Wednesday, May 31, 2006 This Week's Top 10 Hits As far as I am concerned, the Red Hot Chili Peppers still have my favorite track, "Dani California" which holds on to my personal top 10 at #1 for the 5th week in a row. The iTunes software on my main computer is still giving me trouble (like it won't launch).... I suspect a bad sector on the main hard drive or even worst a bad hard drive. I plan to run Disk Warrior on the G4 this week to see if this can be fixed without having to buy a new hard drive. The bad thing is that the iTunes XML file which I think controls and manages all of my playlists is stuck in the bad sector and for some reason can't be copied to another disk. The good thing is that my music files exist on an external drive while the player lives on an internal drive with Mac OSX. So whatever I do, I won't be losing music anytime soon. That said, here is my list of the Top 10 Hits for the week: 1 Dani California (5th Week @ #1) - Red Hot Chili Peppers 2 Hold On, Hold On - Neko Case 3 Again and Again - Jewel 4 Steady, As She Goes - The Raconteurs 5 Girl Next Door (Album Version) - Saving Jane 6 Bad Day - Daniel Powter 7 Who Says You Can't Go Home - Bon Jovi with Jennifer Nettles 8 Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield 9 Everytime We Touch - Cascada 10 Wisemen - James Blunt posted by mel at 10:35 PM 0 comments Mom's Pretty Flowers From time to time I'll post photos of flowers to this blog just to give this place some color. Many of the flowers that I take pictures of grow at my parents' place in Honokaa on the Big Island of Hawaii. Other flowers that you will see posted here will have been shot at other locations. I also plan to write stuff about Honokaa. If you would like to see more photos of flowers that I shot, visit the following page links: My Flicker Flower Garden My BuzzNet Flower Gallery There are more photos in my BuzzNet Gallery, though in time I suspect the Flickr site to grow as I continue to archive my Flickr photo links at my new Flickr photo blog. posted by mel at 6:03 AM 0 comments Monday, May 29, 2006 GOP Hawaii Convention Day 3 The third and last day of the Hawaii Republican Convention focused on the platform. Delegates spent more than 2 hours reviewing, discussing and approving various bullet point topics or "planks" on the 2006 platform. The document which is updated every 2 years has been described as a "living document" meaning that it is probably always in a state of change... at least every 2 years. The platform committee which I am a part of, spent several weekends hammering out the document. Most of it remained unchanged from the 2004 platform. Changes were abundant in the end, as several were brought to light on the convention floor during the final hours and minutes. Fortunately for me, the items I revised in the economy plank went by the committee and the delegation with nary a comment as we updated and revised items relating to the standard deduction on state income taxes to match the federal one, and supported an elimination of the Jones and Passenger Services Act to enhance a more competitive cruise and shipping industry. Floor amendments were proposed, discussed, debated, and voted on some of the other planks. Veteran's issues became an issue after it was decided that veterans should be recognized for services rendered on behalf of our country. Another plank item proposes to ensure that soldiers sent off to war be able to get their civilian jobs back upon their return from service. In the end, it was agreed that a Veterans' plank would be part of the 2008 platform. In the area of Hawaiian issues, the plank was modified to provide qualified native Hawaiians with home ownership on lands set aside for the Hawaiian Homes program. A proposal to grant native Hawaiians the right to own their land in fee was turned down after being opposed by the executive branch. As current leases begin to expire this century, the issue of fee simple ownership will surface again. I think it would be a good idea to allow Hawaiian homeowners to get their land in fee and eventually end the program over the next 100 years or so. On the education front, governance and funding of the top heavy state education system was once again discussed with some changes made to the original plank proposals. Bottom line is that the education system will remain the way it is for the foreseeable future even though the Governor and many others believe major changes should be made in localizing the system. New plank items addressing the growing concern of identity theft were inserted into both the crime and safety plank as well as the one for senior citizens. I think everyone agrees that identity theft is a huge problem that will not go away soon. Lastly after the platform was approved and after some discussion, the proposed resolution to address the issue of the Kuilima resort development was brought up and approved by the delegates. Many people do not want the North Shore to be touched with massive development. Supporters of this resolution are quite passionate about putting barriers in front of the proposed development in order to "keep the country, country." We'll see if the City Council takes action based on this resolution and other public sentiment to have the proposal's EIS re-evaluated. In all the 2006 Hawaii Republican Convention like all others set the course and tone for the next few months as candidates wage into battle for those hotly contested executive level, congressional and legislative seats in the fall elections. Let's hope the party can be victorious in some if not all of its endeavors. posted by mel at 2:20 PM 0 comments Sunday, May 28, 2006 Nanue