I have been away from the Hackintosh community (and the 1525 community) for some time now, as updates have been easy and I haven’t had to do any DSDT modding or replacing of a larger number of kexts on an update to update basis, but I knew 10.6.8 in preparation for Lion was not going to be just your normal update.  So, I went out and did my reading… Hackintoshin’ is all about “community” and it’s this community and the many sites together that all compliment one another and create the community as it is.  I suggest EVERYONE visit them all and READ, READ, READ!

I want to thank and give FULL CREDIT to Slice (for all his offerings to the Dell 1525 community, especially for the modded DSDTs), the Voodoo/Chameleon crew for the massive number of updates between RC3 and RC5!, Nozyczek for all of his super hard work supporting the 1525 and the various updates for Snow, and lastly Jomijoy.  Between visiting InsanelyMac, nozyczek’s site, and reading the comments from Jomijoy at MacYourPC, I was able to gain enough information about what had taken place in my “down time,” and what was expected and needed for the 10.6.8 update.

When you get to 10.6.8 and realize how much of the OS and what is needed is now vanilla, it will blow you’re mind.  The 1525 is getting closer and closer to a “real” Mac everyday with all of these peoples’ hard work and experimentation.

I’m providing here the steps needed to get to 10.6.8 and have your HackBook Pro 1525 running better, booting faster, appearing generally more snappy, and being more “native” than it ever has been before!

Step 1:

MAKE SURE YOU ARE UPDATED AND RUNNING IN-FULL ON Snow Leopard 10.6.7 *AND* that your Dell 1525′s BIOS is at A17 (not A16 or A15, etc.) The BIOS must be at A17 as that’s what Slice’s modded DSDT was created for, and it’s the only way to guarantee that things will work as they should.  And, of course, you should have performed a FULL SYSTEM BACKUP prior to any of this!  I am not responsible for you killing you machine, you solid install, etc., etc.

Now, you might say you have a problem as you can’t update the BIOS (EXE) in SL, and you’re right. But, if you have access to a Windows machine, here:

Download ‘Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool 1.0′:

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Bootable-USB-Drive-Creator-Tool-Download-179880.html

This will allow you to image FreeDOS or MS-DOS to a USB stick and have it be bootable right into that OS.

Dell’s A17 BIOS Update, while appearing as a Windows app, will also run in DOS, so let’s download that at:

ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/bios/1525_A17.EXEs

This is the latest A17 BIOS image for the 1525. Copy this to your newly formatted DOS-based USB stick. Put the stick into the Dell, power on, and hit F12 to select the Boot Menu. Boot from the USB stick. After getting into DOS, type ‘dir’ to ensure you see ’1525_A17.exe’. If you do, you’re ready to update the BIOS.  If you don’t, then you did something wrong. Repeat the above steps.

At the DOS prompt, type (don’t type the ‘A:>’ or whatever drive letter, just what comes after the ‘>’ sign):

A:>1525_A17.EXE (and hit Enter)

The BIOS should be flashed to A17 within a minute or so.  When done, continue on. If you have issues where the app reports that you must be on AC power or have the battery plugged in, and you already do, then at the DOS prompt, type:

A:>1525_A17.EXE /forceit (and hit Enter)

This will bypass the warnings and flash the BIOS anyway.

So, let’s carry on…  Now, you should VISIT:

http://sites.google.com/site/nozyczek/home/hackintosh/how-to-install-snow-leopard-10-6-8-on-dell-inspiron-1525

… and READ — and, READ AGAIN!  Since we’re not doing a complete reinstall, you will need to utilize only a portion of nozyczek’s instructions and tools.

Step 2:

Backup your old trackpad.prefpane in /System/Library/Preference Panes. Copy it to your Desktop or somewhere so you have a backup.

Step 3:

Download:

10.6.8 Combo Update from Apple’s Site:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399

nozyczek’s Dell 1525 10.6.8 Autoinstaller (Note, if you have a 1440 display on your 1525, download the other Autoinstaller!):

http://cl.ly/7wpJ

Step 4:

Run the Apple 10.6.8 Combo Update Installer (DO NOT RESTART when the Installer completes)… You do and YOU’RE TOAST! Leave the finish dialog up and ‘Restart’ button pulsating!  Then, leave this alone until directed…

Step 5:

Rename the /Extra folder on the / (Root) of your Snow Leopard volume.  Do NOT delete it.  You will need to pick pieces and parts from this copy to place and/or edit into a new /Extra folder that will be created in the following step.

