Fianchetto

Lying in bed, warmed by an oil heater and an hour of smiths singles. Sound sooooo good on my mega hifi setup; remastered;repackaged;remembered!

Hi for anyone who has ever been to my website before, it was battez.org but I rather lacksadazeically (sick) omitted to renew the domain before it expired a few days ago, incurring a charge of $100+ or let it slide…so it has slid.

Anyway I wanted to move things to this Fianchetto domain, as that is the name of my musical releases that are forthcoming. It’s a chess term (natch) for a flank strategy - generally meaning a bishop on a long diagonal which seeks to control the centre. Wikiepedia has some contributor banging on about it.

made this several years ago (end 2003 /early 04?) as part of our Animation class using LightWave at University of Paisley - Multimedia BSc Honours . Nicolas Blanchard, David Gallagher and Sophie Godard - Nicolas really knew his stuff (like the textures and more fancy Lightwave effects) but I think we all contributed a fair bit too

Wonder where they all are now ? ( I know about Dave though!)

linky to youtube video

Nice work Craig (of Glasgow’s Infinite Eye) on Stand/ Tennent’s new site for Scotland’s Finest bars — including supporters and bar photos!

And well done to all the bars who have got passion & belief that we will go through, as you can see from all the photos!

Another update.. damn power supply seems to have gone!! Gah..what a rip off

hmm think I can fix it easily enough… too much forum 31 activity brought it down I think :p

Oh yeah! Another update

Today I swapped out the CD-RW of the original 733 quicksilver edition I have, and after some fumbling and frustrations, installed the Optorite DVD-RW I had from an old PC…CAVEAT - this did take me about 21/2 hours
Amazingly, the CD burn works on it- using Liquid CD (much better than builtiin Os X burner, which I havent tried)! The DVD Rom (reading for playback of DVDs - is essentially why I wanted it, as I was confident of this always working, after reading the xlr8yourmac.com archives on Tiger and 3rd party DVD drives).

As soon as I can get a burnable DVD RW disc, I will try the burn function of that. It is a very fast dual layer drive I have, so this will be interesting as there are not many 3rd party DVD players for the Mac I think. Will submit a reader report once I have one to the xlr8yourmac database. Hey, I want to show off like everyone else!

I have been able though to transfer lots of music onto this mahcine, as I have backups of my tunes on DVD drives back from when I had my PC tower.

Heres the info on the wireless I installed yesterday:–

Writing this after a 60 second total time addition of wireless AirPort extreme to my G4 powermac 733 QuickSilver

The card that I got off eBay, Buffalo WLi 2 54 PCI card, for under a tenner, including delivery(!) easily went in to the nifty QuickSilver PCI slot.

Restart the Machine, on os X 10.4.3 (about to update now ) and it immediately asked me, upon login, to join my neighbour’s free wireless connexion! Sweet! Didn’t even have to configure anything - the wonders of the Broadcom chipsets on Os X.

It is recognised as Airport Extreme by the System Profiler. Interestingly it is getting 3 bars of the wireless signal too (it has a nice wee external antenna), whereas my iBook beside it, gets only 1. It seems faster (because of this? Not sure…) too…

…now to get all my essential apps on to this beauty of a G4..although it is kinda noisy

Also picked up a monitor for under a 100, it’s a HannsG 17″ 1440 x 900 — not too bad at all and is running at nice speed on the Quicksilver, at 60Hz.

Thanks biotron for a great machine! Soon I will have these key apps on it

• Opera 9.5 beta (not tried this - you should - its the fastest full feature web going!)
• TextMate
• VLC
• QuickSilver (hey it IS A QuickSilver!)
• Monolingual to get some diskspace
• Fixation (bien sur!)
• Sigma chess
• Perian
• Transmit
• Unison
• Xee
• Graphic Converter
• MacJanitor
• Adium
• Nokia Mac Updater
• Subversion
• TinkerTool
• TextPander
• Salling Clicker
• Double Command (allows forward delete)
• Vienna
• LiquidCD (easy multi burn of CDs on OsX)

yeahhhhhhhhh, fanboys power ACTIVATE!

this is my latest project - very much in alpha stage still, a record shop and vinyl junkie (secondhand collectors kind of people) community web site:

Vinyl Passion

Not sure whether to go with the domain as it is now or another on vinyl-passion.com that I have. Thoughts?

Cool, but messy blitz game:

I recently acquired a PowerMac G4 quickSilver for £50 from a friendly Guy.

He threw in a ProMac keyboard and a Promouse. the machine had 256 Mb RAM but has no Airport or ZIP and all else is standard as per its initial Apple release. I have put Tiger on it and it works. It was origianlly owned by a Glasgow college and Guy got it for them at a bargain a couple of yrs back.

I was wondering how I can improve the performance of it, as I bought it as I knew it is not too far off as is from my iBook G4, and expansion shd be cheap and, er.. fun! I Asked someone I know on an online community ( a secret one ) , and this is our discussion. I hope it is of use to some others out there.

