here’s the what we saw:

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talk about the past calling… it looks like Apple intended to upgrade the Mac Pro a while ago and FORGOT! an article from www.electronista.com lists XEON processors that speed bump the Mac Pro into “the new” category as the W3565 and E5645. these CPUs were released in 2009 and 2010. here are the exact release dates according to the wikipeidia page on the XEON family of CPUs:

W3565 released 2009-11-01
E5645 released 2010-03-16

links the Intel processor specs…

W3565 4 core XEON
E5645 6 core XEON

the coolest thing about the iPhone camera is that it’s the only camera that we have that gets better as time goes by. just about every other camera is feature complete when it comes off the assembly line. the things it can do are the things it does and that is it. there may be a firmware update to fix things that don’t work but we don’t see them often. and we do it’s unlikely that there would be a new “mode” to try out. the iPhone doesn’t work that way. there are thousands of camera apps extending the camera into something more. things like panoramas, high dynamic range, visual effects and 3D are all apps that take a normal snap to extend it’s interpretation.

making your iThing a better camera is not really as simple as downloading a new app and pressing the shutter. to say that everything is different is an understatement. for example the first time playing with 360 Panorama made a horrible image. the second time wasn’t much better. it took some practice to get a panorama that was something worth sharing. all of the apps below are like that. it won’t take you long to get the hang of things but you don’t want to have your first experience with your new “camera” to be the time of important event.

here are some of our favorite iPhone and iPod Touch applications.

Camera Plus vs Camera+ is two different cameras.

360 Panorama is a very free form pano tool. it’s like painting. hold snap move repeat.

DMD Panorama from Dermanda forces the camera to be vertical. as you move to the next stitch watch the two ghosts come together and then it snaps (how zen).

Plastic Bullet and Classic Insta have two very different goals. one of these is slow. the other is fast. one makes gorgeous printable snaps. the other is classic crap cam emulator.

Plastic Bullet from Red Giant is 2 bucks – err 1 buck for a limited time. it’s very slow but makes a nice effect. use it after the snaps are taken for better results.

CIassic INSTA simulates crap cams from the 70s. it has the same 19 effects but put the snap on the different borders is based the “camera” being used to snap. the looks are are frameless, polaroid LAND camera, 90 something and square framed. it’s fast enough so you can just shot and go.

related to the INSTA is the Classic SAMP which emulates a LOMO Action sampler or LOMO Super Sampler. you simply must know this film cam! pull the cord to prime the shutters. snap, snap, snap, snap! unlike the film cameras with the SAMP you get all the cams in one: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 9 taking almost full rez shots!

HDR FX is a very simple HDR photo taker. click to take the scene then choose the processed look from three modes: sneery, sky, ground. it’s to you to save the image when you are finished. there is also a free version.

HDR Photo Camera is a SLOW! or maybe SLOW-ISH! it is an ad supported (how iWeird) HDR maker that makes you save your processed shot. there are no post processing choices, you just get HDR. remember to save.

Camera Fun FREE is a free fun house camera that offers Mirror, Pinch and Sketch modes that the kids will use until there is no more power left in the battery.

other things mentioned:

the story of the making of Glif is a fun read.

make your pocket Canon do more with CHDK.

cover photo is the pigeon taken with a iPhone 1.

corrections: John got the flip cam reference wrong from the show before. 1080HD wasn’t the norm. neither was 720HD. it was standard video (640×480). HD Flip cams didn’t ship until some time later.

so my friends have posted the above which challenges when (and if) the world will see a new Mac Pro.

kids, Apple has been “getting out of the high end business” for a long time. the handwriting has been on the wall for this product for more than a year. but it goes back further than that. first the xServe RAID was axed, then the Xserve line, recently training programs for IT professionals were discontinued, Final Cut Pro Server was dismantled… you can see the trend. there isn’t easy money to be made from this section of Apple’s business so it’s as good as goners.

when you are charging hundreds of bucks an hour the workstation in front of you better look expensive. I’m very careful about hiding what tools I use from my clients. for years I made sure that my clients did not know that a MacBook Pro was the thing I was editing their video on. especially since they were using the zact same Mac. it’s a perception thing. it’s why I kept an old Mac G5 tower around. as nobody questioned it’s bigness, or what it was. stick a second display on the desk for a more “Pro” look even if you don’t use it in dual mode.