Step 6:

Place nozyczek’s Dell 1525 10.6.8 Autoinstaller folder on the desktop and run it. (Again FULL CREDIT goes to nozyczek for such a KILLER script! And, for taking into account all that is handled in Slice’s new DSDT vs. what kexts are now needed in the /Extra directory! All of you will be amazed by what few kexts are now required!)

Here are the steps as to how (… if you’re no good with the cmd line):

Start Terminal (located in ~/Applications->Utilities->Terminal)

Type:

sudo -s <enter your password when prompted>
cd ~/Desktop/hackintosh*
./installer

• Select the drive you wish to install to, i.e. your Snow Leopard volume
• Select the “i” option and hit Enter to start the Autoinstaller
• Then, just sit back and wait for the installer to finish
• Hit ‘q’ to Quit at the end and terminate the Terminal session

When done, run ‘Disk Utility’ and ‘Repair Permissions’ on the SL volume you installed to.

Step 7:

Now return to the 10.6.8 Combo Update dialog and click the pulsating ‘Restart’ button.

Step 8:

Your 1525 should boot into the OS without issue.  But, you will not (maybe) have Wireless support and the Trackpad prefPane will need updated.

Step 9:

Install your former IO80211family.kext from your old /Extra folder (Remember, the one you made the backup of?!) using KextUtility or KextHelper. This will replace any version that might exist in S/L/E. (Note, I did not need to do this as Apple brought back the driver for Broadcom chip in the Dell 1505N WLAN mini-PCI card in this version.  It was there in 10.6.5, and disappeared for 10.6.6 and 10.6.7, only to reappear in 10.6.8.   Nice!  Here’s to hoping it’s in Lion as well!)

Step 10:

Copy the trackpad.prefpane you made a backup of to in /System/Library/Preference Panes.  Replace the one already existing.

Step 11:

Again, run ‘Disk Utility’ and ‘Repair Permissions’ on the SL volume.

You’re done!  You should now have a fully operational 1525 at 10.6.8!   And, You will notice that amount of custom kexts required is down to just a few!  Amazing work from the community!  Sleep now appears to be native!?  Slice’s DSDT has limited the amount of required kexts even more.  Refer to nozyczek’s site (link provided) and go to the bottom to see only what kexts were applied on top of Apple’s.  Things just keep getting better and better!  I have A LOT more research to do to see exactly what has been done in the past year or so, but progress has no doubt been made!

Past these steps, (and you don’t need to do as I did, but…)  I updated Chameleon from nozyczek’s r1088 to r1095, added the Chameleon RC5 PrefPane which makes customizing your com.apple.Boot.plist a dream (me, I use it just for reference; I still edit mine via TextMate), and corrected my Yukon2.kext binary to reflect the correct MAC address of my internal NIC (instead of the default 00:11:22:33:44:55 — a couple of these defaults on the network and things are likely to get a little confusing depending on your network set up).  I also brought back my custom theme and a few other simple and cosmetic com.apple.Boot.plist items to “make things as they were,” so to speak.

Note, I only posted this here so that everyone that enjoys OS X on a 1525 could benefit.  The more consolidated information for the 1525, the better.  Although, you all should be visiting all of the sites mentioned to do your OWN homework and give your own thanks.  It’s only fair to all of people that helped provide you all of this good stuff.  I you wish to share this, feel free to do so, but just give credit for the compilation.

This said, I hope this guide helps some of you out!  Good luck!

With all the fun I had on this one, I’m diving in again and will be attempting to get Lion going within the next couple of weeks.  With the progress I’ve seen and being that at 10.6.8, we’re prepared for Lion, I can’t expect that we all won’t be able to be enjoying Lion on the 1525 in the near term.  I will post anything eventful to the other sites as I find and figure things out.

