Month: January 2009

And now it’s the Mac Mini’s turn

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As many of you will know, as well as my MacBook, which I use as my main computer, I have a Mac Mini as well – this was my first Mac which I bought in 2005. It has spent the past year or so searching for a purpose – I was, and still am, hoping to turn it into a media centre but I’ve neither had the time or money to go ahead with it, and to be honest, I don’t really need to either.

Anyway, after yesterday’s shenanigans with my MacBook, it’s the turn of the Mac Mini to refuse to work. It’s actually not a problem that developed today – I noticed it wasn’t working last week, but as I run it headless I didn’t have a computer monitor to plug it into. All I knew was that it wasn’t registering itself on the network.
Today I had chance to use it with an external monitor. I heard the startup sound, saw the Apple logo on the screen, and then, nothing. No status indicator, just the Apple logo.

So, I zapped the PRAM – Command+Option+P+R. This time, the status indicator appeared for about 10 seconds before the Grey Screen of Death appeared, showing a kernel panic. This happened with subsequent boots.

So, I tried booting from the OS X CDs. Same problem. In fact, after a while, all I could do was access the Open Firmware command prompt.

This therefore means that there’s something wrong with the RAM or another component. Over the Christmas period, I took my Mac Mini with me to my parents in York, rather than leaving it in Bradford as I figured it would be safer. I’m guessing that it may have got jolted in transit and one or more of the components is out of place. It could also be bad RAM, but the RAM was only replaced in November 2006 and it was good-quality Crucial RAM. Plus, it’s a faff trying to get the damn thing apart and will probably require the purchase of another putty knife seeing as my existing one has gone missing.

In the meantime, I have a nice iOrnament.

How to: fix your MacBook screen

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Had a bit of a panic this morning when I let my MacBook go to sleep, and upon re-awaking the screen’s backlight would not come on. The screen itself was working, as I could see a small portion of the desktop in the middle where the Apple logo is, but the rest was un-viewable.

It’s working now, but not after trying almost every trick in the book. I’ve listed all of the methods here, mostly for my own reference in case it happens again but also for anyone having a similar problem.

Diagnostics

First of all, make sure that the rest of the computer is working. If you have an external display handy, plug that in and use Fn+F7 to activate it (you may not need to hold down the Fn key depending on your Mac’s settings). If you can see your desktop on the external display then the problem is with the display – if not, you computer may have deeper problems. If you have VNC set up, you could try this too.

1. Set your brightness

Sometimes it’s the basic things – your brightness might be set to minimum. Use Fn+F2 to turn up the brightness (you may not need to hold down the Fn key depending on your Mac’s settings).

2. Zap your PRAM

One trick to deal with minor hardware problems is to reset your PRAM and NVRAM. To do this, power down your Mac, then, turn it on and hold down Command+Option+P+R at the same time, until your Mac makes the ‘ding’ noise again. Command is the Apple key, Option may be labelled as ‘alt’ on your computer.

3. Reset your Energy Saver settings

You may need to use an external monitor or VNC for this. While you Mac is booted, open System Preferences and choose Energy Saver. Under ‘Put the displays to sleep’, set the timer to 1 minute, and then wait 1 minute for your machine to go to sleep. Wake it up, and hopefully your screen will spring back to life.

4. Take out the battery

If your Mac is a portable, turn the computer off, unplug the AC power cord, and take the battery out. Next, hold down the power button for 5 seconds, and the re-insert the battery. Then boot up again. In my case, this is what worked.

Edinburgh at Night

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Edinburgh Castle

Yesterday I had a job interview with the University of Edinburgh, and due to Edinburgh being somewhat distant from Bradford I travelled up the day before and stayed the night. This gave me ample opportunity to play around with my new camera. Hence, I bring you various night-time shots of places and buildings in Edinburgh.

I was surprised at how few buildings in the city were illuminated at night – the Scott Monument on Princes’ Street being one of the more notable structures that were shrouded in darkness. Still, I managed to get a reasonable set of pictures, although I actually took many more which ended up being deleted for blurriness (next time, must remember tripod) or lack of light.

Also, here’s a daytime shot of where I may be working if I get the job. This picture is also notable for being the 1500th image that I’ve uploaded to Flickr.