Apple 23″ monitor issues

I have two 23″ Apple monitors. The one I bought new in Feb 2005 works perfectly. The one I bought second-hand in 2008 has started refusing to wake from sleep. Initially I solved the problem by plugging in a tiny USB LED light, which kept it active, but in the last week it’s started to be quite a challenge.
Seems I’m not alone. The same problem is described by lots of people on http://pashasadri.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/apple-23-cinema-display-power-supply/#comment-1962. It must be the power supply brick since wiggling the elliptical connector usually brings it back to life. They’re connected to a Quad core G5, still a great computer.
Tomorrow morning I’ll try some of the solutions proposed in that blog, starting with taping off the centre pin and see if that solves it. If that doesn’t work I’ll try resetting the NVRAM and then the PRAM, but since the other monitor works fine I’m doubtful they’re the problem. My room has been smelling as if someone’s been having a sneaky smoke in there lately.
Since dozens of people have posted about this on the blog it seems Apple ought to recognise it’s got a problem with late 2005-2006 manufactured power supplies for the 23″ LCD monitor. I’ve owned Macs since the IIe in the early 80’s and have currently got six in the house, some very old. Just love ‘em, but I don’t want to start using other products because they’re turning a blind eye to a problem.

World’s only democracy: the people were asked and the people said…

Everyone here is talking about the surprise result of Sunday’s vote on the question: should minarets be banned in Switzerland?
In the world’s only true democracy the politicians were upset to find that 57% of the population vot…ed: Yes.

It’s cultural and political, not religious, apparently. The religious and political leaders urged a No out of tolerance and respect but the people say they don’t like what they see in Islamic cultures and politics; oppression of women, lack of freedom of religion, Sharia law etc.

I think I understand. And I guess since He probably won’t be found in a minaret or a church steeple, the search for Jesus goes on. I think yesterday I saw signs of his handiwork all around the day-old pristine pistes, and even one of His paintings in a perfect sunset over the snow-covered Alps.

What do your dreams mean?

Jungian dream interpretation models, which is nearly all of them, say that our dreams are our id trying to make sense of events in our life. It’s like going through your piles of unopened post, leafing through your photo albums, looking at your latest videos, photos and journal jottings and having a clear out of the stuff you don’t want to keep any more, while putting the rest somewhere you can find it again.

Has it ever occurred to you that some of your dreams might be something external trying to speak to you? Throughout history, writings have mentioned dreams often. The Bible is full of accounts of dreams; Joseph’s famous dreams, about how his family would one day bow down to him and Pharaoh’s dreams about the impending famine, not to mention Daniel’s dreams about future events are just a few famous examples.

I believe that some of our dreams could be God trying to communicate with us. By the time you reach 60 you’ll have spent something like 20 years sleeping, so He’s had plenty of time to try.
If you want your dreams interpreted, send me an email. Or, if you’re brave, post them as a comment to this page.

Describe whatever you can remember (it helps to keep a notepad and pencil by your bed side so you can note details down when you awake). Was the dream in colour or black and white? Or was it in black and white but with a detail picked out in colour. What was the colour? Do you have dreams that you’ve had before, recurring dreams? Do your dreams frighten or encourage you? How did you feel when you woke up? Scared? Peaceful? Happy? Sad or frightened?

SOLD: 1990 Mercedes 300TE 24V 7-seater, leather, auto, aircon. Beautiful!

Reluctantly selling this fine, 7-seater Mercedes Benz Estate, metallic Impala Brown on chocolate brown leather, auto and aircon because we simply can’t afford to run it any longer and it’s not very happy tootling around town.
Front view of Mercedes

It’s a beautiful car, which when new was almost fully loaded and cost £35,000 in 1990. It’s one heck of a car, with the sports setup and 170bhp when new, and it’s perfectly suited to an owner who can give it a good, long, regular run. We rarely go on long trips, and when we do you can see and feel the car enjoying it. An enthusiast will have this car in concours condition with very little time and effort.

There are lots of good reasons to buy this car: comfort on long journeys is perhaps number one. When we bought the car four years ago we drove from London to Newcastle and back in a day for a funeral and arrived home almost as fresh as on departure. There are very few cars in which you could do that. We drove to Switzerland, and up and down to Bath: every journey was luxury. We would have kept the car for ten years but for the rising cost of fuel. The long wheelbase smoothes out the road, and the amazing load-carrying capacity is helped by automatic load-leveling rear suspension. With the back two rows down you can carry full-size table-tops: I once had four Habitat glass tables, 1800×800mm in there and each one is very heavy. The car was perfect for the job. The third row, by the way, folds into the floor leaving a low, wide, long space and there is a luggage guard and boot cover.

