Having been a VMware bod for some years now (since 26th October 2000 to be exact), I thought it was about time I checked out the Beta of Fusion for OS X. Parallels Desktop has been the VM of choice for a month or three on the Intel based Macs I’ve got access to of late, but I get easily confused by the whole internationalization issue with Parallels and how they distribute updates - so it ain’t perfect.I won’t go in to detail on seeting VMware up. This is for Mac, so there really isn’t anything to it.Rather than go through a painful install from an .iso or DVD, I decided to kill two birds and go for a VMTN vm-in-a-box approach due to Jnr Breadedcod cutting his top teeth right now irl - so time and patience are both short to be honest. There’s a nifty ‘download’ button right in the application that will launch a browser and point you directly at the shrink-wrapped VMs available.  Anyway, for the purpose of tonight, I need to take a look at MediaWiki as a possible solution for a little project at work that has:
- very limited budget
- very little time to deliver
- lots of interested parties
- lots of potential politics
- potentially large public presence
Update: 17/10/08 - lost a few images here with the upgrade to WP2.3 so this either needs a re-edit or ignoring (after all, Fusion is actually out now).
Tags: fusion, OS X, Virtualization, vmware
So having been up for 2 hours already I can happily report that reading books on Safari and watching ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” passes the time rather handsomely.
Putting the backlit keyboard to good use on the MacBook tonight, which is making up for the fact that OS X kernel panicked its way through the day yesterday. For some unknown reason, it seems that I lost all my kernel modules at some point over the past 10 days and so on a reboot yesterday (caused by an utter nightmare in getting Lotus Notes 7.x client installed), I ended up with an expensive single-user terminal.
On the plus side - when you do have to restore an OS X box, at least you do it sensibly (and easily, obviously) without losing any of your data or preferences 
Had a bit of a flashback today after playing about on Joost for a while. Thought originally that the playback from Joost was a bit rubbish, but then remembered that I’d ‘tweaked’ the WRT54G settings in Tavistock and was running with 54mb-only transmissions. Pft.
Anyway, after resetting to defaults things improved somewhat. Sadly, however, the current content is not really for me - Tiff Needel and The World’s Strongest Man don’t really cut it for mental stimulation I’m afraid. That said, the idea is really rather quite neat, as is the Joost interface.
Anyway, way back in the mists of time I used to own a Commodore CDTV. Yes, honestly, one of those things. I learnt pretty quickly that is was a pile of pup and I should have just stuck with my maxed-out A500 - but you live and learn I suppose.
One highlight of the CDTV, however, was the advent of Full Motion Video from CD-ROM ever-so slightly ahead of the Sega CD32 as I recall. Commodore introduced a format known as CDXL which provided 1/4 screen FMV at a pretty reasonable framerate - all from a Motorola 68000 (ok, with a bit of help from the custom chipset in the Amiga). Who needs a Macbook Pro eh?
The BBC are reporting on the fact that 3 species of British bumblebee are now known to be extinct. The decline in bee populations more widely should be something that gains more attention imho. We’re all a bit stuffed without them.
Anyway, from the article:
Studies show that three species of the insect have become extinct in Britain, while another nine are endangered…Campaigners from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust are calling on the public to take part in a bumblebee survey to catalogue different species.
So there is your next calling folks. As the weather has been so good recently, perhaps you could spare some time to go on a Bee hunt in your garden.
The only downside is that the Bumblebee Conservation Trust have already exceeded their traffic limit for the month because of the BBC article. I have no idea how they think that people emailing pictures is going to help - perhaps they should just set up a group on Flickr? Or perhaps someone could provide them with some hosting space - given that Sterling are involved in the research.
