December 23rd, 2024

Random Projects, Advent's End, and Chickens.

Christmas in less than two days...

Number One on Random Projects:

The iMac

I was given a base model iMac 7,1 (2007) with the 20-inch screen. This thing has sat on my side table for ages. It’s pretty much a decoration at this point, and I quite like having it there to look at. It’s quite a pretty computer. Quite frankly, if it had a bigger screen, higher resolution, and much better CPU and GPU I wouldn’t mind have such a thing on my desk instead of this giant PC. It would probably look quite nice on it.

I originally got this device in June of last year. It was not the happiest looking iMac on Planet Earth. It had what appeared to be a couple years’ worth of dust on it (if this was here at home, that could very well be two months of dust), and needed a nice external cleaning. Thankfully the system’s fan didn’t blow dust out upon first poweron in ages, so that was nice. I had to wipe the screen down, then blow the speaker vents out since the poor things had dust all inside them. I managed to get it all clean, but I think the dust messed up one of the speakers, which now gets distorted at normal listening volumes.

Anyway, ever since I got this thing, I’ve wanted to install the original operating system on it, in this case Mac OS X 10.4.10. Of course, I needed to wipe it, so I did. I only had a Leopard (10.5) install disk, so I used that, but I was unsatisfied. I wanted it to run the factory original system. So I did some digging, and found a few of the DMG files for the supposed original install discs on the Internet Archive. Not a single one worked. So I gave up, installed Leopard, then went through a ton of hoops to get El Capitan (10.11, the latest for this Mac) on it. I had never dealt with any Macs other than a Mac mini from 2006, and at that point the Mini was practically unusable, so I had one Mac and that was the Mac that needed help.

Well, this year I thought I’d try again. So I looked. And I found one. I downloaded the files (click this for link). Lo and behold, it actually booted off of my USB this time, and the Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) installer loaded. I installed it, albeit having to remove the USB and flash it with Disc 2 using my other MacBook Air halfway through the install, and Tiger finished installing. No errors or anything. I went through the setup, and finally got to the desktop. It looked really nice on this Mac. It also felt a little weird. I’m used to seeing these Macs running El Capitan instead of Tiger, so I had to get used to that. Either way, it still looked really nice. I’m probably going to reinstall El Capitan, but for right now, it’s going to run Tiger for a bit.

I also dual-booted with Windows Vista. Looks good on there too.

The iMac outside with Tiger on it. I only took one picture since outside this turns into a iMirror, making it hard to get photos.

Number Two:

Core (2) Duo.

I just so happen to have one Core Duo and one Core 2 Duo laptop. I meant to write about that this week but forgot and ran out of time. Maybe next week. I plan to try and use them a bit to hopefully give a nice comparison of how well these have held up for basic tasks 18 years later.

Number Three:

Photo Backups.

I have tons of photos. 40,000+ supposedly. I need a way to back these up while having them organized, which is not something I’m good at, since I’ve got them scattered all over. Recently, I’ve been scouring my hard drives, getting all of the photos, and tossing them on the NAS. That way, I’d have at least two copies. However, despite being organized by camera manufacturer and model in the folders, that wasn’t good enough. I was also annoyed at having to copy photos off my phone to the NAS to back them up. I decided I would do a bit of research and I found a piece of software called Immich. This ended up being a bit of a pain to set up, but was worth it. It can back up photos straight from my phone to my NAS, and go through and identify objects and people, all without touching the internet other than to download the models for doing so. This was perfect. So long, Google, no need for your backups, I’ve got my own (Google nags me all the time about it on my Pixel 6).

Immich was a bit of a paint to set up, but following the instructions provided led to a successful instance being set up, and from there I had to add my external library of photos as well. It took it a long while to go through the photos, but it’s done the majority of them by now. I’m pretty happy with it. I’m going to give it a week or two to settle down and finish sorting all of my thousands of photos, and then I might write more about it.

Advent's End Is Near, and Christmas is Near.

I forgot to change the Advent candle GIF last week. I did change it this week, so there’s that. But that means that Christmas starts in a couple days. I’m looking forward to that. I still haven’t decorated, but that’s not a big deal. A stand of Christmas lights isn’t that hard to toss on the walls in five minutes.

The Chickens.

Agathae and Dominica no longer sleep inside the house in a nice warm spot. Instead, they’re back outside, with all the others, since we got a heater for their coop and the top stays at a comfortable temperature. Not to mention their feathers have grown back enough. They are back at giving me a hard time over lunch, and being annoying as normal. Oh, and Gaby is now laying eggs.

Gaby the Welsummer in the nesting box.

Gaby's egg in the nesting box.