Skip to content

General

Stuff that doesn’t fit in any other category

An expansion in focus…

Given that most of the technology subjects I think to write about are being used on macworld.com (they get first dibs on anything that I want to write that's related to my job), I've chosen to expand my writings here on robservatory to cover other topic areas that I find interesting. I make no promises that you will also find them interesting, but I don't think there are a ton of readers out there anyway :). The first two such posts follow this one.

I'll clearly not venture into areas of "social debate," such as politics, religion, or Wii vs. PlayStation vs. Xbox 360...ok, if someone wants to send me one of each of those, I'd write about them :). Basically, the new entries will cover things I run into in my daily adventures that I find intriguing, stupid, rant-worthy, rave-worthy, or that otherwise tickle my interest. As such, I can't tell you exactly what those things might entail, but hopefully you'll occasionally find them of interest.

Note that I will still cross-post all my macworld.com stories here, and will continue to focus mainly on Macs, OS X, and technology, as those are my three main interest areas. And after Expo, look for a totally new "Robservatory 2.0" to be launched here. The look will be much the same, but I've spent a bunch of time digging around for nifty WordPress plug-ins, many of which are Ajax-ified for easier user interaction. I think you'll like the new tools, and I'll like some of the things they let me do (like easily run polls on various topics).

And now, I'm off to the Expo! Hopefully the realities of the Tuesday keynote meet the incredibly high level of hype they've generated...but really, how could it? I've got my fingers crossed, though, just in case!



Uncommon cents

  • Home

This past week, I had the "opportunity" to pay two service contractors--a plumber and a leak detection service--to help with the water leak at our home.

Neither of these services are cheap, but I enjoyed (if that's the right word) paying for one more than the other. Why? Because one of them seemed to recognize the silliness of billing to the penny, while the other did not. The leak detection service charged a whole-dollar amount, $250. Expensive, yes, but it would've taken me days of digging and poking to find the well-hidden leaking valve.

The plumber, on the other hand, billed us $645.50 for the repair of the leaky valve. Again, quite expensive, but there's no way that's a project I would have tackled myself! But really, $0.50 on a $645 bill? That last $0.50 is less than one-tenth of one percent of the total amount charged! Rather than making me feel like the company was accurately billing me for their services, I was left with the opposite feeling: "Geez, it's already $645 and they have to nickel and dime me for another $0.50?!"
[continue reading…]



How to run up a huge water bill

  • Home

For the last few months, I've suspected that we've had a pretty bad water leak at our home. There was never any sign of water damage, but our water bills were much higher than usual, starting around July. However, it it took the December water bill, which was the first without any lawn watering activity on it, to verify that our usage seemed way out of whack--over 1,500 gallons a day per month, based on the last bill. Yikes! Typical usage for a family such as ours should probably be down in the 300 to 500 gallon range, if not lower.

So last week, I had a number of service folks at the house. First a plumber, who repaired a couple of slightly leaky toilets. However, he told me they wouldn't account for the amount of water we were seeing flowing into the home when there was no water-using device in use. So he suspected there was a problem in the line between the street and the house. But he couldn't find the shut-off valve at the house that every home here must have, and neither could I--I know I've never seen it.
[continue reading…]



My macworld.com content finally cross-referenced

Macworld logoOne of the challenges in keeping this blog going with fresh content is my employment situation. As someone who is paid to write about the Mac, OS X, and all things even vaguely related to those two subjects, my first obligation for article ideas in those areas rests with Macworld. So when I think of something I'd like to write about, I discuss it with our online editor, and he makes the call as to whether or not he'd like to run it on macworld.com. If he doesn't want it, then I'm free to post it here on my personal blog. This has worked out quite well over my first 18 months with Macworld, except that it turns out that nearly every idea I've had for a story has been picked up by macworld.com :). Hence the sporadic nature of the posts here on robservatory.

I had always intended that I'd publish a pointer here to any articles (outside of my thrice-weekly OS X tips column and the occasional product review) on macworld.com, as a way of providing at least some content here (as I know not everyone reads macworld.com regularly). However, despite my best intentions, I've only been moderately successful at cross-referencing...so I decided to finally get serious about it this weekend.

After a bunch of copy-and-paste work between robservatory and macworld, I think I'm finally caught up. I've created a new category here to track my macworld.com posting activities. Somewhat obviously, I've named the new category Macworld, and you can see all 31 entries by simply clicking on Macworld in the category list--or just click here if you want to save the mouse travel.

Having now gone through this painful exercise, I promise I will be more diligent about immediately updating robservatory whenever something of mine hits the Editor's Notes blog section over on macworld.com.



All-new G5 chassis spacer now available!

In the midst of swapping my Dual G5 for the Mac Pro that Macworld so kindly decided to provide for my use (read my three-part hands-on report at macworld.com), I ran into a bit of an issue: I have an external DVD burner that I wanted to position on top of the G5. However, the front handle on the G5's case prevented the burner's drawer from opening. What I needed was some sort of spacer to lift the burner up above the handles.

After digging around in the office for a bit, I found the perfect solution:

spacer

That's right--a leftover copy of my book, Mac OS X Power Hound: Panther Edition. Now I happen to know that there are only many thousands of copies left at Amazon, so if you own a G5 and you've been trying to find that ideal spacer on which to place an external CD-R or DVD-R, look no further! And even though the book only covers up through 10.3, most of the tips will still work on 10.4, should you happen to actually want to read the thing. Of course, you'll be on your own as to figuring out which work and which don't, but heck, that's half the fun!

