Recently I got a new laptop the MacBook Pro with 2.66 dual core processor and 4GB of RAM with a 1066 mhz bus.  I was a little disappointed with these specs considering the older Macbook pro from 2 years ago sported very similar specs with a 2.5 ghz dual core processor and 800 mhz bus.  I have been reading a lot of good reviews on the new Intel X-25 Solid State drives and have based on benchmark tests this appears to be the best upgrade available for most users.  I put this to the test and installed a new 160 GB intel X25-M drive in the new Macbook Pro.

My intial impression is wow,  indeed this drive outperfroms any hard drive I have seen.  Not only does it outperform standard 5400 and 7200 RPM laptop drives but it also outperforms other Solid State drives currently on the market .  I compared boot times with my two new MacBook Pros, one with the Intel X-25 and one with the standard Hitatchi 320 gb 5400 RPM drive.  I have attached a small video of the experiment,  long story short Intel X25 machine booted in 26 seconds,  the standard MacBook pro booted in 41 seconds.  Everything thing in the OS feels faster with this drive, the only downside is the price is still a little steep.

Boot times with New Macbook Pro 2009

With Intel X-25M 160 Gig Drive = 26 seconds

With Standard Hitachi 320 gig 5400 RPM Drive = 42 seconds.

Click on the Image to Watch (Or Click Here to view my RSS of Tech Podcasts)

There were some initial concerns on the longevity of the drive but these fears have recently been put to rest by Intel.  Intel now offers a five year warranty of 100 gigs per day rate before the flash memory wears out.  For a laptop drive this is good news and completely acceptable, unfortunately at the server level this is still somewhat of a limitation making this drive ideal for workstations only.

I have been asked a few times how to make insert a picture into wordpress that when clicked on opens as a PDF, DOC, or some other type of file.  To answer this question I made a quick podcast on how I do it on a Mac running 10.5.7 leopard. The attached podcast uses a PDF but the concept could be applied to having a picture open as any type of file.  This tutorial is using a website running the wordpress template 2.7.1 but also works for older versions as well as the newer 2.8.

Click here or on the picture to download the podcast

Lately it seems that I have been replacing the fuser film on lots of HP printers, mainly LaserJet 4240’s, LaserJet 4200’s, and LaserJet 4100’s.  Of all the fuser I have replaced on different HP models two models stand out as having overly complicated procedures for fuser replacement, the Color LaserJet 2600(and 4600) and The LaserJet 1300.   At Millikin Elementary school the lunch staff uses an older LaserJet 1300n which starting crinkling papers and smearing toner.  Looking inside the printer you could see that the fuser unit was breaking apart and needed to be replaced.

In the Picture above you can see that the fuser medium is breaking apart showing a strange orange foam that is underneath the fuser’s film.

I found a replacement fuser online for about 70$.

To replace this fuser requires a some time and effort as the machine must almost be completely disassembled in order to remove the fuser.  After 20 or so screws and disconnecting 10 wires and a couple of metal brackets I was finally able to remove the fuser.  For anyone attempting this repair make sure to hang onto the middle sized white plastic cog, the new replacement fusers will often come without this piece and you will need it from the old one.

You can see from the photo below that the machine requires a complete teardown to access and remove the fuser.

Replacing the film and fusers on different 4200 models is much easier and straightforward requiring minimal effort to remove the fuser (2 minutes).  The only catch with these models is to place close attention to the fuser units,  the LaserJet 4200 4240, 4250 and 4350 all use a fuser that looks identical and that can be fitted into each unit.  If you happen to stick the wrong fuser into a mismatched model like a 4240 fuser into a 4200 you will end up with Service Error 50.1 or 50.2 message.

One helpful hint is to look at the pin arrangement on the fuser and to look at the color of the fusers’s film.  The LaserJet 4200 only has 5 copper connectors and has a smaller grey colored film.  The Laserjet 4240 and 4250 has a brownish color film with 6 copper connectors.

If you look at this connector on the photo above you can see that this fuser unit belongs in a LaserJet 4200 as their are only 5 copper pins surrounding the connector,  the 4240, 4250 and 4350 all have six copper pins.

Recently after the 10.5.7 update I had a report of a Macbook that would not properly wake from sleep.    This machine was an early 2008 model Macbook that would always fail to wake from sleep after the second time being put to sleep.   My own machine is running an early release of 10.6 snow leopard and also shows a similar problems,  failing to wake from sleep always the second time it is put to sleep.  After reinstalling the Combo 10.5.7 update and resetting the SMU and the PROM I was stumped on what could be causing this problem.  I almost started to believe that there was a hardware issue with the logic board until I stumbled across a few forums on the internet.

