Blog of Hamlesh

Upgrading the hard disk in a uni-body aluminium MacBook Pro is really very easy.

First, find a suitable hard disk, I’ve opted for the Samsung HM500II (500GB) SATAII 2.5″.  Personally I don’t think solid state hard disks are at a point where the balance between capacity and cost makes sense.

Now before you start, take a full time machine backup – this really is the simplest way to move your current system to the new hard disk.  You won’t need to fiddle about reinstalling and configuring things.  When taking your backup, check to make sure you haven’t excluded any folders from the backup.  I normally have my “Downloads” folder excluded from the normal time machine backups.

1. Open up the bottom of the laptop – my desk always has an antistatic work mat on it, but take the regular precautions!

2. Unscrew the little holder pictured below and lift it out.

3. Lift out the hard disk (which I’ve already done) and carefully disconnect the connectors.

4. Remove the screws from the side of the hard disk, you’ll need to put these on your new disk.  You will need a torx (Star) 5mm screwdriver for this.  If you don’t have a 5mm torx, you could use a pair of pliers to carefully unscrew them and hand tighten them on the new drive.  Invest in a set of torx screwdrivers, they are worth it, and handy.

5. Put everything back together, take care when screwing the case back together, its really easy to slip with the screwdriver and scratch the aluminium – which will make you cry, trust me

6. Boot your system from your install DVD.  Using the “Disk Utility” create a new partition, then use the “Restore from backup” option on the “Utilities” menu.  Connect your time machine backup drive and follow the onscreen instructions.  it took roughly 1.5 hours to restore my 120Gb system.

I did run into a small problem after the restore, which is apparently quite common.  “Quick look” stopped working, this is where you select a file and press the space bar to get an instant preview of the contents.  I found a fix, and its documented here.

As always, please feel free to post a comment, or talk to me on twitter.

I’ve recently replaced the hard drive in my MacBook Pro with a higher capacity one (write up to follow).  After restoring from time machine I found that quick look no longer works.  If you try to quick look a file (select file, press space bar) you just get a black box.  If however you select two files, hit the space bar, then click on the index sheet button (little button with 4 windows in a 2×2 stack), quick look seems to work – but only in the index sheet.

This is a common problem, but took some forum trauling to find a solution, so i’ll save you the work.

Simply reinstall the Mac OS X v10.6.2. Update.  I was running 10.6.2 already, and it simply reinstalled over the top.

If this doesn’t fix the problem, boot your MacBook from the install DVD, select Utilities > Disk Utility, and “Repair Disk Permissions” – you’ll have to boot from the install media if you are repairing the same drive that your system boots from.

Good luck – post a comment and let me know if this works for you.  You could always talk to me on twitter too

This post is a little on the ranty side, but there is a solution at the bottom

I really really really hate voicemail, I can’t even begin to find the words to describe how much I hate voicemail.  To me, voicemail is one of those technological advancements that should have remained in the last century, let alone the last decade.  Its an old solution to a common problem that still exists today.

This little extract from the Dilbert cartoons should explain part of how the whole “voicemail experience” makes me feel;

(All rights reserved Scott Adams, Dilbert.com)

This really does happen to me, people call me up and either;

1.  Leave long messages – which are better off conveyed in email.

2.  Leave short messages telling me that they’ve sent me an email or to check my email and call them back.

3.  Normal people leave short messages with their details and ask me to call them back.

Ok, so now you’re thinking leaving a short message can’t be a bad thing, and thats surely the point of voicemail… well its not.  Perhaps it used to be, but thats no longer the case.  There are much better ways to convey the information that I have missed your call and need to give you a call back – yep, a text message.  One would also be able to read the sms message and process the information in a much shorter time frame than dialing into voicemail and listening to the message.  Inefficient and stupid, simple as.

So i’ve tried a number of different things over the years;

1.  Turn off voicemail completely – only to get people whine that “oh, I tried to leave you a message but there was no voicemail”… thanks for informing me of what I already knew… yes, I turned my voicemail off, yes it was on purpose, and yes, if it was important enough, you’d have found SOME OTHER WAY to get the message to me.

2.  Explicit asking people to leave a “SHORT MESSAGE” – this worked initially, but people soon reverted back to leaving long messages.

I had pretty much given up trying to find a solution.  Then one day, salvation came, unexpectedly.  I was calling a customer and they were busy, but instead of getting asked to leave a voicemail message (which I don’t tend to do either!) a little recording started to play “this person cannot take your call, please try again later or send a text message”, on repeat.

Finally, there was a solution out there!  The bad news is that its a setting/option provided by their network operator.  A facility which my provider, Orange, does not.

No matter, I found another way.  This works on Orange, it may be different for your service provider.  Using AT&T’s text to speech demo I created this wav file recording “The person you are calling cannot take your call, please try again later or send a text message”.