Act now, and give the official Cheese Grater Chassis Spacer Book to all your G5- and Mac-Pro-owning friends for Christmas! That's right, this book is Universal; it works equally as well on the new Intel-powered Mac Pros as it does on the older Power PC G5 machines!

(Note: This is completely tongue-in-cheek, of course. I just found it funny that the book was exactly the right height for the job, and it clearly wasn't doing me any good sitting on the shelf.)





Scuba diving photo albums

While on the MacMania V Geek Cruise last week, Macworld published a brief photo album of our scuba diving day in Belize. However, due to the connection speed on the boat, those images are both small and of low quality.

Now that I've had a bit of time at home, I put together some larger albums, with higher-quality 800x600 images. I created a separate album for each of our dive days along with a Google Earth placemark file that shows the approximate dive site for each day:

I've had a few emails asking to see more pictures, so here they are. Please keep in mind I'm a rank amateur at this--what you're seeing here are literally my second and third attempts ever at underwater photography.

A few people have asked about the technology for such images, which were shot at depths ranging from 30' to 90'. The setup is amazingly simple—I have an underwater housing, good to 100' or thereabouts, for our aging Canon PowerShot S30 (there's a shot of the housing in that review).

I use the built-in flash, get as close as possible to the object, and rely on the LCD viewer to frame the picture, as there's no way to use a viewfinder while wearing a dive mask. Bring spare batteries and an extra RAM card (change both between the two daily dives), shoot a ton of shots (as you can never be quite sure what you'll get), and make sure the flash is set to always go off.

The above 35 or so "best of" shots represent about 28% of the 125ish images I shot on the two dive days--ah, the joys of digital photography. There's no real "cost" for taking a bad shot, beyond a bit of RAM card space and battery usage.



Swimming pools, high winds, and waves

Ah, it's nice to be back home on solid ground again! After over 5,000 air miles and 1,800+ nautical miles in the last 11 days, I returned to Portland yesterday. All in all, I'd have to say my first cruise experience was more fun that I was expecting it to be, and it was great meeting a bunch of Mac users in a relatively informal setting (and in a small group, so there was lots of time to talk to everyone). You can read all about the journey on Macworld's MacMania blog page, where both Dan Frakes and I posted lots of text and images over the course of the week.

I thought I'd post a couple movies here, though, as they're not really part of any of the blog content we worked on for Macworld. During the last 30 hours or so of our cruise, which was spent crossing the Gulf of Mexico from Costa Maya back to Tampa, we were in some amazingly strong winds--over 40 knots coming from just off the bow! Couple that with 20 knots of boat speed, and the effective wind on the deck was about 60 knots. I walked to the rail on the forward deck at one point, and it was quite the experience (walking back to the stairs from the rail, with 60 knots pushing from behind, was most interesting).

But I thought you might find it interesting to see what that kind of wind (and the accompanying rough seas) did to the pools…

Despite how things seem in those movies, the boat was amazingly stable during the windstorm. You could feel it moving a bit, but there wasn't ever a point where I felt it was moving too much to walk around. It takes quite a lot to move 55,000+ tons of vessel enough to really disturb one's walk, it seems.

I'm signed up for another "tour" on MacMania VI, headed up the inside passage to Alaska from Seattle in late May of next year. I'll be talking about (at least) Leopard in a couple of sessions, and I'm really looking forward to it--although I doubt we'll be doing any scuba diving on that trip!



Geek Cruise: MacMania V

Macworld logoFellow Macworld Senior Editor Dan Frakes and I have just returned from a week on a Geek Cruise in the western Caribbean. We both wrote quite a lot, and took a bunch of pictures. So instead of linking to a huge collection of articles, I'll just link to the two relevant sections on Macworld's site, where you can find everything: the MacMania archives for October 2006 and November 2006.

Macworld's site has changed over the years, and there's no longer a section for each cruise. So here's everything from this trip that I was involved with:

Separately, I posted some of my scuba diving pictures from the trip here on robservatory.com.



Roller coaster fun in Tampa

As the six of you who still read my too-occasional postings here may already know, I'm speaking on a Geek Cruise this week, on a ship sailing through the western Caribbean. When I found out that I would be doing this, my wife and I decided to try to turn it into a bit of a working vacation. We arranged to have our children spend the week with family, which let us book our first trip together sans kids in 3.5 years.

Marian and I are both roller coaster fans, and living in the Pacific northwest, we're frustrated roller coaster fans. There aren't any full-size amusement parks in Oregon, and precious few anywhere in the northwest. The closest "real" roller coaster park, at least by my definition, lies 600 miles south in San Jose, California. As such, it had been over six years since she and I had been able to go ride coasters together. But this Geek Cruise, which leaves out of Tampa, Florida, gave us the chance. Tampa is the home of Busch Gardens, Tampa, and they have six separate coasters.

So when we booked our tickets, we left a day earlier than necessary, using a vacation day yesterday to go ride the coasters at Busch Gardens. It wasn't a cheap day, given that we had to take a cab to and from the park, but since it will probably be another five years before this chance comes up again, that's OK. Overall, it was a fun day at the park, though we both felt that only three of the six coasters were worth repeat ride activity.
[continue reading…]