Michael Shivers + mdshivers Creative Media » Blog

"iStat pro 3.0 is the next incarnation of the chart topping system monitoring widget.
4 new skins are included which all feature fully anti-aliased cpu and memory usage graphs complete with beautiful gradients.
Also added is the ability to choose which drives, network interfaces, temp sensors and fan sensors are displayed, giving you complete control over what you want to monitor.

Due to popular demand the Processes section previously found in the 1.0 release has been re-added.

As with previous releases iStat pro 3.0 is completly free although we do accept donations(islayer.com/paypal.php). "

What's new in version 3?
4 new and completely different skin designs that make better use of screen space.
Fully anti-aliased cpu and memory graphs, drawn by our iStat Cocoa plugin.
A new "Processes" section that lists the top five tasks.
The ability to control which drives, network interfaces, temp sensors and fan sensors are shown or hidden.
A new icon to match the new skins.

Download it here

Posted by Michael Shivers at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Canon took four years to update their famed GL2 cam, but today they have: The XH G1 and XH A1. The two cameras offer a slew of new options to the prosumer, not least of which is the HD resolution offered by the HDV format. Both cams feature the same 16:9, 1/3-inch CCDs of Canon's XL H1, along with 1080i recording at 60 and 24fps and Canon's 24p-like 24f option. The XH cams nicely fill the GL2 gap, trading the XL's interchangeable lenses for size and cost savings. Both models feature 2.8-inch LCDs, 20X zoom lenses and even XLR inputs, but the XH G1 has an extra "jack pack" and a $3000 premium. What'll that three grand get you? Pro ports like HD/SD-SDI, Genlock and TC in/out that allow a serious shooter to output uncompressed HD footage for recording to another format with less compression than the consumer-ish HDV tapes.
This will be a great advantage to the folks who want to have higher quality video- but they will still have to use the camera to play the tapes which degrades the equipment over time.
The vanilla XH A1 version goes for $4000, and should be available in October, while the XH G1 will follow in November for $7000.

This is from Camcorderinfo

Posted by Michael Shivers at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More blogs about mdshivers.

Posted by Michael Shivers at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a sad side note, my PowerMac's harddrive passed
away rather suddenly earlier this week. She started
having problems on Sunday- shortness of breath not
able to get up and move around, the usual signs. I
realized that she wasn't going to make it, so I
bought some expensive medication to help her recover
but didn't work. I put her to rest on tuesday after
having a long heated night of unwarrented recitation.

I replaced her yesterday with a new larger yet faster
model that will hopefully serve to a degree that elder
would be proud of. I was able tp transplant most of
her important organs to the new sibling, which made
her death much much more bearable.

o here is here is the lesson learned:
I had no warning what so ever that disk was failing.
Never made noise, S.M.A.R.T verified on Disk Utility
and Disk Warrior. I had a perfectly good backup but
was older. So I started a brand new back up and while
doing that the harddrive died. Which left me with no
bootable backup.

I will also run Disk Warrior now as a precation instead
of when everything has hit the fan. So if you can
afford it, have two backups on hand. If one fails when
updating, and then your master disk dies, then you have
the second backup to refer too.

I can't afford two backups now, but hopefully soon.
Tonight I am backing up my fresh install with fingers crossed!

mdshivers

Posted by Michael Shivers at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Situation:
PowerMac was running fine. Did all updates last week (10.4.7, QT 7.1.1 etc) and everything worked fine. I thought i'd catch up my backup stuff so yesterday morning at 10am I tried out Super Duper! to do a backup. Before I ran the back up, I repaired permissions, and verified disk. Everything dandy. I then started full copy with Super Duper to external Firewire drive. I let it run but was taking forever. Finally 23 hours later it had only copied 58 gigs out of 89 gigs. So I decided to stop it.

Problem escalates here:
I pressed stop on Super Duper and it acted like it stopped. I waited a few minutes still no sign of stopping and back to normal. I then went to finder and Force Quit, and says Super Duper! stoped responding. I then forced quit SD. I waited a few more minutes. Nothing.By now Finder was completly locked up- Spinning Beach etc. Nothing. Waited a while longer- nothing. So i decided to shut power off my pressing power button. It shuts off.

Yikes begins:
System won't boot and it just goes to grey screen with apple logo. Fans rev up, nothing. Try about 5 times. I 'option- command-pr' to reset pram. nothing. I can't even get the CD tray open. So I reboot hold down 'option' and go to boot menu. Press 'eject' on keyboard and try opens. I put in tiger disk, and try to repair disk.
Error: "The Underlying task reported failure on Exit". I run repair disk about 5 times.

Disk Warrior:
I do some research on the forums. I head to Apple Store to pick up Disk Warrior 3.0.3. $106 dollars later I am at hope it will work. I ran the maintance script and S.M.A.R.T. disk verified .

So now Disk Warrior is saying this:
Rebuilding Directory
Locating Directory data
'Speed inhibited by disk malfunction'.

It's been running for about 5 hours now. And the blue progress line is almost half way. I heard the record running DW was 28 days! wow.

So now i am waiting. But i figured i'd post this stuff on the forums so people in same situtation would know what it's like.

So what about my FW backup that stopped at 58 gigs out of 89? i freaked and thought the same thing. Websites,movies,pics yada yada. Well I used my powerbook to check the back up and my user folder is there- with what it seems like all of my data! So I may have all my data for now- but not a bootable clone with apps etc.

Ok, don't want to write too much but just getting it out there.
If i have my data - ok. But loading back all the programs will be a pain.

I'll be posting updates of what happens. thanks for reading and if you have any suggestions, please shoot them this way!

Posted by Michael Shivers at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

and the wheel turns, originally uploaded by mdshivers.

life is moving along here! all is well and its hot! boy i am glad the air conditioner is working. There are several movies that are coming out or are already out this summer that I want to see.

Here is one: Scanner Darkly
It's an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story. Directed by Richard Linklater from his own screenplay, A Scanner Darkly stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane.

Scanner Darkly
http://www.apple.com/trailers/warner_independent_pictures/ascannerdarkly/

Posted by Michael Shivers at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple has posted some new video tutorials on their website.
This is really good for people to learn I-Life and to see what it has to offer.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/index.html

Posted by Michael Shivers at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)