My iBook died 3 weeks ago.
Deceased. Expired. Demised. Kicked the bucket. Shuffled off its mortal coil. Run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile. An EX iBOOK.

It worked one minute then froze. On repeated restarts it just booted and then hung when the GUI came up. For a while it worked in single user mode, so I did all the usual tests and fixes. Then it would just get to a Blue screen of Death.
Wait a minute. Isn’t the Blue Screen of death a Windows thing?

I took it to my local Apple centre and after they did some tests pronounced that its Logic Board is Kaput. And, of course, it is NOT covered by the Apple Logic Board Repair Program.

“Would I like to repair it?” Cost AU$1200 for parts alone. A new iBook 1.33MHz is not much dearer so I said “Thanks a lot Apple. No.”

So eBay for "iBook 800 Logic Board". AU$350+ from sites in the USA and the UK. I will not bother with French or German sites. Plus freight.Plus GST. Plus Johnny Howards Xmas present and a hand out to various other free loaders.

Should I buy a newer, faster iBook on eBay?

I miss some ex-demos which go over my "budget".

Then I decide to do a Google on "iBook G4 Logic Board". Wow. Lots of hits. It appears many iBook G4 owners are discovering that their prized possession seem to croak it just after the warranty expires.



So I replaced my searches on eBay with "PowerBook G4 15in". I found one at an Apple Centre in Sydney. Supposedly a "demo" machine. 1.5MHz. The just superseded “combo drive” model. They would give me a 3 year Apple Care Warranty and transfer the 1GB of ram from my old iBook into the shiny "new" PowerBook.

I week later the logic board of this shiny "new" PowerBook has failed. It started by just going to sleep all on its own. A look at the Log files revealed this

…. “power management: received emergency overtemp signal”.

In other words a temperature sensor is malfunctioning and putting it to sleep. I know it is not overheating. It is only warm to the touch. The fan has not even come on.

The shiny new PowerBook is totally unusable.

Also in the log files I found that the AMS sensor (Apple’s Motion Sensor) is also misbehaving. It appears in the log files and in single user boot with various ERROR messages. Now this could be a software problem. Maybe Apple just didn’t get around to updating the driver in 10.4.3.

I wonder how many other PowerBook owners don’t realise their shiny pieces of wonder will not be protected in the case of a fall, as Apple’s advertising suggests.

Life Can Get Bumpy
Apple equips PowerBook computers with an extra measure of data protection. Should an unexpected elbow send your PowerBook flying, the Sudden Motion Sensor technology built into every PowerBook detects the accelerated movement or sudden position change — and instantly parks the heads on your hard drive. Once your PowerBook is level again, it unlocks the drive heads automatically.

Am I pi**ed with Apple?

I don’t know. My Quicksilver G4 has never missed a beat. With its Sonnet 1.4MHz processor it is fast enough for most things I do.

So the PowerBook is back at the Apple Centre awaiting Apple’s pleasure.

Would I buy another Macintosh?

I hate Windows with an undying hatred. I dont want free viruses, trojans, key loggers and to have to reinstall the OS every six months.

Do I have any choice?

I read with interest the tale about Martin Hennessy-Smith’s efforts to get an OCR package working on a Mac in icon in today's Sydney Morning Herald


I have been using Macs for years.


OCR and scanning in general is probably one of the greatest weaknesses in Mac OS X.
It is because most Hardware manufacturers spend their resources developing for Windows and leave nothing for Mac OS X, and probably Linux as well.


My advice, if you wish to send this on to Martin.


1. The only decent OCR software for the Mac is OmniPage Pro from ScanSoft.

2. City Software has it but it is terribly expensive at AU$850.

3. OmniPage Pro for OS X is an updated version of the previous software and can be annoying to use. It also relies on the Scanner manufacturer having twain drivers that will work in OS X. I ditched my Firewire Umax scanner for this reason. Umax is no longer able to support OS X.

4. In frustration I downloaded and tried a piece of shareware called VueScan.

VueScan is to Mac OS X scanning what the Rosetta stone is to Egyptology and encryption. VueScan recognises lots, and lots and lots of scanners. No need for troublesome twain drivers or partially working manufacturers software.

