Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago at 5:21 pm. 1 comment
Yesterday,Apple finally decided to release updated MacBook Pros with the newest Penryn processors from intel. I headed to the apple store to purchase a 17″ baby for myself. So far, it has been amazing! The 17″ screen (matte) is brighter and bigger than I thought! All my applications launch instantly. The hard drive upgrade to 250Gb (from 160) in this generation of Macbook Pros is also a great benefit as well as the 512Mb VRAM they upgraded the 8600 to.Now, as opposed to a hackintosh I built, I have a real genuine Apple computer. I’m very impressed with the build quality. I don’t have one complaint about it.Later, I will post information such as benchmarks, etc. With this post will come a more indepth review of the laptop.
Posted 9 months ago at 7:45 pm. 3 comments
I used to only use Arch Linux on an old, dusty 1.6 Ghz Intel P4. I mainly used SSH to get what I needed done on it, and occasionally used VNC into the machine. But yesterday, I decided I would install arch linux on my current main machine so I could try out Compiz-Fusion. This computer is higher spec’d then the other one. I was running Windows XP on this computer, and just wanted to dual boot. I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. I defragged the hard drive in windows then booted up the gParted live CD resize the partition to make room for Arch. That went fine and dandy. I then installed Arch on that partition, set up grub. I rebooted the machine after the install, took out the CD, grub loaded but… Windows disappeared!
I probably could have somehow fixed that, but it was late at night and I really didn’t even know what I was thinking. Anyways. I reinstalled Arch again after that to use up the whole hard drive. I installed gnome, compiz, and everything else I wanted and got going. I actually didn’t really mind much the new environment. I liked it better than windows, but I was mad that I lost all of my files that were on windows. I would reinstall windows to get all my compatible applications back like photoshop (I did the little artwork at the top of this post in GIMP…YUCK)., but that would take to long considering I am still expecting to buy a MacBook Pro the minute they are released. And most people are betting on a release either tomorrow or the 26th.
So I’m going to live with Linux 24/7 for a little bit I guess. I’ve been learning and doing a lot of C++ during my stay as I don’t have much else to do. I don’t like how it is such a task to set stuff up though. I can’t get my ip6000D printer working, or my Linksys WMP54GS wireless adapter (So, I’m wired right now). The sound is also sort of glitchy… it can only play from one source at a time. I can’t watch a youtube video and hear my Pidgin messages come in for instance. Other then that, I can’t really complain though. I am excited to move to Mac OS, but I’ll still have this computer running Arch afterwards. Linux is boring though, there is nothing to play and nothing to do. Even internet browsing feels diferent with. Everything looks smoother.
Posted 9 months, 1 week ago at 9:00 pm. 0 comments
I have been really busy the last few days with server switching, other projects, and…. Django? Django is a Python web framework I have been learning about. I have never coded python in my life, and Django was still easy to use while learning python simultaneously. Django is particularly useful for database powered sites.
Basically it is a 3 step process to making a Django app.
- 1. Create the database structure in models.py
- 2. Select the data to be sent to the templating system for each page in views.py
- 3. Make the HTML templates and insert tags for each variable
Theres more to it than that, but thats the jist of it. It makes programing websites a lot easier and not to mention faster than php or ruby. Django for example can automatically make an administrative page for the site based on the database fields you specified in the models.py for each app.
Django is also highly plug-able. You can drop someone elses app into your own project (which is pretty much a package of apps making up a site) and integrate it in. Although Django is a little harder for the average joe to set up than say, just sticking to PHP, it is worth it. As a note, for production sites, it is recommended to keep media and python on diferent servers. This makes it hard to use Django on a shared server not only because most shared servers don’t provide it, but because it is recomended to keep the Django on an apache server running mod_python and the media (images, js, css) on a server such as nginx or lighttpd.
If you are interested in making a database driven site and are comfortable messing around with python, Django is definitely worth a shot.
Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 3:38 pm. 3 comments
Digg This!
On the morning of Feb 3. I was featured on the front page of digg.com. This caused my site to get an huge amount of traffic compared to what I was used to. About 60,000 unique visitors came to my site in 24 hours. It took down my home server right away. I quickly transferred to hostnine. It worked for a little while. But then, the site got really slow again. So I added an ‘index.html’ file to over-ride the index.php file from wordpress to try and keep the site up. I just copied and pasted the popular post into the html file. This saved the site. At the end of the day, after the superbowl, I put up the regular site again as traffic had died down to around 4,500 visits/hr. It worked perfect… until 3:30PM the next day. I go to my site to see how things are coming and I see “Site Suspended.” Furious, I tried to get in contact with hostnine. Their phones went un-answered, the live support answered after over 1 hour in a queue which kept notifying me I was the first in line. When someone finally did answer, I stated my problem and he went un-responsive. I emailed all the listed on their site, and in the mean time, since I had a reseller account I changed the suspended page to the text contents of the post. This way it atleast displayed the content people were coming from minus the images. Josh got back to me by email and said he personally suspended the account because it was too busy. At this point I used only 3Gb bandwidth and the site was on this server for over 24 hours. Now this account was allowed 150Gb bandwidth. If you do the math, if the 3Gb bandwidth a day kept up… which it wouldn’t… for a whole 30 day month, the total bandwidth for the month would be 90Gb. This is not to mention that it was 3Gb per about 30 hours and not per 24 hours. I was furious. I emailed Josh back and told him my side of the story. I told him to un-suspend me or I’m canceling.
