Personal Blog of Ricky Mills; Web Developer, PHP Programmer and Mobile Application Developer
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Poor little Mini!

November 21st, 2008 | Posted by Rick in Apple | Hardware | Random | Servers | Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

I’ve been using a MacMini as my home server for about 6 months now. I found one cheap (£250) on ebay. Its only an Intel core duo (not core 2) running at 1.66 but it works great as a server. I had problems with it when I bought it. It wouldn’t boot and showed all the signs of a faulty RAM module.

The seller kindly sent me a replacement 1GB stick as it looked like one of the RAM slots was faulty. I had been running fine for about 5 months, then last month I did a re-boot after OS X 10.5.5 was released and boom….the mini wouldn’t boot. After spending about 5 days trying to fix it, even trying to reinstall OS X I gave in. It looked like OS X stopped running if there were memory issues.

I installed Ubuntu which worked flawlessly….for 5 days. I’m still running Ubuntu and have to re-boot every 5 or so days as it locks up. Nothing in the logs, it just locks up. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s something not right hardware wise and cant be fixed.

I’m going to be looking into replacing it, but cant really afford to splash out on another MacMini. I think I’ll be making a new server using an Intel Atom package. I can still run at 1.6 Ghz and its still a small sized motherboard.

Since the Atom integrated motherboards are fairly cheap, I will be able to spend some money on getting system to boot on a solid state drive. I found that you can get 32GB CF Cards, and a CF to SATA drive for under £50 which is great! You can even get duel CF readers, thus giving you a 64GB solid state drive on the cheap!

So heres my spec plan:

1.6Ghz Intel Atom
2GB DDR2 RAM
2x 32GB CF solid drives (using a SATA -> CF adaptor)
A small case (not much bigger than the MacMini case hopefully)
DVD RW +/-

Since I’m off on holiday soon I cant really afford to build this, however when I’m over in the states, I’ll pop into circuit city, Best Buy and a few other places to see if I can get some of the parts….will be much cheaper than buying here! :D

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Started Uni!

October 14th, 2008 | Posted by Rick in Apple | Education | Personal | Random - (0 Comments)

Well my reason for not posting since just under a month ago is because I started University 3 weeks ago!

I’m now a full time student studying Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. The best bit is that on my induction interview I was asked “You do know you got a £3,000 scholarship?” to which my reply was “Uh…no….but thank you!” :p

With my little (free) nest egg, I’ll be buying whatever new Apple laptop gets released tonight/tomorrow morning! I’m going to be buying a MacBook Pro to replace my 8 month old MacBook!

So, tomorrow afternoon I will post the unboxing pictures!

(ok, ok….this was a poor excuse for a blog post, but I am getting quite excited at the prospect of finally owning a MacBook Pro!)

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Crossover Office for Mac

September 17th, 2008 | Posted by Rick in Apple | Random | Software - (0 Comments)

When I first switched to a Mac just over a year ago, I pretty much ditched everything on my old Windows computer. In fact, I dont think its been turned on since the day I got my mac home!

I found that to run Windows games or apps I needed to use bootcamp (which results in tedius rebooting to switch between the two operating systems) or Parallels (which is great for apps, but not for games). Another alternative was Crossover. I had used WINE on Linux before and loved it, however knew it had limitations, as did Crossover.

I’ve pretty much stopped playing games on my mac as I’ve got an Xbox 360 however I still have the piles of Windows only games. Well, today I decided to give the new crossover a whirl as well as crossover games and was amazed. I tried a few games (RCT2, Train Simulator and Joint Operations). They all worked flawlessly! What surprized me was that the crossover site said they wouldnt work!

Basically the new crossover release, supports almost anything. I’ve yet to find something that doesnt work! Another fantasic reason why Windows users should get a mac!

For anyone interested in crossover office, check out their site: http://www.codeweavers.com

Alternatively you can try the free WINE app: http://www.winehq.org

Moving Time!

August 28th, 2008 | Posted by Rick in Education | general | Personal | Random - (0 Comments)

Well as some regular readers already know, I’m about to start my first year at the University of Hertfordshire, studying Computer Science. Last week I got a letter to confirm my place so we opened a bottle of bubbly to celebrate before going to Scotland for a week (See flickr for photos!).

I’ve now started the mammoth task of moving from one room, to another…why you ask? To fit in 2 brand new desks! I was all prepared to put them in the current room, just about to go and buy them and did a final measurement of where they were going to go….only to find they weren’t going to fit! So I’m now moving to a MUCH bigger room, with lots of space for the desks. I decided whilst I was at it I may as well go all out and get wooden/laminate flooring put in too. So today I’ve gotta get everything out of my room (which is currently pretty cluttered with total crap so its gotta be a good thing!)

So, once I’ve moved in to my new room, I’ll post some pics of the workspace. I know members over at the MacRumors forums love seeing other peoples work spaces (and I have to say, so do I) for inspiration, so that should make a few people happy!

So yeah, that’s about it…I know this post probably wont interest many people, but I’m excited and had to air that excitement somewhere! (Yes, I can be sad :p)

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