TunnelBravo’s website is today’s webpick over at CommArts. The guys over there were kind enough to feature a link to Phx Creative right alongside their link. TunnelBravo does some amazing design work and we were fortunate enough to be able to work on their own website with them.
Stewart West, partner/Art Director at TunnelBravo did a lot of the heavy lifting to get the site up and running. We did our part to add some custom functionalities to the site and really give them total control over their content whether it be images, text, video or flash.
They knew what they wanted and we did everything we could to help them achieve their end goal. And when it was all said and done, TunnelBravo is featured as the webpick of the day at CA. I’d say they did a great job and I am proud to say that we had a part in it.
Congratulations to John Johnson and Stewart West of TunnelBravo!
Mac OSX – Leopard DVD Ejecting Issues SOLVED!!!
take me to the solution »
I fought off buying Leopard as long as I possibly could. I finally broke down and purchased it from some pawn shop on ebay. The disc came in the mail and I quickly opened it up. From watching videos online, I was prepared for an easy process. However, when I opened up the package, I could not find a registration code or anything to input when prompted (turns out you don’t need one). This made me a little worried that I didn’t purchase a legit copy. Being from a pawn shop and $50 under retail value, I figured either the copy was stolen or a fraud.
After doing a full system backup, I put the dvd in my laptop and prepared to move foward. The DVD spun, made a few loud noises, repeated two more times and then ejected. I think I was scammed. I tried again… same result. I became very irritated, because I can’t really call Apple Support because I didn’t buy it from them. I can’t do much with the pawn shop either, they just sold it, they don’t offer support, and the fact that they only had 12 copies meant I probably couldn’t mail it back for a replacement disc.
So, I jumped online. Turns out many people have been having the same issue, put the disc in, and it pops back out.
Here are the possible solutions I found:
- Burn a duplicate of the disc on another machine and then try the new disc
- Have Apple send you a new disc
- Burn a new disc image without the XCodeTools directory
- Reset pram – reset machine, hold down control + option + p + r, let it chime three times
- Boot from disc – restart, hold down c
- Choose boot disc – restart, hold down option
Unfortunately, none of these worked for me, so I am sure others are stuck too, however, I did find a solution.
THE SOLUTION:
- I grabbed my wife’s 5 year old iBook and put the Leopard dvd in, and it worked! Sweet, one step closer.
- Then I grabbed a firewire plug and plugged the iBook into my MacBook Pro
- Next, I shut down the iBook and rebooted in target disc mode – hold down t while it reboots (must be plugged in through firewire)
- The iBook mounted as a disc drive and so did the dvd drive
- I opened up the dvd and ran the install process successfully
This process took a lot longer to install than it normally would. This is because the dvd player was running off of another laptop through the firewire connection. But it did install! The process was supposed to take about an hour as good ol’ John stated in the video. It took me about 4 hours. Almost 2 hours were spent trying to find the solution and prove that the disc was not a fraud and then a little over two hours for the 1 hour install.
Now, Leopard is installed and it is running great. I am cruising around the machine checking out all of the new features. So far, I like it, but the over powering drop shadows that they rave about are kinda cheesy.
Hopefully this will help a few get Leopard installed. As long as you have an older Mac with a dvd player, you are good to go.
I disabled my Treo 700w mid week and moved over to the new iPhone. I was planning on waiting a year or so, but things worked out that I never planned on, so now I find myself with the coolest new product on the market. Overall, the iPhone is pretty sweet, I did lose some things that I enjoyed with the Treo, but I gained some other things that as a Mac guy, I missed out on before.
First and foremost, I must say that AT&T has the worst cell phone coverage I have seen so far. Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile all somehow provide service all the way out in the middle of nowhere, which is where I live. AT&T barely comes up with some bars when I am upstairs or outside, but talking in my family room is not an option. But, who cares abut the services, let’s talk more about the phone, right?… yup.
The iPhone is great for me because it syncs up with my life. I work on two mac book pros, one for work and one for home. It allows me to sync with both of them. Well, for the most part it does. I can sync my calendars and contacts easily without overwriting the other one. So my phone allows me to always have an up to date calendar of my work and personal life. It also allows me to keep my contacts up to date on both machines and my phone.
So I have two intel macs now, one at work and one at home. My home computer, as explained in a previous post, has parallels with Vista and my work one has parallels with XP. To keep this short, I will just say Parallels is awesome, vista sucks and XP does what I need it to do.
If you want to have a mac that does windows, get parallels. Also, don’t go and get vista, it is a big drain and a let down. I am yet to find the benefit in it. XP runs fast and doesn’t make me feel like I am running dual OS’s. So, parallels = sweet, vista = suck and XP = good enough.
I have been using CS3 for a little over a week now and it is certainly nice. The cool thing is that Flash and Dreamweaver are now Adobe products so they are all connected in some way. I tried using Dreamweaver for a project after I read the manual and I was disappointed. I don’t know if I just suck at Dreamweaver now or if it is a Dreamweaver issue, I just personally trust and like looking at hand code much better. It wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do, so I had to resort to hand coding which took me longer to clean up DW’s code then it would have if I just coded it by hand to begin with.
Other than that, everything is cool. All of the apps I have used are just like the last versions, except they are connected more seemlessly and have modified interfaces and a few new tools. I haven’t used anything enough yet to really know how cool they are, but I am definately happy I upgraded.
Two really cool apps that I have used so far are Acrobat and Flash Video Encoder. They are simply smoother and easier than ever before and offer flexibility that makes life more painfree.
As I use the apps more, I will learn more and let you know how it goes. I guess the coolest thing so far is the manual. You will know what I mean when you upgrade. It is a manual like I have never seen before. I am now about 25% of the way through the manual and will actually read the rest, again, you will understand when you upgrade. For now, I don’t know how necessary an upgrade is, I am just happy I did it and will find out even more benefits as I use the apps more.
