iPod Touch, which was a separate order, and also had its delivery information changed by Apple, well that one went on a sligt detour also, so my new friends at TNT got some even more shitty calls.

First problem… Im a avid user of BluePhone Elite (this is for 2 reasons, im lazy and i dont like using my phone keypad… u people who can type a txt in under 3 seconds, im sorry your all sad bastards) but alas the mac pro was pathetic at allowing me to use this piece of software, not due to its performance, it installed in seconds and opened before i new it was on the hard disk… But, as it turns out the bluetooth module within the Mac Pro’s is a piece of shit, with a range of about a meter (im sure your reaction to this is the same as mine = WTF)… This, fortunatly is where the freebie section of Fluxbox comes into play. Due to Apple’s wonderful hand assembly system for adding things into custom builds, this also allows for the human error to come into play, there are 4 antenna’s inside the case of the Mac Pro systems (2 for wireless card, 1 for bluetooth & one for, well no one seems to know), if with a gentle hand you can bring yourself to remove the wireless card from the system and swap over the bluetooth antenna for the spare one it fixes the whole problem. Very Strange, since the cable which was attached to my bluetooth module was actually labeled ‘BT’. (PS, Good site for finding guides, etc for mac kit www.ifixit.com alas no help for Mac Pro’s though)

Okay, onto problem number 2… Im still in what can be accurately named ‘the transition zone’ iv been a Microsoft user since the mid 90’s, hence my MCSE qualificatio and annoying ability to actually understand why your computer is acting like a problem child on crack ! But, recently (8 Months or so) iv discovered the wonderful world of OS X and its ability to run for weeks/months without the need to hold the power button for 10 seconds and pray to god that Word’s auto recovery feature is in a good mood today. Unfortunatly, i cant seem to bring myself to do the switch completly, mainly down to the fact that however spanky OS X is, its a toy, its like giving a teletubby a P4 and better TV stuffed in for graphics, everything is swish and fancy looking (not to mention the stability factor), but none of the windows goodies are still around, like a DECENT version of office (yea yea, i know this is MS fault, but its a reason im clinging to MS’s corpse) So with this in mind, i turned to Boot Camp and Parallels !

The setup is thus, Windows XP Professional, installed in Boot Camp, then Parallels running a VM of the Boot Camp partition (sounds fun eh)… well, the theory works, iv managed to get all my favorite MS app’s running inside of my Teletubby machine, alas even though the Mac Pro is classed as a Professional (least thats what i think the ‘pro’ stands for) it only comes with 1GB of RAM as standard (SHIT), this 1024Mb of RAM shared between 2 very memory intensive operating systems proved to be a little too much for it (even with 4 cores working away at the problem, just rubbing it in a little hehe), hence my decision to browse over to Crucial UK and run my order in for another 2GB of RAM (Sorry, but screw u apple, im not paying your prices)… which arrived this evening and was installed without even the slightest effort, now Windows and OS X are both happy little children playing together in the virtual sandbox !

Well, thats about as much as im going into atm, but ill be hanging around the keyboard a little more now iv actually got one to type on, Catch ya all soon !