Oddly Enough In Korea – The Great Stone Face Sculpture Park

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Oddly Enough In Korea – The Great Stone Face Sculpture Park

  What do you do if you are the founder of one of the largest mental health facilities in South Korea with 20 acres of unused land and have extra won laying around?  You start commissioning the creation of tacky sculptures of course!  This is what Chun Guen-hee of Eum Seong did on the parklands surrounding his psychiatric and geriatric hospitals.

  I have been wanting to visit the park ever since reading about it in the UK Daily Mail.  Strange tourist traps draw me to them like a moth to a flame, especially when they are perfect fodder for blog content!

  Here is entrance to The Great Stone Face Sculpture Park.  The admission is 6,000 won per person (About $5.20).  Which grants you entrance to the Grande park surrounded by three medical institutions, a psychiatric and geriatric hospital, and an alcohol treatment center.

The park contains stone statues of famous people, symbols of religion, science and learning, and pop culture.

Here is the Dali Lama.

Buddist Statues

Ghandi

Pope John Paul II

John Lennon

Some of the sculptures require a bit of imagination, or the ability to read the Korean descriptions.  Who can guess that this is Condoleezza Rice?

Hillary Clinton.

Other famous people from the political arena included.

Queen Elizabeth.

Princess Diana

To some of the darker corners of political and economic thought.  Or as I called it,  Murder’s row.

Fidel Castro

Kim Il Sung

If you think this might be Osama Bin Ladin, it does not fit the time period.  The Ayatollah Komaeni would be the correct answer.

Finally, Idi Amin.

There was a collection of really nice statues dedicated to sports.

Korean runner winning a race.

Snowboarder’s

Bicyclists.

And skiers

Among the entertainment and pop culture statues.

Elvis – The King himself.

Psy, who is famous for the K-Pop hit Gangnam Style.

And Marilyn Monroe

Other sculptures depicted older Korean customs / family life.  Here is a boy “Winowing”.  If you remember the blog I did on the Toilet Museum in Suwon.  Winowing was the practice of sending your bed wetting child around to your neighbors with a Winnow basket to collect salt to halt your nocturnal urination. 

Woman enjoying the sun.

One great thing about going to a place like a statue park for photography, is that you get to practice skills that are important for other styles of photography.  Such as different angels and focal lengths for portraits (Though you never would shoot at 16mm for a “portrait”, but for more of an artistic presentation of your subject?

I like the depth the wide angel gives, but there is too much dead space at the top.  Could have gotten closer and “looked down” on the subject, or a small chair or step ladder to elevate myself over the subject might have worked without changing the focal length.

Curious as to what this couple is praying for?  Is it a wedding?  Are they praying for a deceased son our daughter? The sculptor definitely captures the solemnity of the moment.

The subtle differences in these two women’s expressions capture two completely different emotions.

Girl going to market.

I am assuming this is supposed to depict a lawyer swearing someone in, though I do not know what book you would be swearing on in Korea.

I will admit the sculpture park is a bit odd, especially being in the middle of a Psychiatric Hospital.  I could not help think what it would be like being transported here by ambulance, arriving at these large stone buildings, and being surrounded by these statues.  Especially the ones depicting health care workers.  I might think that the inmates are running the asylum.

I hope you enjoyed this photo filled blog.  I do apologize for the lack of connect lately. There is more great content coming, so please visit frequently!  If you wish to receive a notification when new content is posted, please consider registering by clicking HERE.

Technical – Converting CentOS 8 web server to Oracle Linux

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Technical – Oracle Linux “OL”) Drop In Replacement For CentOS 8.

Last month we blogged the news that RHEL has decided to prematurely end support for CentOS 8 on 31 Dec 2021.  This has left IT departments scrambling to find a replacement before the end of the year.  There are several options, and most of them including switching to a Red Hat support license require a complete reinstall of your server, applications, and the migration of data.  Compounded with the  time testing and fixing any issues that may arrive stress levels are on the rise as the clock is ticking.  

  There is one option that does not require you to reinstall everything, and that is to convert to Oracle Linux 8, which is also a rebranded RHEL 8, and offers an easy script to convert your system from RHEL / CentOS 8 to OL 8.  The script will automatically reconfigure the system to download and install the needed kernel and other files.  Simply reboot after the conversion is complete.  The conversion installs the Oracle Unbreakable Kernel by default but If you need 100% code compatibility with RHEL 8, you can switch to use the RHEL Kernel.

  So how does this work?  Is it really as easy as advertised?  I converted Brent’s World To Oracle Enterprise Linux on Jan 01 2021, and I can honestly say for me it was! The entire process took about 4 hours, with the complete backup of the VM and its associated disks taking up the majority of that time.

 
Here are the steps I took.

  I made of copy of the VMWARE folder, and placed it on a separate drive, This was mostly done in the event the conversion was not successful, not of losing a drive in the process.

