September 2006 Archives

In the last week Software Update on both my MacBook Pro and the G5 "got stuck" as you can see above. It says there's new software, but doesn't show me what.. ?@#$@. I wanted to get the 7.0.1 iTunes update.

I tried deleting the software update downloads /Library/Caches/, but that didn't help and it was my only idea. Any suggestions?

I had a few hopeful follow-ups to my previous mail about the hardware test CD for my MDD G4, but it turned out that they - like myself - couldn't find the darn CD. Why doesn't Apple make them downloadable?

I got my old 1.4GHz G4 "Mirrored Drive Doors" PowerMac out today and I wanted to run the Apple hardware test for a few days to check it before putting it to use or selling it.

I found the ancient "Software Install and Restore" disk, but it appears they distributed the hardware test on a separate CD for this computer instead of on the OS X Install DVD. Grrh.

Does anyone have a similar MDD G4 PowerMac and the accompanying Apple Hardware Test CD? If so, any chance I can get a CD image of it?

Maybe I should try calling the local Apple Store, but it seems excessively unlikely that they would be of help. :-/

Email me if you can be of help (ask@develooper.com).

How come nobody put their Perl modules for the Google Checkout API on CPAN yet?

I'm sure they are made, but either they are crummy or the author thinks they can make more money selling them. I'd suggest to those people that if their code isn't crummy, they will do better with the publicity from having made the modules everyone is using.

In any case: Please someone do it already! :-)

I got a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED (sorry, that's really the name). Quick Summary: It's really great.

I have a big stack of pictures to scan. It's curious how good I was about writing careful notes on all the framed pictures of place/trip/event/occasion, film number, frame number and usually year. When the time machine is invented I must send thanks back to myself annno 1991-1996 for doing that. (It's also curious how it seems like I was a much better photographer then than now, but that's for another posting...)

I'll get to the fun ones with people soon enough (well, fun for the 5 occasional readers who knew me in that period. For you 2500+ daily readers looking for the regular serving of ... Actually, I've no idea what you are looking for!). Anyway, no matter what I find and scan I will post to my flickr account and occasionally here.

The technical quality of the scanner is amazing. It almost makes me want to put batteries in the old F-90 and take some more. The new fancy digital cameras might technically have better resolution and all, but "it just doesn't quite look the same". Sob sob. Of course, the workflow completely ruins it. Even scanning a strip of 6 pictures (which the scanner can do by itself) takes forever and a bit too much manual labor wheras with Aperture I can "process" hundreds of pictures in a snap. (Duncan compared Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom a few days ago).

The scans show A LOT of detail. Also a lot of dust and dirt, almost no matter how carefully you thought you cleaned it. Fortunately the dust, dirt and scratch removal in the scanner is really good (except on some of my slides which I think are Kodachrome, more on that another time.

Only nit so far (I only opened it up and made a few test scans) is that it didn't come with the "FH-3 Film Strip Holder" so I can only scan framed slides or strips of 2-6 pictures.

For some of the pictures (maybe the one above included) it looks like it'd work better if I could take it out of the old glass frame and clean it better, but without the strip holder I can't scan them. And it appears to be sold out everywhere. Grrh.

Speaking of dirt, here's an article on how to clean the Coolscan 5000.

Update: The hardware is really good; but the software is really just completely horrendous. Nikon basically completely stopped supporting or developing the software years ago and are showing no signs of opening up the APIs to other developers or some such. To use the scanner you really need an old computer with an old OS. For Macs I'm keeping a G4 Mac Mini around with OS 10.4 just to scan because the software is working marginally better (which is better than "not at all") there. Contacting Nikon technical support will just give you a "well, maybe it'll work. If not, as you described, try re-installing and cross your fingers a lot". Okay, so they didn't recommend crossing fingers; but they should have - it'd have been the most helpful advice they'd given.