Author: lux

Weekend Hacktacular

I couldn’t resist. I should be focusing on getting my trip photos dealt with, but instead I did a little hack project this weekend.

The fact that the Dell Mini 9 is one of the few netbooks out there that can run OSX has not gone unnoticed. And after hearing from one of the Adobe community folks that the method for turning a Mini into a “Hackintosh” really did work as reported, I was intrigued. So when an extra Mini crossed my path, I decided to give to a try.

The necessary ingredients:

starting out

One Macbook Pro, One Dell Mini 9 (1 GB RAM, 16 GB SSD HD), One copy of OSX 10.5.6, One 16GB USB drive. Not pictured: a 2nd USB thumb drive for the bootloader.

How I did it: the “Two USB Drive” version described here.

It was actually quite easy. The only pain in the butt was getting the ISO of the OSX install disk onto the thumb drive — it took a long time. Other than that, though, everything worked as described. After the standard installation and setup process and a few reboots, I had this:

end result

There was only about 2GB of free space left on the drive after installation, but Monolingual cleaned out almost 3GB of additional space. I used Xmark to sync my bookmarks onto Safari, threw on a copy of NeoOffice in case I need to do any basic document editing, and added Last.FM so I can listen to music without having to load any MP3s onto the Mini.

I haven’t tested the Bluetooth yet but everything else is working like a charm. I can stream videos, listen to music, check email, and do pretty much anything else I need to, on a machine that’s small enough to fit into my purse. I can even plug SDHC cards from my camera right into the Mini and then upload photos to the cloud. And I don’t have to put up with Windows to do any of it. 🙂 The only drawback is the tiny keyboard on the Mini. It’s fine for a few emails but I wouldn’t want to use it for extended writing.

And yes, installing OSX onto non-Apple hardware is most likely a violation of the EULA (and may void the Dell warranty as well) so bear that in mind if you decide you want to give this experiment a try.

(Hint: Having a sweet little Hackintosh is worth it IMHO)

Travel Update

Over Passover, I spent a busy week in NYC and followed it up with the promised train ride across America. It was great — very scenic, very relaxing, and I’m very glad I did it.

I took a huge pile of photos, the best of which are slowly making their way onto Flickr here. Please be patient — there’s over 500 to sort through and I have a lot else going on as well.

Social Media Food for Thought

Matt Haughey’s recent observations on Social Media marketing:

… instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products …

Exactly how often the world will beat a path to your door without at least some marketing is open for debate, but it’s absolutely true that there’s only so much marketing can do if your product is not making people happy.

Are Blogrolls Still Relevant?

I’ve been seriously thinking about ditching my blogroll link. It’s partially a technical issue, partially a personal one, and partially because I’m no longer sure that a blogroll is adding any value to the page.

Technical, because at one time I was using Bloglines as my primary feed reader, so my blogroll was also an up-to-date reflection of the feeds I was reading. I’ve since switched to Google Reader, but the way they implement feed sharing is different and makes sharing my current feed list a lot more annoying. Bloglines let me drop one snippet in and boom, my whole feed list was displayed, folders and all. Google does feed sharing differently — each folder is its own feed and needs its own snippet. That gives you more flexibility in how you share your feeds but it’s also extra work. Frankly it’s not all that much work (and I’d only have to set it up once), but I just can’t be bothered to do it.

In short, what you see in my blogroll is not fully in sync with what I’m currently reading. And silly as it may sound, that bugs me. I know every blogger has different ideas about what their blogroll should be, but for me it was always about sharing my own personal info stream. There’s any number of lists of the “top” blogs in any given category out there. My blogroll was meant to be more personal. Now that it’s not, I don’t like having it there as much.

Finally, I’m also not sure that anyone is actually finding value in a blogroll. When I look at web analytics reports (both for this blog and others), more and more of the referral traffic I see is coming in from Twitter and Facebook. Very little comes from other blogrolls. So there’s a part of me that’s thinking, “if nobody is using this, why not ditch it for stuff that people will find more useful or interesting?”

What do you think?
Kill it or keep it?
Is a blogroll still relevant anymore?
Am I overthinking the issue and need to go do something fun with my weekend?

Travel Plans

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to cross America in something other than an airplane. The only catch was, the idea of all that time stuck behind the wheel of my car did not sound all that appealing.

Well, I got inspired by this recent NY Times article and my plans are now made. I’ll be crossing the USA on a train in the not too distant future. Here’s what did it for me:

It’s still possible to travel 3,585 miles across the United States without being the target of billboards, golden arches or absurdly large twine balls. The rails offer a view onto Unbranded America — the land as it was.

How often do you get a chance to see that anymore? Sign me up.

I’ve got extra memory cards for the camera and a new lens is on order, slated to arrive before I depart, so I expect I’ll have plenty of raw materials to load into Lightroom and Photoshop. The only drawback is there’s no Internet access on the train, so I’ll have to make do with my Blackberry and hope that AT&T doesn’t completely crap out on me while winding through “flyover country”.