During the last week of April, Microsoft released four updates for Windows 7 x64. They rolled in like normal. I selected all of them and let them do their thing when I was planning a reboot, assuming they would want one. They did. They performed some “configuration” prior to shutdown displaying some text prompting me to this effect. And, when restarting, Windows paused again, running more “configuration” against the new updates. After a few seconds, I was prompted with, “Failure Configuring Windows Update… Reverting Changes. Do not Turn off the Computer.”

Of course, when the machine came back up, I logged in and the same updates were there, wanting to get applied. I tried again. Fail. I tried one by one. Fail.

The update packages in question are:

• KB2515325
• KB2522422
• KB2492386
• KB982018

All four of them will just keep repeating the installation, posting identical entries in the Event Viewer-> Windows Logs->Setup

You might see something similar to:

• Package KB2515325 failed to be changed to the Installed state. Status: 0x800705b4.
• Package KB2522422 failed to be changed to the Installed state. Status: 0x800705b4.
• Package KB2492386 failed to be changed to the Installed state. Status: 0x800705b4.
• Package KB982018 failed to be changed to the Installed state. Status: 0x800705b4.

The System Log entries are:

• Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80071a90: Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2515325).
• Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80071a90: Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2522422).
• Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80071a90: Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2492386).
• Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80071a90: Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB982018).

Again, manual updates failed, so I looked for all of them in the ‘Microsoft Download Center’ and was able to download a self-contained (*.msu) update for each one. Using these, I was then able to install each, individually, in order, rebooting after those that prompted me to. After a few reboots, all was well and Windows Update no longer showed any required/optional system updates. I can only think that the update cache or downloaded updates were corrupted or being installed as a batch where one might have had dependencies on the other. . . Not sure.

Downloading the MSU and installing each manually will correct the issue. Here are the links for the four updates in question:

• KB2515325 Windows Update Package
• KB2522422 Windows Update Package
• KB2492386 Windows Update Package
• KB982018 Windows Update Package

I’m sure there are other fixes out there, maybe deleting the contents of the update repository (c:\windows\SoftwareDistribution), etc., but the above worked well for me. Hope this is some help to you also — for those that might have found their way here.

So… I was getting sick and tired of having to convert my videos (and RAW photos when I had to pull an impromptu slideshow for the family) on the PC/Mac and copy them to a USB stick, just so I could shove the drive into my 47″ LED Vizio to play them back. Now while the flash USB-in for video, photos, and music is an outstanding feature on the Vizio, the TV is still somewhat finicky in what formats it will decode. This applies to video, audio, and photos. Yeah… yeah… I have a UPnP DLNA client built into my DirecTV box, but I don’t think it has seen any development in years, has been stuck with a Beta label long enough outlast Google’s products, and frankly works about 50% of the time. So, it’s really not any solution at all to the “get content from my PC to my TV” problem.

Then, along comes Apple’s AppleTV, 2nd generation box (or puck). I wasn’t too enthusiastic about the little black piece of plastic as it was purely designed as a hobby by Apple and was nothing more that another device that allows iTunes rentals and purchases, helping Apple pad their pockets with yet more of peoples’ hard earned cash, as if the iPhones, iPads and associated AppStore aren’t enough?! In this form, it wasn’t anything that excited me to much, although it did get those iTunes purchases off your PC and to your TV. That was nice. But, then good things happened… Apple not only developed a great little piece of hardware, but made the fantastic choice to run iOS on it as well. This opened the device to a whole bunch of intelligent and creative hackers, hackers that could retool their other iDevice efforts and put them straight into practice (for the most part) on the AppleTV2. And, given a few months, they did just that. They not only jailbroke the thing, but started coding applications for it like the mad, up all night, energy drink fueled crowd they are. The little puck that could(n’t), could now do a whole lot more than it was ever originally designed to do!

Present day… All it takes is $99 and some time and you can have a very nice little media streamer that works in conjunction with Macs/PCs and a whole slew of OS’s. It all starts by jailbreaking an out-of-the-box Apple TV 2. Installing nitoTV is the first step. In the past, installing nitoTV involved first jailbreaking, then some tedious SSH’n and terminal commands, but today, Greenpois0n (RC6) is all you need. Not only will it perform an untethered jailbreak, unlocking Apple’s grip of the device running firmware v4.2.1 (which you should update to if the unit you purchase doesn’t have it installed by default), but the latest release will also install nitoTV right onto your little black Apple puck. There are numerous other custom jailbreaks out there for the Apple TV 2, and all have some differences, but Greenpois0n makes it really easy to get moving along once installed.