I downloaded the centos2ol.sh script from GitHub

  I copied the test from GitHub, put it in a text editor on the server and gave it executable permissions.

  The easiest way however is to download it using curl.

  From a shell prompt $ curl -O sudo https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oracle/centos2ol/main/centos2ol.sh

  Grant execution privileges to the script using chmod.
# chmod 776 centos2ol.sh

  Verify the script is now executable by listing the directory with the -l option or use the ll alias.

 We are now ready to execute the script

  I would recommend stopping any web or database services before the install. I did on my production box, but not before starting the install on the demo box for this blog.  At the very least this will keep users from connecting to your web applications and database during the install and reboot.

  Unless the script was downloaded into a location that is in your system path, execute the script by typing sudo ./centos2ol.sh

The script will now run.  Note the kernel version BEFORE the script is run.

 

 

 

What the script will do is redirect YUM to the Oracle repositories and replace the Kernel and necessary files.

  When the script is complete go ahead and reboot your Linux server, note the different Kernel information after the reboot.

We are done!!  How easy was that?

 

  The script installed Oracles Unbreakable Kernel, if you or your application or organization require a 100% RHEL compliant Kernel.  Follow the steps below to switch to using the RHEL kernel.

Let is take a look at the kernels available to us on our newly installed Oracle Linux.
At the command prompt, enter the following command.
# sudo grubby -–info=ALL | grep ^kernel

This will list all of the Linux kernels currently present on your workstation/server.

You can verify which kernel is currently the default kernel by issuing the following command.
# sudo grubby -–default-kernel

 

 

It should show what we already know, that we are using Oracles UEK kernel.
It does, so let us now switch to the RHEL kernel.  We need to first find the absolute path to the kernel.  We do that by first copying information between the quotes of the kernel directive of the second item on the list of installed kernels. Then enter the following command.

# sudo grubby –set-default <paste>

 

 

If the command is successful, you should see the following output.

 

 

 

Now reboot the system to load the newly selected RHEL kernel.
# reboot

When the system is back up, login and check the kernel version with the uname command.  
# sudo uname -r

 

 

 

We should now see that we are using the RHEL kernel.

That is all there is to converting a CentOS 8 system to Oracle Enterprise Linux!  I hope you found this blog informative, and that you will come back for next month’s technical blog.

Some notes on this blog.

  It is considered poor practice to use the root account to perform maintenance on a NIX server.  The best practice is to use a user account with granular privileges granted in the SUDOERS file, and perform the commands using sudo (Super User do).  I configured a demo VM for the purpose of getting screenshots and used root for expedience only!

DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for loss of data, or downtime incurred by using the steps and procedures in this blog!  Follow best practices and your employer’s policies if attempting this upgrade. 

  I am not affiliated with Oracle in any way, the steps outlined here should in no way substitute for official Oracle installation best practices or support.

Thank you for visiting Brent’s World.  If you find this content helpful and wish to be notified when new content is posted, please consider registering to receive an email notification when new content is posted.  You register by clicking HERE!

Korean Movie Review – Peninsula. Train To Busan 2

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Korean Movie Review – Peninsula. Train To Busan 2.

  Wrapping up 2020 with a Korean film review, it has been since back in August when I blogged Ode To My Father that I have reviewed a film here on Brent’s World, and given what a year 2020 was I thought it was only fitting that we reviewed Korea’s latest zombie apocalypse film.  Pendula is a stand alone sequel to the immensely popular Train To Busan which was released in 2016.  With an all new cast, and set immediately following the events in the original film. Peninsula takes you on a 2 hour zombie filled thrill ride that should keep you on the edge of your seat.

  Jung-Seok (played by Gang Dong-won) a Captain in the Korean Marines is trying get his elder sister, nephew and brother to an evacuation ship in the southern port of Busan.  Along the way they encounter a stranded family who begs them to at least take their daughter.  They ignore the family and make it to the ship.  However en-route to their destination it is discovered that an infected person has made it onboard and quickly infects several other passengers, including Jung-Seok’s nephew.  His sister refuses to leave her son, and Jung Seok has no choice but to seal the cabin and leave the refugees to their fate.

  Several years later, struggling to survive in Hong Kong Jung-Seok, his best friend Chul-min are recruited by the criminal underworld to return to South Korea to retrieve a delivery van with 20 million in US dollars locked in the back.  If successful, each will get a split of half the money.

The two decide to join a team of 2 other people who successfully make it into the port.  Will they be able to locate the missing truck?  Will they be able to avoid the zombie hoards who control the streets during the day? As they cannot see in the dark?  To make matters worse, with the absence of law in order, even the militias assigned to protect the people from the zombies and other outlaws have turned rouge and become bandits themselves.

  If the teams make it back alive, will their underworld bosses keep their part of the deal?