What is more VueScan has basic OCR recognition built in. I have tried it and been very, very impressed. It does not have the bells and whistle as OmniPage Pro but the cost is incomparable. What is more I really like the way it outputs scanned text as just plain old text with no formatting. You can then drop it into Word and do what you want with it.

The developer of VueScan, Ed Hamrick will respond promptly to your queries, and even modifies the product to fix any fault you find or in response to suggestions.

How much is VueScan? US$49.95 for a one year subscription.

Go to http://www.hamrick.com for more details.



I would not be without it.

Billy Carts

See the Latest Photos and plans here

If you're after simple plans to build a sturdy timber billycart check this out Timber.net.au - that one's not too hard to make. There's different plans here - Instructions to Build a Billy Cart. but I've been trying to find drawings for a cart we made in the Sixties which had a foot-brake and a steering wheel. It was a class act. The "brake" was a length of board hanging off the seat at the back with strips of bike tyre nailed to it. When you put your foot on the simple lever-type brake pedal it pulled a cable attached to the board which acted on the wheels. Back wheels only. The steering was made from broom stick with old towel wrapped around it and sashcord going to the front wheels. I'm going to try and make one for my little boy so I'll give you a video on it. Come back and check this site (RSS me)

 Bunnings are in on the act as well.

How to build a billy cart

Bladeschool goes to the other extreme.

Here you buy ready built, sophisticated, shiny chromed billycarts. Everything for the pampered child.

Our ABC has a site dedicated for every child to design and build their own billycart.

Called Rollercoaster this site has an animation which you can click on to build your own virtual billycart.

"Click on different billycart parts in the garage to design your own billycart"

At Ararat Community College in Victoria, year 7 students make use of materials they have scrounged for a variety of purposes ... all in the name of Clean up Australia.

BILLY CART

"We came up with the idea because we were going to make a go-cart but we decided to make a Billy Cart because it’s easier we also knew we had materials at home.

First we built the frame out of wood and plaster board. Then we welded the back axle, which was made out of metal, and then we put the wheels on and then painted it light blue it looks great. Then we cut off the rope because it was too short and we still need another wheel for the front, and we are about to put the seat on it so we can drive it.

The materials we used where Nails, Meta, Wheels, Paint, Chair, Plasterboard, Rope."

Scouts go Totally Wild on Billy Carts!

"1st Dural Scouts sped around the tracks for Network Ten’s Totally Wild, as they demonstrated how to build, how to ride, and how to race billy carts in an episode to be shown later this year."

I was in the Sea Scouts (1st Bayview) when I was a kid. We never built Billy carts but we "did up" old boats. I was always muckin' about in boats. I even built a canoe out of corrugated iron once.

Tom and I built two of them. We bent the sheets of iron length ways and nailed or screwed the ends to bits of 4 by 2 timber. Then we poured melted tar around the timbers to make them watertight. Voila! Instant canoe. ... Except the iron had come off someone's roof and still had some nail holes, which necessitated more melted tar. Eventually, using Dad's New Guinea "Headhunter" paddles, Tom and I paddled up to the headwaters of Pittwater and made our way deep into the magic mangrove forest, near where Pittwater High now stands.

Alas the mangroves are gone now. Along with children's sense of adventure and exploration. It is easier to watch Discovery Channel than read Swallows and Amazons.

There is even a book called "How to build a tin canoe". which you can get from Amazon.

When I looked up the author Robb White it appears he has lost the copyright of the book or something. No email, mobile phone or AMEX.

"There are several Robb Whites but I am the one who writes boat stories for various magazines and who wrote the book "How to Build a Tin Canoe." I am not allowed to sell the book because of some legal rigmarole but you can get it here."

I used to make model boats too. I would get a hunk of oregon, shape it into a boat with a saw and plane, and use dad's chisels to hollow it out. I will never know how I didn't put a chisel through my hand. I could never get the walls of the hull thin enough with the tools at my disposal so they were sometimes too heavy.