personally, I’m all too happy to see the Mac Pro go away. the box was way too expensive for starters. when you compare (yeah, yeah, yeah the whole Apple and Orange thing) high end offerings from other companies to the Mac Pro you’ll find much more from the price/performance curve “from the dark side.” dark side?! bah! this is where the true development is right now. if Apple is doing anything with USB3, SATA6, high end GPU it’s news to the world. yes, Thunderbolt (aka LightPipe) is pretty cool as tech goes but I’m thinking this is an eventual dead end unless the industry in general adopts it. it’s been a year… where are the machines from the other kids. missing that’s where.

the Apple Tax is not worth paying considering the primary tools of content creators run the EXACT same on other computers. the fact is, these tools run better on non-Apple hardware. don’t forget that the options for a high end video card for Mac Pro is a THREE YEAR OLD card which might have been “unquestionably number one” in 2009. but why is this the only option? there are at least 13 newer “workstation” class cards on the market that won’t work on a Mac. so there’s that problem.

the lack of upgrades over the last 2 years makes me question the long term of using Mac’s in my company. are Mac’s that I buy today going to go the distance like they have in the past? for some tasks this is easy to answer. yes. they will. a Mac Mini, for what it is, is a wonderful box albeit over priced by $200. but FireWire 800 is aging (meaning it’s slow) and the cases to support it are stupid expensive. and Thunderbolt things are stupider expensive. the freaking cable is $50. this matters when you have to buy 5 of something. I’d rather spend the money smart.

anyway, the nail in the coffin for me is the switch to Adobe CS tools for video and audio editing. I did this over a year ago after FCX was demo’d at NAB. and I cannot be happier. Premiere Pro and Audition have performed beyond my expectations. and if I switched to a workstation class Windows box it would go go even better.

so the only thing that holds me back from completely jumping is that one last wait and see. maybe, just maybe that new box will be the box that keeps me around for one more go. sigh. maybe it will be soon. eventually I’ll be disappointed and that will be the day I order a box of parts, I’ll say goodbye to the Mac and… laughs, of course I’ll still use a Mac, duh. I use all kinds of other tools in my day to day so it will be a long time before a Mac disappears from my desktop completely but it’s days soon to be numbered.

for me it’s about momentum. and if I get stopped, if there’s the slightest roadblock, I will go home. at least that’s what I’m like today. I really did try to get to the show. I tried twice. and it would be easy for me to criticize the show planners. but you see, it’s me that is the problem. I hate crowds, I can’t walk far, I get tired easily, I can’t see up making talking to the people difficult if not impossible sometimes. and if I do make the weekend of it because the world was in alignment I pay dearly for the experience for days afterword.

so I bailed. and instead of just gawking at the spectacle that is 3D printers, robots, nerd talks, and lots more walking around I spent the rest day hacking. and got far. it’s pretty easy to forget just how rewarding an afternoon of soldering or programming or writing or coding can be. especially if it’s nothing related to the normal day to day.

here’s the article that talks about how a kid found out that he wasn’t the only one after he spent the day at the Faire. I wish that as a kid I could have fond my kind of nerds.

TinkerCAD is a 3D maker tool that works inside of a modern browser.

the SF Gate (aka cronicle) has a series of pictures that give you an idea of the crowd that descended on San Mateo.

FORA TV has almost all the talks you didn’t make it to hear.

Zoa Chimerum jewelry

Tapigami

R2D2 builders

WALL-E builders

Adam Savage 2012 Maker Faire — Why We Make

Chris Anderson talks about making Autonomous Quadracopter drones. he packed ‘em in compared to the 30-40 people that listened in 2010.

more information can be found at DIY Drones.

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it’s better than the circus, the local carnival or a parade. the Maker Faire has been held at the San Mateo County Fairground since 2006. the event has changed over the years. it gets bigger adding more vendors, talks, exhibits and interests to a growing crowd that doesn’t seem so much like a crowd because everyone is there to learn and enjoy. some of the Faire seems more like a trade show than a faire and maybe that’s not a bad thing because it means that ideas have turned into businesses that are thriving.

lots of people see the Maker Faire as a technology event. but it’s not just tech. half of it is traditional crafts like sewing, screen printing, pottery, jewelry and many other “made by hand” things. all of these skills also translate into the same skills you need for working on robots, cars, or making in general. when I was growing up sewing was something “girls” did thus I didn’t want any part of it until I got into backpacking trips where the sewing skills made things to help the trips work better.

