Tancredi

Solving Macbook Wake from Sleep issue

My girlfriend's Macbook has been suffering from a wake from sleep issue for around 12 months now. It appeared to go away and then last week with an upgrade to Leopard the issue came back even worse than before. The problem: Macbook automatically wakes from sleep with a log entry stating 'USB caused wake event (EHCI)'.

What follows are the steps I've taken to try to eliminate the problem and also what I hope is the permanent solution.

Bad Boy 8 fixie conversion

I would like to present to the world my latest and greatest bicycle, the Cannondale Bad Boy 8 fixie conversion. Its my first fixed wheel bike and I hope you'll agree she's a beauty.

Abode Photoshop CS3 fix for crash on Save

A quick post to describe a possible solution for fixing an issue I had where Photoshop CS3 kept crashing on trying to Save.

Courier bikes - Which one to buy?

When I go back to Australia, we are moving over east to Melbourne. I'm going to hopefully be a bike courier again, riding around the streets at ridiculous speeds trying not to kill myself or anyone else. To this end I'm considering what bike to buy here in the UK (where choice is much better) to take with me when I go back over.

Windows Vista, Linux and Mac OS X

I have two computers at home, a mini PC in a Shuttle case with a TV card for my entertainment and storage and my Macbook Pro which I use for everything else. I recently became frustrated with trying to get Windows Media Centre 2005 to work properly with guide data in Australia and the correct daylight savings times, so I decided to dual boot it with Linux to see how the current distributions were going, and to give MythTV a shot.

Bleedin' Hayes 9 brakes

Last couple of weeks I've been riding I've noticed the efficiency of my brakes has been slowly getting worse, to the point where the levers reached right back to the handlebars and I could no longer get enough leverage to lock up the wheels. I use Hayes 9 hydraulic disc brakes on my bike and figured maybe they just needed bleeding or something.

Cannondale F800 Bad Boy conversion

I wrote a previous entry about what I was going to do to my Cannondale frame to make it into my dream work bike. This new entry is about what I've actually done and the various difficulties I encountered along the way.

Amcom - the saga continues

Wow, those guys at Amcom are truly incompetent. After disconnecting my ADSL connection for no good reason and making me wait a week without even offering dialup before reconnecting me, I have now found out they connected the wrong number at the local telephone exchange, so all my calls are going through someone else's Telstra account and phone number. This means no-one has been able to contact us for days too.

So I decided to write to Amcom (yet) again, with a list of all that has occurred between us so hopefully they will understand the problem. I've copied the letter below.

Converting a Cannondale F800 XC bike into a courier work bike

As you may know I work as a bicycle messenger or courier at the moment and I've got a tricked out Avanti Escape with rigid forks I'm riding currently. I can't bear to see my Cannondale sitting there each day not being used so I've decided to convert it to rigid forks and get it out on the road and start using it as my main work bike.

The bike is a Cannondale F800 2004 model XC mountain bike. Its a hardtail with a Lefty Jake front fork, which is one of the most beautiful things I have ever ridden; as long as that riding is done off-road. On the road it is simply wasted effort, there is no lockout on the front fork so a lot of energy is lost riding up hills and turning is not so tight and accurate as a rigid fork bike.

Amcom - pain or pleasure?

I use the broadband ISP Amcom here in Western Australia for my fast broadband needs. They are one of the only providers which have their own DSLAMS in the local telephone exchanges, most of the rest of the ISPs are at Telstra's mercy. I have always found the Amcom connection to be fairly fast and reliable, unlike my experience with iiNet where disconnections seemed to be an almost daily occurance. My main problem with Amcom is their administration department and their billing department and their technical support department...