Waterfalls Nanue Waterfalls, originally uploaded by macprohawaii. This was shot on the Big Island of Hawaii earlier this month. Nanue falls is located along Highway 19 on the Hamakua Coast. posted by mel at 9:55 PM 0 comments Sunlight Creeping In Sunlight Creeping In Originally uploaded by macprohawaii. Flickr.com offers its users the ability to blog photos from the Flickr website to Blogspot.com. So here is my first Flickr photo blog. This particular picture was shot last December at my parents' home garage in Honokaa on the Big Island. I used a Sony P50 digital camera to take this photo in black and white mode. posted by mel at 9:47 PM 0 comments GOP Hawaii Convention Day 2 If there are some things that you should do in life is attend a political party convention at least once. These events are huge pep rallies for the party faithful and the second day of the Hawaii Republican Party convention was no exception. The highlight of the day was the 4-hour long general session which amounted to a huge pep rally where supporters cheer their favorite candidates on. Perhaps the group that made the biggest visual impact and the most noise was the supporters of State Senator Bob Hogue who is making a run for the 2nd District Congressional Seat being vacated by incumbent Democrat Congressman Ed Case, who is making a run for the U.S. Senate. Hogue's loud group gallantly paraded to centerstage as they kicked off several candidate lines with noisy celebration. The major candidates for the high profile offices got to make floor speeches and rallied on the troops. Candidates for various State House and Senate seats were rallied to stage and all were celebratory for this day, knowing that the campaign trail willbe long one until the fall elections. The goal of this year's elections is to have the Republicans hold on the House and Senate seats they now have, and hopefully even increase their numbers. There are 10 Republicans in the 51-member House and 5 in the Senate. Lt. Governor James "Duke" Aiona is a popular candidate with the conservative wing of the party. He also seems to be popular with women voters as he was recently named one of the 10 most sexiest men in the State of Hawaii. So much for electing a guy on issues, but if looks is also what it takes to get into office then for the lucky candidate, by all means, take advantage of that too. Over the last few years I have grown to like Mr. Aiona mainly on his stance to get tough on crime and also on his Christian conservative views. The highlight of the general session was the appearance and speech made by Governor Linda Lingle. For the first time in 40-years Hawaii Republicans can chant "four more years" as we now have a sitting Governor from our party in control of the executive office. The Governor focused on her accomplishments in office and briefly touched on issues she wants to further pursue. It was good to hear her talk about local school boards again after the issue apparently went away for a few years after her administration fought to decentralize Hawaii's top heavy public school system in 2004 to no avail. She also touched upon some of her pet issues including home rule and support for the Akaka Bill legislation in Congress. In the end notwithstanding some major flub-up, it is expected that Governor Lingle should win re-election this year and get a second term in the executive office. Despite some of the personal differences that I have with her on some of the issues, in the long run she will continue to be good for Hawaii. posted by mel at 7:15 AM 0 comments Saturday, May 27, 2006 Film Cameras Decline Canon, the top maker of photo products including digital and film cameras, announced yesterday that they are looking into the possibility of discontinuing production of 35mm film SLR and compact cameras. They are the latest in a long parade of camera manufacturers who have announced and followed through with the discontinuation of film cameras. Bottom line is that the bottom of the film camera market has fallen out as many people all over the world have embraced the wild world of digital photography. Canon will be joining other camera makers in the discontinuation of film cameras. They include Nikon, who announced the same earlier this year, Konica-Minolta, who pulled out of the camera business altogether (selling their digital assets to Sony), Olympus, Pentax and Kodak. About the only market that film still thrives is at the very low end where disposable cameras are still popular. It is kind of sad to see film go, but I like millions of others have embraced digital photography with a vengeance. The entry into digital photography is a bit steep no matter what kind of camera you buy. Digital cameras are simply more expensive than most of their film counterparts, especially at the high end where digital SLRs now rule. Still in the long run, digital is cheaper because you eliminate the cost of having to always buy film and in most cases taking the film to the procesor and having them develop it all. With digital we get an almost unlimited supply of "film", and instant gratification to see the results of what you shot and the immediate ability to do with your photos whatever you want to do with them.... as long as you have a computer (in most cases). I've been shooting pictures for many years and have gone through a long parade of film cameras. Fact is I have several perfectly good film cameras like the Minolta X700 that is pictured above. Sadly, I hardly ever use these cameras and shooting digital is more satisfying and immediate. Still, I hang on to my film cameras for those times when I may feel nostalgic and want to spend money buying