Another compelling reason is: this car is tough. Clarkson and co. tested this model to destruction – and couldn’t. After hitting it with everything they could, and causing barely a dent, they concluded this vintage are the toughest vehicles out there.

This Mercedes had new tires all round in January 2008. New radio/CD May 2008. New MB original fan bearing June 2007. New rear left passenger window glass and winding mechanism (electric) August 2006. New front coil springs and engine bushes in 2006. Digital tracking in 2005. New battery and alternator in 2004 (the person who sold it to us put in a cheap battery when it needed something heavy duty).

It’s not perfect, but at 18 years old you couldn’t expect it to be. But the condition is amazing for the age. With a little tender loving it could almost be showroom again.

The leather is almost as good as new. All the seats look fabulous, except for one small belt-rubbed hole in the drivers right side bolster that was made long before we bought it.


The windows all work, as does the left electric (heated) mirror, the headlamp wipers and the fog lamps, front and rear. A few things don’t work; my son broke the sunroof mechanism on the 3rd day by fiddling in the boot. He didn’t know, but it’s too expensive to fix. The driver outside mirror adjuster broke from metal fatigue, though it still heats to de-ice. A thief broke in, in August 2006, and damaged the centre console walnut surround, and we’ve mislaid a small bit. Since the new radio was installed the instrument lights and front right headlamp don’t work, and the central locking mechanism (including boot electric closing mechanism) and interior lights haven’t worked for about a year. We’re talking problems that an electrician could easily solved but we’ve been told to allow £120 to find and repair the faults and we don’t have the cash.

The bodywork is in generally fine shape, with very few scrapes on the protecting colour-coded panels that run around the bodywork, except for a small dent in the front-right wheel arch. The other party has admitted full liability and will get the work done – we just haven’t got around to it.

Finally, the car uses oil and is leaking a little drop from the engine and the gearbox. A leaky gasket somewhere is letting oil burn; adding stop smoke keeps it clean but needs treatment every three months or so. Again, a bit of time to fix and the car will be running superbly, or take it to a garage, but we don’t have the cash.

If you need this kind of car you may not find a better example for the age. It’s only got 155,000miles on the clock, but should easily live to 450,000miles.

It is currently a non-runner, with SORN status. I am willing to sell it as such for a discount, because I don’t have the time or cash to put it through the MOT and get the road tax sorted. I expect that the instruments need to light or it will fail, so the cost is around £120. Alternatively, for the right person (eg someone in Christian ministry) I will put it through MOT and tax but for a higher asking price.

The asking price is £950 ono. If you’re interested, please call me on +44 7968 625634

First Steps – Stepping Stones

I edited this for Rockhopper in 2008. Directed by Amanda Burrell, series Producer Mark Turner

The Survivor’s Guide To Work – Times of Crisis: The Philippines Fights Back

I edited this film November 2009 for Rockhopper TV. The director was Terry Messenger, Series Producer Mallary Gelb.

The Survivor’s Guide To Work – The Migrant’s Story

I edited this film October 2009 for Rockhopper TV. The director was Jane Bennett-Powell, Series Producer Mallary Gelb. I also supplied archive for the programme.

‘The Switch’ by Elmore Leonard

‘The Switch’ was first published in 1978 and consciously reflects the times in choice of language and setting. But it’s a good story, and I couldn’t put it down.

Ordell Robbie and his friend Louis Gara, who has just come out of prison, kidnap the wife of a wealthy but uninterested businessman, for a million-dollar ransom. They decide to kidnap the dolly-bird wife of a local businessman, but their plans run into a problem when he makes it obvious they’ve done him a favour, for which he has no intention of rewarding them with a ransom payment.
Along the way Ordell gets a soft spot for the jilted wife, so when the Nazi hard-nut Robbie has hired tries to rape her things turn nasty. Meanwhile the protagonists have to work out how to get out of the situation and hopefully make some money.
Leonard’s writing is vivid, colourful and makes for a good read. Like me, you may find yourself reading his books for the next few months. Robbie and Ordell actually pop up again, thirteen years later, in Rum Punch – made into the film ‘Jackie Brown’ by Quentin Tarrantino.

Recommended.

