Monthly Archives: October 2007

Starting Fresh

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I received my copy of Leopard this morning and thus began my busy day of trying to fit in everything I needed to do to install the critter. Fortunately I have been preparing for this for the last few days so I was ready to jump into the install relatively quickly, but once the install was done the real work has begun.

Last year, about this time I decided that when Leopard came out in January (yes, I was dreaming), that I wanted to do a fresh install. Erase my hard drive, and start from scratch. When Leopard was delayed till October I said the same thing. Over the past few years my system had become cluttered with many an extra add-ons, programs (I had 250+ programs), hacks and un-used document. I wanted to start over completely from scratch, taking with me only my music to my new install.

I have SuperDuper, so my first step was to have a hard drive clone of my disk made. I’ve had a clone of my drive ever since I got my 250 Gig external drive a few years back. I used 100 gigs to clone my Laptop drive, and the remaining 150 to hold video editing files and use as a scratch disk for FCS as well as Photoshop and what-not. However, I knew that SuperDuper didn’t work well with Leopard yet, and I also wanted to be able to try out Time Machine, as it was one of the coolest hyped things Apple has talked about for the past year.

So the other day I copied all my video files I needed off the 150 Gig partition onto the spare space on my 300 Gig drive that I use for my large photo collection and panoramic work. I then completely zeroed my 250 Gig drive, (with Disk Utilite’s 7 pass zero feature,) and I repartitioned the drive into 3 sections. One section was about 5-8 gig larger then the current usage of my laptop drive, I called this “Tiger Drive.” I then made a 110 Gig partition called “Time Machine” for the usage of Time Machine, and I called the remaining space “Application Files” and dumped all the needed loop-files and other FCS things onto it.

Using SuperDuper to clone my laptop to my “Tiger Drive” I was now ready for the install of Leopard, whenever it was going to show up.

When I saw that my copy had arrived the first thing I did was do another SuperDuper copy to my external drive, which only took a short time, and then booted from it to ensure that it was working correctly. Next, I slipped in my Leopard DVD and restarted.The first step to install was to zero my laptop drive. I wanted to let my drive find any errors and do some cleanup, so I let it do a one pass zero of the drive before I installed Leopard. After it had finished that, I partitioned the drive to make a “Macintosh HD” partition, a “Music” partition and a “Documents” partition. I then installed Leopard to the Macintosh HD partition, and the fun had just begun.

Leopard has an awesome feature of letting you change the home directory of any user account, unfortunately, if you don’t do that right away you’ll have to go back and reset many of your preferences, including Mail and Safari and others. I didn’t realize this until after the fact, so I have a number of things I now have to re-do or fix again. Oh well.

As of right now I have copied my music over, and have set up an Administrator account (I don’t run as admin for security precautions) and changed my user icons back to how they should be. It feels really good to have a nice clean start, but I have a long way to go before I feel back to normal. I have many applications to download (hopefully with Leopard compatible versions), and then I also have to find my serial numbers for these apps so they’ll work properly. Also, I’ve started my calendars over completely, so I have to set up my new data and hopefully get my Palm Pilot to sync with it properly. (I was having issues before (with MarkSpace), and thought a fresh install might fix things.)

It is a weird feeling, to completely forsake everything you know and love in hopes to fully start a fresh. (Although the 2029 messages Mail downloaded from Yahoo isn’t very re-assuring for a fresh start.) But I hope that it will help me fully realize what it is that I need and what it is that I use. I’m hoping to hone in my computer using habits so that I can become a bit more efficient and a bit more tech savvy.

A Rushed Lifestyle

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It’s day 3 of mid-term break. A solid 3 days without classes. I spend day 1 working in the Theater department, and I spend most of day 2 playing video games and watching TV. Today was spend mostly outside, but between today and yesterday, I have just hit the point where, I feel like I have nothing to do.

When life becomes busy, people get use to it, then when it stops being busy they don’t know what to do with themselves.

I think we have forgotten how to relax. Even I find it hard to sit back and enjoy myself if I know there are a dozen things I should/could be doing. Even our “down time” is being filled with online interaction, video games, movies, all keeping us from truly relaxing.

Assignment for this week: spend 30 solid minutes doing absolutely nothing, and don’t regret it afterwards.

Preserving the Charge

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This is my article from “The Scroll” for the October 2nd, 2007.

Lithium-ion batteries power everything these days. Items include any cellphone, camera, laptop or mp3 player. Lithium-ion batteries are relatively maintenance free. However, unless they are shown proper care, they will deteriorate at a much higher rate.

Before talking about the proper care for Lithium-ion batteries, it is good to understand the advantages and disadvantages to using a Lithium-ion battery.

Lithium-ion batteries have three big advantages over other types of batteries. First, they are very light. Lithium is the third lightest element, and the light weight makes it a perfect choice for using in portable devices. Secondly, Lithium-ion batteries have a huge potential for storage capacity, which means that the battery will hold more charge than other chemistries of battery. The third big advantage is that Lithium batteries have an extremely low ‘self-discharge’ rate. When some batteries are not in use, they still drain a small percentage of power, Lithium-ion batteries use significantly less power then other battery types.

Lithium batteries are far from perfect, though. The biggest drawback to a Lithium-ion battery is that it begins to degrade as soon as it is manufactured, regardless of whether it is charged or not. Typically, a Lithium-ion battery will last between 2-3 years from the date of manufacturing. Lithium-ion batteries are also very sensitive to heat, and prolonged exposure to high temperatures shortens battery life significantly. Lithium-ion batteries are also very expensive to make, because they have a special onboard computer chip to help monitor the status of the battery.

So what’s the best way to save a lithium-ion battery? Here are two big tips to help keep them in tip-top shape.

Lithium-ion batteries work best when they are ‘exercised.’ Charge lithium-ion batteries frequently, recharge the battery whenever it gets down to 70-80 percent. Lithium-ion batteries do not need to be drained before recharge. Doing so will actually shorten the battery’s life span. Most lithium-ion batteries will last for 300-500 full discharge cycles.

On the same note, devices (like laptops) that keep track of the current battery charge will slowly become less accurate over time if the battery is only partially drained. To fix this, allow the device to run until it shuts itself off, about once a month, then perform a full recharge.

The big reason that laptop batteries fail so often and so quickly is simply that the batteries are always too hot. To help keep laptops cool, only set them down on hard surfaces; beds, blankets, and soft locations don’t allow air to circulate properly. Don’t leave cellphones or mp3 players in hot cars.

Lithium-ion batteries are not cheap, so it is a good idea to keep them working as long as possible. Just give them proper care and they’ll be able to serve well for several years.

Another Quote

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It’s funny how this works. The day after I devise a quote in my head, a similar quote appears on a website I frequent, and says something very similar. I still think I like mine better though.

“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

- Ray Bradbury (1920- )