I don't hate TLC. It does have good moments - just about any scene involving Connery and the intro sequence with River Phoenix which establishes how Jones became "The Man with the Hat" but on the whole it represents a decline in the collaborative creativity of Spielberg and Lucas with a weaker rehash of an earlier work.
I mean, my favorite Star Wars original trilogy movie is Return of the Jedi, which is apparently heretical, because no one is supposed to like that movie. Nevertheless, compared to Empire I also get why the fans would have turned their noses up at RotJ.
I saw ROTJ in the cinema and my child eyes were amazed at the Battle of Endor's special effects. They still hold up well nearly forty years on and that's a testament to Lucas - who it is strongly suspected, handled all the special effects sequences himself after seeing that director Richard Marquand struggled with the concepts, shot the Luke-Vader duel and other parts of the film.
As an adult, I now view ROTJ's second half as a rehash of ANH, shameless merchandising and a drastic decline in writing - not helped by the departure of Gary Kurtz, who'd helped bring out the best in Lucas during their partnership. Judging by much of the deleted scenes, a better film was left on the cutting room floor. Marquand had to push in order for Yoda's passing to be shown. Lucas had proposed that it be mentioned by the characters as an off-screen event. Nuts.
Seeing as you're a Star Wars fan, you'll appreciate that I met the cinematographer of Empire and he was a good enough sport to autograph and dedicate my TESB Laserdisc.
You and I are in the same camp on Skull. I felt disappointed but I certainly didn't hate it. The rehashing perplexed me: Jim Broadbent as a British senior academic to replace Denholm Elliot's Marcus Brody. Seriously? Yet another traitor reveal and once again, all the villains are wiped out. Though I did enjoy the fan-service at the end with Indy transitioning to a romantically stable life.
Fingers crossed that Lucas and Spielberg (two of my fave filmmakers) the new director and writers do Dr. Jones justice this time.
As a winter weekend project, I wanted to try something with the cooling situation on my A1261 MacBook Pro.
It’s not really a secret how the aluminium MBPs have the tendency to run pretty hot at even the best of times. But I got kind of tired dealing with a really hot lap after using it for awhile — even to the point where it was slowly scalding my thigh.
This MBP was the one I only started using last year after sourcing a green-dot board for it. As with all my Macs, I use Noctua NT-H2 paste, which is consistently pretty good at doing what it’s supposed to do. Even so, the MBP was still warm to hot in very localized spots directly beneath the heat sink bridge, particularly on the left side (or, the side nearest the Magsafe adapter). I’m guessing a far-infrared camera would have shown three localized hot spots where the CPU, GPU, and memory controller are located.
So I thought about the underside of the heat sink bridge and took stock of how there are only small portions of the bridge which actually make direct contact with the bottom case. Since the bridge, as designed, can shunt only so much heat to the fans, there aren’t other ways for heat conduction and dissipation to take place.
Except, well, perhaps there might be!
Borrowing from user discussions on improving heat dispersion in current-gen Silicon MacBook Airs, I bought a 10x10cm sheet of 1mm-thick silicone thermal pad. I went ahead and cut out pieces of the thermal pad to fit the underside areas of the heat sink bridge (which otherwise don’t make contact with anything, aside from poorly circulated air) to help to move some of the heat generated to the aluminium case, rather than make the fans do nearly all of the work.
If all worked as planned, the overall temperature of the case would feel warmer (including around the palm rest), but this manner of heat dissipation would also take longer for the fans to rev up as high to move out heat and to “de-localize” the hot spots underneath the laptop. In other words, I’m using the aluminium case more directly to keep “hot spots” from getting so hot so often and to make resting it on my lap more tolerable.
There were a couple of tiny spots I could have filled in, but for sake of testing, I left them alone. I didn’t use thermal pads in the zones next to the fans, as those are sealed by a thin foam rectangle factory-attached to the bottom case (and sealing away air within from the rest of the case). I might come back to those later.