The teacher’s macbook had only shown these problems for two weeks which coincided with the release of 10.5.7.  His system successfully updated and did not hang or fail during the upgrade.

The fix for this problem can be found in the NETWORK panel of System Preferences.  Click on the Ethernet Connection.

Click on the Gear at the bottom of this panel and make sure to switch the Ethernet Connection to MAKE SERVICE INACTIVE.

If this service was already marked INACTIVE simply switch it back to MAKE SERVICE ACTIVE and then hit apply.

If it was already set to active then Click on MAKE SERVICE INACTIVE then hit apply.

Now restart your computer.  After the restart go back to this same screen and click on MAKE SERVICE ACTIVE, now make sure to hit apply.
This will fix the sleep problems on a Macbook running 10.5.7.  Interestingly it also fixes the sleep problems with a Macbook pro running 10.6 Snow leopard.

A long story short,   the dishwasher stopped working once again.  The buttons on the touch panel stopped working and thus the dishwasher would not start.  After taking the machine apart again I saw something different.  The circuit board looked to be in tip top shape (replaced earlier for 60$)  but after taking off the front control panel I found a new problem.

Where the ribbon cable connects the front control panel to the circuit board you could clearly see burn marks on the wire.  I was also able to press out a brownish liquid through the opening which confirmed earlier thoughts that the machine has a design flow which allows water to invade the electronics.  From the photo of the back side of the front panel you can see clear burn marks on the cable.  Looks like both the control circuit board and front panel short out on this model simply because of water damage,  I suspect that during the drying cycle steam works it way up through the seam and into the electronics area.  I am thinking about putting a line of silicon around the seams on the front assembly door and near the ribbon cable to the front control panel.

If you happen to have this model and are looking for parts I would recommend heading to the sears part website – searspartsdirect .  Here the front control panel was 68$ compared to other online vendors which averaged around 170$ all the way to 220$. (partsselect.com, applicancepartspros.com all had this part way overpriced.)

I ran across a minor annoyance with Podcast Producer running 10.5.6.  After the upgrade I noticed that Podcast Producer had stopped working, looking through Server Admin I found that the settings for the XGrid Controller and for the Shared File System had been erased.  After reentering the correct data I noticed that most system restarts after any future updates also seem to wipe out these settings.  Another problem that is more troublesome is that the Server UUID for Xgrid changes everytime you re input the settings, further these settings do not replicate to the necessary plist file pcastserverd.plist that resides in the shared file system location (in my case /Media, in most Podcast Configurations this is /SFS).    This results in a mismatch of UUID’s causing all podcast producer jobs to return a Art Score of “0″ and stay pending unless you manually edit the plist file and enter the updated UUID.  You can find the new Server UUID by going to Server Admin, then clicking on XGRID Agent log to find the UUID, copy this value and edit the pcastserverd.plist with this information.  Now restart Podcast Producer service and all should be working.

Looking around on the web it appears that this problem is specific to 10.5.6.

I made a quick Podcast using Podcast Producer describing the problem here.

I have also found another person who has reported the same problem and fix here http://podcastproducer.org/forums/bugs/910799692

Today I have been playing around with boxee .  Using my laptop connected to a 52 inch Samsung HDTV, I ran the boxee application and tried using it as a replacement for cable TV.  I am impressed with this free application and can see this idea replacing current television models in the near future.   Boxee provides a nice fluid interface to provide access to lots of internet feeds of streaming music, videos, movies, photos, television shows, etc.  Good internet speed is a must for this application as most of the video feeds are dependent on a fast connection.  A nice touch is the additional free iphone application for boxee that turns the iphone into a television or (laptop) remote.  I found the response and controls on the iphone app to work well and was easily able to navigate through the menus with the iphone.  For an alpha release, Boxee looks to be promising and in its current form I can already see it being put to good use in the classroom and at home.

(Click on the image to watch my Podcast of Boxee)

If you would like to try out boxee you can download the Intel  Mac version of the app from my website  here (version .9.11.5591) or directly from http://www.boxee.tv.

With the multitude of touch screens her in district 228, both Smartboard and Promethian, I could see boxee having some use in the classroom.  One could easily navigate to the discovery channel, show full length high res national geographic speicials, show current event news clips, stream news media live or could simply start music through one of boxee’s multiple audio streams (such as Pandora) during silent reading time or something similar.  The interface and fluid movements of Boxee would work well with the touch screen concept.

If you have a apple laptop, apple tv, linux machine or want to make more use out of your new HDTV I highly recommend trying Boxee out, it’s not perfect but is probably the closest thing to the future of television and media entertainment currently available.