The good stuff…

Okay, so the puck is jailbroken, nitoTV is installed, now what? Well, XBMC (XBox Media Center for Apple TV – Info), of course. Quick instructions…

Plug your Apple TV 2 in, boot it up, and SSH into the device. Then, reference: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Install_XBMC_on_ATV2

I’m not going to go into a lot of details regarding how to get things installed and set up, but the lins above have about every piece of info you could ever want to make your ATV2/XBMC experience a dream. When you’re done picking one of many different skins, getting things set up and customized, you’ll be able to stream almost every video and audio codec known to man, organize your video, audio, and photo libraries, and present this all on your beautiful, large HDTV. You can also set up playlists for those family slideshows I was speaking about earlier.

Note, once set up, regardless of the skin used, ‘Weather’ will function when set up for your local, however, no weather condition images will be displayed. These were not included in the build or nightly builds, I believe to keep the package size small. However, if you wish to enable them, they can be harvested from the Mac edition of XBMC and installed via SSH to the Apple TV’s filesystem. Credit goes out to whoever created these, but to make things easier on you, I broke them out and packaged them up. You can download them right here: Apple TV 2 XBMC Weather Images

Once downloaded, unzip, SSH into the ATV2 and place the /128×128 and /64×64 sub-directories in: /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/temp/weather

Restart ‘Lowtide’ via nitoTV or reboot the ATV2 and when accessing the weather, you will now have nice images to match your local weather conditions.

So, long and short of it, if you wanted or were looking for a solution to get content from your PC to your TV, look no further. $99 is hard to beat, and with little effort, this small puck can do as much as or exceed the capabilities of many dedicated media streamers out in the market costing twice as much. And, it does so in a beautiful way. Don’t forget either… Even with the addition of the XBMC side of things (and this is far from the only customizable app that can be installed), the device still retains its original Apple functionality, allowing you to stream your entire iTunes audio library, play Netflix ‘Watch Instantly’ titles, YouTube clips, and more.

I can’t recommend it enough! Please feel free to leave comments and/or ask any questions… I will try and field them as time permits.

Last week at some point, when using Firefox, a XP machine I’ve got developed an issue when hitting slashdot.org,  theregister.co.uk, and other sites I commonly check out and read on a day to day basis.  When hitting  the sites, the browser would load the header and then attempt to hit 74.55.39.45, and then just sit there with the status bar reading ‘Waiting for 74.55.39.45…’.  The browser would sit in this state for minutes before finally timing out on the connection and finally rendering out the page for me.  It was amazingly annoying.  I did a lookup on the IP and it didn’t turn up much, but further browsing seemed to show that the issue would present on ANY site that contained AdSense content.

Now, yes, I might have visited some “suspect” sites in the weeks prior, and yes, I might have installed some suspect software as well.  But, one thing for sure, this needed correcting!

At first I thought it just might be Sprint’s T1 service having some temporary routing issues, but if I used ANY browser other than Firefox, the issue did not present.  Hmmm… It was local to my machine. Investigation began.

I first checked out my HOSTS file.  It was clear and didn’t show anything suspect.  I then checked out my add-ins and plugins in Firefox.  They all looked okay as well.  Regardless, I began to disable most all of them.  This did nothing to clear the issue either.  So, off to Google the problem.

Seems a bunch of people ran into this annoying malware.  It was hard to tell it was malware however as Trend, AVG, Norton, and McAfee turned up nothing.  I finally found a link that pointed me to an AV product called Prevx.  When I ran this, it returned 10 or “infected” files and registry entries.  Eight of these were not “infections” at all.  I use SlimFTP, a small FTP daemon; Prevx identified this as a problem executable along with another few benign apps.

There was two entries that were suspect though.  One, a file called, MicrosoftDocProp.dll that was located in \Common Files\Microsoft.  The file had no version info.  Pulling up a process viewer, I found the file attached to almost every running process on my box!  There was also a registry key that loaded it under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\.  Using the excellent XP utility Unlocker, I was able to delete the file outside of a PE environment and kill off the reg entry.  Of course, this shut down Explorer, as it was attached it as well.  But, after killing both the file and reg entry and rebooting, all was well.

