Linky linky

It's a link-type day today.

Firstly, I must have one of these! Talk about improving my weekends! Pity I can't afford it and probably never will.

I always enjoy a good dig at Microsoft. "There are just some sites that no-one should ever visit", love it.

Some 'demo reels' from the guys I've been working with. First one here and the other one here. More of these to come later. Such talent...

Poor Facebook dude. Idiot.

And finally... The Earth on the Jesus phone. Sweet.

End of line.

General stuff for today

My bad back is back - with a vengeance. It got worse again on Friday, this time only my right side, and continued on until on Sunday afternoon I was walking with a limp (limp what you might ask...?) and my right leg was going numb.

Got no sleep Sunday night, lots of drugs and came to work late. I'm trying to get in to see someone, massage, chiropractor, anyone to no avail. I'm seeing my Doctor this afternoon though. So we'll see what happens.

Now then, glasses. I finally found and ordered some new ones. Got them from Lens Crafters of all places. The LC in Metrotown has a huge selection. I went for top-of-the-line everything lenses-wise. Should have them in 2 weeks or sooner.

They also have a 30 day money-back guarantee in case I don't like them. They were 650 all told, but that's just what they cost.

We have house-guests this week. Rhylin's Mum and her friend are here for the birth of Mum's friend's grandchild. So home is busy.

Going out on Friday night. A friend of mine from work is leaving both the company and the city and is heading back to Trawna. So there is a huge group going out for drinks. Should be a fun and drunken night. Look out for hangover on Sat AM.

End of line.

Glasses update

So, I went to order said glasses today.

As I was being measured for the new top-of-the-line-you-really-must-have-these lenses, the woman behind the counter was tallying up my bill.

That's 1158 in total, she said. Umm, I said, I was told 849 yesterday. Oh, that's without the frames at 309 was the reply.

I asked the woman doing the measuring to stop as there's no way that either my wife would approve 1150 for glasses, or that I would pay 1150 for glasses.

When I got the price, I asked for all-inclusive. WTF do I care about the cost of the lenses on their own?

Boy!

RAW

So, people 'in the know' have told me that once I started taking digital pictures in the RAW format, that I would love it.

Last weekend I decided to give it a try and yes, they were right, I loved the results.

Here's a link to my Mac.com gallery containing the RAW images.

Enjoy.

Glasses

Went for an eye test today. I did this for a number of reasons.

Firstly, my currently glasses are getting scratched, or are already scratched to be more precise.

Secondly, I've noticed that my vision is getting worse, particularly without glasses.

And finally, due to my leaving this company, I want to make the most of my benefits before I leave.

So, I had them tested and found that they have indeed deteriorated since my last exam and that my glasses are no longer as useful as they were.

After the test, I took a look for new glasses, and found some. I have a wide head (must be to contain all the brains?) and so a lot of frames don't fit. The glasses stores in Vancouver must cater to smaller people than me. 

Now for a little history lesson.

When I was growing up in England, our Health Care Service was called the National Health Service or NHS for short. The NHS would give you glasses so you didn't need to buy them, but they only had one style. When I was younger and not nearly as nice as I am now, I and others could always tell when a kid came from a poor home because he/she would wear 'NHS frames'.

So, forward on to today. NHS frames actually turned out to be exactly the same frames as Rayban Wayfarers. And dammit all if those shape frames weren't the ones I picked out today?

So, I'm going to be wearing glasses that I wouldn't have been seen dead in when I was a kid. 

Glasses who's wearers were mocked when I was a kid. 

And I'll be paying 850 for them, when people I mocked got them for free.

Dumb, huh?

Oh well, best get back to work so I can afford to pay for them...

Post-interview

Well it turns out that it wasn't an interview after all but was a meet n' greet.

It was good though, I got to meet the owner and we discussed his need for a full-time Macintosh Admin and the requirements that he has in the coming months and years. It sounds like I will have to do more than just consider a freelance-type role if I want to stay in the Macintosh field.

That said, I applied for a Windows Systems Administrator position this afternoon. Eeew. I had to reach for the wet wipes as soon as I sent the message as I felt so dirty. But I spent years in Windows and can do all that stuff standing on my head and the position was for a mixed Windows/Mac Administrator, so it might be great! We'll see if I even get a call back.

Later people.

Interview today

Today I have an interview. It's my first one since officially looking for work this time. 

I'm calling it an interview anyway, although the person I'm meeting with is calling it a meeting to determine whether a 'fit' exists or now.

The company is a Vancouver-based Video Post-Production facility that handles some TV movies and documentaries. They are quite well-known and have been around for a number of years.

The fit is going to come because they are a 100% Macintosh company and are in the process of deploying an Apple XSAN. I really hope they're deploying XSAN 2 and not XSAN 1.4, XSAN 1.4 is horrible. It's probably (in my opinion) one of the worst pieces of software to come out of Apple and I'm sure they purchased it and just dumped it out - it doesn't display any of Apple's normal usability features and stability at all.

Anyway, lets hope today goes well and that there is indeed a fit for me. Then I can stop thinking about trying to find another job and go and work somewhere that I can set up from scratch instead of inheriting others design characteristics. It's always better to do the whole thing yourself, although it's not always possible.

Good luck to me.

Restore a Mac from a .dmg (Disk Image)

I'm a Mac guy. I'm a Mac guy at home and professionally I'm a Macintosh Systems Administrator.

I learned something today that I wanted to share with my loyal readers.

I needed to take the hardware back from a team and replace it with a different machine but with the same software. The machines in question are both iMac's. And here's how to do it without having to rebuild it.

Use Super-Duper to take a full disk image of the old machine and save it to an external FireWire drive.

Connect the FireWire drive to the new machine, insert the OSX Install DVD and reboot the machine with the Option key held down, once it's up, select the DVD and continue as if you were doing an install. 

Once you get past the first couple of screens, select Utilities and Disk Utility.

In Disk Utility, both the volumes Macintosh HD (or whatever the local Boot volume is called) and the FireWire drive will be listed.

In Disk Utility, click on the current boot volume and click Restore.

Next to the Source input field, there is a button called Image. Click it and navigate to the FireWire drive and find the Disk Image you put there. Click the Image and click OK.

In the Destination input field, just drag the current boot volume from the left pane of Disk Utility.

Make sure you select the Erase destination check box, and then click Restore.

You'll get a progress bar that will tell you how long it will take. Once it's finished, there will be no message, but you'll see that the progress bar has gone away. Quit Disk Utility and quit the installer. When the installer is exiting, it will give you a few options. The one you need is to select the Startup Disk. Select the Macintosh HD volume that you just restored to and continue the restart process.

Once it comes back up, you'll have the same hardware, but a new install which will be the same as the image.

Simple, huh?