On the last day of my Orlando vacation I dropped my Iphone 3g on an ornamental rock while playing mini golf.  The phone’s outer glass cracked but the phone continued to work just fine.

I logged into the GSX portion of apple’s website to see what parts were available form apple and was surprised to see that they don’t sell anything.  Since it appeared that only the front glass on the phone was cracked I looked on ebay and quickly found the glass front panel piece for around 20$.   For anyone looking to do this repair make sure you purchase the front glass piece with the connector cable already attached – I saw some people just selling the plane glass which is useless.

(Front Glass Piece for Iphone 3g with connector cables attached)

The first step of the repair was opening the Iphone.  This step is easy I recommend anyone attempted this repair to just look up Iphone 3G repair on youtube.com .  Using a size 0 jeweler’s phillips screwdriver remove the two screws at the bottom of the iphone and then pry the top half of the phone using a flat object (I used a butter knife).  Start prying right above where the screws were removed.

Once I had the phone opened I removed the cables 1,2, and 3 which keep the top half of the phone attached to the bottom.  The cable labeled 3 has a little clamp holding it down, using a mini flat head screwdriver you can lift up on the back side of the clamp, this should move it up 45 degrees and allow the ribbon cable to come free.

With the top half of the phone free I removed six screws holding the LCD module.  There are two screws on one side and three on the other with 2 hidden by tape.  The last screw is on the front side.

Using a butter knife I was able to separate the brace and LCD module after applying a little pressure.  Unfortunately once I looked at the LCD module carefully I noticed that I did crack the top right portion and decided that I should replace this as well.  Again back at Ebay I was able to find this part from a Chinese seller for 49$.

(Storing the Iphone in pieces while I wait for the LCD module to arrive in mail – China 2 weeks)

(LCD Module)

Since the new LCD screen module does not come with the brace attached it was necessary to use the old brace.  Using a flat head screwdriver I was able to pry off the LCD from its brace and then using Krazy glue I glued down the new module.

(Old LCD Module and LCD Module Brace – after prying it off its brace with a mini flat head screwdriver)

Another tricky part of the repair is removing the broken glass plate from its surrounding brace.  The glass is held on by glue, I found that by warming the glass with a lighter helped in weakening the glue.  Using a butter knife I pried the glass from its mounts, being careful not to brake the mount.  With the glass removed I used Krazy Glue again to attach the glass panel.

(Front Glass glued back on its brace with Krazy Glue)

Once this was all finished I simply reassembled the phone.  First snapping in the LCD screen under the Glass screen and then putting back the six screws making it one solid top piece.  Attaching the connectors in order was simple except for the ribbon cable number 3 which I had to fiddle with for around 5-10 minutes before it would slide back in.

With the phone back together I headed to the store and bought a leather case and a clear screen overlay.

In late October I installed a Google Analytics script on our main district website www.dist228.org.  I  inserted this code into the main index.php script, the starting index.html file for the district, the high school’s start page, the middle school’s start page, each of the elementary school’s start pages and the staff portal (both locations).  The overall goal of using this tool is to understand how our website is being accessed and more importantly increase overall traffic to the website.  At around the  same time I created an XML sitemap and submitted this sitemap to google.  This sitemap can be thought of as a thorough index of our site helping Google’s search engine find our site and specific pages within the site.

The good news is so far the main goal of increased site visits is being accomplished.  Google Analytics is a very versatile tool and lets you create custom reports comparing past data against more recent.  When comparing the Month of November to that of March (1-30 subtracting a day)Analytics shows the following info:

November 1-30 43,827 total visits and 9,430 unique visits.

March 1-30 60,116 total visits and 11,835 unique visists.

This data shows a 37.17% increase in total visits and 25.50% increase in unique visits.

(Click on the image to enlarge)  PDF Report – Comparision Report November 1-30 and March 1-30

With overall traffic up at the district let’s take a look at which pages are accessed the most.  Looking at the data from March 1 – to March 30 we get the following results:

District Main Webpage = 56,426 Pageviews
Staff Portal = 11,656 Pageviews(total of both locations)
Geneseo High School = 10,143 Pageviews
Geneseo Middle School = 8,679 Pageviews
Southwest = 2,027 Pageviews
Millikin = 1,516 Pageviews
Northside = 1063 Pageviews
(Total of all three Elementary schools = 4,606)

(Click on the image to enlarge) PDF Report Top Content Viewed at www.dist228.org

The Staff Portal page is now the second most frequently visited site in the district (mainly teachers) – 11,656 visits in a month.  I created this simple website to make it easy for staff to access frequently used online resources, links, documents and forms.

