imac | justBcoz

TV on my iMac

Jul 20, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff

How cool is this??

Thanks to my spiffy new little USB TV dongle that my Dad helped me install yesterday,
I now have TV on my iMac!

I can re-size and position that little screen anywhere on my monitor (full size too, but the quality takes a bit of a dive) and keep an eye on the cricket while I’m working … stoked!
No more hopping up and down to see the action =)

It has a time shift function, a handy little remote to control everything and I can record
straight to my hard drive!

Clever, hey?

[ Son#1 happens to be watching Just Shoot Me at the mo’ … ]

Saul – here’s the photo of the box for you:

Exorcising Outlook

Jun 27, 2008 | Software

One of the things I had to do as part of the migration to my sexy new iMac was recreate my Outlook setup on the new machine as I had it on the dinosaur laptop I’ve been using. I’m sure this wouldn’t be too much of a mission for most people, but I have over 20 active email accounts, hundreds of rules to help me process and sort through the more than 2000 emails I get every day, a massive task list, and notes for Africa plus about 6Gigs of emails, organized into 60 different PST files.

Needless to say, I was NOT looking forward to setting this up all over again! So I had a hunt on the interwebs and found a really handy tool to backup Outlook from my old machine (compressing it at the same time) and then restore it again to exactly the same settings on my new machine. It’s called ABF Outlook Backup, sells for $39 and it works a treat. What should have taken me DAYS to do only took me a couple of hours.

Actually it would have taken much less time, but I ran into a snag.

I did something wrong in the restoration process and somehow managed to duplicate my mail profile. The end result was that I landed up with duplicate PST folders showing up in Outlook and I couldn’t get rid of them. Trying the “Close <pst name>” option did not work – it kept telling me that “an object could not be found”. I was getting extremely frustrated, I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling Office, but that did nothing. I was close to bashing my head on the table!!

Back to the interwebs again to find a solution …

And the news was not good. All sorts of scary stuff like going into the registry and mucking around in the deep, dark unknown. No thanks! And then I spotted something – a free little application called PSTGhostbuster. It was a lifesaver! I managed to get rid of those pesky ghost files very quickly and easily, no mess no fuss =)

So there you go – 2 very handy tools that you could need one day.

First post from my iMac

Jun 26, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff, Work

AT LAST!!!

I have finally finished my transfer from the Acer dinosaur to this delicious iMac =)

It’s taken me weeks to get everything copied, downloaded, installed and configured, but I’ve done it!

*pats self on back*

(On Justin Hartman’s recommendation, I have ditched the M$ keyboard and gone with the Apple one. Good move too – it’s really cool.)

Thanks Dad, I LOVE my new ‘puter – now I must pay you!!!

Almost ready to ditch the dinosaur

Jun 23, 2008 | Gadgets 'n Stuff, Work

Monday = killer day. Stupidly busy!

But …

My gorgeous iMac is *just about* ready for me to start using it exclusively … YAAAY, at last =)

All I have left to do is install PHP. And IIS (when the tech guy decides to drop off the disk I need). I’ve nearly finished copying over all my files to the new machine, which is IMO, the best damn piece of hardware I have ever worked on!

I ripped the 5 new CD’s I bought over the weekend on the iMac last night and what an absolute freaking pleasure! It seriously only took me about 30 minutes to copy all of them; as opposed to the more than half an hour it used to take me to rip just ONE CD on this old dinosaur. And Photoshop is a total BREEZE on my new baby too, I can work soooooo much faster … love it =)

I still need to transfer about 7Gigs of Outlook PST files … Urgh. (Yip, I keep EVERYTHING!) Oh yes, and I also need to setup all my email accounts – hmmm, that’s going to take a little time. I’m not even sure where I have all that info stored away. Let the hunt begin …

What else? iTunes – I’ll need to load up all my music. I’ve got about 60GB of tunes to import! That’s going to take forever, but it’ll be a good opportunity to sort through it all and clear out some of the crap that I don’t want anymore.

Really not sure when I can get around to organising all these bits and bobs – I’m terribly short staffed at the moment and even more snowed under than usual (!) Miss Boats is still off for this week, recovering from her op and one of my contract coders is out of action until further notice =( Hopefully I can have the iMac completely sorted by next Monday. I really can’t wait to get working on it.

Enjoy your evening everyone; I have to get back to the old grindstone … I sense a couple of late nights coming up!