and processing film. posted by mel at 6:57 AM 0 comments Friday, May 26, 2006 GOP Hawaii Convention Day 1 This weekend probably marks the unofficial start of the 2006 election campaign season. Both the Republican and Democrat parties in Hawaii started their conventions in Honolulu today. GOP Hawaii's convention is being held at the Sheraton-Waikiki hotel. I am a delegate from District 22 in the Republican Party. So I attended the convention for most of the day. The first day crowd numbered at around 200 or more people. Most of the events planned for today revolved around candidate workshops, informational forums, speeches and a platform committee meeting. Most people pay for and attend these kinds of conventions for camaraderie with like minded people, mingling with candidates and other people in the party, to learn something new, and hopefully feel the energy that a collective brings in order to start a vigorous election season with a bang. What I got of the convention is some insight on education issues that were presented by a panel of experts in government and the media. Panelists Linda Smith of the Governor's Policy office, Laura Brown, education writer for HawaiiReporter.com, State Representative Lynn Finnegan and former Board of Education member Laura Thielen addressed many issues before the televised panel with moderator Beth-Ann Kozlovich of KHPR radio. Among items discussed were weighted student formula, charter schools, vouchers, HSTA union, performance standards, SAT scores, and budgeting. One of the interesting items discussed was how teachers and schools control only 4% of the funding allocated to them. Most of the decision making is handled top down... from the all encompassing State Dept. of Education, the State Board of Education and the Hawaii State Legislature. Those are the people currently making decisions that may not be benefiting Hawaii's students, but instead, benefiting those in control... administrators and legislators. Now isn't that a crock? The 4:00 pm Platform Committee Hearing turned out to be a longer than planned discussion that revolved around family issues, health care, education and development. I am on the platform committee and I was in charge of the economic plank. Proposals from my plank were minimal as I decided and the committee voted in favor (at earlier meetings) of amendments equalizing the state standard deduction on income taxes to match federal levels, the elimination of the Jones Act and Passenger Services Act to enhance economic competition and offer the State better options and prices in the transport of goods between the islands and places afar. A minor change not discussed was a change in verbiage on creating a "diversified" instead of a "sustainable" economic base "built by the people of Hawaii." Essentially most of the economic platform that was crafted in previous years is still agreeable to most people including myself in the party. Some of those items still holding strong in the economic plank include lowering taxes and fees, lowering the cost of government, ending duplication of state and county services, and recognizing the importance of tourism, supporting the military as well as diversified agriculture. The "family, social and housing" issues got a lot of discussion. Someone on the conference floor asked why the party did not include a "definition of marriage" as a bullet point in the family plank. Good question all agreed. The issue brought about a lively discussion on traditional marriage and the fact that 70% of Hawaii's voters did approve a constitutional amendment in favor of defining marriage as "a union between a man and woman." Since this definition is already part of Hawaii's constitution, the committee felt that it was not needed to be included in the plank. Instead we had an item on stressing the importance of a strong and viable family unit, attached to an item relating to abstinence-based education and teaching youth the responsibilities of parenthood. Personally I would not mind seeing the definition of marriage bullet point inserted, though I can also live with the family plank the way it is now proposed. A marriage definition bill has been circulated in Congress by the Bush administration, so in light of that bill, perhaps this could be inserted either now or in the future. Education got more discussion as the Platform Committee discussed zero-based budgeting and a simple definition that a layman could understand. Several of the points brought up in the earlier education panel discussion also came to light. Lastly a resolution was proposed by State Representative Colleen Meyer and State House candidate Carol Phillips on the proposed Kuilima Resort development. What we have here is a proposal to expand the Kuilima Resort property to include up to 5 major new hotel developments, possibly more golf course and housing developments on property that is one of the last tracts of open land on Oahu's North Shore. Increasing traffic congestion, infrastructure upgrades and population growth cloud this issue as the developers are planning to go ahead with the development based on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) they made and got approval on more than 20 years ago. The proposed amendment that Ms. Meyer and Ms. Phillips want would recommend that the county government re-evaluate the proposed project and perhaps force the developers to do a new EIS. The resolution proposal was met with both support and skepticism by members present at the meeting. In the end, floor proposals brought up in today's Platform Committee meeting may be developed over the next 2 days and presented to the membership in a floor