Where does our Traffic come from

PDF – Report on Worldwide Access

Traffic from US. Sources  – PDF – Report on US Access

Other Interesting Data -Browsers used to Visit Site  (October to Present)

1# -Internet Explorer wins with 38.6% of all visitors are using the browser.  I find this an interesting statistic since the majority of all computers in the district are Apples which cannot run Internet Explorer.  This shows that the district’s website is heavily accessed outside of school use.
2# -Safari gets second with 33.2% of all visitors.  I find this a little surprising – my guess would have been Firefox.
3# -Firefox 29.4%
Chrome, Mozilla, Opera, Seamonkey all got less than 1%
(Click on the image to enlarge)

Operating Systems Used (Click on the image to enlarge)

Operating Systems and Browsers (Click on the image to enlarge)

Future Goals and Projects

This week I installed a new Google Analytic script on the index page for www.gcsdblogs.org.  I created this webpage to serve as index for students, parents and teachers accessing teacher websites and blogs.  I installed a new Poweredge 2950 quad core server earlier in the year and registered the domain gcsdblogs.org, using the lastest version of Apache I setup a webserver and installed mysql 5.1  so that I could locally host and manage staff websites based on wordpress.  I then manually created websites for every staff member that requested one.   This project has turned out better than I could have imagined as the staff has begun to run with the new Wordpress based sites and now are doing and excellent job with them.  Perhaps in the future all staff members could have and productively use a website.

A future project is to install an analytic script on each staff website – I think it would be interesting to see learn how each site is being accessed.

My Staff Website – Roodhouse Blog
I have already setup the script on my own blog and would like to begin tracking all staff blogs in a similar fashion.   Here is how my site compares to the district site.
This month I got 705 Hits from 57 different Countries.
The District website got 53,091 Hits from 21 Countries.

Roodhouse Blog Map Overview – (click to enlarge)

Another interesting difference,  I had 54 hits from California almost as many as from Illinois.  PDF Roodhouse US Map

Keywords -

The biggest area for improvement I can see based on the Google Analytics data is keywords.  Currently when people are searching for our website they are doing so with accurate searches.  Using such searches as Geneseo School District, District 228, Geneseo Schools, ect. This is okay but I would like to try and make the site more search friendly to generalized keywords such as Good quad cities schools, Good illinois schools, Great Quad Cities Schools, etc. I have inserted each of these keywords and more into the header and meta tabs of all of the pages but so far the results have been minimal.  I may work on re-submitting and updated XML file to google, along with registering our site with Yahoo, Excite, Live and other popular search engines.  Another possibility is to include adwords to the site for generalized concepts such as good education and great schools.

keywords (click to enlarge)

search engines (click to enlarge)

The school district purchased 50 new IMacs for use at the Middle School.  Over the break I installed these units replacing both the 8th grade lab and the library.  These machines are brand new Intel based IMacs with a 2.4 ghz core 2 duo processor and a 20 inch screen.  Those familiar with the machines in the High School labs will notice these machines are almost identical with the only difference being the memory frequency, High School at 667 mhz and the newer Middle School machines at 800 mhz.

I reimaged all of the new machines based on an improved|modified image from the High School labs.  With this image in place all of these new machines are already running the latest ILife 2009 (Imovie 2009, Garageband 2009, Iweb 2009) and IWork 2009(Pages 2009, Keynote 2009, Numbers 2009) as well as Office 2004 (with all updates) Firefox 3.0.8, Google Earth 5.0, Sketchup, and much more.

There were no problems to report except for some compatibility issues between legacy workgroup manager and 10.5 based workgroup manager.  On the older EMacs running 10.4.11 application access and control was handle by specificly indicating which applications students could open, in Leopard Server’s workgroup manager this is called Legacy mode.  Since the new IMacs are running 10.5 they have a different application control setting that had to be configured in order for the machine to operate correctly.  In short there are now two sets of application controls for the Middle School student accounts one that applies to the older machines and one to the newer.

In the library there were not quite enough ethernet jacks for the machines but this problem was easily overcome by simply using the built in Wireless N on the IMac with the Wireless N at the Middle School.  The Middle School currently uses Cisco 1250 Aeronets (I installed these last year) using Wireless N each connected back to the network backbone at 1 gbps.  The connection works so well that you could actually run the entire lab wirelessly if need be or desired.  In fact I would say the days of running network cable to individual machines may be over.

These IMacs have only 1 gig of RAM installed and I plan to purchase a 2 gb upgrade for each machine at the price of 20$ per machine (crucial.com).  When this is complete the machines will each have 2.5 gb of ram as they currently have two sticks of 512 mb.  Machines are ready to go and are available for student use.