(While I had the heat sink bridge out, I also opened the fan assemblies, cleaned out a year’s worth of dust, and added to the spindles a drop of the lubricant I’ve been using for refurbishing fans.)
I ran a screen cap of the temps before I put the system into hibernate, and about an hour after I woke the system from deep sleep. The ambient room conditions were the same:
I wrote this post with the laptop on my lap, and for a change, it isn’t slow-cooking me. The fans aren’t moving as quick as before, while the top case and overall bottom case are perceptibly warmer. The above data are the best I can do without access to an infrared camera.
tl;dr: Not so hot!
EDIT to UPDATE, late into day 2: Even as this is still pretty early, post-modification, there is still a noteworthy drop in overall temperatures around the areas of heat generation — namely, the CPU/GPU areas and their respective heatsinks. In the 7-day line chart on iStat Menus, the drop in overall temperatures at the typically hottest area — the GPU heatsink — is evident (the break in the line is when the system was in hibernate mode and while I was adding in the thermal pad modification).
Overall, the CPU die is about 12°C cooler; the CPU proximity is about 6.5°C cooler, and the GPU Heatsink(0) is about 7°C cooler; other generators of heat are between 6 and 7°C cooler. Meanwhile, the three heatpipe sensors are about 2–5°C cooler, and the two case-related thermal sensors — Palm Rest and Skin Proximity — are 6°C and 4°C cooler, respectively (i.e., not as much of a drop as at the areas where that heat is generated). What this suggests is the aluminium case is now taking on (and dissipating passively) more of the overall heat from the thermal generation, borne out by an overall warmer case, and lacking the localized scalding-hot spots.
Put another way: the difference between the GPU Heatsink(0) and Skin Proximity before the thermal pad modification was about 28°C; since the modification, the difference is about 25°C — or about 3°C (which is bang-on with the difference between the 7°C cooler GPU Heatsink(0) and the 4°C cooler Skin Proximity reading). In Fahrenheit, that’s about 5.5°F.
As I add this section via the A1261, I’ve managed to push the Skin Proximity temp up to 42°C under load (Interweb, Transmission, Console, Preview, and a few OS X lightweight utilities like Dictionary and Calculator). Before the thermal pad mod, this would have been closer to 46°C — the latter being above the threshold for risking second-degree burns (after over an hour of constant exposure) or third-degree burns (after over 90 minutes of constant exposure); in localized spots, such as where the cross-members of the heatpipe assembly met the bottom case), that temp was likely much higher). And this might finally explain how I received such deep burns over the summertime as I used this laptop on my bare leg lap.
Unloved orphan of tl;dr: This thermal pad mod is doing exactly what I hoped it would (better cooling, less hot to the touch, and hopefully extending life on the GPU and CPU with less heat lingering) — all for less than $10!
Seeing as I couldn’t leave well enough be, I gutted open my A1261 MacBook Pro this evening and followed up with adding thermal pads and paste to areas I withheld from doing two weeks ago. Winter indoor time does strange things to one’s focus, I guess.
After going full-hilt over the weekend with passive cooling additions using thermal pad and paste on my 17-inch A1139 PowerBook G4 (whose innards, insofar as heat piping goes, is a much closer analogue to this MacBook Pro than to its smaller fraternal twin, the 15-inch A1138 PowerBook G4), I went ahead and disassembled the laptop once more, leaving in place all the silicone thermal pad on the underside of the heat sink piping, but further filling spots I left alone last time. It did mean wasting thermal paste on the GPU/memory controller/CPU heat sink plates and having to re-apply a fresh batch, but this is for skyence!
After fitting more thermal pad for underneath the heat sink pipe (which runs adjacent to the two fans); adding some minor amounts of thermal pad in spots I left alone last time (as last time was the first I’d done this on any machine, so it amounted to a proof-of-concept); and adding small amounts of thermal paste to the heatsink assembly brackets which do make direct contact with the bottom case, I put everything back together again.
To avoid a gap with the iStat Menus sensor charts (as was the case two weeks ago), I de-selected auto-update for date/time from an NTP server, so that when the system was awoken from hibernation, the line graph would be unbroken.
