Monthly Archives: June 2007

Installing Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on a Mac Pro

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Here’s a simple how-to for installing Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on a Mac Pro.

  1. Get a Mac Pro. Mine is a 3 month old Quad core (2.66Ghz) Xeon with 4GB Ram and a number of SATA drives.
  2. Install bootcamp (I used beta 1.3) and burn the drivers CD
  3. Install Vista, I did mine to a spare SATA drive that was separate to the OS X drive.
  4. Install drivers (there’s a set-up.exe)
  5. Um, that’s it.

It just worked. Even my Mac bluetooth keyboard and nVidia 7300 GT running 2 widescreen Dell 24″ screens work faultlessly. Kudos to the Bootcamp writers.

/me now a Vista fanboy. It absolutely flies on the superb hardware of the Mac Pro but then it should I guess. I’ve not completely given up on Mac OS X, I at least now have the option to run it, but after three month it was still irritating me and most importantly I wasn’t as productive as I could have been.

Upton floods (again)

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Flooded boat

Who’d have thought it, lots of heavy rain and then the next few days the River bursts its banks, amazing. Yes for the third time this year it’s flood time here in not-so-sunny Upton.

Thankfully there are some excellent flood defences in place so the town is still usable (unlike the main road to Malvern) and I’m able to write this at work.

Looks like it’s a lot worse elsewhere in the area with one guy dying this morning in Pershore when he tried to cross a ford in his car.

More photos on my Facebook also on the BBC site.

Facebook gifts, what’s that all about then?

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If you use Facebook then you’ve probably seen that it’s possible to send other people ‘gifts’.

As far as I can tell if I want to do this then I get to PAY around $1 to send a PICTURE of some tat and a message to someone else. Eh? I can see how it’s a nice bit of fun (or maybe a nice thought) but to actually pay them for this service is quite evidently a rip-off, it’s not like you get to use the gift. I do see that there’s could be deemed a certain amount of exclusivity what with these ‘gifts’ being limited edition and time limited too but even so I really don’t see the point.

Money for old rope, I’m in the wrong game, when I were a lad, mumble mumble.

Google Developer Day 2007 (London)

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On Thursday I attended the Google Developer day 2007 event in London and overall I’d say it was worth the day out of the office.My headline excuse for going was that I’m working on a project that requires some Google Maps integration and as there was a 1.5 hours hands on workshop on it I figured it’d save me some investigation time in the office – and it turns out that I was right, so thumbs up there. Continue reading →

Superb Javascript lectures

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As someone doing more and more frontend development using javascript I’m trying to shore up my knowledge a bit. For example some of the shortcut syntax I wasn’t sure about and I knew I could do with more backgound on how the language deals with objects.

With this is mind I’m half way through Douglas Crockfords (of Yahoo) “The Javascript Programming Language” which is a stand-up talk teaching Javascript to (off camera) students. I’ve watched 2 of the 4, 30 mins videos and have already found it to be well worth the time investment.

Highly recommended.

The *downloadable* videos are available at the YUI Theater; there’s also advanced version which I’ll move onto afterwards.