theKitch

Windows 7 vs OS X Leopard for Netbook

Published on May 21, 2009 in mac. 10 Comments Tags: hackintosh, ie8, lenovo, lenovo s10, lightroom, mac, mac os x, mac osx, netbook, os x, osx, s10, windows, windows 7.

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I recently got very brave and decided to try out Windows 7 on my Lenovo S10 netbook since I had heard so many different sources speak highly of the new Windows Release Candidate.

Initially I wanted to try and dual boot and keep my existing OSX installation fresh. So I used Disk Utility to shrink the Mac partition and make room for the new Windows OS. This was a failure. Even thought Win 7 is supposed to be able to deal with the GUID partition tables I just couldn’t cram the thing down the throat of the install. So knowing that I have my Time Machine backup handy I decided to just say screw it and blow the whole thing away.

Once I made this leap the Windows 7 install was a piece of cake. Very little input was needed from me to do the install and it didn’t even take that long. After the first reboot pretty much everything on the system worked right out of the box. Video, Webcam, Audio, Mic, Wifi, Ethernet, Card Reader, Sleep, you name it, it worked. Install, thumbs up!

Next up I got the business of getting the system ready for real use. This meant finding a browser I enjoyed and getting Lightroom rolling. I found that the IE8 was pretty awesome! The full screen mode is unbeatable on the resolution limited netbook. It’s completely fullscreen with an autohiding address bar, tabs, and bookmarks. Top notch! Lightroom installed just fine. The big issue here was that I could not get it to properly import photos. The other big issue was that overall performance just couldn’t touch Mac OS X. Expose and Spaces completely dominates the Windows Aero switcher. Both in usability and in animation smoothness. iTunes also performed much better in OS X. Finally I would say that overall multi-tasking performance in OS X was considerably better.

So in the end Windows 7 didn’t last long. Next post I’ll discuss the switch back to Mac OS X. There are some new tools and twists since I last did this and the process is now even smoother!

Two Months of Mac Netbook

Published on May 5, 2009 in mac. 11 Comments Tags: hackbook, hackintosh, lenovo, lenovo s10, lightroom, logitech nano vx, mac, mac os x, netbook, osx, s10, tenba.

I’ve been thinking a lot about life with my Lenovo S10 hackintosh netbook as my only system. Recent articles in Lifehacker, TUAW, and Wired got me thinking about it even more. Most of these folks are going on about 6 months with their Hackintosh netbooks, I’m at two months. That said I have definitely formed some opinions about the whole thing. Some good, some bad. I’ve even been contimplating the purchase of a full Mac Laptop as a replacement.

What it has been really great for is having a fully functioning laptop I can drag around with me anywhere I want in my Tenba bag along with all my camera gear. I don’t even have to bring the power supply along for a day trip since I invested in a 9 cell battery for it from ebay for 75 bucks. This is a pretty unstoppable combination for day travel. I am getting between 7 and 10 hours of battery life in this setup. Not bad for a little netbook and a cheap knockoff battery. I also added a Logitech Nano VX mouse to use along with the system as well. It’s a great match since I can leave the micro reciever in the netbook at all times, very convenient. I’m also using the netbook hooked up to my 20″ LCD display when at home sometimes. This is a great setup when I want to do heavy photo editing or work from home.

Overall system performance is OK. It’s tolerable basically. It runs Lightroom fine if I am willing to be a little bit patient with it. I don’t do a lot of brushwork and cloning so that definitely helps, these functions are a bit slower for real artistic work. I would guess Photoshop would be nearly unusable if I were to try. It’s great for web browsing with the Safari 4 beta which saves me some screen real estate. Watching video is a crusher. It can handle 480p h.264 video and lower quality flash video, but no more. With 2 gigs of memory it handles multitasking just fine. I keep Adium, iTunes, and Tweetie open at all times along with a few browser tabs and Lightroom and switching is fine, no issues there. I have even set up XP in a virtual machine using VirtualBox. I would say that compared to netbooks running XP performance is actually better, especially for multi-tasking.