As all other conditions were identical (room temperature/humidity and same applications and window open exactly as they’d been from before hibernation), it appears those extra thermal pad/paste applications are amounting to, at most, another degree of passive cooling. Individual differences, depending on the sensor, were either lower by a degree, the same, or in the case of the “Heat Pipe 1” sensor, a degree higher.
What I can deduce from this additional thermal dissipation through a broader contact surface area with the aluminium bottom case is that what I added doesn’t seem to impede cooling of the CPU or GPU.
As to whether using this much thermal pad to drop another degree Celsius being worthwhile? That’s a judgement call on behalf of anyone who’s wanting to do the same with their laptop.
In the case of this 17-inch MBP, it seems the roughly 3–4°C drop in GPU/CPU temperatures after the first round of applying thermal pads beneath the heat sink assembly was significant enough on its own to not warrant needing more thermal pad/paste material to eke another degree at best. Then again, a 4–5°C drop, versus a 3–4°C drop, may matter for the very reasons I set out to work on this project — namely, to save my skin, literally, from burns when using the laptop on, well, my lap.
You and I are in the camp on Skull. I felt disappointed but I certainly didn't hate it. The rehashing perplexed me: Jim Broadbent as a British senior academic to replace Denholm Elliot's Marcus Brody. Seriously? Yet another traitor reveal and once again, all the villains are wiped out. Though I did enjoy the fan-service at the end with Indy transitioning to a romantically stable life.
Fingers crossed that Lucas and Spielberg (two of my fave filmmakers) do Dr. Jones justice this time.
I had been excited to see that movie, but just never got around to see it in theater. I did eventually see it but not like I expected.
I can peg the time period as being between November and December 2009 because of the following events. TiBook 400 dies, November 2009. I have no other Mac except two iBook G3s that my mom had passed off to me. I've never used them. Jury duty happens and so I take one of those with me. I spend the entire time in the jury room trying to get that Mac working (it had something earlier than 10.1 installed). Never got it to hook up to the jury room WiFi. Later I discovered that this was because it had a broken Airport antenna and it eventually became my son's iBook.
Anyway, the people there played Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for the jurists. So with a non-functioning Mac I couldn't do much with I ended up watching the movie.
It was so unremarkable and required such a suspension of disbelief that I've never seen it again.
After what Disney has done to Star Wars, be prepared for some major disappointment.
Personally I liked TLC, Crystal Skull was just content for content's sake but still entertaining. I expect 2023 Indiana Jones to be even worse. I think I will not even bother watching it. Modern Disney has fooled me more than enough.
As for early intel Macs, I'm currently watching "La Valla", a Spanish dystopian series on Netflix, mostly on the couch with my white 2010 MacBook.
I had been excited to see that movie, but just never got around to see it in theater. I did eventually see it but not like I expected.
I can peg the time period as being between November and December 2009 because of the following events. TiBook 400 dies, November 2009. I have no other Mac except two iBook G3s that my mom had passed off to me. I've never used them. Jury duty happens and so I take one of those with me. I spend the entire time in the jury room trying to get that Mac working (it had something earlier than 10.1 installed). Never got it to hook up to the jury room WiFi. Later I discovered that this was because it had a broken Airport antenna and it eventually became my son's iBook.
Anyway, the people there played Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for the jurists. So with a non-functioning Mac I couldn't do much with I ended up watching the movie.
It was so unremarkable and required such a suspension of disbelief that I've never seen it again.
I caught it on TV - and recorded the airing but I've not watched it again either. I've also got the DVD here somewhere. Maybe I should give it another chance.
I've just checked and contrary to my assumptions, neither Lucas or Spielberg are involved this time. Hmmmm I'll try to remain optimistic because we might be in for a pleasant surprise.
Personally I liked TLC, Crystal Skull was just content for content's sake but still entertaining. I expect 2023 Indiana Jones to be even worse. I think I will not even bother watching it. Modern Disney has fooled me more than enough.