Then within the Orange voicemail, there is the option for an “extended absence” greeting, now the major difference between this and a normal greeting is that you can opt to not accept voicemail messages while your extended absence greeting is active.  So using a pair of headphones right infront of the mic pickup on my mobile and some careful timing; now whenever someone calls and I am otherwise occupied they hear the synthised voice of Crystal, asking them to try again later or send a text.

Win   Finally!

Download the wav file: here

Or create your own: here

PS: Yes I know Google Voice would be the other solution to this problem, but its not available outside of the US, and I doubt they will bring the service to the UK, not for a while anyway.

The moon seems to be my muse as of late.

I’m waiting to invest in a 2000mm telescope that has a Nikon camera mount, then i’ll be able to take some more detailed shots and of other astronomical objects.

Above was taken just before the “blue moon” eclipse on the 31st Dec.  Annoyingly and upsettingly a cloud covered the moon after this and blocked my view of the moon for the rest of the night

This was taken on the night of the 1st Jan I believe, the moon was really low in the sky making it look bloodshot.

I’ll return to my usual petrol head techie posts soon – honest

I’ve been unhappy with the standard flash on my camera for a while now, and from time to time find myself in dire need of a flash gun which can be pointed at the ceiling (think indoor shots, no natural light, etc). Instances of need however are not frequent enough for me to invest in a Nikon SB-600 (yet), but they are frequent enough to be a cause of great irritation and sleepless nights.  Ok, perhaps not sleepless nights, but you know what I mean.

So, while looking around the shed for a hammer (all 3 of my hammers seem to have grown legs – don’t ask!), I came across an old flash gun that I picked up many many years ago from eBay for a few quid.

(Yes I know its a rubbish photo, taken using my phone)

After excitedly fitting it to my camera, I decided that its “intelligence” was very limited, and I mean VERY limited!  There was also no way to point it upwards – so out came the cardboard, scissors and sticky tape.

Ta da   I’ve set it to full power manual mode, the camera can only tell it when to trigger, but at least its brighter than the standard flash, and its firing light upwards.

Here is an early test shot, taken indoors, my desk lamp was the only source of light in the room.

(Isn’t this just a lovely little espresso cup – recent present from the better half)

Ok the shot is blurry, but the result I’m looking for is the gauge and quality of the light, which is spot on (for a cheap little flash gun and some cardboard).

(Odd box of cables and bits I need to put in the shed)

Again the only source of light in the room other than the flash gun is my desk lamp.  I’m somewhat pleased with the result

Naturally, give it a few months and I’ll be blogging about how this setup was rubbish and I invested in an SB-600   Then again, this “natural” hardware progression is the better way to go in my opinion.  Fudge/Bodge it until you know how to use the tools, then get good tools.

I’ve heard from a few of my friends/readers in Canada that they’ve all been finding the UK’s total inability to cope with the recent “snow storms” absolutely hilarious, of course, looking beyond the mockery at our expense, thanks to the UK mainstream media, calling the recent snow a “storm”.

A lot of people have been enjoying the snow, and its the first time in many years that we may actually stand a chance of celebrating a “White Christmas” in the UK… although currently, its looking like the weather in yee old Blighty will return to its normal programming, ie, rain, and we’ll all enjoy a nice gray and slushy Christmas. It remains to be seen.

Personally I’ve not enjoyed the snow, beyond my initial school boy excitement, which lasted a whole 5 minutes, a long time considering. The snow “storm” has caused havoc on the roads, journeys that normally take 15 minutes have taken near on 4 hours recently. Apparently the warnings that the UK MET office had been issuing for weeks never reached the highways agency, and yet again they were “caught unaware”… as my girlfriend keeps asking, upon observing the competition ice rink style road conditions, “so why exactly do we bother paying taxes?”.

Humbug I say!

Ah well, on the bright side the snow did give me something to shoot.

If you are reading this post on a syndicated site, you’ll need to view the slideshow directly on flickr, here.

Well I know its been a long time, and I don’t seem very active – I have been working on a few projects, and hopefully they’ll come to fruition soon and I can talk about them… well at least blog about them.

You can always keep up or engage with me on twitter

On another note, I’ve had a few blog comments complaining about some broken download links, so those have been fixed.

CISCO Lab Software – PacketTracer: now available for download again. Please post a comment, it helps with my page rank (shows activity and relevance), and takes about 2 seconds to do.

Photo Booth (for osx): my solution/fix to the common problem of photo booth not initializing the inbuilt camera is available once more for download.

Enjoys

Recently, I’ve been playing with my camera more, making an effort to get back into the swing of “shooting” things and events. I was out the other night, “shooting the moon”, and out once again tonight.

It took me a little while to realize that the best way to keep the camera stable was to lay down on the driveway! My tripod won’t support the weight of the 80-200mm lens.

Was made by combining;

What do you think?

Post a comment or tweet me.