I’ve been to the MF since the beginning. and while I have skipped some years (notably last year) I have plan that keeps me wanting to go back. and you’ll want to make your own plan because every expedition needs a plan. I think of the two day weekend as an expedition because there is a lot of ground cover and because it’s so big I want to make sure I know where things are before I get there because once you’re there it’s too late. you’ll see when you get there.

load your phone
there’s an app for the Maker Faire that works on iPhone and Android. it’s supposed to contain the schedule of the stages, has a map of where things are and is a gateway to other information. sigh. it might work better if it was self contained. but it’s web based. meaning there will be slow load times given the fact that 40,000 nerds and geeks will crush the surrounding coverage. but you don’t need that app.

copy / paste / collapse the information on the main schedule page of the makerfaire.com and paste that into the notes section on your phone. make a page for Saturday and for Sunday. that way you’ll scroll less. take a screen shot of the Map, and drag that to a photo album so you can open it more quickly than a PDF. of course you could always schedule events that you MUST see in your Calendar with alarms set to remind you before they happen. 15 minutes is a warning is plenty of time to get to anywhere on the grounds.

get there early
it opens at 10AM but that doesn’t mean you need to wait until 10AM to travel. the road to parking lot was full enough that it took 40 minutes from the tail end to land in parking lot. so plan around that slowness. for example if you really want to see Adam Savage on Sunday at 11AM you really need to leave… by working it backwards. 11AM talk. 20 minutes to walk from the car to the hall. 40 minutes in traffic. 50 minutes travel time. 20 minutes for coffee and donuts. 2 hours 10 minutes is how much time you need to travel to ensure seeing half a Mythbuster.

another reason to get there early is that the workshops, hands on and kid building things fill up. but worse is that sometimes they run out of materials. if you want to fly a rocket, learn to solder or be part of other makes it’s best to be the early bird. I have never seen a more sad kid than the time I saw the volunteer say to him, “I’m sorry. We’re out of rockets.”

wear
think of the Maker Faire the same way as you think about hiking. it’s a lot of walking, standing and some of it is outside. if you wear the same gear when you walk the Marin Headlands or Point Bonita Lighthouse you’ll be fine. if you wear the same clothes that you wear to make things be sure that your shoes are up to the task. if you need it spelled out here’s the short list: sunglasses, hat (optional but some of it is outside), layers depending on the predicted micro climate, walking shoes, pants with big or many pockets.

tech
yes. bring your camera (or just use your phone), video camera, dSLR, Lomo, sound recorder, laptop (it better be something light weight). there will be lots of tech around you too. so don’t be shy about getting right in there with your tech. my take on this is try to travel light. take “a camera” not two. if your devices need lots of power consider extra batteries or make or buy a booster pack. while there is lots of power around the fairgrounds don’t assume that you can just plug in to what you find.

what to take
there are lots of things to take away from the Faire like flyers, brochures, posters, books, kits, kites, parts, toys, anything that you can buy… it’s all interesting right? thing is that interesting brochure becomes another and another then pretty soon you have a pound of paper in your bag. there are two things that I like to do to avoid paper: take a picture and make a note in your phone or notebook. all this stuff is on the web so you can avoid taking any paper with you at all.

eat
before going on an expedition you should start that journey with a good breakfast. or at least a bagel and an apple. but don’t worry if you can’t because you run out of time there is plenty of things to eat. just about every space between the buildings has food of all kinds. you name it, it’s there. and none of it seemed outrageously priced. and for the planning ahead minded person there’s nothing stopping you from packing a launch for your backpack. or load the trunk cooler and feed the whole family.

drink water
there is water, water every where. the thing I noticed is that there are drinking fountains in almost all the buildings. bring your refillable vessel or bring plastic throw away bottles with you. there is always water for sale. sometimes that nicer because it’s ice cold.

carry
a backpack is only going to make you miserable by the end of the day. so if you take a backpack with you make sure it’s more empty.

