Update: Moving a Mountain / New Mac Shelf
May 10th, 2006 by Benj Edwards
For those of you who didn’t know or don’t remember, the reason why VC&G has been quiet lately is because I’m in the middle of moving to a new house. After I’m settled, things will be back to normal (I also got married on May 1st. So you can imagine that I’ve been quite busy). Until then, I’ve got a few pictures for you. The first picture (above) is of the first computer I set up in my new house. It’s a Mac Color Classic that I’m currently slowly playing The Secret of Monkey Island on (great game, by the way). I set it up in a little dormer nook in an otherwise empty room upstairs. In lieu of proper furniture, it gets the next best thing: the floor. When the hustle and bustle of all the moving gets to me, I can retreat to my “Mac room” and relax. But not for very long, of course, because there are plenty more computers to move! Chop chop!
Remember my “Compact Mac Shelf?” Well, I’ve had to leave that luxury behind. The closest I can get to that in my new place is what you see here. The previous owners left this wall-mounted TV stand in the kitchen, and upon first seeing it, I didn’t think “TV.” I thought…well, you can tell what I thought, because the picture illustrates it quite vividly. Anyway, if the wife lets me, I might rig up some sort of useless-but-fun interactive Mac art installation. Then again, it’s likely that we’ll actually just put a color TV up there (if we ever get one that size). Still, I thought the new “Mac Shelf” was worth a picture.
That’s all for now. I’ll still be chatting some in the VC&G Forums before I get back up to full steam again, so join in the fun (Haven’t joined yet? Why not?). And don’t worry — more interesting and original VC&G articles are definitely on the way.
May 10th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Secret of Monkey Island is a beautiful landmark in computer gaming. And that wall-mounted Mac is pretty awesome. It would be spiffo if you could somehow get a wireless keyboard and mouse attached to that thing. Although, the monitor probably isn’t big enough to see clearly from a distance anyway.
September 18th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
What would be totally awesome (but at the same time almost impossible) if you could get your hands on a Macintosh TV, and hook it up to the cable there. That would be a truly complete kitchen.
September 18th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Heh, funny you should mention that Jason, as just 10 minutes ago I was looking at the Mac TV specs on apple-history.com and thinking about what I could do with one. 🙂 They’re pretty rare, but I think I could get a TV tuner card and put it in another Mac.
Thanks for the comment!
September 19th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
You could get an eyeTV (www.elgato.com) and connect it to an iMac G3 or any Mac with USB. Maybe a nice blue iMac would look nice in that room, and if it counted as a TV, well, that would be a bonus:-).
September 19th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Well, I do have a blueberry iMac, but I don’t have cable TV at the moment, so I guess the whole thing would be moot. 🙂 Still, I could probably put it up there and display something on it.
September 20th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
You could display a slideshow or something, but for eyeTV to work, you don’t need cable. It will work with whatever you have. Just make sure not to burn out the power supply or CRT tube. I have experience. It’s a custom power supply that costs $300 to replace, and I don’t think you can replace the CRT. P.S. Visit my website (I linked it to my name at the top) to see some screen savers that I made for the Mac. As of now, they’re 10.4+ only, but I think you might like them anyway. Also, a link to Quinn is there, which is a falling-blocks (I can’t mention the name of the game due to restrictions by the Tetris Company) game, with a neat Aqua interface and everything. I didn’t make it, but I highly recommend it. Wow. I can get off topic easily.
September 20th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Oh and one more thing, it’s on topic. You could also get a wall mount for the flat-panel iMac (G5 or Intel), and use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Although it might be expensive if you don’t already have the iMac, it would look really neat. Especially if the iMac doubled as a TV and picture viewer. And if you had one with the built-in iSight, you could also get software to use it as a security camera (so you can see who stole the sugar :-)).
September 20th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Thanks for the great ideas, Jason. I’ll check out your screensavers soon, as I’m always looking for cool ones. So far I’ve read that they react to sound.. that sounds like an awesome idea! And I’ve got two computers that have Tiger on them, so the OS requirements won’t be a problem.
You know, I would absolutely love to have an Intel iMac (I wanted the G5 one too when I saw it), but I don’t. Someday, perhaps. For now, I have a G4 15″ flat-panel, though, which I got new back in 2002 when they were first introduced. Boy, is it really showing its age! I’ve been thinking about retiring it for a long time, perhaps to use it as a weird linux-like machine or something else, but I keep it for iTunes, personal email, my contacts list, and occasionally iChat. Some day when I have the dough I plan to upgrade to the latest and greatest. 🙂
September 25th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Oh, I love that iMac. I don’t know why, it’s just something about that computer that I like. If you ever want to get rid of it (or any other mac, for that matter), you know who to email 😀 . But honestly, I would probably suggest that you try to sell it first.
I’ve seen some cool things done with those computers. I saw one where the owner took the shiny apple on the back of the screen off and replaced it with a clear one so that the backlight could show through like on the PowerBooks and such. I’m not sure if they have that mod, but for a lot of different mods for different Macs, with instructions and pictures, go to http://www.macmod.com.
You should definitley wait for Leopard before upgrading.
Just wondering, you don’t happen to have one of the Indigo iBook G3’s, do you?
P.S. I’m planning on releasing a new screen saver or two soon, so you should download the current ones, but check back every once in a while. Also, the screen savers should be coming to the Apple website soon! 🙂
September 26th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Great suggestions, all around. And nope; no Indigo. I’ve always wanted one of those “toilet seat” iBooks. Someday, perhaps.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Yeah. They’re not that expensive on eBay, at least for a Mac, and most of them run OS X (10.1, but it’s something). I’ve always heard of them as “Clamshell”, “toilet seat” is a new one. I guess if you look at it from the right angle.