Just gonna go out there on a limb and observe how Andor, the most recent series (a prequel of Rogue One) is surprisingly fantastic. And I say this as someone who basically detests Disney.
Just gonna go out there on a limb and observe how Andor, the most recent series (a prequel of Rogue One) is surprisingly fantastic. And I say this as someone who basically detests Disney.
Oh trust me, I can rant at everything everywhere all at once!
I'm almost through and can recommend La Valla. It's not another Squid Game but solid world building, interesting and deep characters with a logical plot. Certainly more than what Disney has to offer most of the time.
Just gonna go out there on a limb and observe how Andor, the most recent series (a prequel of Rogue One) is surprisingly fantastic. And I say this as someone who basically detests Disney.
Rogue One is pretty much the only Disney Star Wars stuff I really like. Mandalorian and Bad Batch was also ok most of the time. But after the other huge disappointments I simply lost interest in Star Wars. Indifference is how far Disney has got me after being a lifelong fan. I still like the old stuff obviously. But instead of new Star Wars I rather spend my time with stuff like the afore mentioned La Valla.
Decided to experiment with macOS Catalina on my Late 2008 unibody MacBook, installed it to the partition of the original 160GB HDD connected externally via USB.
I was very impressed with the way Catalina runs: APFS on HDD went a long way since it was first introduced, Apple Maps also seems to be running well, I could zoom in/out without the app crushing.
I enabled the FileVault and it took 5-10 min to encrypt 80GB partition. When I went to manually patch the Night Shift, I got prompted to install Command Line Tools which failed to install twice through the built-in app so I downloaded about 11 packages from the software catalog and installed them manually. After patching the Night Shift I restarted the machine for the changes to take effect and got greeted by a screen with an Apple logo that is refusing to boot. It took me some time to realize that enabling FileVault can cause this behavior. So in order to boot Catalina I had to decrypt the disk through terminal commands. Even as a novice terminal user you can appreciate its power.
I would say that the lack of AirDrop and FileVault support are the only immediate downsides that I experienced so far.
On a positive note under Catalina my iPhone sees my Late 2008 MacBook as a trusted device which can receive codes. For some reason under High Sierra my MacBook is seen as not trusted device by my iPhone.
High Desert Southwest, North America. All the silica & iron in the air is bad for your lungs but man oh man, it sure makes for jaw dropping sunsets 325 days out of the year.
Well, it's not so recent anymore, but a couple weeks ago I made some DVD rips using my 2012 MBP. It takes about 5-6 minutes to rip one 22 minute episode and about 5 minutes to convert it to MP4. I can't remember how long it took to rip a single episode on the 2009 Mini, but converting from MKV to MP4 took about 10-11 minutes on that Mac. Will definitely be using the 2012 MBP for my DVD ripping and file conversion jobs from now on. Not everything is rosy with the 2012 MBP, however. I have issues on Ubunutu and Monterey where the Wi-Fi will just randomly slow to a crawl for a good chunk of time and then go back to normal. Using an Ethernet to Wireless bridge instead of the built-in Wi-Fi resolves this issue, but the way the case is bent around the Ethernet port makes removing and inserting the Ethernet cable tricky, so I don't like using the Ethernet to Wireless bridge unless I have to. I also notice that I have to plug and unplug the MagSafe connector a couple times before the battery will charge. This happens with both a 60 W and an 85 W charger.