vote when the entire platform and the Kuilima Resort resolution is subjected to approval on Sunday. Photo: Panelists discussing education issues. posted by mel at 11:22 PM 0 comments Powerbook 3400 as an MP3 Jukebox A few weeks after I brought my Powerbook 3400 back to life, I decided that one of its main uses will be as an oldies music jukebox. Believe it or not, older Macs running on at least the Power PC 603 or 604 chip can handle the playback of MP3 files. The Powerbook 3400 has a PPC 603 processor. My particular model is maxed out with a total of 144MB of Ram memory, enough to run Mac OS 8.6, standard (but older) internet programs, word processors and simple imaging software. It can also play MP3s. SOUNDAPP PPC We are not talking about iTunes here. With a Mac this old running on OS 8.6, not even the version of iTunes that ran on Mac OS9 could run on this little puppy unless I upgraded the OS to version 9 (which I have no intention of doing). The freeware application known as SoundApp PPC version 2.73 will do the job for MP3 playback and CD ripping for the Powerbook 3400. This Powerbook is running off a 1 GB compact flash memory card. SoundApp was installed on the compact flash card. You can download a copy from places such as TuCows or from the Headgap Web or Telefinder BBS (I'll write on this another day). I think development on SoundApp PPC was discontinued a few years ago. While no longer supported, this program is useful for anyone who wants to play or rip MP3 music files to their older Power PC Macintosh. Installation of SoundApp is simple. Just unstuff the compressed .SIT file and make sure it goes to the correct destination on your hard drive or other media storage device during the installation process. Be sure to carefully follow the simple installation steps. INSTALLING YOUR MUSIC Next is the music. I have a Power Mac G4 with a large external hard drive where I keep my music and sound library. Most of the songs and other files on this volume were ripped from my CDs, with a few converted AIFFs coming from other sources such as my vinyl record collection. I also have about 120 AAC files of tracks I bought from the iTunes music store. These and podcasts downloaded from iTunes can all be played on my Power Mac G4, iTunes or loaded to my iPods. Since we are talking about an older Mac here, all of the AAC tracks purchased from the Apple Store are out. SoundApp doesn't support the file format. Everything else it does, which is mainly MP3. From backup CDs that I had previously burned off the hard drive, I installed those MP3 tracks that I wanted onto the rather measly 4 GB internal hard drive on the Powerbook. Mind you that this drive is kind of flaky, and may someday totally give up the ghost. But since all of the songs are duplicates of what I already own, I have no fear in installing them to the Powerbook 3400. USING SOUNDAPP PPC After the MP3s were loaded to the Powerbook 3400 hard drive, it was time to organize them into playlists on SoundApp. One of the easiest ways to use SoundApp is just to go to the file menu and press the PLAY option. A dialog box will open up, you navigate to the song title you want, select it and play. The selection will play and when it is over, you repeat the process again. This is great if you only want to play one selection at a time. The real power to SoundApp (like almost any other MP3 playing software) is to create your own playlists. SoundApp allows you to do this by going to the file menu and selecting NEW PLAYLIST. Once you do this a blank window shows up and you fill it by selecting the ADD option. Navigate to your music library folder and select the songs you want to show up in the playlist. If you are adding multiple songs, hold down the SHIFT key and keep on making selections from your music library folder until your playlist is done. You will notice that SoundApp PPC only lists song titles by file name. It is not very good at doing that either as songs with long titles have their names truncated. Bottom line is that you are going to have to know your song titles very well. There are no artist listings whatsoever, which means you also need to know the artist names to each song title if you want to create a specific playlist for a particular artist. Once this is done, it is a matter of playing back your song list. SoundApp offers several options which are listed at the bottom of each PLAYLIST. They include PLAY which allows you to play a song one at a time from your list, or PLAY ALL at which time SoundApp PPC will play all of the songs in order how they are listed or at random if you also check off the SHUFFLE option. If you want to have the music play all day long, select the option to REPEAT your playlist. Besides the Playlist window, SoundApp PPC also provides you with a CONTROLS panel that allows you to set volume, play, pause, skip forward or backward and stop your music. Playing music through my Powerbook 3400's tiny stereo 4-way speaker system is adequate though somewhat "tinny" in sound reproduction. Like most computers, if you want to get full sound from your music files connect a headphone to the output jack or connect the computer to a powered speaker or full size stereo component system. On the Powerbook 3400, users need to beware that running SoundApp PPC all by itself when playing back music files is recommended. If you are going to run another program at the same time as SoundApp and actively use your Mac for another function, playback will stop at several occasions as the processor has to switch back and forth from one task to another. RIPPING MUSIC FROM CDs To rip tracks off a CD, you insert the CD into your CD drive, Go