I recently installed Windows Vista under Parallels (I’m running the latest Beta - Build 3150) which worked fine except as Parallels does not yet support 3D graphics acceleration you don’t get any of those nice Aero Glass effects.

To see how well Vista can run on a Mac I decided to give Apple’s Bootcamp beta (version 1.1.2) a try.

Installation of Bootcamp is painless and after making a 20GB partition for windows and creating the Macintosh Bootcamp Drivers for Windows XP CD I was ready to boot the Vista installation DVD.

After going through the normal process of installing Windows Vista (it autodetects and installs drivers for just about all of the MacBook Pro’s hardware - including as it happens my Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Bluetooth Wireless Mighty mouse) I manually installed a few more things to get Vista working just right.

First off ethernet and graphics drivers work out of the box (including Aero) however I updated the ATI catalyst drivers (including support for the Mobility Radeon X1600) to the latest Vista release from Catalyst 7.1 Display Driver for Windows Vista (32 bit).

To enable iSight and Sound you will need to manually extract and install the drivers from the Macintosh Bootcamp Drivers for Windows XP CD you made before - to do this insert the CD into the drive and run the following from a DOS command prompt under Windows Vista:

D:\Install Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP.exe /A /v

and follow the prompts to extract the drivers to a location.

To install the Sound driver navigate to the location where you extracted the drivers and go to the "program files\Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP 1.1.2\SigmaTel" folder and double click the setup.exe file in there.

To install the iSight driver Launch the Control Panel and go into the Device Manager. Go to sub-category called "Imaging Devices". iSight should be listed there. Right click the item and select "Update Driver Software". Manually install the driver by choosing "Browse My Computer For Driver Software", tick "Let Me Pick From a List…" and tick "Have Disk". Now navigate to your drivers folder and select the iSight.inf file in the "program files\Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP 1.1.2\iSight" folder. Install the driver.

Instead of installing the BootCamp Apple Keyboard driver and Brightness Controller program I suggest you just install the excellent Input Remapper software. This little gem basically gives you all the Apple Function key functionality available in OS X (F1 and F2 Screen Brightness, F3 Mute, F3 and F4 Volume Down and Up, F6 Num Lock, F8 F9 and F10 Keyboard Backlighting controls, F11 and F12 Media Playback controls and Eject plus things like Ctrl-Alt-Del.

BTW: My Vista Ratings (for my 17" MacBook Pro - 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM, 160GB 5400RPM HD) were:

Processor: 5.2
Memory (RAM): 4.7
Graphics: 4.9
Gaming Graphics: 4.9
Hard Disk: 4.8

I recently became the proud owner of one of the new Apple 17" MBP’s (MacBook Pro) (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM, 160GB Hard Drive) and am enjoying the experience so far (except for that rediculous wireless mighty mouse).

I’ve been a Unix user for some time (I’ve mostly used Solaris (& SunOS) on Sun SPARC machines over the past 15 years and have dabbled with various Linux flavours) however I’ve also got to use windows at work as well (those corporate app’s I need to run).

I’ve been relatively happy/tolerant with windows (probably because I spend most of my time on my Unix workstation) over the years and all my previous laptops have run windows. However late last year I had major malware infections to both my windows machines (desktop and laptop - at different times) - which required a complete rebuild of each to be safe. I was pretty p***ed to say the least and whilst I don’t necessarily believe the Mac OS X is more secure than windows by design mantra I do expect it to be significantly less of target. With the advent of Parallels (I’ve been a VMware user on Windows for some time) and the time came for a laptop refresh I decided to take the punt and see what the other side of the fence looked like.

On the Wireless Mighty Mouse front - perhaps it’s just a carry over from my other window managers I’m used to (on Solaris or Windows) but I still like to use the context sensitive right button menus (a lot). The mighty mouse doesn’t have a "real" two button mouse (it emulates it by detecting whether you’re clicking down on the left or right of the shell). The problem is that this is so flakey (if you are even barely touching the mouse anywhere it almost always treats it as a left click) - and as the Mac has so many one click actions you end up left clicking and doing something (you don’t want to) when you just wanted the right button menu.

Having two separated buttons would make this both more reliable and you’d get that tactile feedback doing it - I’ll persevere a little longer but I think I’ll be switching to a "real" bluetooth mouse soon - any recommendations of ones which have decent support under Mac OS X?

