Troy Sandal

In deciding to make the switch I had to figure out just what kind of need I was going to fulfill. I’ve got an amazing home built PC at the moment, an Athlon 2200XP machine with 1GB of RAM, a flat screen monitor, 120GB of RAID 0+1 storage, etc. It’s as fast as I could want, boots in under 40 seconds and hasn’t crashed since I built it. It’s not going to be replaced for quite some time. But what about my laptop?

Sitting in the living is my old dog Thinkpad 600X. It’s only 4 years old but in the world of PC laptops that’s a lifetime. With 384MB of RAM, a 1024×768 screen and only 10GB of hard disk space it takes it almost 4 minutes to boot Windows XP and couldn’t do any sort of compilation for my work projects. Not that this isn’t a great machine for email, web browsing and VPN’ing into a remote desktop but for software development, it’s dead. This means what I’ll be replacing is the laptop.

In looking at Apple’s web site I discovered that their laptops were somewhat dated. Most used PC100 or PC133 RAM which was at least 3 years old technology. DDR 400 was all therage and even the lowest end PC laptops had DDR266. In addition faster 5200RPM hard drives and fatty video cards should be offered. Besides software I’m going to want to play some games. Further their chips also appeared to be getting long in the tooth as well, the G4 being just a slightly juiced up G3. 800Mhz CPU speeds were the highest available except for the new 17″ that was coming out at 1Ghz but the 17″ is too big to fit in my bag, which brings us to weight. Most the iBooks and PowerBooks were of decent weight, 5-7 pounds, with the 15″ Titanium being perfect at 5.1lbs. But still it didn’t feel right, the machines just didn’t have the features for the price they asked. What to do but read the Mac rumor forums and see if anyone has an idea what’s coming down the road? This is where the Apple world shines.

The Mac has got to have the most loyal, dedicated followers on the planet akin to hard core religious zealots. Rumor forums abound as do hundreds of informative blogs about everything Mac under the sun. Sure enough 5 or 6 confirmed the fact that a new version of the 15″ PowerBook would be coming out with a host of updates to bring it in line with the 17″. I decided to wait out the summer to see what would happen and, low and behold, the new aluminum PowerBook 15″ G4 arrrived. Reading through the specs I was satisifed with everything I saw with the exception of a slightly faster chip and a higher resolution screen. 1.25Ghz is good but 1.5Ghz would have been better. Also the 1280×854 screen is adequate for my work but a 1400×1024 screen like you’re going to get in a similarly configured Dell laptop would have been better. Nevertheless, I was hooked, this would be my new machine.

A trip to the local Apple store revealed that you cannot customize PowerBook configurations for those bought at a brick and mortar Apple store so online I went. The base machine I built started with the higher end 15″ PowerBook. I removed the SuperDrive as I have no idea when I might use it, increase the hard drive speed to the 80GB 5200RPM and added an extra power supply for my office. A blue tooth mouse almost made it onto the list but I wanted to make sure I liked this idea of a single button first. That was it, I added it to my shopping basket and hit checkout To my surprise I found that I qualified for a 6 months same as cash Apple loan. 2 minutes later I was approved, checked out and patiently waiting for my new machine. Being a custom order it turns out you have to wait one week longer as the machines ships from the manufacturer in Taiwan. But don’t good things come to those who wait?

Why would I ever want to switch from Windows to the Mac? I’ve been using PCs since DOS 3.0 and Windows 2.1, for roughly 14 years now, and never have used a Mac for more than a few minutes at a computer store or a friend’s house. All my graphic designer friends swear by them but not me, I’ve always been a hard core PC hacker, a developer who loved the fact that Microsoft treated me like a king so I would write tools for their platform. As a developer I’ve always had access to phenomenal tools from Microsoft and other 3rd parties that made writing Windows apps easy, maybe not interesting, but easy. Not that this isn’t the case for the Mac but all I ever heard from my friends who developed for the Mac was that the tools were never as good as Microsofts’, that Apple didn’t treat their developers nearly as well as Microsoft, that Apple’s APIs were not aging very well and that Apple did a terrible job of providing backwards compatibility as they moved their hardware and software forward. That was always one of the key strong points of Microsoft, backwards compatibility. They even made Dave Cutler ensure that there would be an x86 layer inside the NT kernel such that legacy DOS applications could be run. That in addition to the fact that the NT APIs had to be a superset of the Windows API, ensuring that old programs would still compile and run under NT. From what I heard Apple never did that. I’m sure it cost Microsoft tons and we benefited, the developers, and we stayed and made it a great platform. But now these times they are a changing.