Saturday night
if you have the time stick around for the things that are set on fire.

don’t worry
there are so many things going on that you won’t be able to see everything. interesting talks sometimes overlap one another. it happens. the good news is that most everything is recorded so that everyone around the world can see. that way if you get stuck in traffic you’ll still be able to hear that guy. some of the demos run both days. meaning you can get a better seat tomorrow because you’ll have a better idea of what to expect.

look
it’s layers and layers. as #10 mentions there is so much to see that you won’t. but don’t skip over something because it “looks” boring. the table that held the most heavy metal ball in the world looked just like that. it was just a table with a guy standing next to a silver ball that looked like a baseball. everyone knows what a baseball weighs. it was a real surprise picking up this object. cool right? practically everyone missed it.

http://reprap.org/wiki/Clonedel

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Craig Severson explained his backup system one time. it seems over the top until you hear, “I can take that drive over there, plug in, reboot and I’m back to five minutes ago.”

I needed a backup device that transparent like Apple Time, was more cost effective then a appliance NAS drive, give me the most storage for my money and it had to be something I could self repair. I ended up building a 10 terabyte server powered by FreeNAS for under a $1000.

the problem that caused the need for this project presented itself in a rude way. a hard drive died inside a MacBook Pro which had a backup but it wasn’t up-to-date. this was caused by the movable nature of notebook computers. you have to remember to plug things in so that other things can happen automatically. the back up drive for Time Machine won’t work otherwise. and because nobody thinks like, “hey, so I’m going to lunch I guess I will plug this in so it will do it’s thing.” we have to make sure that backups just happen.

which brings up an ugly rule: the only time you think about backups is when you need one.

the “backup” that you make is really only as good as four things: how fast you can use it, how simple it is to do, how cheap it is to use it and finally how redundant redundant it is. generally when a drive dies there a few files that a person really wants now if they had access to them now they could keep working. it’s usually something like my bookthesispaper, pictures, music, project and email. and not always in that order. and when it’s borked is not the time to know if your backup software is doing it’s job. you have to check it once in a while and even better you have to test restore on some random hardware to make sure it’s really working.

the G4 NAS drive MK3 is still doing work in the office but is showing it’s age. it will be forever stuck at Mac OS X 10.4, has limited options for SATA cards, and if it dies it will stay dead because it’s 12 years old. even though it’s old I won’t retire it because as long as it’s running it will stay running. think mighty machine that serves files.

it would be easy enough to use a Time Capsule. but a quick bit of math showed that the office would outgrow it. it’s not really made for a work group / office environment. but there are other problems that made me dismiss it. you can read why I’m not just using a Time Capsule here.

a better product are mini servers called NAS drives. these offer redundant media options, cross platform file sharing, printer sharing, even music sharing without lots of complicated configuration to go through. commercial products like ReadyNAS and Drobo are interesting. the ReadyNAS is a stand alone box that connects to your network. while the Drobo can either attach to a computer or operate stand alone with an additional network adapter. you can buy either product with or without drives. for my application either would work and I was interested until I priced it out. either box with no drives cost about double what a basic motherboard, case, processor and RAM cost.

philosophy
as grown up as these products are it’s still to you to make sure what you are buying is compatible. in the past Macs and NAS drives didn’t get along. the file system didn’t support Mac names as they were tuned to work specifically with Windows. this would cause files saved on the server to become corrupt. they would look like they were there showing the proper file size and icon so all looked well until you actually tried to open the file. the buying tip here is if the NAS only supports SMB keep looking.

there are some things that I know about technology products 1) support really doesn’t help you unless its to issue an RMA number 2) drives fail 3) long term and proprietary do not go hand in hand. 4) while the parts inside aren’t any different then parts you can get yourself you don’t know if the company cheap’d out to cost reduce their product. if a power supply goes bad I should not have to wait a week for a new one. and if a drive goes bad it needs to be replaced now. 9-14 days doesn’t cut it. if I don’t have to haggle with support about getting these things fixed I’m even happier.

remember my goal is to get as much for my money as possible. so I’m willing to forgo company technical support and possible future repair from a single source. besides, building a box is fun.

the downside of rolling your own box is there are lots of unknowns. will this work with that and for how long. fortunately we don’t have to rely on “press” reviews of products. the users community that feedback on sites like NewEgg are beyond helpful. sorting by 1 stars to see potential problems as well as looking at 5 star reviews for praise. both should be evaluated with your specific requirements in mind. what doesn’t work for somebody’s application might be perfect for another.