In contrast, my 2006 MBP doesn't have these problems. I plug in the 85 W charger and the battery starts charging right away. I don't have to do any unplugging and replugging. I also don't experience the Wi-Fi slowdowns on either Snow Leopard or Mavericks. I do however hear the fans spinning all the time even on idle. The loudness level varies, but the fans are always on. The fans on my previous 2006 MBP didn't come on much using Snow Leopard, but would be more active under Lion and MX Linux. This 2006 MBP has fans that are as noisy on Snow Leopard as they are on Mavericks. The fans rarely spin up on my 2012 MBP by contrast. Last time I heard them going was after doing 2 or 3 three video conversion jobs. One nice thing about my current 2006 MBP is that I can use it to digitize my vinyl and cassettes. A little over a decade ago I had a Pentium 4 running a Windows 2000/Windows 98 SE dual boot that did that job. I still have the analog to digital converter (RCA jacks on one end, USB type B on the other) that I used back then and I discovered that it is OS (and audio software) agnostic. What is not OS agnostic, however, is the software suite that came with it, which is Windows only. I could have done a bootcamp setup so I could still use the old software suite, but I opted for a native Mac OS X solution instead by using Audacity. It is not as fun as using the old Windows exclusive software, but it gets the job done and allows me to stay in Snow Leopard. I chose the 2006 MBP for this task, because it is literally the only laptop I own that has USB 2.0 ports and my converter will only work on USB 2.0 ports running at USB 2.0 speeds. USB 1.1 and USB 3.0 result in glitchy audio. I need a laptop because my turntable is in a completely different room from my desktop Macs. It's been neat doing these digitizations again. I record the audio in Audacity, export the tracks to WAV and then use iTunes to convert to AAC. Basically, the same process as I did in my P4 days just with different software (though I did experiement with Audacity back in the P4 days too, so in some ways it's the exact same process, though I had the MP3 codec back then to convert WAV to MP3 in Audacity).
...decided to play my semi-regular game of musical hard drives with some of the Macs in my collection.
The person from whom I acquired my improbably resilient (yet still suspect) A1226 green dot MacBook Pro later offered me another green dot A1226 sans HDD, which I of course snapped up because I am anything if not obsessed. When I installed a hard drive in it, I noticed that the PRAM battery had been installed on top of the optical drive - weird. It wasn't until later that I realized that the PRAM battery is supposed to go underneath the optical drive in a small semi-circular notch in the magnesium chassis. Since I was opening it up again, why not use the opportunity to upgrade the 5400 rpm drive?
I stole a 120 GB Kingston A400 SSD from a MacBook 1,1 I'd nearly restored to full working order, swapping the SSD for the hard drive I'd originally put in the MacBook Pro. And of course, both drives work perfectly in their new respective homes without skipping a beat; a testament to how truly awesome Snow Leopard is (and how lovely it is when Apple builds their Macs with user serviceability in mind).
The person from whom I acquired my improbably resilient (yet still suspect) A1226 green dot MacBook Pro later offered me another green dot A1226 sans HDD, which I of course snapped up because I am anything if not obsessed.
I abandoned the disassembly of my iBook G3/500 halfway through due to the difficulty involved in accessing the HDD area. Thank goodness sanity prevailed with Apple's later products. For a while, anyway.
Even worse is the fact that the 21.5" iMac used 2.5" 5400rpm drives, and the 1TB Fusion Drive configuration was downgraded to a 24GB SSD. My iMac has that, and I couldn't get my hands on a "proper" SSD quickly enough.
I saw ROTJ in the cinema and my child eyes were amazed at the Battle of Endor's special effects. They still hold up well nearly forty years on and that's a testament to Lucas - who it is strongly suspected, handled all the special effects sequences himself after seeing that director Richard Marquand struggled with the concepts, shot the Luke-Vader duel and other parts of the film.
As an adult, I now view ROTJ's second half as a rehash of ANH, shameless merchandising and a drastic decline in writing - not helped by the departure of Gary Kurtz, who'd helped bring out the best in Lucas during their partnership. Judging by much of the deleted scenes, a better film was left on the cutting room floor. Marquand had to push in order for Yoda's passing to be shown. Lucas had proposed that it be mentioned by the characters as an off-screen event. Nuts.
Seeing as you're a Star Wars fan, you'll appreciate that I met the cinematographer of Empire and he was a good enough sport to autograph and dedicate my TESB Laserdisc.