I’m working for BEA Systems now and am working in Java. My work desktop is a Windows machine but, in theory, the application I work on should run on any pre-emptive multi-tasking OS that has the latest Java Virtual Machine. So why not a Mac with OS X, their beautiful new OS that simply continues the NeXT OS lifeline. In theory all the applications I really need like Office and a PIM of some sort are present on the Mac. Except for writing VBA macros to automate Excel I’m in no way a power Office user so even an old version should do. Web tools could be tricky but I only use FrontPage currently and GoLive, DreamWeaver and BBEdit are all available for the Mac, so software isn’t an issue. Being a developer or course means I need some horsepower to compile and a large screen, but they’ve got decent chips and large screens in the PowerBook line, enough for what I’m doing. So the software and hardware are there but what about the price?

Pricing out a new, loaded PowerBook can be scary but it you compare it with a top of the line IBM or Dell laptop you might be surprised to find the ratio of the two to not be too high. Plus you have to look at what you’re getting, and I mean look, the machines are beautifully engineered and just as appealing to look at. The new 15″ PowerBook keyboard is simply divine. So now when we get down to it, why wouldn’t I just plunk down a little more money to get a Mac when I can just pick up a new Dell or Toshiba laptop and be at home in my familiar environment?

Because I’m bored with the PC, it’s too familiar, I know it inside and out and I’m caged in by its mode. I want to try something new, to look at working with a computer on a day to day basis through a different point of view, a simpler one. Yes, even through the eyes of a company that won’t add a second button to their mouse. I want to see what all this hype is about, why everyone I know who has an excellent sense of style uses a Mac and all the slobs PCs.

And so it went.

I’ve learned to live with SPAM in the last few years as has everyone else. When it first started to become a problem I remember thinking I was going to have to change mail addresses to deal with it but then, thankfully, came SPAM filters. To date my hotmail account, although it requires weekly attention, is fairly clean. Alas, today I discovered an entirely new type of SPAM, Blog Comment SPAM.

Some SPAM machine somewhere has an automated way to add blog comments to MoveableType Blogs such as mine. Fortunately only 20 entires were added but it still took me 30 minutes to clean them out of my blog and to turn off comments for all old blog entries and all future entires. Until I find a way to maintain the blog SPAM I’m turning off commenting. Sorry!

I’ll be looking into MT-Blacklist to try and rememdy this so until then, if you want to comment it’s going to have to be via email.

Elliot Smith died yesterday. Rest in Peace.

When entering Sonic Boom lately I’ve been going to the new music less and less and taking a quick left to check out the latest Used New Arrivals. Thinking about the crowd that buys there you’d imagine that those who sell have the same quality music tastes. Indeed they do. In the past week I’ve picked up the following:

Violent Femmes – Add It Up
Beastie Boys – License to Ill
Blur – Blur
Cocteau Twins – Treasure

For me it’s a inexpensive way to get back all those lost tapes from my childhood, well at least for the Femmes and Beasties. For some of my friends it’s probably also a cheap way to feel legal.

I highly recommend you give it a shot. Also, today is national “have a brownie and a glass of milk” day. To your health!

As is typical for most bloggers they’re active for the first 2-4 weeks then drop off the face of the earth. The same has happened to me. No more insights into the state of the online music industry, no reviews of new and upcoming bands, no touting my latest photos because I havent’ really posted any, not even a small diatribe about this year’s Burning Man. Well that’s about to change.

It’s going to change because I’ve wasted an entire day trying to get my build working but to no avail. Hence, I’m a blogger again. So first off, let’s talk about the new Apple 15″ G4 PowerBook. I’m dying to have it, literaly dying, making every possible excuse in the world to buy it. It’s fast, it’s new, it’s silver, it’s got Firewire, iTunes, iThis, iThat, OS X Java and, most of all, it’s a Mac. What’s stopping me except for the fact that I’ve got 4 machines at home already? Well, who cares, life is short and I hope my next blog entry comes from a Mac. That also means I’ll need to fix the sight to run on a Mac.

I’m going to the Bellevue Apple store with Keith tonight. We’ll see what happens.

As for photography, I’ve only done one real piece of work and two snap shot sessions. My latest/last f1 photos were done on the topic bridges. Let me know what you think. The other two snapshot sessions I did were at Burning Man and some other random shots from Costco, a camping trip and a dinner out at Serafina’s on Eastlake. The Costco pics are few but fun, I’ll post them soon. The others are simply friends out on the town so I might not scan which brings me to another issues – snap shots and posting.