> Luke Barker wrote:
>
> > I had a couple of questions for you, as I never owned a g4 tower
> > before and was wondering about upgrades to it?
>
> First of all: most information for upgradability of specific models
> can be found on, or through everymac. You machine is on this page:
>
> http://shorterlink.com/?BLOZ54

thanks, hadn’t seen this, and the apple specs were for selling rather
than what I’m after…

>
> > a) the optical drive - I read I need to swap out the CDRW if I want to
> > upgrade it as the other bay is 3.5″ (for Zip). I have a DVD RW and
> > Tiger, so I am going to try this as at least I will have a DVD ROM
> > from doing that, even if the writer is not compatible - is that
> > correct do you know?
>
> What do you mean exactly? Do you wonder if that new DVD RW will be
> compatible with Tiger? If so: you’ll have to dig in the specs of that
> specific writer. Sadly, I’ve never done this specific upgrade, you
> see. Or have I misunderstood your question?

no, you are right..I think from what I have read now that the DVD rom
aspect will work, but the burning is luck. tiger added lots of support
so I hope it works. It is an optorite and not listed on a page I found
where they say any burners tested in G4 PMacs with Tiger

>
> > b) RAM - I need more, so I was going to get a kingston PC133 MHz 512Mb
> > from ebuyer, at 55€ , but this wont be the same type as the stick in
> > machine - is that worth worrying over, or shod I just get it?
>
> The Kingston should work just fine, as far as AI know. It looks like
> you don’t have to ‘pair’ it. (many macs are happier if you plug in two
> identicak stick or RAM).
>
> Get as much RAM as you can afford. 2 Gb if you can. 1 Gb minimum.
> It’;s the single most important way to speed things up.
>

thanks for this - I think I will buy 2 if I can afford it, but that is
110€ already , so total machine price is then 170€…bah..I am asking
around to see if I cannot find some old RAM of someone else with nicer
machines than me

> > c) Wifi? I have a Silver Lucent card (Orinoco) which I have working in
> > a pbook 3400 (!)
>
> Is that PCMCIA? The Quicksilver doesn’t have that. If it’s USB it is
> still not clear if it works. I assume you run OS 9 on the 3400? Many
> cards that worked under OS 9 don’t work under OS X. Getting a PCMCIA
> card for the Quicksilver is not worth the hassle, I think. If it’s
> USB, just try it, and look hard for 3d party drivers if that doesn’t
> work. getr back to me in case of emergency
>

yes, is PCMCIA, but like an Airport Card - there is an airport slot in
the QS, but unfortunately after reading on this the antenna will not
fit in the slot (AirPorts didn’t have these antennas) so I cannot
close the case if I try that. I am now looking at the USB Belkins and
a Buffalo PCI card (best compatibility but less flexible than USB)

> > do you know any cheap alternatives, as the Airport original is very
> > expensive?
>
> Many vendors sell USB wifi connectors, and some even one that plugs in
> on your ethernet connector. Take note: there are baiaclly two
> ‘chipsets’ for use on USB cards, one which works on macs, one which
> doesn’t. This is a bit of a jungle, sadly
>

your explanation is perfect - the Broadcom chipset and Ralinks are the
best, and there is a new one Zydas with drivers …somewhere!

> > d) what types of video card would work with it? Any mac Radeon etc? I
>
> Probably. I would advise something like a 9200:
> http://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATI%20Technologies/100436014/
>
> and I guess it should be possibl to get it a bit cheaper.
>

I hope so - this is the part I still do not understand, and the Mac
cards seem to hold their price very much. Not complaining though, I
will only upgrade this in the future.

So thanks again, very kind of you, hope life in Netherlands is good!

hope I can return the favour!

Luke

If you are interested in more of my researches - check back through some of my delcious posts (see below) where I post g4 stuff or

look at my del.icio.us page itself

UPDATE!

scavenged 384Mb of RAM (PC 133 and SDRAM), one a quality hyundai bank, from an old PC tower today! Sooo lucky.

Just managed to get the 2 RAM banks (?) in OK, and it didn’t {{do the beep}} when I turned it on. Although, it took me 10 minutes to realise that I have to pull the little drawer at the back to get it to close properly.

I cant check in sys profile if they are compatible/recognised yet, but am confident the 256 will be ok - it is hyundai and looks , er cleaner than the 128 no-namer.

mega.

Also won a pci wifi card on ebay for 20$ inc delivery today, a buffalo one that is supposed to be compatible and has a nice antenna for good range.

“Wireless 54Mbps Desktop PCI Adapter”

Link is to best buy, where you can still get it in the States, I think!. Model: WLI2-PCI-G54S
I read that is is almost certainly compatible.

Otherwise there were plenty of v3000 and v4000 Belkin wireless USB sticks, it seems, both with drivers that are reported to work on Os X, although they seemd more annoying as many reported the stick had to be taken in and out on sleep or reboot. Nada!

Someone on the “Pile of Discuss” posted this interesting question, which I also have often wondered:

i have a octagon aluminum moka pot that i make ‘espresso’ in, in the morning with. and for some reason there is a clear slime left on the bottom where the water goes. Any ideas why or where it is coming from?

I usually just wash it and rinse; repeat…hopefully I am not alu-poisoning myself

Whoa,

in our post-sticky toffee pudding bonding era, my father and I exchange a kind of verbal RSS feed of gadget finds whenever we chat. Ha! Prof JB has come up trumps with his latest one, a solar powered universal charger. It costs about £25 (ebay UK has plenty for sale) or you can get it from Ethical Superstore if you can’t bear the garish colours of ebay shop pages.

Why would you want one? Cos it seems to work with everything going! I received a GPS today, which didnt annoyingly come with a charger, but had a mini USB socket - my Dad produced the adapter (from his tech den) and I got it charging immediately.

Mega part 2, whilst round at my folks, my phone always seems to run out, (the nerdy E61 from Nokia, you may have seen it recently as the phone given to contestants on the Apprentice. It’s ace although also crap in that it has no camera for opportunistic celeb snaps). 

It also has about 15 other adapters with it. Including iPod ones (NB you do not need their crappy addon kit at extra cost - so long as you have your USB cable that should have shipped with your iPod). Ingeniously you charge up the Solar charger by leaving it , er, outside… for a wee while, then that basically has a stored charge so you can re-charge your gizmos at leisure.

Pretty cool, and it looks lovely. As you can see it is a bit like a satellite when charging up, but a sleek (hate that word) brushed metal style when not. And it has a cool name - FreeLoader, punning nerdery, woo, woo.

Logging off…