Ergonomics is another issue all together. The keyboard was my main concern initially but this turned out to be almost a non issue. They layout of the Lenovo S10 keyboard is fine for all but the most intense typing. The touchpad is worthless for anything but the most basic navigation, thus the cordless mouse. The screen has also turned out to be a bit of an issue. At 1024×600 it doesn’t have enough vertical resolution for a lot of apps. I have to use some scaling trickery to make these work. Overall, a higher res screen sure would be nice. I’ve even gone in search of the panel from a Dell Mini 10 “HD” which is 1200×768 or so to see if I could hack it in somehow. No luck yet.

So in the end it’s still a usable solution. I think I would really like a real mac though. The extra screen real estate and the added horsepower would be really great. Not sure how I feel about giving up the insane battery life that I get right now or the compact size. There is also the cost. I’m not limited with what I can do with the Lenovo right now, so I think I’ll just stick with it.

Off Camera

Published on May 4, 2009 in photography. 2 Comments Tags: 220ex, cable, camera, canon, dslr, flash, macro, off camera, photography, speedlite, xsi.

Flash that is. I got my hands on a Canon 220EX Speedlite recently and it was a blast! I have never been much for flash photography but this was something completely different. I had a cable attach so that I had the freedom to hold the flash in my left hand and aim it wherever I please. The ability to bounce it off different walls, floors, and ceilings combined with bringing the light in from different angles was amazing.

I also combined this with the close-up lens filters that I have for my kit lens to do even more cool stuff. Macro photography is much easier indoors when there is lots of available light from a flash.

I’ve been on a real kick lately to spend more time with the photography toys I already have. Borrowing, begging, and stealing is also allowed in the case of the speedlite. Overall it’s just cool to see how much there is out there in photography land that I have yet to investigate. So cool!

Raleigh Time Lapse

Published on April 30, 2009 in photography. 3 Comments Tags: canon, downtown, dslr, eos, flickr, photography, Raleigh, time lapse.

I recently got the bug to try and do some time lapse photography when I saw this post over at Digital Photography School. It’s a good intro to what you are getting into and links to various attempts around the web. I had considered doing this previously but never really got around to it. This work by Ross Ching is pretty much the ULTIMATE time lapse I have seen out there. It’s combining the use of tilt shift lenses and telescoping mounts along with crop panning to create an even more unique and dynamic experience. Amazing.

I don’t own a dedicate intervalometer at the moment. I will soon. Using my laptop with the Canon EOS software hooked up to my Canon XSi allowed me to employ the basic concept of doing time lapse. The result is interesting, it does not really meet my artistic vision though. The biggest issues was that the fastest interval I could accomplish was a shot every 5 seconds. This combined with a 1-1.3 second exposure time just didn’t give me the shutter drag I really wanted.

So there will definitely be more to come on this topic. I have a big plan in my head of exactly where I would like to go with the concept. I’m looking forward to implementing it and sharing it with everyone.

Photo Time

Published on April 20, 2009 in photography. 4 Comments Tags: "New York", 28-75, bokeh, depth of field, dof, durham, hotel, ice, macro, new york city, nyc, photo, photography, snow, tamron.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted any photos on the blog. I’ve been really into photography again lately so I figured I would share a few. This first shot was taken with some friends at an old burned down hotel. All kinds of strange plants were growing out of the concrete foundation that looked pretty cool. Here are some tiny ones that I shot with my 28-75 which is not Macro, but it’s pretty close. I really liked the depth of field here and the look of the tiny little forest of trees.

The shot below was taken while I was on vacation in NYC over the winter. New York had gotten a pretty good snow the day before. It was FREEZING out on the bridge but I soldiered on. I took over 200 shots just crossing the bridge, which is excessive even for me. Only a handful were really interesting to me, this is one. Architectural style photos are not my thing, but this turned out well I think.

Planning for the Future

Published on March 19, 2009 in life. 3 Comments Tags: career, college, facebook, life, mentalmasturbation, newsroom, twitter, work.

Yesterday I posed the question “Is there a name for the concept of spending a lot of time planning for something that is not likely to happen?” and received a lot of responses. Here they are:

Via twitter:

30THREADS : @kitch Yeah, it’s called working in a newsroom.

nugo : @kitch It’s called Mental Masturbation

kurtschlatzer : @kitch – they call it a career

RoninVision : @kitch: I think they call that “college”.