software is another consideration that must be understood before buying a bunch of parts. I ruled out Windows right away because of cost. adding this OS would put the box I was building near the same cost as the other commercial solutions. there are lots of choices of open source software. Open Solaris, FreeBSD and Linux are all server capable. of course these OS may be beyond your skill set. the command line isn’t obvious to everyone. fortunately there are two projects that make it easy to get a file server running without having to using a CLI.

those projects are OpenFiler and FreeNAS. installing either is as simple as downloading an ISO, burning a CD, booting it on the target machine and following the instructions. which is as simple as it gets. both tools auto-detect network interfaces and hard drives. all you need to do is enter a fixed IP address and decide which format you want your storage drives to use.

we know that open source software can be a pain to work with because of sparse documentation and unfinished features. fortunately both projects have documentation that is good enough to help you get setup in case you can’t figure it out on your own. I installed both tools on my hardware before deciding on either.

the build
based on my research and testing I made a 10 terabyte server for under a thousand bucks. it’s been running for a while now so I have hindsight about the build, care and feeding and what I would change. here’s the specs:

SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPE-HF-O Flex ATX Server Motherboard
2 gig of RAM up’d from 512M because ZFS complained

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
a 4G SATA SSD based on a Compact Flash Card

Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Computer Case
power supply / whisper fans
powered by FreeNAS

building the 10T wasn’t any harder then making a PC from a box of parts. it’s simple. attach a motherboard, bolt in hard drives, and connect everything to a power supply. something I’ve done a hundred times. it was built and posting in less than 30 minutes. installing the OS on the compact flash drive didn’t work when I tried doing it on a Mac. however, it worked without a hitch when I did the install it from a proper PC. it took about 5 minutes

so there were problems right off. which I attribute to the nature of open source software. it’s not always obvious how to set it up! I did the install of the OS 4 times before settling on a version that worked. I partially blame this on the documentation. OSS doc is notoriously out of date. for example the use of “compact flash cards” was discouraged because they fail after a number of writes. except modern CF cards don’t suffer the same way cards used to.

performance issues and solutions
the next steps included formatting the drives, pooling them for ZFS, making users and then creating Time Machine mounts for all. between the false starts and learning how not to do it I spent about 2 hours with this setup. and now that I’ve done it a few times I could easily set up a new server in about 15 minutes.

the first big problem that came up after the initial configuration was that file copies were incredibly slow over the network. copy was at lest 5X slower compared to copying to the G4 NAS. poking around the UI for settings didn’t reveal an obvious solution but I found one in the freeNAS forum and it was in two parts.

the first problem was that the Western Digital Green drives that I choose can be slow on any system because they use a modern 4K block. you need to tell your OS that this drive uses that otherwise it won’t go fast. after the drives were reformatted and re-ZFSd performance increased. but it wasn’t go fast yet. checking the a box labeled “Enable tuning of some kernel variables” in the Advanced tab got copying to network saturation.

as you poke around you’ll find other tools and options that you can turn on. one configuration option is for email notifications. I made a new email address on my server. then I filled in the form with the normal log in information then clicked Send Test Email. it worked. 10 days in and then 4 months in.

10 days later I got an email that… oh no. one of the drives failed! it emailed me that a failure had happened. and I was like, oh YEAH! it worked!!! hell ya. I shut down the server, replaced the drive, then pointed ZFS to the new device allowing it to resilver the zpool. next I filled out the WD replacement form is on the web, packaged the drive and send it back. it’s replacement arrived back in days. I keep spare drives are in stock as a precaution. I bought 2 more because they were on sale. although I will very likely use these drives for other tasks because the shelf life of a idle unspun drive has proven to be short.

I set the server to email status updates once a week. at first I read them every time. now I don’t bother unless it’s not from a scheduled time. the only thing to note here is to be sure to enter the DNS settings otherwise the messages will never get sent.

all the problems I mentioned earlier got solve because I wasn’t in a hurry to get this running. I didn’t rush to get it done. because this software was a new thing for me I wasn’t promising when it would the project online. I had a bunch of false starts, reformats, and re-doing everything was okay. had this been a production file server instead of a back up server I might have been even more cautious about announcing it’s “on” to the people using it.

cutting costs
could the 10T be made for less money? certainly. I’ve got an idea of what would I change if I was building it with my new found experience. the case and power supply is the first stop in cutting costs. rather than using a new parts I could have used an old “found” case and supply. and if I found the case there might certainly be a motherboard loaded with a CPU and RAM inside. I could have chosen cheaper parts trading off looking good for basic functionality.

it might be nice to be able to swap a drive without opening the case. but “hot swap” drive holders start at $20 per drive and you have to have the right case to use them. I think if it’s job was production file server this would be worth the extra expense.