To transport my new pride and joy around I grabbed an STM bag for the 17" MBP - I got the STM Large Convertable (shoulder bag and backpack in one) specifically because it was small, thin and light so I wouldn’t be able to cram too much crap into it - just the MBP, wireless mouse, my 160GB external laptop hard drive, eyetv and perhaps a few papers and discs. This way it isn’t some huge bulky backpack which weighs a ton (like my previous laptop backpack) - in fact it ends up nice and close to the body when I’m using it as a backpack and it feels incredibly light - even with my 17" laptop in it - marvelous.

Lastly I also picked up one of the Elgato EyeTV Diversity’s (my kit also included a 3 month IceTV trial code as well). It is remarkably good and HD is glorious - however one tip I have for reception is that (the antennas have magnets on the bottom) if you put the antennas onto some metal surface (at home I have a metal frame desk so I just magnet onto that - anywhere basically - so the antennas are actually under the desk - and at work just onto a metal filing cabinet) it seems to give MUCH better results.

On the 26th of August 2006 I attended the 30 (31) year reunion and celebration of the formation of the 1st Illaroo Scout Group.

I initially joined the Cub Scouts at around 6 years of age (1st Bomaderry Scout Troop) and soon joined the 1st Illaroo Scout Group when it was first formed. I was an active member of the group for many years - first as a Cub, then a Scout, a Venturer and finally a Rover and it was a real pleasure to meet up with old friends during the day and even more at the dinner in the evening. My parents were also heavily involved with the scouting movement - my mother as part of the ladies auxilliary and my father in various leadership roles.

I hadn’t really been back to the scout hall for perhaps fifteen years and I spent the afternoon pooring over memorabilia and chatting with past scouting friends. My daughters got a real kick out of finding very old photos of me as a kid taken during many of my scouting activities (hiking, camping, abseiling, caving and so on). I was involved with the scouts for perhaps 15 or more years and I have very fond memories of my scouting experiences and think perhaps they were some of the best times of our lives and I have no doubt that my experience with scouts has dramatically shaped my life.

In the photo below - thats me about to walk over the rope suspension bridge (I remember we used to build these sorts of things all the time when we were young). 

 

Some photos from the day.

Electronic tolling tags are currently used on most major Australian toll roads, bridges and tunnels. In Sydney the toll network includes the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tunnel, M1 Eastern Distributor, M2 Hills Motorway, M4 Western Motorway, M5 South West Motorway, M7 Westlink, the Cross City Tunnel and the soon to be opened Lane Cove Tunnel . Outside of Sydney some major toll roads include Melbourne's City Link and Brisbane's Gateway Bridge and Logan Motorway.

The E-Tag (electronic tag) is a small device which is usually attached to the front windscreen of the vehicle. As the vehicle passes by one of the tolling points of the road, bridge or tunnel, the tag will receive and transmit a signal to the tolling equipment and will beep. This will deduct the appropriate toll amount from your toll account.

There are five different E-Tags you can sign up for and motorists can use any of them on all Australian toll roads:

• E-Toll (RTA)
• E-Way (Interlink Roads)
• Beep Tag (Cross City Motorway)
• Express Tag (Tollaust)
• Roam e-TAG & e-PASS (Transurban)

Before the release of the Roam e-Tag (and the opening of the Westlink M7) the NRMA calculated the costs for each of the first four tags and found the E-Toll and E-way tags are the best value for frequent users, while the E-Toll is best for infrequent users.

Either the NSW RTA E-Toll or the Roam e-TAG are probably the best E-Tags to get as they can have no extra fees (other than the cost of the tolls) and no fees for tag inactivity. You can also get statements posted every quarter for free.

With most of these E-Tags (including the RTA E-Toll and Roam e-TAG) if you want to avoid or limit monthly tag and admin fees you will need to setup an account with:

• an initial pre-paid balance (generally in the order of $50 to $80)
• an automatic payment and top up option (when your balance drops below a certain value - generally around $20 - and it tops up a certyain amount - generally in the order of $50 to $80)
• and you will need to pay the upfront refundable tag depost (generally in the order of $40).

The very first post of my new Blog. I've spent some time researching blog packages recently and have decided on the Wordpress software suite to run this blog. I've also been scouring the numerous themes, templates, plugins and widgets available around the net and have settled on this Lush theme for now and I've integrated a whole swag of plugins and widgets (mostly AJAX based ones) which I might write about at a later date.To get things started, and so I can test the integration of the very cool javascript based page overlay image viewer (try it now by clicking on one of the thumbnails below) here are a few pictures of my family:

I've actually already been using this technology for my own generated web photo albums for a little while but it was extremely nice to be able to integrate it relatively easily into this blogging software as well.