Via Facebook:
Don: Working for the State?
Chris: Oh! College!

It looks like the winner is college. Not that exciting overall but I definitely got a kick out of it. It’s by far the most response I’ve ever seen out of a tweet. For the record the scenario that prompted this tweet from me definitely falls into the Mental Masturbation category.

Everyday Mac Netbook

Published on March 16, 2009 in Tech and mac. 17 Comments Tags: dell, desk, external display, flipclock, hackintosh, ikea, iphone, lenovo, lenovo s10, mac, netbook, osx, s10.

This is my workstation at home now. It’s my Lenovo S10 running Mac OSX 10.5.6 hooked up to my 20″ Dell display and wired keyboard and mouse. Also includes the iPhone dock and a 250gig WD drive hidden away for storage and Time Machine. It’s definitely not the fastest system in the universe but it’s been responsive enough overall. With 2gigs of RAM I can run downloaded TV shows on the S10 screen and switch on the main screen between Safari, Adium, and Lightroom. I’ve easily gotten used to the workflow speed on this setup. Here I just have it running Windows XP in a VirtualBox VM because it’s kinda meta.

I’m really shocked that I’m able to use a 350 dollar system (plus 20 dollar RAM upgrade) as my only personal system. So far the only thing it really can’t cope with is “HD” flash video streams. Even non-HD flash video gives it a serious run for it’s money. If flash would stop sucking so much it would be far less of an issue. Another good test has been playback of Apple’s Quicktime movie trailers. 480p is handled with ease. However 720p is too much to handle. It’s close, but it’s dropping a few frames making it choppy. Still, none to shabby.

Extra bonus, when the next gen of these little buggers comes around in a year or so I won’t feel to bad about making the upgrade, as long as I can still run OSX. If not I may have to bite the Apple bullet. I’m getting kinda hooked on OSX all over again.

Netbook Security Scare

Published on March 5, 2009 in Tech. 6 Comments Tags: linux, lowend, mac, netbook, osx, security, users, windows.

In this recent Yahoo! article they are stating that netbooks are inherintley insecure because they are cheap.

Such a bullshit article. It does have some facts right about the whole thing. But the generalization that they are insecure by virtue of being cheap is ridiculous. The only thing that makes a system secure is the software that runs on it. So if you have a firewall and anti-virus or something then its just as secure as my 4000 dollar workstation here at work.

They also miss the point that a lot of them run linux which is much more secure than Windows right out of the box! Some intrepid user, like me, are running OSX, which is also a more secure OS out of the box than Windows as well. Please do not flame, I’m not a mac fanboy. It’s just fact.

Certainly there is some validity to the statement regarding “low-end” users. This is true simply because the most dangerous thing to a computer is it’s user. Unknowingly clicking links and popups and opening emails and attachments is still the real danger.

Way to go mainstream scare tactics.

Mac OSX on Lenovo S10 and Dell Mini 9

Published on March 3, 2009 in Tech. 125 Comments Tags: dell, dell mini 9, dell mini9, dellefi, hackintosh, lenovo, lenovo s10, lenovos10, mac, mac osx, mini, mini 9, mini9, mydellmini, netbook, osx, s10, s10lenovo, voodoo.

Notice! I have updated this with a new report on my latest attempt with OS X on my Lenovo S10. It’s easier than ever. It does require that you have a running OS X Leopard machine, but it is dead simple. See this post.

I’ve spent the better part of this past weekend working on getting Mac OS X running on a Dell Mini 9 and my Lenovo S10. I’ve spent some time in the past Hackintoshing on various systems but it’s been quite some time since I had done it. Abby’s recent Mini 9 purchase and the sale of my own iMac spurred this whole thing on. This along with the step by step guide made famous by Gizmodo sparked all this insanity.

The whole thing is made possible by information gathered from:

The S10 (or a dell mini with an upgraded internal drive) makes a truly amazing Mini Mac. Performance is VERY snappy. Think of it as running a first gen single core Intel Mac Mini. It’s nearly identical. I’ve even got Virtualbox running the included XP Home in a virtual machine and it is trucking away happily. The small screens do have some limitations but for the most part I have been happy with the real estate provided. More than adequate. The Mini9 is going to live on as an XP system, but the S10 shall forever more remain a Mac. I love it!