I have such good memories of watching the original edit of ROTJ on VHS that I honestly am willing to look past some of that movie's glaring issues. It's by no means perfect but it just tickles that kid-like part of my brain that needed a pure-escapist break from everything else going on in my life at that time. The more mature, cynical part of me decided to steer purely clear of all of the various cash-in toys they were pushing even at the time of the VHS release, before the "Special Editions" came out.
Also, that's quite an incredible thing to have! Hope you've taken good care of it!
You and I are in the same camp on Skull. I felt disappointed but I certainly didn't hate it. The rehashing perplexed me: Jim Broadbent as a British senior academic to replace Denholm Elliot's Marcus Brody. Seriously? Yet another traitor reveal and once again, all the villains are wiped out. Though I did enjoy the fan-service at the end with Indy transitioning to a romantically stable life.
Fingers crossed that Lucas and Spielberg (two of my fave filmmakers) the new director and writers do Dr. Jones justice this time.
What also really bugged me is how badly they mangled Mutt. He was clearly positioned to be the heir to the Jones mantle, which made total sense to me, but he was portrayed in such a cringeworthy fashion, and now he's gone from the new film entirely.
It really came across as if they wanted to make a new film that acted and felt just like the old films, ridiculous escape/action set pieces and all...instead of just making a new film.
Hooked up a new Apple Wireless Keyboard to the Early 2009 Mini today. So that's two of these keyboards now.
Also hooked the small BT speaker back up to the Late 2009 Mini through an audio cable. I have the speaker plugged into a USB adapter on the powerstrip instead of a Mac now. That keeps the speaker from doing that annoying clicking.
Created a Multi Output Device with the Base Jump and the small BT speaker so sound is now outputting to both devices from the Late 09 Mini. Also had to find a different way to control sound because you can't use the sound up or down keys with a Multi-Output Device. Found the app called Multi-Device Output app. On Github and it works. Just have to get used to going to the status bar now.
Finally…ordered a 40" VESA display stand mount. That's going to get those two displays on the ground off the ground when it gets here. They should be even just right under the HDTVs.
And last but not least, my 300 watt torchiere lamp is doing it's job and killing all the flying bugs! It's not napalm in the morning but you can gag on it just the same.
You mentioned the original versions and I've got all three on Laserdisc in NTSC widescreen format and for better or worse, I also have the so-called Special Editions in PAL widescreen THX Dolby Digital format, plus the original versions and Special Editions on PAL VHS - and both in widescreen.
What also really bugged me is how badly they mangled Mutt. He was clearly positioned to be the heir to the Jones mantle, which made total sense to me, but he was portrayed in such a cringeworthy fashion, and now he's gone from the new film entirely.
It really came across as if they wanted to make a new film that acted and felt just like the old films, ridiculous escape/action set pieces and all...instead of just making a new film.
Hooked up a new Apple Wireless Keyboard to the Early 2009 Mini today. So that's two of these keyboards now.
Also hooked the small BT speaker back up to the Late 2009 Mini through an audio cable. I have the speaker plugged into a USB adapter on the powerstrip instead of a Mac now. That keeps the speaker from doing that annoying clicking.
Created a Multi Output Device with the Base Jump and the small BT speaker so sound is now outputting to both devices from the Late 09 Mini. Also had to find a different way to control sound because you can't use the sound up or down keys with a Multi-Output Device. Found the app called Multi-Device Output app. On Github and it works. Just have to get used to going to the status bar now.
Finally…ordered a 40" VESA display stand mount. That's going to get those two displays on the ground off the ground when it gets here. They should be even just right under the HDTVs.
And last but not least, my 300 watt torchiere lamp is doing it's job and killing all the flying bugs! It's not napalm in the morning but you can gag on it just the same.
I have a UV lamp that I deploy during summer time to annihilate unwanted flying guests. Some times I'd get woken up at night time by a random *bang!* as one of them touches the lamp and completes the circuit...
Dug out Dock Dodger from backup. It's a Universal app so runs on Intel and surprisingly still works on Mojave. That allowed me to remove the Nixie Clock app from the dock and the app switcher (this is what Dock Dodger does).
