Robert Thompson on all things China.
Common sense, but, still worth a read for all you new MB owners. Talks about cleaning the display, general care, etc.
I didn’t know this:
Important: Do not place your MacBook Pro on a pillow or other soft material when it’s powered on, as the material can block the airflow vents (in particular, the rear vents)…
I now know why I have “black smoke” marks on the G4, I always used to watch movies with Chun Mei this way. Good to know, good to know…
Update:
SEE FOR YOURSELF. Screen Mimic initialized recording at the same time I clicked Dreamweaver on the dock.
On this brand new $3,000+ laptop, with 2 GB of RAM, it takes Dreamweaver 36 seconds to load and get to a “new” HTML screen. 
-BOB-
WATCH TUTORIAL (10+ mins, 88 mb)
The video is a little over 10 minutes. When you have 10-15 minutes, watch this, it’s very dry, but a helpful video outlining the basics of FCP. Should be informative for beginners, and definitely will allow you to use FCP with the easiest key commands to get a video out the door.
-BOB-
Can you say hell yes?
This is Flix Pro 8.5 for Mac, Flash Video exporting on crack, here’s a screenshot. Basically, what I’ve been looking for… for a while. $279 well spent.
I just re-exported it with the proper dimensions. Variable Bit Rate encoding in Flash is off the hook.
FCP is complicated. But it’s fast. Still can’t get Flash Video Exporter to work on this computer, so everything is QT for now.
Movie is 450 at 16:9, 600 video kbps, 1-pass. 30 second video compressed in less than one minute. Tekno music is Thievery Corporation. File size is a seriously low 2.3 jigabites. Any skipping in music is the source file, has nothing to do with FC or compression.
On another nerdy note, I just installed Flash player 9 with Action script 3.0, woo hoo. And I’m eyeing Flix On2 FLV exporter. I highly recommend upgrading to an Intel Mac if you have the fundage. Just my opinion.
_BOB_
- Installed all my music apps (and will start with other apps) to skip the “wait time” for UB. Windows runs them at full speed (Sibelius, Pro Tools, Adobe, etc).
- Google Video and Google cache (cached pages) now load in China, wonder in my POP3 JV mail works now.
-BOB on WindowsXP-
Update:
Sibelius, Reason, and Pro Tools run on Windows lightening fast. It’s kinda wierd, Tom just switched to Mac, and it looks like I’m switch to Windows (in the interim until Mac goes UB). There are a few little things, like you have to wait extra long for the CD to read, and sometimes everything freezes up for a few seconds while it thinks about something else. I have to say, if the program is the same, it really runs basically the same on a PC. So all that marketing about “Macs are for creative people, blah blah” is just marketing. Same programs dude.
Okay so I re-installed Windows and my mistake last time is that I didn’t immediately install the “Mac Drivers Disk”. That takes care of the Wireless internet, trackpad, video card drivers, etc.
So everything worked right away. But damn the system font is terrible, and when you turn on “ClearType” it looks like you’re looking at a screen after you’ve worn your contacts for 17 hours straight.
But it is Windows, and it does work, so I’m happy.
Bob
Update:
- If you want Parallels for your new Intel machine, I have it. It’s a simple install, and you do not need two licenses of Windows XP to run Parallels and Boot Camp. Just call Microsoft and tell them your legit activation code, and they’ll give you a another code for whichever you need. Perfectly legal. So now I have Windows XP and Parallels activated.
- Flight Simulator is pretty sweet! I’ll have to limit the time so to not interfere with music.
- Download 30-day trial of Contribute 4 to see how it works.
-BOB-
I used about 15 plug-ins on many different tracks. I never saw the error message of death. It feels odd operating this program the way it was intended. No system halts. No overloads. No buffer issues. It just works. And it bounces about 20x faster. My favorite upgrade?
The acoustics in the ‘green’ room are a bit reverbalicious, but I kinda like that. So that’s the practice room.
VIEW MOVIE (sound)