I watched Transformers tonight. Hmmm not sure. From a pure action and toy franchise perspective, it was cool.  Lots of transforming, guns, bullets and missiles.

The story plot was weak, to the extent of it would happen like that every other minute.

It has a PG13 rating, and in parts understandably. Without the parents at the door scene, I’d let the kids watch it. Well only Jacob would want to, but he’d love it. So it confuses me why an obviously boys movie, went down the American Pie humor path?

So from a fun action flick, yip it was fun, but I’m glad I didn’t pay full price and see it at the theatre.

I was planning to attend the 2008 Summer Road Trip today, but the work meeting I was just in overran.

The presentation has started, I’d have to find parking in town, and it’s raining.

So I’ll miss becoming edu-mi-cated about SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 or .Net 3.5

I’ll also not win one of two Windows Home Servers.

*snap*

Guess I’ll just get back to work…..

Yesterday I found the required USB cable to connect my MacBook to the keyboard we purchased for the “kids”. But nothing happened….

After a few minutes Googling I found that Casio only provide Windows drivers… But then I found a GoggleCode project to provide Mac OS X USB MIDI drivers for Casio keyboards. Oh happy times.

To make it work you should

1. Download the driver
2. unzip it
3. copy driver CasioUSBMIDIDriver.plugin to the root driver folder /Library/Audio/MIDI Drivers (so all users accounts can use the driver)

   

4. reboot.

Tada, the Audio Midi Setup (Applications/Utilities) could see the keyboard, and GarageBand could record the input.

Now I’m interested to see what the kids will create.

[Update July 2011]

For Snow Leopard there is an installer package now on the above linked driver, so use that for Snow Leopard installs.

To test it installed correctly, run ‘Audio MIDI Setup’, and click in the ‘Windows | Show MIDI Window’ top level menu

Then click the ‘Test Setup’ icon to make it blue (shown white here)

Then click on the down arrow at bottom of the Casio USB MIDI Interface. You keyboard should make lots of noise. Its working.

Now load GarageBand, and start the record mode and press some keys on the keyboard. All working…

[Update June 2021]
The archived files can be found at:
https://code.google.com/archive/p/casiousbmididriver/downloads

It has been a while since I have had anything post worthy, and I am still empty handed. The longer the pause, the grander I feel what I say, must be.

I have been enjoying the MacBook. I like it’s styling, it’s sense of cohesion. I have Boot Camp now running, and Windows XP runs very nicely. But it’s different. The laptop keyboard layout differences make working in Visual Studio “different”. I’ve lost my mojo for the Curse of the Azure Bonds port, as I want to work from the Mac, so have a lot of ground work to solve. I am torn between a full rewrite in C++ and using OpenGL as the UI layer, or maybe SDL, or investigating getting mono running, and seeing what UI support is present. I have spent a few nights getting my head back into OpenGL, it was painful. I was grabbing snippets of code from the WWW, and my program keep being blank. Ended up having to stop merging code, and just use the small examples as is, to get them working. But I’ve now got the basics going again. But how to merge it into the game (without a rewrite) I’m not sure… so time passes.

I’ve been using Azureus as my bit torrent client. It works nicely, I had gotten very used to µTorrent’s UI, so found it hard to find the same information, it’s there and more, but it’s just across 4-5 tabs. But it works so I no complain.

The house is at the slow, paint and sand stage, aka almost completed. So there is a large pressure to be doing that also….

We have been experiencing very slow web page loading times on the MacBook (via Firefox).  After reading lots on blogs and the like of people complaining, I found one note that struck a cord with me on talking about OpenDNS. The slowness was almost pin-able to DNS as all the waiting for data from x.com type stuff went by in a flash, after the huge pause was over.

So I did a side by side compare of loading a sub-page on Trade Me, on the old Window PC vs. the new MacBook. Using the same Wifi. The PC won hands down.  In fact it finished before the Mac had started.

With it in hand I decided to see how the networks were different.

Long story short_-er-ish_, The Mac was getting IP & DNS settings from the router, and the PC had them manually configured. Applying manual setting to the MacBook, and hay presto… fast page loads. Yay!

So this is a case of the ‘auto-magic just works’ causing problems, as it wasn’t the best solution, but it did work mostly.

We have now finished all the big stuff

• The bay window has new weather boards

  

• The room as a new chipboard floor surface

  

And some small things

• Replaced the larger plaster board. It was damaged when replacing the stud it was attached to.

  

• Replaced the small plaster board pieces that are behind the skirting board
• Michaela has done the first coat of plastering over all those edges

Stuff to go

• Finish the plastering
• Put all skirting boards type stuff back
• Undercoat/topcoat inside
• Undercoat/topcoat outside
• Put concrete board that is part of the eves over the bay window

Five days into being a Mac user, and on the whole I like it. Here is my running thoughts:

• Had Dashboard crash (well Michaela did actually)
• Had Firefox crash
• I really like the parental controls.
• The kids really love GarageBand
• After days of telling Michaela you could use two fingers on the track pad to do a right click, I found Rod’s blog post, (where I read about the feature originally) only to discover that it was not on by default. That explains my lack of success.
• Found the Super DragAndGo extension, so now I don’t need a middle click to browse with tabs.
• Found this support note saying why I couldn’t find Boot Camp Assistance, and why I also couldn’t find how to install it. This was really driving be batty

So, now I have Boot Camp, I’ll start the Windows XP install, and then be able to decommission my current desktop PC. Yeah!

Wow - one of the problems that caused me grief on the programming challenges web site was 110104 LC-Display. Today when I logged in I noticed it was now marked as solved, yet I haven’t submitted that problem for 3 years. It also appears that I had 5 different correct solutions, that were originally marked wrong.

So someone has reviewed that problem, and found the judge solution was wrong, and re-evaluated all submissions. It’s good to see the site is still alive.

Pity they don’t have a forum as this was a good place to discus tricky problems, and give clues for the easier problems.

My 110206 Erdös Numbers solution is now showing as Compilation error (for all 160 submissions), so I might try and track that down…

My first laptop, and it’s a MacBook. I have gone to the white-side. Seems perfectly good so far. The lappy is faster than my workstation at work, and more than twice the processor than my old desktop at home.  I’m connected to the work wireless network, so I’m ready to start installing extra software.

The only issue is I’m currently using a Microsoft mouse, in the USB port….

That and my formatting like paragraphs are not sticking in Safari. Now that I have changed to Firefox, things are more normal. Didn’t think it would be that easy to drop a key package. Safari (mac) == IE (windows), to be avoided!

I have just uploaded the first installer for my Curse of the Azure Bonds .net port on the Google Code project download page.
The installer needs work:

• Add a UI
• Ask where to install
• Fix the update functionality (so I can release updates)
• Add shortcut
• Check for and install the 2.0 .Net framework

What it does do, is drop all the required resource files to Program Files/Curse of the Azure Bonds. You will need the 2.0 .Net framework. You will also want to run main.exe

Any issues, let me know, or post them to the issue list