Sorry, that’s not going to happen, your site used more than the allowed 5% combined CPU and RAM which is clearly stated in the terms and conditions you agreed to when you signed up.
So, be my guest.
Let us know if you need anything further, we’ll be happy to help!
Thank you for choosing HostNine!
Best Regards,
Joshua Brown
Level 2 Technical Support
Abuse/Billing Manager
I never read that anywhere so I asked where in the TOS it said that. He linked me to the TOS and quoted it. It did say that. I looked up the google cache of their TOS. Whoa, whoa, whoa… On January 28, 2008, when the paged was cache it said nothing about any 5%. Keep in mind that I was hosting under a reseller account which was actually signed up a while back.
Contrasting with the current TOS. So it appears they changed their TOS after they suspended me because they realized they didn’t have a legit reason to suspend the account even though I was slowing down their over-crowded server. I emailed Josh back about this, and he hasn’t mailed be back since. I guess he knows he just got owned.
Now however I have the site all back up and ready to go. I thank everyone who is blogging about my recent $350 mac article and I encourage you to digg this article for two reasons:
1. To show H9 that they absolutely suck.
2. To show people that H9 absolutely sucks.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago at 1:21 pm. 155 comments
Yesterday, while still anxiously awaiting for new MacBook Pro (which are now rumored for either the 5th or 12th), I built a hackintosh with Leopard. How? I will show you.
First thing to do is get the parts for our hackintosh. For this project I used a shuttle barebones system system because of the size.
Here are the specs:
We are not getting a video card because the motherboard that comes with the Shuttle has a built-in Intel GMA950 which is the same graphics that the previous rev. of MacBooks used and therefore are supported by Leopard out of the box anyways.
Great, build it. If you have never built a computer before, it is pretty straight foward. The Shuttle comes with a guide anyways not to mention all the guides available on the internet.
Once you have it built it is time to install Leopard. You will need the Kalyway Leopard DVD to install it. Get it through this torrent would be the easiest option. Burn it to a DVD with ISO Recorder or a program of your choice. You will also need a few drivers for the ethernet and sound. I have packaged them together. Download here. You can put those files on a CD, flash drive, or external hard drive.
Now we are all set. Boot the Shuttle up and put the Leopard DVD you burned in. I didn’t have to change any big setting in the BIOS, however you might want to set the date and time and stuff by pressing the delete key when the Shuttle logo comes up. Otherwise, boot from the DVD. It will show a text message that says “Loading Darwin” for a few minutes if you burnt the DVD correctly. It will then turn to a gray screen. It takes a while to boot the DVD so be patient while this boots. Select the language of your choice when it comes up. Next, go to the utilities menu and go to disk utility. Create a new partition by clicking on your hard drive on the left, then going to the partition tab. Select 1 partition and name it “Leopard.” You can actually name this anything you want, it is what the hard drive icon on your desktop will be labeled, just make sure it is ONE word and contains NO SPACES. There is a glitch where if it is more than one word, the OS will not boot. Also, go to options and make sure GUID is checked. Make sure the format is ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled).’ Now apply it. Once it is done, close out of the disk utility. Pass through the next couple screens click Agree, and then on the next screen click the ‘Customize’ button. A screen like this will pop up.
Follow those settings, and let ‘er install!
Assuming the install went ok, it should restart when it is finished. When it turns on, take the DVD out and let it boot from the HD. It should boot Leopard! This first boot takes a little longer than usual and has some set-up that it has you do. Do what it asks in then it will take you to your brand new desktop. Lets waste no time! You may notice your internet isn’t working, either is the sound, and the resolution is a little funky too.
Let’s fix the resolution first. Go to the settings icon (It’s the one on the dock that has a bunch of gears), and go to ‘displays.’ Change the resolution to the max. Now it should look better.
Put in the flash drive/cd/external hard drive and look at the files. First lets install the audio patch. Unzip the AppleHDAPatcher now drag the text file ALC888-a.txt ontop of that crazy icon. It should patch the sound. Now we will fix the ethernet. Spotlight ‘kext’ and you should see ‘kextHelper’ come up. Open it. Drag the skge.kext to the white box in the KextHelper, it should add it in, type in you’re password and click ‘Easy Install’ or what ever it says. It should pop a message up saying to cross your fingers and restart. Restart. Once you are booted back in, got to the settings again and this time click network. Configure the stuff there. DNS servers seems to frustrate a lot of people, so in there put 4.2.2.1. Its a public DNS server that most people tend to like. You can also put your gateway which is usually something like 192.168.1.1.
That was easy, wasn’t it? Your hackintosh should now work 100%! If something doesn’t work, or I missed something, write a comment!
Another helpful resource is the InsanelyMac Forums. They are usually quick to get back, and have tons of drivers if you are building something different than the specs I used.
Happy hackintosh-ing!