I’m not sure that if you run into this that the file and/or the reg entry will be the same, but it definitely seems that Prevx will help you identify the culprit and help you kill it.  You can either buy Prevx and have it clean for you, or do the killing yourself, as I did after running their free download (it will scan and ID, but won’t clean until you buy a license).

In any case. . . If you run into this, I hope this helps.

It’s become clear that without titling and commenting my photographs individually, something which I simply don’t have the time to do — it’s amazing I do as much as I do on this site as it is — that a lot of the wider, Internet public, was not able to view them… Why? Well, they couldn’t find them. There was nothing that contextually made them apparent or known to the search engines, so only the people that know of this site or received mails to check the images I posted, got to see them.

I created a Flickr account almost a year ago and posted images from Harbour Island (in the Bahamas) to the account. I had all but forgot about the account until doing some work this weekend where I was finally directed back to it for whatever reason. When I got there, I found a comment from an advertising agent. She noted that her agency wished to license some of my photo work. Too bad she left the comment 7 months ago! (Not really getting back to her in a timely manner — so, the “deal is off,” I would think. I’m sure she was looking for pictures of Harbour Island and that whatever they were working on has long since been completed.) Also, I found that many of the images were tagged as a lot people’s favorite images. Go figure?! Anyhow, it was clear that the Flickr images were getting hit a lot more than those in the gallery on this page. And, isn’t the reason I post images so that people can have a look at them? Well… it is.

So, I’ve taken the time today to add some of my images to Flickr and to “join the community,” so to speak…

So, if you ever wanted to have a site or just some space out there, plus some killer tools for web design, look no further.

In addition to providing great service, with all accounts you get:

• One free domain name registration
• Disk space and bandwidth increase every week. Stay with them longer, reap the benefits. I started with 20GB of disk space and 1TB of bandwidth per month. My disk space capacity is growing by 160MB/week, and my bandwidth capacity is growing by 8GB/week!
• A billion email accounts (well, not a billion, but like 3000 and like you’ll ever use all of those?!?)
• PHP 4/5, Python, Perl, and Ruby (it’s nice having lots of options for web programming)
• FTP and Telnet Access — they’ve even started a web-based FTP so you can file manage remotely, without a FTP client installed
• MySQL databases under the same domain name — you used to have to name them differently (e.g. db.example.com, db2.example.com, etc.)
• Your own Jabber server (read about Jabber at Wikipedia)
• One-Click Installs of blog software, photo galleries, store fronts/shopping carts, forums, etc. It’s madness, I tell ya!

Anyway, I could go on with their features forever… The one-click installs do make getting a web presence as easy a clicking a couple of buttons. It’s easy enough, monkeys could do it! If you feel like trying it out, you can use the DreamHost coupon “KID” which will pay $50 of the $119.40 annual service cost! That’s almost cutting the yearly contract price in half! (That’s because I’m such a nice guy.) So, if you ever feel inclined to play around with your own domain, don’t bother looking at any other service. Use the coupon code above and give it a try. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

Click here to check out their hosting plans!

A co-worker of mine turned me onto Pandora.com a couple of weeks ago. I have to say, this music service is pretty damn impressive! I’m not a big fan of having to have a browser window open to listen to music on the ‘pute (which you have to do with this service), but Pandora does offer you a cool way of finding new music and artists amongst some genre or “mood” you’re wanting to explore. There have been a bunch of bands I wouldn’t have ever listened to or found if I hadn’t come across — or been told — about this service.

The basic gist of it is, you put in an artist or tune you like and it will, based off of thousands of other “votes from others,” direct you to a streaming station that it feels compliments what you entered. You can even send this “station” to others. Underneath, the service is powered by the Music Genome Project, the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken.

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

Over the past 5 years, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists – ranging from popular to obscure – and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy – but now that we’ve created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.

We hope you enjoy the journey.

Tim Westergren
Founder
The Music Genome Project

So, there you have it… Now go try Pandora.com for yourself and let me know what you think.

