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June 03, 2005
Garage Band Tutorials
dave
03:55 PM
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There's a good, if somewhat basic GarageBand tutorial which was mentioned in the Mac Facts by Dave Horrigan (down near the bottom) Column in the SCMP this morning. (Sorry, the column is paid subscription only.)
It covers the basics on how to get started, and is probably enough to get anyone up and running with GarageBand. My preliminary noodling around with it reminds me of my days of multi-track recording with a Fostex X15, except that this one can record more tracks and has tons of instruments and drum loops built in. A lot of the presets sound quite good too - I can just listen to a few and ideas start flowing straight away. Must spend more time with this.
May 17, 2005
OSX Tiger 10.4.1
dave
12:51 PM
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Well, 10.4.1 is here. The first upgrade to the recent OSX Tiger release. Notable changes are that the Mail app now actually works with my IMAP server. The memory management seems to be a little bit better as well, as I seem to have a little more spare RAM when my usual applications are all open.
Also updated is apparently the Core Image functionality, although it's not noticeable on the Mac Mini, as the graphics card isn't powerful enough. (It really irks me that they went with the ATI 9200 instead of the much more powerful Nvidia 5200. Space and heat issues, I guess.)
There doesn't seem to be any improvement on the SMB/CIFS issues. The Finder still doesn't find the Samba Shares on the local network, and I have to connect manually to get them working. This isn't a show-stopper, but it's a little bit annoying.
May 04, 2005
Upgrading the Mac-mini
dave
03:45 PM
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I just upgraded my Mac Mini to 512MB, It makes a huge difference to the usuability of the machine. I can now use it as it's really intended to be used: browser open, itunes going, ichat on with video chat, some dashboard thingies active, as in the picture.
(Extra dimensional entity not included with iChat software.)
The upgrade itself was pretty easy. getting the case off is a little bit tricky, but there are plenty of resources on the web to show you what to do.
The video, in particular, was extremely helpful.
I got the 512MB stick of Kingston RAM for $360 in Sham Shui Po. I did look at the 1Gb stick, but they were quite hard to find and expensive, at more three or four times the cost of the 512Mb stick. I guess they haven't reached commodity status yet.
The Mac Mini is now a usuable desktop machine, at a fraction of the cost of an Apple upgrade, and I get to keep my 256Mb stick of RAM too, for when I build my next PC.
April 30, 2005
OS X
dave
09:58 PM
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One major irritant with the Mac Mini is the amount of Memory. OS X, especially with the Tiger Upgrade, just barely fits into 256MB. There's one heck of a lot of waiting around. methinks the RAM upgrade has gotta come soon...
Mac Spooging
dave
07:10 PM
Comments (1)
Have you noticed that the + symbol for adding things to your dashboard screen rotates as the widget bar opens so that it becomes the X symbol to close the widget bar?