19 February 2010

Good News | Bad News

I should be preparing for my report in my MA class tomorrow but instead of attempting (for the Nth time) to get some organized outline from O. Ducrot's concept of Polyphonie (whose reluctance to drop that elusive "producteur empirique" screws everything for me cause I can't really grasp how that is different from the "locuteur"), I'm updating my blog with a new post.

Good News #1 : U.fl Apple antennas have been delivered at home! 
Finally, after 18 days of waiting!
I've recently ordered U.fl antennas for my HP Mini 311 to fix bluetooth signal. If you remember, I had to transfer the stock BT/WiFi combo card of the 311 to the full height extra PCI slot so I could use my dead Mini 1001TU's Snow Leopard compatible b/g WiFi card on the half height slot and because of that, the stock antenna could not reach the BT/WiFi card where it has resided ever since.
Bluetooth would still work but I had to keep my cellphone in very close proximity (read: on top of the keyboard deck) to transfer stuff and the connection then was not even half decent.
Below are pics of my new setup:
I used glass frost film to secure the card, the length of the antenna coiled and fitted in the remaining free space in the full height pci slot.
I haven't tried experimenting with which port on the card gives better signal for BT but I started with J2, see middle pic above, and I could control the cursor on my Mac OS X 10.6.2 desktop from my desk to my bed and so I stuck with that config.

Good News #2 : My Mini MacBook 311 has its own 11.6" bag from TechAir
The bag supposedly retails for £19.99 but I got mine for only Php 639 (£ 8.98); and it comes with a free TechAir optical mouse too! The laptop bag model doesn't offer TechAir's trademark TechAir Protection technology, which admittedly makes this good deal not really a good one. 
But I was only looking for something with which to carry my Mini 311 tomorrow - I usually just shove it in my A4-sized clear file holder with zipper (something like this, only mine's clear) along with my photocopied reading materials for my MA class. But tomorrow, I'll be attending the christening of a friend's baby boy and I'm tobe godmother, so I need something with some cushioning and can be strapped securely to my body while I jump from church to university.
Here's my 11.6" TechAir baggie:
 
 Yay! I'm so excited to use it tomorrow!

Now for the bad news: The HP Mini 311 Darwin Project thread has been closed
Links to the project files for installation have been taken out. 
The sad thing is that I didn't back up the latest ISO booter which also contains the HF4 installer :( I'm still thinking how best to reformulate my HP Mini 311 Snow Leopard installation guide to make it adapt to available resources in the HP Mini 311 Level 1 Support thread which, thankfully, is still up and running. Also there's still the google code page.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey congrats on the antennas!why does it come with 5 if you only use two? haha
btw did you get my message on twitter?
i believe i know why your mini's 1000 screen died! email me, ill help you out in return for all the help you have givin me

LeMaurien19 said...

^Thanks! The antennas come in a bundle of 5 - can't really do much about it.

And really? You know what happened to my Mini 1000? I mean, I thought it wasn't just simply the screen that died - I don't hear the drive activity (it's not loud but still normally audible when the mini was still ok) and also the fan doesn't whir up like it did before straight on after switching it on...But, I'd still appreciate your opinion on this very much :D

email's lemaurien19 (at) gmail (dot) com

Nefi Gonzalez said...

Do you know why they closed the project? Will it be open somewhere else?

Nefi Gonzalez said...

Not so bad news after all, the project is still active at google code: http://code.google.com/p/hpmini311/wiki/Downloads

Nef

LeMaurien19 said...

@Nef
Congrats on your Mini MacBook! or is it a Mini MacBook Air? ;-)