I might not use this specific motherboard. you don’t need lots of power for a file server. anything 1GHz and up will do. although 2G of RAM is a must if you plan to use ZFS. the SuperMicro board has 6 SATA ports and the processor is built-in which swayed my purchase decision. it’s certainly easy enough to find a cheaper solution using a hardware search tool. remember that you you don’t need a “RAID” card because freeNAS does this job in place of specific hardware and a dumb 6 port SATA card is cheap.

finally, the cost of drives has plummeted since I made the 10T. I’ve seen the specific drive for half of what I paid in July of 2010. the specific thing to watch with drive is the length of the warrantee. a bargain drive will often have just 1 year from the manufacture. this is not a drive you want to use for a 24/365 production server. and it’s certainly not good for storing backups. always mind the age of your drives with a plan to retire them as they as they approach the end of their warrantee.

wrap
Time Machine backups from all the users happen transparently. since it’s been in place I’ve used the going back in time feature a few times to get files that I stupidly changed without making a new version (open somefile_r4, save as, somefile_r5). having this much storage on the network means that nobody can make the excuse “I forgot to plug it in”.

the 10T has been in service for 9 months and has proven itself beyond my expectations in terms of cost, performance and uptime. I did expect drive failures because that is the nature of drives. that the server tells it’s status via email means means I’m not having to actually check it’s logs periodically for failures is a feature that I know works. hopefully you will have a similar experience if you decide to roll your own 10T (or bigger).

good luck. have fun.
YMMV.

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I read a Rudy Rucker book where lots of the tech is mindblowingly complex. tech that was so hard that a humans couldn’t even be involved after a certain point. yet interfaces to tech creation allowed the characters to control making without thinking about who made who (robot making tech based on human interaction). the book Makers mentions combining complex programming projects into a greater object. this concept of reusing code is tossed out there like it’s no big deal. but fiction always over simplifies making because the story would become boring otherwise. to most people man landing on the moon is a sound bite even though it took the better part of 20 years (don’t forgot all the work before the Kennedy speech) to get there.

I’ve had a lot of printers in my life from letter quality daisy wheels to dot matrix to dye sub to laser. and at some level the businesses I ran wouldn’t have been possible without the leveraged use I got from printing without limits. Tom pointing that this same thing is right here with 3D printing is telling.

1) it’s ground zero. think of MakerBot“>Makerbot as a Epson MX-80
2) there potential for hundreds of new business
3) be prepared to see lots of failure as it engages
4) plastics and resins are toxic. stand by for regulation in California.

the discussion last night over dinner before the show was about lots of different things but one subject was “I want one but I don’t know why I want one.” this was Kanen answering the question do you want a 3D printer because making 2 is just as easy as making 1.

I think wanting one of these is the same as back when I had an Apple II of wanting a MX-80 printer. or a printer of any kind. it wasn’t that I needed to print lots of things. it was the idea of having a printer right there next to me. that way I didn’t have to wait to use somebody else’s. over time printers got better. my Epson became a C-Itoh, then it was a Panasonic, next it was a ImageWriter and not too long after became an ImageWriter II which was my last dot matrix printer. after that it was lasers and film printers all the way.

there is something satisfying about printing a stack of paper that is the manuscript / report / script / outline or whatever needs to be on paper to use properly. when tracking takes for a voice production I can’t imagine NOT doing that on paper. and proof reading copy just looks different when it lands on dead trees. [note about editing: the trick of course is to make the copy look different. I can write all day long in whatever typeface but if I want to proof read it I have to copy paste into a different werp and change the font and size so I can "see it".]

so yeah, that’s been my question since the possibility of having one came up back in May. these things are all around me. really. there’s a MakerBot an email away. and Shapeways will send me anything I can dream up. I even bought some tools to help me make things.