Now the technical crap

First thing you’ll need to do is get some install media ready. I don’t own an external DVD drive so I decided to use the “single key” USB drive install method outlined at mydellmini. For this you will need one PC, one Mac, one 8gig USB drive, one retail OSX 10.5.6 DVD.

Use this AMAZING guide for step by step directions on how to do the install:

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/how-to-mac-os-x-dellefi-installation-t3925.html

This worked perfectly on the Dell Mini 9. You are DONE. Note that I did my install to an external USB HD (need to use GUID partition table in Disk Utility) and it’s working fine. Although sleep does not work. Result of the USB drive or the 8gig SSD internal which has known sleep problems.

Some slight tweaks for the Lenovo S10.

1) I used the latest DellEFI beta from http://code.google.com/p/mydellmini/downloads/list

I used the DellEFI1.1b2.zip I removed the RealtekR1000.kext from DellEFI/Contents/Resources/Extensions/ in this package though since LAN doesn’t work on our S10s. It’s possible this could have been left alone, haven’t tried it yet with it in place. I also removed IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext since it’s for the sd card reader on the mini 9 which we also don’t need.

2) When installing the DellEFI package I did advanced and did not do the system specific dsdt file since I suspect this might do bad things on the lenovo, more experiments to come later. YOU MUST INSTALL THE DSDT file option. Without it the system will not power off, restart, or have properly working audio!!!!

There are a few more steps for the S10 as well.

For Audio install Audieee by following the directions exactly as they appear on the site.

For sleep and speedstep download:

Voodoopower from VoodooPower Kext

VoodooUSBEHCI from VoodooUSBEHCI

GenericCPUPowerManagement Application

Install the two kexts using kext helper from http://cheetha.net/

After rebooting then follow these steps:

To enable sleep you have to edit the Info.plist in

/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBEHCI.kext/Contents/

You need to add these lines

<key>OSBundleCompatibleVersion</key>

<string>1.0</string>

under

<key>CFBundleVersion</key>

<string>3.1.5</string>

Then you will need to refresh your kexts by using the advanced section of the kext helper utility and running the kext permissions and tag cache rebuild options and rebooting.

UPDATE:

Fixed fan issues by following the information on this thread. More specifically I grabbed the 10.5.6 AppleACPIPlateform.kext from this post. Once you have gotten that you can use the kext updater again to replace it on your system and reboot. Fans work great now!

That’s everything you need to have a well oiled Mac Netbook! Some of this is a bit vaugue so please feel free to ask questions. It can be a little challenging to piece all this crud together from the various sites out there so if there is something that needs clarification please let me know.

Much thanks to Abby for the photo and loaning me her Dell Mini 9 for this experiment! Also note, the mini9 is just running xp above, but yes, it’s also running Mac OS

Chinatown

Published on February 1, 2009 in photography. 1 Comment Tags: "New York", dragon, new york city, newyork, newyorkcity, ny, nyc, photography, street.

This is one of the many reasons I love photography.

I recently took a 3 city tour of Washington DC, Philly, and New York. I was visiting my sister in New York in Brooklyn for four days and LOTS of photography. On a trip like this I have my camera with me everywhere I go and will actively search out locations and events for shooting. I do try to keep my camera with me as much as possible when I’m out and about. This is why.

I had taken off early this morning to go to the local Farmer’s Market so Kate could pick up some fresh goods for the week. Afterwards I had planned to cross through a local snow covered park. Next location was Dumbo to take some bridge and skyline photos. It was in the teens and windy but I had to make the crossing of the Brooklyn Bridge. Well worth it. Lots of fun shooting. I was freezing my butt off so I went off in search of noodles.

Shortly after landing on Manhattan I heard singing in the distance. I had to go investigate! When I arrived I found myself in the middle of local Chinatown Christmas Parade. The shot above is just one of MANY that I snagged. Check my flickr stream for more fun shots. Many many more NYC photos to come. You can see what I have posted thus far in this set.