I really am not very good at keeping this up to date, am I? Well,
regardless, I finally got a desk an now my G4 is set up. Welcome to
Telnet luxury -- OS X 10.4.11's Terminal. Really, the best part of using
this setup is having a 17" CRT, rather than my old iMac's tiny 12" one.
And once I get around to properly cleaning this CRT, it'll be absolutely
beautiful! The only issue I'm having are some screen stability issues.
In particular, at rates below 100hz, the whole damn mess seems to flicker
an awful lot. I really hope this isn't a power/wiring issue, because I
can't really do anything about that.
Well, setting that aside, I'm real pleased to have gotten my Cube out of
storage. I've rather missed using it. And look, I've gotten it out just
in time for 2014 to end! Soon, it'll be /fifteen goddamn years old!/
That's surely good enough for me to call using it "retro computing."
Doubly so since I tend to prefer using OS 9. The only reason I'm typing
this in OS X is actually because it froze up when I was downloading a
telnet program for OS 9, really. Well, that and I wanted to listen to
some audio files, and OS 9 and FLAC don't really mix well. It's easier to
just reboot and use VLC.
Another nice feature is how much quicker Photoshop (and ImageReady) are on
this G4 than on my iBook. Admittedly, part of that difference is because
this has Photoshop 7 on it, versus the iBook's CS2. But I'm pretty sure
the killer feature here is the 1.5GB of RAM in my Cube, versus the iBook's
paltry 512MB. In a shocking twist, the computer using PC100 RAM has more,
because you can find spare sticks literally everywhere. PC2100? Not so
much.
===
8 December 2014
===
Well, now it's December. It's cold and thanks to the wind, generall
unpleasant. But that's fine, I guess. I would be happier if it would at
least be consistently cold, rather than wavering like it has been.
I meant to gin up a website last month, to make use of the webspace SDF so
generously provides. Naturally, I've done nothing on that front, except
have a fun conversation on twitter about iframes. I don't even need
iframes, since everything in html is already in a box. Hell, I could just
do like SDF does and have the menu at the top of the page. That's even
simpler! But really, my lack of progress is entirely due to laziness.
Winter really does bring out the worst in me --- all I want to do is watch
videos and drink coffee. Of course, that isn't terribly different from
what I do during the majority of the year anyway.
If I were being sensible, I'd go for a walk and try to find something
interesting to photograph. But again, the weather makes the idea of doing
so less appealing. Apart from the cold and the wind (and occasional
rain/snow/&c.), everything tends to be grey and uninteresting. At least
in the evenings you can enjoy peoples' Christmas displays --- but I
suspect most people would be somewhat put-off by a man photographing their
homes during the night (or at any time, really).
At least part of the problem is that everything is so terribly familiar
that I simply cannot generate the interest to even take a picture of it.
Who really wants or needs tens of pictures of the same suburban streets
and the same uninteresting businesses?
Well, if slumps were easy to get out of, they wouldn't be slumps, right?
Eventually I'll find something interesting, I'm sure. Until then, I guess
my camera'll just sit around gathering dust.
Hah, and to think, I occasionally think I want a medium format camera --
that'd end up getting used even less than my trusty Minolta!