so here’s the very thing that I’m getting my head around in making my lens mount. I don’t have to fab it think about “machining” like I would if I was building from PVC, aluminum and other hardware. right angles aren’t even a requirement. one thing that comes to mind right off in learning to think like this is what Apple is doing. the original Mac Mini was the first thing that was made from a block of aluminum. it might have come out of a poured mold in approximately it’s final shape and then milled. but I bet it was milled from a block. hatched as a plan to learn how to make more complex shapes from the beginning. look at the white keyboards. those are bi-products of iMacs. and iPhone 4 is a complex shape made from even more exotic material.

if hindsight tells us anything it’s that getting in on the ground floor is a good idea. you don’t have to be the first in line but being there is that important. while I didn’t have the first laser printer I had the next one. and that was a better printer. it was fast, consistent and the type looked better than what came out of the letter quality printer. and what did I make with my printer? a software publishing business. back then software was as much about paper as it was the program.

but what could 3D printing do as a future business? printing “wood” gives a whole new way to look at “cheap wood pulp waste.” there’s no need for things to be cheap looking just because the manufacturing process prefers flat, wide, long that gets made in to shelves, entertainment centers and desks. using a combination of materials could automatically build in great surfaces that live on top of super strong latices grown out of a nozzle. this kind of thing would change the place of manufacturing. no need to make in China and ship it. just ship goo to Walmart. and because waste is every where goo doesn’t have to be made in a specific place. it’s just like concrete.

I’m interested because I see opportunity. it’s curious that the businesses popping up around 3d printing resembles the floppy in a zip lock bag stage that software publishing went through in the 80′s. that somehow buying a hardware kit and some precut wood is going to make your build much easier than just going to Home Labyrinth and finding the same thing there. I don’t think I’ll start a kit business printing printer parts. think been there somebody is already doing that. I am excited to see what my mind will come up with then the rig is sitting there wanting to do something.

and that’s why “I want one!”

links you might like to read:

why I love my 3D printer from a 10 year old’s perspective

trillion dollar industry and the age of 3d printing.

Print Crime and Makers

hopefully they won’t screw up 3D printers

Alibre Design

printer as part of it not the end of it

the people of Know Tech are divided on the care and feeding. Chris has a Windows centric attitude causing him to rebuild and reinstall the System and all his apps twice a year. Kenji lived with a broken MacBook Pro keyboard for nearly 2 years before he bothered to get it fixed. Craig has a detailed backup system. Kristin just uses her Macs. and all the Macs that John takes care of just seem to work without any messing about.

so why do people have a need to maintenance their Macs? it’s something that is built into all consumer products. your car needs regular care, you have to put chemicals into the pool, the heater filter gets changed, the coffee maker needs de-liming and the refrigerator needs to be de-iced. maintenance is all around us and were programmed to accept doing it. some people actually like the peace of mind that they’ve “done something” and other people “just like doing” maintenance because it makes them feel good.

but it can’t hurt? if you listen to the guy that runs “some maintenance tool every week” he’ll exclaim “I never have a problem with my system therefore what I’m doing is working!” you have to weigh that against our own findings that show you don’t have to do anything at all and all is well. sometimes “doing something” can make it worse. look at the Oynx forum here you will find some of reports that a Mac sometimes breaks after running this tool. this makes the “solution” worse than the “problem” in our mind.

the thing with maintenance tools is that they often get used at the wrong time. these tools usually get pulled out when something is horribly wrong with the a Mac like it won’t boot, applications won’t launch, something takes forever to open or it’s just slow. what happens next is a person will start to “try things” in the hope of making it better.

reboot
command option P-R
remove the battery and hold down the power button for 5 seconds.
reset-nvram
reset-all
repair permissions

if you phoned tech support at any company you will be asked to try it these things because it’s on a list. the thing is that none of the above will actually fix anything. and doing it regularly won’t actually make your Mac run any better than it already is running.

almost nobody suspects that the actual problem is a hardware problem. the modern computer is a highly reliable tool. but it’s not infallible. parts wear out, static takes it’s toll and that time you dropped it yet it still worked has caught up with you. instead of resorting to a long list of tricks the first thing that you should make happen is busting out the backup drive to make sure all the photos, music, writing and email is up-to-date. you do have a backup drive right?

if you don’t buy one right now.

there are quite a few “maintenance tools” that will invoke various scripts that clean caches, dump logs and do other repairs. these tools include applejack, TinkerTool, mainmenu and OnyX.

