Today, I wanted to PVR the Vancouver 2010 opening ceremonies in HD, but was dismayed to find that Windows Media Center does NOT support ATSC if your region is set to Canada. Fortunately resourceful users have found a workaround patch. See link above.

Sheepfilms – short comedy films and animations starring me, cardboard boxes and various fluffy animals including sheep.

After much trial and error, I finally found the proper procedure for installing Snow Leopard onto my Inspiron 640m. For reasons that I cannot fathom, I was unable to perform the chameleon cdboot/swap to boot from the retail Snow DVD. It might be my DVD drive, or some other cause, but I didn’t bother finding out; I just took the hard drive out of my laptop and connected it via USB to my iMac.

Here’s the procedure that I followed yesterday to install Mac OS X 10.6.0 on my Inspiron 640m. It’s tested, working and stable, everything is great except that this laptop does NOT wake from sleep. It goes to sleep just fine, just won’t wake. Here goes:

1. Remove hard drive from the Inspiron. Connect it using a hard drive dock or USB to SATA enclosure/adapter.
2. Put Mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD into existing Mac (Hackintosh or real mac, doesn’t matter).
3. Using Disk Utility, partition your Inspiron’s drive as you like, using a GUID Parition table.
4. With your Snow Leopard DVD mounted, in Finder, choose Go to folder. In the box that comes up type “/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Installation/Packages”.
5. This will open a folder with a lot of install pkgs. Find OSInstall.mpkg and double-click it.
6. Follow the steps to install Snow Leopard, making sure to pick the proper drive for installation.
7. Once the installation is done, eject your USB drive and put the hard drive back in your Inspiron.
8. Download the Inspiron6400.iso and burn it to a CD.
9. Power up your Inspiron and boot from the CD
10. From the Chameleon menu, use the arrow keys to select the hard drive.
11. Type the following boot arguments: -v cpus=1
12. Your Inspiron should boot into Snow Leopard. Congratulations!
13. Download my 2 Inspiron kext packages: Inspiron640mExtensions Inspiron640mExtra
14. In the Inspiron640mExtensions, you will find kext helper. Run it, and drag AppleBCM440XEthernet.kext, VoodooBattery.kext and VoodooHDA.kext onto it, enter password and install.
15. You will also find the Chameleon RC4 installer. Run it, but DON’T reboot at the end.
16. Extract the Inspiron640mExtra.zip. Copy the contents of the extracted Extra folder to /Extra.
17. Remove the Inspiron6400 CD and reboot. hopefully your laptop should boot fine from the hard drive.

Just a few notes:

• I cannot get the laptop to wake from sleep. As such, the SleepEnabler.kext is not included. I also included the InsomniaX app which you might choose to install to prevent your laptop from sleeping.
• This method seems to be update-safe. I just updated to 10.6.2 using Software Update and all is ok.
• When the clamshell display is closed, the Dell BIOS or something blanks the screen. Mac OS cannot re-enable the screen and you’ll be stuck staring at a black LCD. To circumvent this, set one of your screen corners in Expose prefs to put the display to sleep. If ever you find yourself with a black screen, move the cursor to that corner to force the display to sleep, then wake it up again.
• The Intel PRO 3945 ABG wireless card that came with my Inspiron (and all Inspirons that are branded “Centrino”) does NOT work with Mac OS X. I swapped mine for a Dell 1505 Draft-N card (cheap on eBay) that works perfectly out-of-the-box.
• The Broadcom 440x ethernet card seems to work fine, I tested it briefly with some light web browsing. However, the original thread says that the driver occasionally drops connections, so YMMV.
• Finally, a quick thanks to all the OSX86 devs. None of the kexts found here are made by me, all credit goes to the original authors. I found all the necessary info over at the InsanelyMac forum.

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn…We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Good news, I say.

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2010/01/12/in-case-of-nuclear-attack-7-comfort-the-dying/

Conan: “I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.” (http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/conan-obrien-says-he-wont-do-tonight-show-following-leno/?emc=na)

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/08/yes_diy_elf_ears_no_experience.php … ouch!

NSFW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezrvxYmSGNs

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/samsungs-14-inch-transparent-oled-laptop-video/

OMG cool

And some NPH:

Fantastic little command.

via » How to extract uniq IPs from apache via grep, cut, and uniq Dan Collis-Puro.

Can someone explain to me what the deal is with hair straighteners and makeup? I mean, honestly. My sister just got a hair straightener and it is completely beyond me WHY she could possibly need one. Her hair is already straight! And even for those girls whose hair isn’t straight… Is it not possible that you’re beautiful with curly or wavy hair? Personally, when I know a girl has wavy hair, I find the natural wavy look a LOT more attractive. That’s not to say that straightened hair isn’t pretty, I just don’t see the point since you’re pretty in the first place…

And makeup… seriously. A lot of it, I find completely unnecessary. I will agree that some makeup, when used properly, does complement a girl’s natural beauty. But, again, I don’t really see the point, because I think that when makeup is actually noticeable, it’s less beautiful than au naturel. Girls, you’re human too, you’re allowed to have not-so-perfect skin, or thin lips, or whatever. You’re beautiful already, so why bother colouring your eyelids or lips?

That’s my rant today. Man it feels good to get this off my chest.