Okay, gonna bust out some geekness on ya! I’ve been using this “application” for over a year, but since RSS feeds are becoming so prevelant across the Internet, I figured it was about time to inform those out there that might not know what to do with them (and even those that do) of a cool way to manage them and actually “read” them.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication,” which infers a way to provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content. RSS, in particular, delivers this information as an XML file called a RSS feed or WebFeed. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website’s readers to track and read updates on the site using an “aggregator.” What’s an aggregator? Well, this is where Pluck comes in. It is the aggregator (or reader) — or, at least, one of them. And, a darn good one. It plugs right into your browser, is supported under both IE and FireFox, is easy to use, and it’s free. So, try it out…

Then, whenever you see an icon like the one that’s plastered on this post (or at the bottom of this page) or the letters or , click on ‘em. If you don’t have Pluck or some reader installed all you’ll see is a bunch of code you probably won’t be able to make much sense of. Installing Pluck will allow you to read and use the feeds as they were intended to be used. It’s a cool new way to organize and check for updates on the sites you visit most often. Pluck also makes things easy by allowing you to see that the site has been updated without you even having to visit it.

So, if you didn’t know what all the RSS “hype” was all about, now you do. And, you got a tool to make RSS something other than a bunch of garbled text.

Well, it took a while, but if you search for “Dave Wolf,” I finally seemed to get “The Blog” (Man, do I hate that word. In fact, I’m going to have to stop using it, I think. . .) to turn up on the first page of most all the major search engines.– you know, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, blah, blah. . . It wasn’t an easy thing to do, especially with that friggin’ astronaut that stole my name. He was a tough one to beat out! And, it’s amazing how much work you really need to do to get up there in ranking. They don’t make it easy.

Just wanted to drop a quick post about WinAmp, SHOUTcast, and a great Internet radio radio station I found back in the day.

Firstly, if you listen to MP3′s on your PC, you must use WinAmp. There’s no better decoder/player out there. It’s lightweight, feature packed, efficient, and the least invasive PC based player out there. Forget all the rest! Best thing of all, SHOUTcast was developed in conjunction with it. SHOUTcast enables people to run “MP3″ servers, giving them a way to create their own “radio” stations.

In all of my cruising the different stations, one of the best ones out there — in terms of its diversity and droppin’ the jams, is BlackDogRadio.net. No commercials, no gaiety, just a good eclectic blend of tunes. So, install WinAmp if you don’t have it, and check out the BlackDog. It’s good s%!t, man!

(Note: Other “Media Players” will also tune and play SHOUTcast stations, but WinAmp is the granddaddy of all of them, so why bother with the other?!?)

I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade to the latest version of Coppermine, the PHP, mySQL based photo gallery software I use in conjunction with the rest of the site. Was there any good reason to? Was anything broke? Did I need all of the couple new features they added? No. So, that’s why I did it. It made perfect sense. (Confusing, ain’t it?) So, anyhow. . . I upgrade it. Then, after I upgrade, I find out that the theme that took me weeks to create — to match the rest of the site — didn’t work with the new version. Not good! I started have that bad feeling you get when you know you’re screwed. Why? Because the new version modified the mySQL database — which is the foundation for the entire gallery. I made the attempt to “go backwards” and reinstall a prior version, using a version that was compatible with my theme. Things looked good at first. . . at first. About 90% of the gallery’s functionality remained intact, the other was kaput. This left me with no other choice other than rebuilding. In the end, it was all for the best as the gallery is now back up, organized better, and using a newer, more secure version of the software than it was prior. So, things are good once again.

I did loose all of the comments, ratings, and views — which, in all, was no big loss since no one even bothered to comment or rate anything. But, now that things are back up, clean, organized, & working, I ask you all a favor. . .

Go into the gallery and rate 5 pictures you like. (Click on the stars – under the intermediate sized pictures.) It’ll take you all just a couple of minutes. And, it’ll give me a good idea of which pics might be worth working a bit more on, printing, and hanging on the wall.

Your patronage is kindly appreciated.

– The Management

Just happened by Microsoft’s new map, driving direction, satellite, close-up geographical image deal, website, thingy today. They’re really trying to compete and one up ‘Google Earth‘ — which has been out for a while now and is pretty damn impressive in its own right. Got to say that Microsoft is doing a pretty good job! Google was able to get some pretty clean satellite images of most all areas of the United States (and World), but are missing out on a lot of areas — where their gamut of satellites haven’t yet taken “super detailed” images. One of Google Earth’s best places, in terms of image detail, is Cambridge, Mass. (It has something close to a 6 in. resolution — or something crazy like that.) Check it out, you can make out people on the sidewalks!

