rickshangle.com

Project Q is a donation-driven OS X port of QEMU system emulator. Ken’s comment re: virtualization and Apple’s recent release of Boot Camp / Windows XP dual-boot support on Intel Macs inspired me to check this out.

Currently loading Fedora Core within a Q virtual X86 machine.

Um, why would anyone do this? Practically speaking I can’t think of a reason offhand, but it is pure geek joy. I’ll let you know how it goes.

So far, I can tell you Q is eating 85% of one of my two G5 2GHz CPUs, and the install is going… very… slowly.

update - 5:18PM

yeah. about 2 hours later… and… we’re gettin’ there!

update - 8:38PM

i don’t foresee this ending well for anyone.

update - 9:22PM

Um, yay?

update - 10:02PM

Well, we got this far, but then my system started hanging application-by-application. Not sure if it’s related to Q, probably not. Will explore more later.

update - 9:48PM, the next day

Yeah. You know what? On second thought I don’t think I’ll be exploring this any further, and have deleted Q and the virtual hard drives it creates from my system. You know why? Because I run OS X so I don’t have to run Linux (if even for ridiculous nerd-testing reasons). I feel great about this decision.

rds

I can’t say it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, but it’s certainly one a few of us have been expecting: Apple supports boot of Windows XP on Intel Macs via Apple - Boot Camp (public beta).

Adding Intel Mac mini to cart now.

I don’t think this means Dell is as in as much trouble as TUAW thinks, but we’ll see. You can only connect the dots backwards.

So, the prediction: Apple’s market share will move from 3-4% (whatever it is now) to 10% in 12 months.

Also, within six months, Apple will need to re-calibrate their stance on “we don’t support Windows no how no way no what”, somewhat. due to negative press.

Takers?

updates

Vista on Macbook Pro

rds

Did anyone see this squeaking zombie on American Idol last night?

I honestly thought — due to not being a huge fan of the Nashville scene — that singer Kenny Rogers (remember “The Gambler”?) had passed into the next plane, perhaps as long as twenty years ago.

I was horrified to discover that it’s much, much worse… he’s undead… and permanently surprised!

Get your fill of more awful plastic surgery at… awfulplasticsurgery.com.

Ok… this is pretty much what i remember… every gambler knows that the secret to survivin’

Ok… something’s going on here…

SURPRISE!

rds

Video walkthrough of Boot Camp / loading XP on an Intel Mac over at Uneasy Silence.

For huge nerds.

rds

This is excruciating to read.

Linked through SlashDot. Be sure to get to the original article, or just go here.

By linking to this I have undoubtedly put myself on an RIAA watchlist. It was nice knowing you, Gentle Reader.

rds

From BBC News, about a guy who allegedly (by his own admission) took 40,000 ecstasy tablets over about 9 years, amid a smorgasbord of other drugs.

Amazingly, he’s alive but suffers severe short-term memory problems.

Hmm, I do, too… where’s the connection…

Let’s all take a moment and bid fond farewell to Bucky Covington, who got voted off American Idol 5 this week.

Wait, he hasn’t been voted off, you say?

He hasn’t even performed yet this week?

What a mistake. I’m so embarrassed. I’ll re-post this Wednesday night.

rds

Adobe software developer provides insight into the challenges in moving a large code project to Xtools, a necessary step in the PowerPC => Intel migration.

rds

Decent one digital life » tip re: using iTunes to back up your music via playlists.

Although probably possible to use this approach for a 280GB library, impractical. Although the experience would likely remind me of the heady days of backing up my Mac SE’s 80GB external Ehman hard drive with DiskFit (which may have become Dantz, which in turn was acquired by EMC) and a stack of 1.4MB floppies.

However, it is a valid approach (in my case) for doing periodic DVD backups of my Purchased Music (12GB, ~3 DVDs).

So, how do I back up my iTunes?

UNIX rsync. My “Audio Core” directory is cron’ed to do an rsync to an external hard drive every hour.

This is relevant because last week (Saturday, actually) I came home to discover one of the two Maxtors in my 2-disk RAID 0 set had left for the Great Gig in the Sky. I can’t blame it - it was about 3 years old, had probably been turned off less than 48 hours during that time, and… it was just time.

Within moments of identifying the failure as drive-related, I had re-set my iTunes preferences to use the rsync copy, told iTunes to not re-organize everything, and my most mission-critical dataset (since I can’t work / write without music) was back online and servicing users (me).

Sometimes, it is possible to win a little battle.

This tip is especially relevant because Apple Backup 3.x’s “smart” list to back up protected music does nothing, as far as I can tell, other than create a false sense of security for its users. I tried it once. It backed up approximately 800MB (out of the aforementioned 12GB of legitimate data).

I use Backup for one purpose - to protect my “Writing” Finder folder with a weekly backup. Also, I have a cron job that rsync’s said folder… to two different external hard disks… hourly.

As you can tell, I have tremendous faith in Backup. Apple is a company that has a very wide and deep understanding of storage and data protection…

rds

CinemaNow has them, but doesn’t support OS X.

MovieLinkhas them, but (shockingly) doesn’t support OS X.

Since I’m too lazy to do any research, I assume this has to do with Windows Media DRM issues, and the fact that we won’t see Windows Media DRM on OS X any time soon (or ever).

iTMS has clearly set up the infrastructure, and the popularity of downloading whorish housewives seems to make the case (despite the still horrific quality of iTMS video content).

So, is the lack of feature-length HD movie content on iTMS purely a function of Jobs pissing off the industry?

I’m dying over here. Every time I open Azereus a little piece of my soul is crushed.

I could be watching Krull right now, but noooooooooo…

while these bs restrictions do not make me want to run windows at home, they do make me want Apple to solve the problem…

_Update_

Then, there’s this and this.