Once I used one of the wooden hulls as a mould and covered it with paper mache, which I then painted with dad's oil-based Dulux house paint to make it waterproof. After making some wicked sails out of nylon shower curtain and a mast from balsa I took it down to Bayview for a sail. It was fantastic, except I had miscalculated how much lead to put in its keel, which was sealed tight inside. So she got a bit of a lean on in a blow, but was amazingly fast upwind in a moderate, morning type breeze. No good in a black north easter though!

I wonder what happened to that boat. I suppose it got chucked out when we moved to Mosman.

Getting back to serendipity. It seems to me we are losing something nowadays. The kids I teach have little imagination. It is just so easy to find information on the net or TV. Although J.K. Rowling is to be applauded for her Harry Potter character and the reincarnation of reading as a pastime, too few will actively seek solutions to problems in an intuitive and creative way.

When I built billy carts as a kid it was out of whatever was lying around. Stuff we found as flotsam and jetsam in the bay or "chucked out" by others. There was no Bunnings to buy a ready-made palette of all you needed for your project.

What do you need?

Some wheels with axles from a pram or some such , a bit of wood as the backbone, two shorter bits of wood to mount the wheels, and a box or something to sit in, and some rope with which to steer it.

Thats your basic billycart.

Nail the axles to the short bits of wood. Nail one bit of wood to one end of the backbone.

Drill a hole through the other end of the backbone, and through the centre of the other "axle".

Bolt the second axle through the backbone.

Nail the box to the end with the fixed axle.

Drill two holes through the ends of the moveable axle and tie the rope to it so that it forms a loop which can be help by a child sitting in the box.

Find a hill. This is not much good in Central Oz, but in Kananook Avenue, Bayview, it was just fantastic. A real bender.

I remember running our billycarts down the hill in Kananook Avenue, Bayview when I was a kid?
And I wondered at how steep Lombard Street in San Francisco was when I visted in 1986? Well they run a "derby" down one of their hills.
Go here to see some slides.
Our billycarts back in the 60's were made from stuff we dragged back from the "dump" or from out of the Bay. Or stuff our fathers found at work.

Source: http://www.lib.mq.edu.au/readingthefamilyalbum/picman/backyard/4_10.html
I got carried away once and built this ginormous car-like billy cart with a steering wheel and about 4 feet wide. It even had brakes, a plank with old tyre bocks nailed to it which rubbed on the back wheels. Unfortunately it was so heavy it needed to be towed up the hill behind someone's Hillman or Morris Minor.
 

A Morris convertible just like Malcolm's!

Part of a block of flats collapses in the Lane Cove after a large hole opened up in the ground. Photo: Jon Reid
During the week a hole appeared below a block of flats in Longueville Rd, Lane Cove, above the new Lane Cove Motorway tunnel. It gave the media a great time. Obvious comparisons to the Cross City Tunnel debacle. Sydney Morning Herald
They even managed to get a story about a Cockatiel that was trapped in the crumbling building, starving and dehydrating. But the cops got a bomb disposal robot to pluck said little bird to safety.
It was a bit like that wonderful story on Yes Minister about Benji the dog who had strayed into a mine field. The PM got the Army at huge taxpayer expense to fly a chopper in with Special Forces to rescue the little darling.

The same week saw Little Johnny convince porky Kim and the sycophantic "Premiers" that there is a "clear and present terrorist danger" and we had better have these new terrorist laws. So we woke yesterday to a new regime. Sounds eerily like Hitler's dissolving of parliament to protect German citizens from the threat of the communists in 1933.
At the same time Little Johnny introduced Industrial Relations legislation which will eventually strip workers of conditions they have fought hard for over the last 100 years. The stupid "battlers" voted this lying little man into office. Their kids will be the ones who will suffer in the future.

" What weekend?" "Sunday? What's so special about Sunday?" "You don't want to work on xmas day. Get another job."
iTunes music store finally opened in Oz last week. I have had a look but not bought anything yet. Lots of classical ... a pleasant surprise. And plenty of Oz rock music. Maybe I can build up a play list of Oz music now without paying for all those songs I have never heard of.