‘The god of small things’ by Arundati Roy

I really enjoyed reading ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundati Roy. A master of language, Arundati makes you smell, taste, hear and feel the atmosphere in which this tragic love story unfolds. Recommended.

How to up-res SD to HD using Kona3

A project that started in 1993, on Hi-8, has recently taken up again. At the time I made a short 11-minute film aboutCharles Walker Hazzard a fine art sculptor, but in 2005 I shot some 12 hours on DV. An unfunded project, the second time my camera was a Panasonic AG-DVX100, a great standard definition (SD) camera producing wonderful pictures in the right hands.

A great camera in the right conditions

After a 2-year hiatus filming has started again, but now, of course, we’re in an High-Definition (HD) world. The film is intended for film festivals and to be offered in a completed state to broadcasters, so we’re shooting on the best HD we can get hold of, a Panasonic HVX-200 using P2 to record DVCProHD.

Looks like the DVX100, but bigger – and HD

The question is whether the DV (and perhaps even the Hi-8) footage can be blown up satisfactorily and used in the film in any capacity other than as archive?

Using the Kona3 card and an SDI-equipped deck I intend to find out. My hardware up-conversion or up-res will be done by the Kona3 card in real-time. The plan is to re-digitise all the original footage in DVCProHD – not the highest HD standard because it’s 1440×1080 but an excellent choice for a self-funded project.

The Kona3 card is compatible with my G5 Power Mac. One of the last G5s, the 3.0GHz Quad core version, it takes PCI-e cards. From
Salon Rentals Limited

 in West London I rented the Kona3, with breakout box (unused in the end), a Sony HVR1500 deck with SDI output and a Keyspan serial-USB converter. 

 

kona3 card which converts SD to HD in real-time during ingest


front panel HVR-1500
hvr-1500-rear, SDI outs on left, half-way downSDI means that with one cable I can get the highest quality and audio out of the DV and into the Kona card. The Kona 3 card is going to do the conversion for me. So how do I set it up?

Let’s start with the hardware. I couldn’t get a signal through the breakout box but rather than waste time connected instead the 4-way cable supplied. This has special miniature connections that push-click onto the card at one end and onto SDI connections on the deck.

The Keyspan USA-28x serial-USB converter controls the deck by carrying Timecode from the RS-422 connector on the HVR-1500 into a USB connection on the Mac.Keyspan serial (RS422)-USB converterA device control preset will need to be set up in FCP; see later.

WARNING: the cables are labelled in a way that I think is counter-intuitive. The label that says SDI IN connects to SDI OUT, whereas I would have expected the label on the cable to tell me to connect that IN-labelled connection to the IN connector. Apparently Kona changed how they do things a few years ago and I’m not the only one who tried it “the wrong way” first. 

Salon told me that the v.2 control panel on the supplied CD would need to be updated via the web. I tried v.6, but suspect it is only compatible with an Intel Mac. It didn’t work for me, so I tried v.5 (same problem). VERSION 4 works http://www.aja.com/html/support_kona3_swd_arc.html.

FCP controls the Kona 3 Control Panel, which can be frustrating as the settings you’ve put in the control panel change when you open the Log and Capture window in FCP (unless you’ve set it up correctly). Once set up properly it should look like this (note: you can connect SDI In 1 or SDI In 2 with equal results):

So how do you get it there?

First, set up your FCP project using AV setup. I wanted to work in 1080p but had to settle for 1080i. I tried various ways to take in 1080p: I suspect the Kona will do it but FCP won’t? Or I had something incorrectly set up… Please comment if you have an answer.

The capture set up looks like this:

Make sure it\'s same settings as your sequence

check the right codec in use

make sure it\'s PAL; default was NTSC

The device control set up looks like this:

Device Control Preset in FCP

In your Easy Setups you should see this:

list of settings after previous setup.

I experimented using test footage with various numbers for the capture and playback offset but couldn’t see any difference. It always seemed 1-frame behind the same footage captured in SD using Firewire. Please comment if you can clarify this.

Results so far look surprisingly good. I’ve noticed more grain, but later in my work-flow I’ll test a plug-in to reduce noise. One annoying and embarassing discovery is that somehow a couple of rolls of tape were shot on LP; I don’t understand how, but it might explain why I had trouble with sound-sync originally. The good thing about my setup is that I can just dupe from the DVX100 camera to the HVR1500 and re-originate that footage. I’ll let you know shortly.