Back in Japan. While recovering from jetlag, perhaps there is a chance to blog some pictures from our trip that flounder unblogged on flickr. Fitting with the theme of recent travel, here is the inside of a train on the London Underground, possibly the Circle LIne.
The most exciting thing about our return - our home computer (late 2006 Macbook) wont boot. Not from its own disk, an external clone or a system DVD, with or without battery installed. So that must mean a hardware-ish fault? It did work in target disk mode, and the disk is fine (of course it is backed up anyway). This is wonderful, as now I can go to lovely Yodobashi camera and enjoy purchasing the new mac mini. It will look so cute in our living room. Shall I get the 2 disk server version?That might be quite exciting. Squeak.
...I hope someone isn't about to tell me how to fix the Macbook...
Only issue is the HD one. We have a VGA projector that we use to screen movies. Will probably have to invest in HDFury/. Anyone tried it?
The second most exciting thing: James' computerised automatic plant watering system appears to have worked and none of the plants are dead, despite a scorching hot summer.
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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 10/14/2010 08:16:00 PM
8 comments:
Not a mac person but if works in Target disk mode, I think that meansalmost all your your hardware must be still working.
You could try reseting PRAM/NVRAM and alternative boot sequences - all done by holding down various keys.
But probably its a symptom of hardware at the end of its life
Tried that already.
Surely the first most exciting thing is that the house did not rot away entirely. When we first left our house closed and empty, for a single week in late summer 2001, a typhoon passed over and we had to throw out a bit of stuff that got very mouldy. So I was a bit apprehensive (to say the least) about this 2 month absence. This time we left the air-con on a anti-mould programme (together with a bunch of hygroscopic pots lying around the house) and it seems to have worked just fine.
If its been in humid conditions for extended time - you could try putting it somewhere warm&dry for a few hours - like a sunny window sill - that has worked for me.
Or you could could dismantle and clean out mould & dust & replug anything that might suffer from contact resistance. But laptops are often a little scary to disassemble/reassemble.
But best use of your time is probably checking out prospective purchases.
Well it is plugged into the power, which should keep it warm so it may dry it out if it is wet. Hopefully it wont do so before we go shopping on Sunday. It gets so hot in that part of the house that it is unlikely to be moist, more likely fried! Could it be a victim of the crazy hot summer!? As James remarks, the house is nice and dry. The only place I've found green fuzzy mould so far is in the toilet bowl water!
The truth is that I have never loved this Mac. (gasp! heresy!). As an early intel model, but not one of the very first, it had a mild case of many of the hardware problems that incapacitated the first machines - ie tendency to black screen, chronic blue tooth instability. Not bad enough to ever bother sending it back, but after a couple of years the problems progressed to a level such that the computer became useless as a laptop (wouldn't sleep). At that point we replaced the iMac with it, and it has done fine as a stationary computer. (Moving the computer seems to irritate the bluetooth problem - perhaps because it senses bluetooth devices?!)
The house stayed pretty dry, but it might well have reached about 40C indoors. Mind you, it does this pretty much every summer, and the internal temp of the computer routinely reaches 60-70C when operating, so that shouldn't really break it. But it is a bit old and what jules didn't mention is that she was looking for an excuse to upgrade anyway even before this problem.
It isn't the circle line anymore, rather, the spiral line. Obviously some old timers don't like that, but it seems to make sense in the light of the line closures they have been doing recently.
Happy for the house plants.
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