to the FILE menu and select the option to CONVERT. Once you do that, navigate to the desktop, select your CD and a dialog box with track selections from the CD will show up. They are generically labeled as Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, etc. Select the track(s) you want to rip and the format you want to rip it to. Best to select AIFF, though beware that AIFF are large files. Unfortunately you this version of SoundApp PPC will not allow you to convert your files to MP3. If you have a newer Mac move the AIFF file to iTunes and convert it there or just simply rip the CD in iTunes to MP3 and move the tracks to the older Mac. One thing I noticed is that SoundApp allowed me to rip a supposedly copy protected CD and move its AIFF tracks off the Powerbook 3400 and to my newer Mac for conversion to MP3 or AAC in iTunes. FILE FORMATS SUPPORTED SoundApp PPC plays back a myriad of sound file types including MP3, MOD, snd, Windows WAV, AIFF, audio CD, and several other obscure types which I know nothing of. The program does not support newer file types such as Apple's AAC, Windows WMA or Sony Altrac. DOCUMENTATION Documentation for the SoundApp program is built into the ABOUT SOUND APP option that you pull from the Apple Menu. There is also a READ ME file that is included with the program and rudimentary help files accessible from the HELP menu. IMAGE: Select to see a large image of the SoundApp PPC program windows. posted by mel at 7:33 AM 0 comments Tuesday, May 23, 2006 Reviving My Old Powerbook 3400 The following post was orignally published on my BuzzNet and MySpace blogs earlier this year. I decided to put this here and will need to post it at my Macintosh website when I get around to updating that. Vintage Macs: Powerbook 3400 My Powerbook 3400. I bought it used about 8 years ago. It was for a while my primary laptop computer until I bought a used iBook 700 last year after the hard drive on this computer went south... sort of. The computer sat in my closet for about a year when I read an article about having this boot up from a flash card. I figured this was worth a try. So this is what I did: I purchased a compact flash PCMIA adapter that fits into the card slot built into the Powerbook. I had an extra 1 GB compact flash card laying around. Used that. I formatted the compact flash card for Macintosh. Booted the Powerbook 3400 with an OS 8.5 CD ROM. Installed the operating system and the basic network package onto the compact flash card. Rebooted the computer with the compact flash card after I changed the start-up settings control panel. Installed older software that I have sitting around to make the Mac useful again. Now I have a bunch of word processors, text editors, and HTML converter, JPEG viewer, iCab web browser and internet connectivity restored to this old Mac. It sits next to my Power Mac G4 where it is also connected to my network and uses the DSL net connection. Makes for a great little internet machine and word processor. The operating system was upgraded to OS 8.6 a few weeks later. My next post will be on how I turned this little old Mac into an oldies MP3 jukebox player. Visit my Powerbook 3400 page at my Macintosh Universe website. posted by mel at 6:46 AM 0 comments Tuesday, May 16, 2006 Top 10 Hits of the Week Over the years I have been a "chart freak" of some sort, listening to local radio station countdown shows and the old "American Top 40" show with Casey Kasem. I used to write down and keep lists of the weekly song charts. Did that a lot when I was a teen. Today in the internet age, we have entire websites devoted to music charts of all types. Oldies, current hits, mainstream, Billboard, eclectic and iTunes to name some. This past year I revived my personal music chart after I tied it in to songs that I buy or rip into my iTunes and iPods. Starting with this week's post, I will list my favorite Top 10 iTunes current tracks of the week. Here they are for the week of May 14: 1. Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers 2. Bad Day - Daniel Powter 3. Hold On, Hold On - Neko Case 4. Who Says You Can't Go Home - Bon Jovi with Jennifer Nettles 5. Steady, As She Goes - The Raconteurs 6. Girl Next Door - Saving Jane 7. You're Beautiful - James Blunt 8. Crooked Teeth - Death Cab For Cutie 9. Not Tonight - The New Cars 10. Again and Again - Jewel For a complete list of my Top 20 Hits of the week, select this link. People who create personal music charts get to have their charts compiled at places such as Top Hits Online and Beyond Radio.com. posted by mel at 10:54 PM 0 comments Monday, May 15, 2006 Welcome to Mel's Internet Universe Blog Welcome to the first official post of Mel's Internet Universe Weblog. I have had this blogspot since last year but haven't done anything with it until now. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a regularly updated blog. What I will publish here are my random thoughts on a wide variety of topics ranging from media to music, from politics to life in Hawaii and America. There will be a lot crossposting from a few other sources that I publish and even from other blogs that I do on a periodic basis. There certainly will be a lot of photos here as I have them published at several websites all over the net. In order for you to get acquainted with what I do or where I am coming from, I will offer you a list of web links to sites I already publish and maintain. Check em out and enjoy. Hear from you all soon. Hawaii Radio & Television Guide HonokaaHawaii.com Mel's Macintosh Universe Mel's BuzzNet Photos Mel's Flickr Photos Pukas in Hawaii Small Business Hawaii posted by mel at 4:10 PM 1 comments == 30 --