Optus installed Digital TV for me yesterday. I now get everything in digital including about 20 radio stations, including ABC. I can order a movie from FoxTel Box Office and pay as I watch it, which is cool. Most of the movies are yank rubbish, but I looked at Oliver Stone's mushy Alexander yesterday. Overacted pulp. Similar to Troy, or whatever it was.

click to enlargeJust assembled my brand new mountain bike.
I bought a cheapie off eBay. $170. Brand new. Dual suspension. 1021 gears. And I just went for a fang around the Bay.

I knew I was out of nick. But .... Is that what those muscles do?

Now really. It was just an impromptu thing. My mate turned up on his bike for a cuppa. And I was searching eBay for something or other when I saw these mountain bikes.
I thought "When did I get my first bike? For xmas when I was 8 or 9 I think. I pulled it apart that many times. I even remember losing all the ball bearings out of the wheel once and had to buy some more. No gears. 28 inches I think.
Another time I came down the hill on Pittwater Road near Loquat Valley School. I was going much, much too fast. I left the road and completely demolished a For Sale sign outside the "Purple People Eaters" house. The Bayview ambulance turned up (remember the Bayview Ambulance? A Daimler no less) and then mom, who freaked out at the thought of the Ambulance bill. So I was taken to Morrie Brennans to be Patched up. Lots and lots of stitches. I hobbled around on crutches for weeks. I remember getting some sort of special provision to do my Intermediate Certificate Exams. The other disappointment was I had to miss out on the Sea Scout Jamboree.

I bought another bike in the 70's from KMart. An awful thing. Racing bike with skinny, skinny wheels and derailleurs which always seemed to jam ... or the chain would come off. I finally unloaded it when I kept shearing the crank's cotter pins. Stupid things.

Years later I picked up a very rusty old thing at a garage sale. $5 I think. Another racer which gave my neck hell. It went up to Byron Bay with my brother. He had some idea about using it to get to a job or somesuch.

Ane now to this wonderful mountain bike. 21 gears! Suspension front and rear.

I zoomed down the street and went straight down some steps. Just like my old Moto Cross bike. Except instead of 360cc of raw 2 stoke power, this has two fifty-something legs for power.

Philip Lambe
Sydney

click to enlarge

FROM PHILIP LAMBE IN SYDNEY:

Once a year, usually in August, the famous OREILLYS GUESTHOUSE in the Lamington National Park in Southern Queensland offers a special fortnight of activities called "Off The Beaten Track". Usually their activities make use of the many well-built walking tracks surrounding the guest house in the rain forest. But during Off The Beaten Track, walks are organised off the tracks.
A couple of years ago I spent a week up there and did some wonderful walks.

My first was to The Lost World, a plateau surrounded by cliffs straight out of Conan Doyle's novel. We walked the border track for a while then branched off and walked along the rim of the Tweed volcano to the west, eventually turning north again until we descended a ridge to a saddle. Then scrambling and rock hauling up a very narrow and steep ridge to the plateau. A walk through virgin rainforest took us to a little waterfall with views over towards O'Reilly's. We descended by a similarly dramatic narrow ridge beside some cliffs and eventually got to our beer- stocked minibus for an exciting drive back up the Duck Creek road back to the guest house.
The second OTBT walk I did was over to Binna Burra. Not via the border track system but straight across the valleys. Once again through trackless rainforest and across two major ridges with beautiful rivers at the bottom of the valleys. We walked beneath some awesome and magestic Hoop Pines at one stage. They must have been hundreds of years old and towered over the forest canopy as the main emergents.

Finally I did the walk I had wanted to do since childhood. To the wreck of the Stinson aeroplane as told in GREEN MOUNTAINS. I had read all about the way Bernard O'Reilly had set out to look for the downed plane based on a hunch that it had crashed somewhere in the Macpherson Ranges way back when I was a boy. There is little left of the plane nowadays and it is the longest day's walk I have ever done, but it was well worth it.

We set off at 4:30 am under torchlight and made our way back up to the border again. Then west along the rim of the caldera with glimpses of the sun coming up on Mount Warning and the white tower of Byron Bay lighthouse in the distance. Lunch was in a clearing in the forest with a short walk to the cliffs of the caldera. After lunch it was down, down, down into a creek system with the wreck just off the ridge line. How Bernard found it is just amazing. There is a little plaque there with the names of those who perished. To find out more go to the story HERE.