April 2009 Archives

I had the logic board in my MacBook Pro replaced under AppleCare warranty recently with fantastic service from the Regent Street Apple Store. That was all good. However when you change the logic board in a mac some things can go awry.

The key thing that changes is the ethernet MAC address of the machine. This is the low level network identity which is used prior to getting a proper TCP/IP address for use on the internet. They are (I think) unique per machine and so they are used as a key for all sorts of things. Two I have found so far are Time Machine and MobileMe syncing.

Neither of these services warns you, they just stop working, which is quite irritating. To fix Time Machine you need to reselect the drive you are backing up to, this should work, but didn't for me.

For MobileMe you need to go to the Sync tab in the MobileMe preferences and tell it that the old machine name is really the same as the new one. Then you'll get to merge the data.

It is a pity that macosx doesn't recognise that it has a new motherboard and offer to fix these for you, but hopefully this list will help you one the right path to getting things back to normal.

JG Ballard was interested in

"the evolving world, the world of hidden persuaders, of the communications landscape developing, of mass tourism, of the vast conformist suburbs dominated by television – that was a form of science fiction, and it was already here".

Just as relevant today, quote taken from The Guardian obituary, itself taken from a longer interview with JG Ballard from last summer.

Reading The Terminal Beach and The Crystal World at about 12 or 13 and still having it haunt me 25 years later.

I'll admit it, I'd really like a Kindle 2, I'd even consider buying a US one and using the clever usb network trick to get content onto it. However I'll wait until a UK launch for a variety of reasons.

A few months back I was very tempted by a netbook, running Ubuntu as a hackintosh, but the combination of my MacBook Pro, my iPhone and an ebook reader feels like it would be enough. I don't want to have to deal with syncing my working environments. I have a MacBook Pro which I use for everything, it is my work machine and my personal machine. This means I have no context switching to deal with and something is never on the other machine.

The weight aspect of the netbooks does appeal, the 2-3Kgs of a 15" laptop becomes wearing after a while. However I realised that I can cope with a 5-6kg bag, it is the paper books that drive the weight to over 10kgs. So being able to carry more than one book around would be a real boon. Stanza on my iPhone is good for fiction, but not so good for technical books.

I'm going to try out a Sony PRS 505 for a few days to see if I like the idea. The lack of touchscreen is already annoying me. I'm trying calibre and Docudesk PRS as library management apps.

Interestingly the ebook readers are about the same price as a netbook, at around 250-300 pounds. The netbook offers a lot more for the money, but small and light costs more I guess. Computer, book and phone appeals more than computer, netbook and phone.

UPDATE: 6th May 2009. I want a Kindle DX
, native PDF support and text book sized, but only available in the USA at the minute.

I work beside Kings Cross station, so I've been watching the developments at the station on a daily basis. The recent demolition of the buildings beside platform 1 near the junction (google map) of Wharfdale Road and York Way exposed the remains of the bridge which carried the former Battle Bridge Road. The stub of this bridge, shown below has been further pared back in this work. The bridge is part of a concerted campaign to get a link from the Islington side of the Kings Cross area into the actual station. Current plans will only allow access from the St Pancras or western side.

The new platform Y (planning application pdf), which is the cause of the recent demolition, will run along the old cab access road, shown in this photo taken in 2006. To the left in this photo is the current platform 1.

There is much change at Kings Cross, some of it I think is positive, if they can make it as nice as the St Pancras station, that would be great. The access issue is frustrating. My morning walk out of Kings Cross in the sunshine up York Way is not exactly unpleasant. A bridge over the platforms would be appreciated and route a large number of people away from the front of the station and thronging up York Way.