An ExpressCard SSD In A MacbookPro

 Computing  No Responses »
Apr 012010
 

Apologies to those arriving here looking for information relating to U***tu and the use of this ExpressCard SSD. There is nothing relating to it here – Google has taken you on a wrong turn.

So after a false start with the wrong product I end up with a Wintec Filemate SolidGo 48GB ExpressCard 34 Ultra SSD (which is specifically a PCI-based ExpressCard rather than a USB-based one which tend to be a lot slower). The specs on this thing claim 115MB/s read and 65MB/s write which compares to my hard disk with tested scores of 80MB/s read and 78MB/s write – so a lot quicker for reads and marginally slower for writes.

How does this translate into how quickly the Macbook operates ?

Well after quickly duplicating my “OSXBOOT” partition onto the new “disk” using carbon copy cloner onto the new disk (“SSDBOOT”) I can run a few benchmarks :-

Test Result for SSD Result for Spinning Metal
Menu -> Login 31s 27s
Word startup 5s 16s
du of MacPorts 34s 109s

Well apart from the slightly surprising result of the time taken to get from the Refit menu until the login screen being actually quicker for the spinning metal disk, the SSD is approximately 3.2 times quicker! Certainly a worthwhile performance boost … and presumably a suitably chosen SATA SSD would be quicker again.

iPhone: What’s Missing (5) – Multitasking

 Linux  No Responses »
Mar 232010
 

I am in two minds about the need for multitasking on the iPhone. I can see that it would be useful for applications such as music streamers such as the one for LastFM or Spotify (personally I prefer LastFM), but having multiple GUI programs running on a machine as small (in terms of hardware resources) as the iPhone could be problematic.

It could also make the iPhone less stable.

But there is a demand for running lightweight background tasks in a way with a only a small risk of interfering with the currently running GUI application.

It would be easy to allow too – just allow the iPhone application to fork a helper daemon with some means of controlling it. After all under that pretty skin, the iPhone is just an computer running OSX as anyone who has jailbroken it has probably found out.

Dealing With An Invisible Window With Enlightenment

 Computing, Linux  No Responses »
Mar 162010
 

Probably of not much use to most, but useful to me …

On occasions, I have been known to start an application and switch virtual desktops as the application window appears which can sometimes lead to Enlightenment (but the DR16 version) “displaying” the window in a non-visible location. Fortunately there is a convenient and fairly trivial fix for this :-

  1. Open a terminal window
  2. Display a list of windows with the command eesh window_list (or eesh wl for short).
  3. This displays a list of two columns – a window ID and the title of each window. Pick the window ID of the window that is not visible.
  4. Next iconify the window with the command eesh wop iconify ${window_id}.
  5. At this point the icon for the application window should appear in your iconbox and you can uniconify it with the mouse and it should appear on the currently displayed desktop.

OpenSolaris with OpenCSW Packages

 Computing, Working Notes  No Responses »
Feb 272010
 

One of the great things about OpenSolaris is that the archaic packaging tools have been replaced with something that looks like it may be a little better; one of the disadvantages is that trying to install packages from something like OpenCSW is a little awkward when the first command fails.

Given that I’ve just to hunt around for the details a second time, it is worth working up the basics into something that can be added here. Firstly we need to install the commands necessary to support the old packages :-

pkg install SUNWpkgcmds
pkg install SUNWwget

Now that has been done, it should be possible to install the OpenCSW package command using pkgadd :-

pkgadd -d http://www.opencsw.org/pkg_get.pkg

Mike’s Mini MacPorts Guide

 Computing  1 Response »
Feb 042010
 

Macports is a convenient way of adding conventional Unix software to an OSX machine; this guide is not intended as a replacement for the main documentation but as a simple convenient cheat sheet. Mainly for myself, but as it is here, anyone is welcome to use it (and send in corrections!).

After you have installed the main Macports package you need to periodically update the main macports binary and the index files with :-

% sudo port selfupdate -d

This conveniently tells you to update the outdated ports with :-

% sudo port upgrade outdated

But neglects to suggest that removing inactive ports would be wise :-

% sudo port uninstall inactive

As an upgrade does not by itself remove older packages; merely makes them “inactive”. A considerable amount of space can be used by these “inactive” ports!

Variants

Once you have found a port you are interested in installing :-

% port search emacs

It is worth checking what variants are available :-

% port info emacs | grep Variants
Variants:             gtk, motif, universal, x11

This allows you to specify what features you want :-

% port install emacs +gtk

Further details may be added …

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