I thought that was cool until today when a work associate showed me the competition, Microsoft’s Live Local site. Damn! This site has some seriously close-up, detailed imagery — not to mention providing maps, driving directions, and satellite views. But, the super detailed stuff I’m not even sure how they did (technically), as you can get down to the ‘Bird’s Eye View’ which has up to a 20 yard resolution and is in 3/4 perspective! Google Earth has the ability to change perspective, but it’s a “faked,” flattened view. Check out Meg and the Kid’s crib from the Microsoft site:

(It’s much more impressive larger — on the site.) But, nutty! Again, no idea how they are getting these types of images. I don’t know of any kind of satellite that is producing these things. Check out your address and see what your neighborhood/house looks like to a bird (make sure to click on the ‘Bird’s Eye View’ on the left, top of the frame). Technology wars… The wars are going to produce some pretty neat things for us masses over the years.

If you haven’t by now heard of Wikipedia.org by now or, at least, checked it out, it’s about high time you did. I have never found something on the Internet to be so useful, practical, and relational than that of Wikipedia. Well, Internet Movie Database comes in somewhere not too far behind (they get props in that I’m a movie buff and all), but a movie database is not really going to provide much “practical” knowledge. But, I do know a hell of a lot more movie trivia now, so you’d be advised to keep me away from the pink categories when playing Trivial Pursuit.

I went off on a tangent there, but then that’s what the Wikipedia is all about. You go to look up something — even the most obscure stuff and 99% of time you’ll find something. When reading about a subject, you’ll be given a thousand (okay, well maybe not a thousand) links to other subjects directly or sometimes not so directly to other subjects. Sometimes a simple reference turns into an hour long study session. In that time you might have learned three or four things you didn’t know the previous day.

I think I heard it put best as…

I think perhaps Wikipedia is one of humanities greatest achievements.

… and, I have to agree, if not just to piss off FatKidd, who is highly suspect of its Wiki (Wiki carries it’s own definition — look it up!) nature. For some, the architecture is just too open. Anyone can add, edit, or modify the content of the “encyclopedia.” Yeah, you can imagine that with this being the case, there has to be a lot of false, inaccurate crap posted. Well, not really. For every one person that posts crap, another comes along and corrects and/or deletes it, so in the end, it all balances out. And, for a company/site with only 3 permanent employees, it really is a remarkable achievement. Check out the founder’s personal appeal and explanation of the site:

Jimmy Wale’s Idea of the Wikipedia

So, use it, support it, and see why it is becoming one of the most visited, talked about sites on the Net. And who said a combined effort from the people of the world couldn’t produce and organize something so successful and practical — and not have to be managed by some higher authority, other than themselves? Gives me signs that there’s hope for this world yet — maybe — it’s possible — kinda…

UPDATE – Jan. 20, 2006

As I said, Wikipedia can be one of the greatest resources or one of the best places to confuse, mislead, liable, or slander. It’s the people of the world that must police each other. There have been some good stories recently. Must share them (they told me it was good to “share” when I was young):

• Wikipedia Science 31% “less accurate” Than Britannica’s
• There’s No Wikipedia Entry for ‘Moral Responsibility’
• Wikipedia Editing Hobby Goes Nationwide — in England

So, pros, yes… cons, yes. Will evil ultimately triumph good — or visa versa? Who knows. But, it’ll be fun to watch. Research suggests that the site’s contect continues to just get worse and worse (as in more inaccurate) by the day. But, at present, Wikipedia sure beats the hell out of the ‘World Book Encyclopedia’ I had to use as a kid in the 80′s — even if it led me to have a few of my “facts” wrong on my “The Capital of Oklahoma: Oklahoma City” paper I turned in in 5th grade.

Guess it comes down to a personal choice. Use it, knowing you’ll need to confirm most of what you inquire about. Or don’t, and loose all that knowledge — good or bad — that you could have otherwise filled your brain’s gray cells with.