uninteresting :: nerd

I splurged on the 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD a week ago, and it’s been driving me nuts that my Macbook Pro wouldn’t recognize the drive – even though it worked fine in my Macbook and from an external USB enclosure. Long story short, I finally discovered what the problem was. Here’s my forum post on it. Hopefully it may save some other MBP users the headache:

I finally got it working in my machine, and the solution is not what you’d expect it to be!

First, I was able to upgrade to FW1.1. That didn’t solve the problem: the drive was still not recognized by the MBP, although working fine in the USB enclosure and in my Macbook.

THE SOLUTION: after countless hours of trying different install options, I finally discovered this really obscure behavior:
– when the drive is installed the normal way (black side facing out), it’s NOT recognized by the MBP (you can tell because Disk Utility sees it as “generic external media”).
- when the drive is installed UPSIDE DOWN (silver side facing out) it works fine! Disk Utility sees it as “119.2 GB OCZ-VERT (serial#) Media”. Picture: http://skitch.com/richlin/bpb98/photo

The mounting screws don’t fit right when it’s upside down, so I figured that since the problem is likely caused by metal on metal contact, I taped a piece of paper to cover the silver side and installed it normal-side up. Sure enough, it’s working just fine now.

So far things seem to be working fine. Even boot camp is working. And now, I can get on with my life…

For my new Macbook Pro. Here’s a video opening 35 apps in 20 seconds.

cool behind the scenes look at how HD video is broadcast from Mt Everest using Macbook Pros with SSDs.

nexus app for facebook is pretty wild. it visually graphs out all your friend relationships. for example, here’s mine. the cluster with all the names displayed are my college friends from Atlanta, who are quite naturally their own little universe and disconnected from my other friends.

the mac mini doesn’t come with either a built-in microphone or webcam, so enabling it for video ichat/skype means you have to buy those items. luckily, things are cheap enough so that you can do it for under $60.

the mic: the mini only accepts line-level inputs, so you can’t connect those junky pc microphones with the pink connectors (those are mic-level inputs). rather, you need a usb mic like the Logitech USB Desktop Microphone ($24 on amazon).

the webcam: the Xbox 360 Live Vision Camera ($32 on amazon) works just fine on macs, just plug it right in and it will work in both ichat and skype.