Things are busy here as always. I got to reinstall my Mini after a power hit and no UPS (doh!!!) but that was OK since I learned a few more things in the process of trying to bring the mini back to life including opening it. What a niffty package the mini is from a industrial design perspective. The engineers get kudos for the clean but tight packaging. Anways, the Mini is back up and running after a clean install of 10.4 and amazingly, things work better than when I first got it. I'm not surprised since it was someone's elses mini and all I did initally was to create a new account so I could play right away. I've been using the Postfix Enabler big brother called "Mailserve" now for about a month and it's great little app for the cheap price they want for it. What an awsome way to set up a real email server for cheap with the mini as the engine. It has been absolutely reliable and doesnt complain one bit about using POP and fetchmail to retrive email from the ISP unlike MS Exchange which complained bitterly every time it got the mail. The internal routing just works, no mess, no fuss. I'm going to start enhancing it but before I do, I may just install my new copy of Server 10.4.

Oh did I mention I have server now? oh yeah baby, a REAL OS and server tools to boot. I joined the Apple developers group and for a small amount, a real copy of OSX 10.4 and Server 10.4 plus a couple other resource DVDs headed my way. Plus a discount on a single piece of hardware, can we say Intel?

To get back into the saddle of programming in C, I got from Spiderworks their "Learn C on MacOSX" and their "Coco Game Programming Workshop" tutorial books. I also picked up a book on ObjectC so I'm trying to get back into it. My last programming in C was the days of "Turbo C" so you can see a refresher is in order. Visual tools? Bahh.. GUI interface? humbug! Yeah.. fun days .. not!

So anways, to get server up and running on the Mini I bought a 160 gig drive in the NewerTech miniStack V2. Sweet piece of hardware for the Mini. In preparation, I did a clone of the mini to my old Gen3 iPod an verified that I could boot from it if I have to. The new stack went in last night and works prefectly. So sometime in the next few days, I will be installing Server on it and using the stack as the boot device. It is claimed even using firewire, the faster drive makes a noticable difference on the Mini's performance since the internal 4200 RPM drive is such a dog. We shall see :)