we aren’t not recommending these tools. nor are we flat out saying don’t use them. the point of all this is to know what you are getting into before you click GO. pretty much don’t take the word of “my Mac friend” just because they sound like they know what they are talking about. look into the forums before you commit to running because there are reports of problems. now, to be fair, maybe these tools didn’t cause the problem at all. maybe this was what got tried in an attempt to undo some other hail mary attempt of a fix.

remember, if you aren’t totally sure about something don’t use the tool.

okay so commercial software is better? there’s is a list of these tools as well: Drive Genius, Drive Tool Box, Disk Warrior, Tech Tool Pro, and Disk Utility (included on every Mac). yep, sometimes these tools actually do things that will fix your broken Mac meaning running them once in a while help eliminate potential problems? maybe. but more likely not. we consider these tools to be rear view mirror apps. you would use them when the problem is so big that it’s a last ditch. maybe because your backup drive is hosed (aka you never had one).

a very important thing to note about maintenance tools is that you must check to make sure the version you are about to run is compatible with the system you have. that 12 year old copy of Norton Utilities is not going to help you. and it may do lots of damage to your system if you actually got it to run. but any out of date “fix it tool” will have the same issue. what worked for OS X 10.2 is out of date for 10.6 as lots has changed. find a way to check to make sure you have a compatible version BEFORE you subject your Mac to it’s fix.

another common maintenance problem starts because an application appears damaged or doesn’t run at all. Final Cut Pro has this problem as do some Mail programs. the hidden “holding down the shift key or option key while starting the app” will reveal a secret maintenance mode. sometimes these the repair will make it work again. but sometimes the only way to make it work again is to reinstall the application or worse (only because it’s so time consuming) rebuild the entire system.

96% of apps uninstall simply by deleting the app. the applications that that don’t are from Adobe, Microsoft and Apple. for example Garage Band puts all the samples and loops in the Library folder so deleting GB from the Applications folder won’t get you 12G free. you could “use a good uninstaller” but there’s few 3rd party tools and the rest of them come from the maker.

the biggest problem is that doing things like re-installing often won’t help because the installer doesn’t kill all the old files in the installation process. if a pref or a .plist or some hidden file is corrupt no amount of reinstalling will fix the problem. one of the wonkiest problems we ever saw was when a user deleted a Microsoft Office demo instead of using the Remove Office application. when they tried using the real version it acted weird. in this one case it took copying a Demo folder to it so it would uninstall using the dumb app. the newer Uninstaller for Office seems do a better job of finding deleted versions.

and then there is Repair Permissions. this is here because that it’s part of the Apple support check list. they do it because sometimes, and this is only once in a blue moon, a problem is actually fixed by running it. and they will run whenever there are weird problems reported even though the failure is clearly hardware. we had a MacBook with a SuperDrive that would burn CDs but not DVDs. the first thing they wanted to do was re-install the OS. they being the airquotes Geniuses. booting from a different drive proved that it was the hardware. but the airquotes G insisted on Repair Permissions, Zap’d the PRAM and some other rubber chicken waving. finally convinced that it wasn’t software the hardware fix commenced.

the user desperate to have a working Mac again will try anything to get it to work. the problem with having a button called “repair” in a app is that the user will trust it implicitly. they will try it and try it all the while ignoring the tell tale signs of a dying drive—clicking, popping, long delays, beach balls, etc. using Reparing Permissions as a gauge for drive health is interesting. thing is, that Mac with that drive would have already been slow. and having it take an hour plus shows how bad it was. we’d say that Permissions fixing was never the issue at all as the drive had been dying for a weeks.

Permissions have not been a big problem since 10.4 was released. which means we really need to understand exactly what Repair Permissions does.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1452
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repair_permissions

one of the things that gets this feature so much attention is the word Repair. it became the catch-all task to do first for any problem that arrises. like magic is going to happen every time this runs. here’s a quote of what you usually see in a forum post:

“This is on an older PowerBook G4 with 10.5.8. I ran Fix Permissions and it made no difference.”

duh, right? the thing to note is that the user wrote it as “Fix Permissions”. there it is FIX as in FIX my problem! I bet we could release a series off apps called “Error Tools” that essentially do nothing yet that everyone would report in “dude, it fixed my problem!!”

so what is the best thing you can do for Mac maintenance? have a backup. and have another backup. but remember your backup is only as good as how fast you can use it and how complete it actually is.