I’ve come to the point where, for the most part, I will no longer shoot film for snapshots as it’s just too slow to scan in the prints for the ‘value’ I get out of them. Instead I shoot film, mainly slide of C-41 black & white for projects, then scan the negatives for that ultimate 24 Mega-Pixel image. So how am I doing snapshots you ask? I bought my second digital camera to replace my trusty Olympus D320, may it rest in piece. The newest addition to the collection is a Canon Elph S320. It’s small, light, has little shutter lag, a decent flash, great battery life, 3.2 MegaPixels, a 256MB CF card, great manual settings and takes up almost no space in my bag. In fact, it’s right here next to me and won’t be leaving my side. It’s my new snapshot machine, expect many more albums to come on line.

Also, I can feel that I’m almost ready to make the digital SLR switch, meaning in the next 12-24 months. It will happen though most likely not at 6MP, I’m still holding out for the 12+ though I might break at 10. Since Kodak is breaking new ground with the DCS-14N I’m hoping/assuming that Nikon and Canon will follow suit, hopefully with a full frame CCD.

One other set of pictures I shot but won’t be posting as I gave the negatives away was for my friend’s Mary and JT at their wedding. Fresh from Burning Man 03′, I came back, shot the wedding at the Lake Washington Rowing Club and passed out cold around 11:30. Don’t ever try this on your own, it’s a killer. We did the formals ahead of time at Kerry Park and down the street at Parsons Gardens. I highly recommend Parsons, it’s quiet, intimate and easy to work with. Kerry Park, on the other hand, is decent for your Space Needle pictures but too many tourists almost ruined the day. Stay away.

Lastly, Burning Man 2003 was amazing, by far my best burn yet and never would have reached that level had it not been for Black Rock City Animal Control (BRCAC). Read the web site, you’ll get the idea. I took very few pictures as I was having too much fun each and every day and night. In fact I barely slept at all which almost killed me on the way home. This year I had the great opportunity to make new friends, Toby, Grady, Shannon, Colby, Steve, Dez, Sven, etc etc, I can’t name them all, there’s too much playa dust in my eyes. Nevertheless, they were amazing and made it what it was. And yes, we survived to burn another day. Burn long, burn hard. Pictures to come. Oh, and I must mention Pac Man, my El Wire Pacman got one good 20 minute ride on the playa. I truly hope someone got a picture! Time for a welding class so I can build even more for next year.

That’s it, I’m back to the build. Later.

I’m attaching a link to a story at the register about Senator Orrin Hatch’s approval of software that would destroy the computers of those found to be trading in copyrighted materials. It’s thinking like his that could, if allowed to spread to other uninformed senators, lead to just such crazy talk becoming law. Think of the DMCA Part Deux, The Empire Strikes Back.

Do your part, let your senator know you’re for fair copyright use and that you don’t support the RIAA and MPAA’s tactics for Hatch’s legislation.

It’s been one week now since I received the new Dandy Warhols album Welcome To The Monkey House and I’m faithfully, loyally keeping it in my playlist. At first, however, I thought it wouldn’t be so. After listening to the first three tracks I thought they were going to stay fairly true to their prior albums, with just a new degree of electronic influence mixed on top. Excellent stuff, a great morph on their sound. But then came track 4, “The Dope” and finally track 5 “I Am A Scientist” which threw me off completely. A truck full of 80′s wave sounds rear ended a late 90′s Mercedez carrying two albinos and a kilo of coke. I was afraid to get out of the car but couldn’t help but start at the scene of the crime. Thankfully “I Am Over It” came on to drag my attention away, followed by “The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone” which, though still too close to “I Am A Scientist”, took me even farther. Not ready to give up I was rewarded by “Insincere Because I”, an ambient, spacey interlude leading up to one of my favorites “You Were The Last High” which rules this album as far as I’m concerned. Turn it up here and don’t look back, the rest of the album will pull you through. Listen hard and you’ll hear all the goodness of the old Dandy’s mixed in with all the wonderful newness that they’re pulling into their music. The Dandy’s are going to fearlessly morph themselves forward, I’m going to morph right along with them.

My only entry for today is that I bought the new Dandy Warhols from Amazon UK, Welcome To The Monkey House.

This new album is supposed to be a big departure but I don’t care, I love the Dandy Warhols, love them.

A few simple shots from my walk with Anne a few weeks back.