  I enjoyed Peninsula, it had good action, special effects, and a pretty good plot.  Though at some parts it did become formalistic.  As a standalone sequel it is worth the watch.  As it does not rely at all on the original you can watch the film without having seen the original.

  Go to your favorite source of online movies, and find out!

Peninsula is available at the AppleTV Store, and Amazon Prime.
It is also available on Blu-Ray and DVD at www.amazon.com

Blu Ray – $14.99
DVD – $11.00

After watching Peninsula, please tell us what you thought of the film.  Do you agree with our review? Post your response below in our comments.

Thank you for visiting Brent’s World.  If you enjoyed this blog and wish to be notified when new content is posted. Please consider registering by clicking HERE.

Technical – RHEL/IBM Screw CentOS 8 users by early End Of Life!

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RHEL/IBM Screw CentOS 8 users by early end of life!

CentOS project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

  We interrupt our normal blog schedule (I had planned on releasing the 3rd and final blog in the Muju travel series, but I was informed this week of late breaking news that Red Hat, which was acquired by IBM in July of 2019 has  decided to EOL CentOS 8 at the end of 2021 and push the project to  CentOS Stream.  Read the press release by clicking HERE.  

  CentOS was originally a community driven and supported fork of RHEL and was first release in 2004.  It has been an extremely stable Enterprise version of Linux frequently used by IT departments and developers as a stable development / test platform for their RHEL production environment because it is almost 100% code compatible with the upstream version of its subscription based Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Vs. Red Hat’s own Fedora project which is more of a bleeding edge development / test platform which is not as stable as CentOS or RHEL.  Red Hat officially joined the CentOS community in 2014 greatly speeding up the process of compiling, testing, and release of CentOS 7 and CentOS 8.

  It may sound like CentOS 8 is mealy being rebranded or replaced by a new product called CentOS Stream, so why are users up on arms?  After all they have been getting a free stable product for years?! 

The issue most users are taking is multi-faceted.

The planned lifecycle of CentOS 8 (the period of time where maintenance and security updates where provided.) was supposed to be 10 years. A lot of users now feel abandoned by Red Hat and feel that they have broken a promise of commitment to userbase.

    1. Users or companies will now have to migrate their servers over to another Linux  platform, even if they opt to migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, this will require them to rebuild the server from the ground up.  The caveat here is that Oracles Open Linux allows seamless transition from CentOS/RHEL, with a paid subscription to the OEL platform.
    2. With CentOS Steam being put in the middle of the Fedora -> RHEL development pipeline members of the community feel like they will be used as guinea pigs for Red Hats paid customers. Completely negating the reason, they settled on CentOS in the first place.
    3. Those that came to Linux from OpenSolaris after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystem and promised to support the down steam community are seeing déjà vu and see it as a breach of trust. 

 

  The discontinuation of CentOS 8 on 31 Dec 2021 will affect Brent’s World, as it runs the web server that hosts the blog and the forums.  Most likely we will be migrating to Oracle Linux, but am open to other flavors of Linux.  The main reason I chose CentOS, was due to the majority of production web servers are RHEL based, it would be a natural progression of what I do at home carrying over into my career.

  As M*A*S*H’s Frank Burns would say, “NERTS!”, but at least I have a year to develop and carry out a migration plan.

  What are your thoughts on this surprising news from Red Hat?  Feel free to post a comment, or head on over to the Forums for more in-depth discussion! (Click HERE to go to the topic in the forum.)

  Thank you for visiting Brent’s World!  If you enjoyed this week’s blog and wish to be notified when new content is posted, please register by clicking HERE.

Old Tech Vs New Tech – Image BBS Golf Solitaire Vs Glowing Eye Games Golf Solitaire for the iPad.

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Old Tech Vs New Tech – Image BBS Golf Solitaire Vs Glowing Eye Games Golf Solitaire for the iPad.

 

  For this long overdue technical blog I thought I would so something a bit…. Ok, very different.  As you know I have a fondness for connecting to old BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) via telnet.  In fact I run a Commodore 64 BBS myself called The Rat’s Den.  One of my technical blogs in 2014 interviewed several SysOps who also run Commodore BBSs running Image BBS.  You can read the blog by clicking HERE.

  One of my favorite activities on a BBS, besides posting, reading, and responding to messages around the world via the NISSA (New Image SysOps Support Association) network is playing some of the games Image BBS is famous for, and one of my favorites is Golf Solitaire!

  The object of Golf Solitaire is to remove all of the cards in each of the 7 rows.  Each row contains 5 cards.  You remove the cards by playing them against a stack of 16 cards.  If you can “match” them with the current card in the stack, you remove it from the board.  You receive a bonus $1000 for clearing an entire row.  To make the game play more difficult on the IMAGE BBS! Version, You can only run the count up from Ace to King, you cannot “place” a Queen on top of King, nor can you restart the run by placing an Ace on the King.  There are no wilds. 

  The Image BBS! Version, allows you to play against other users on the BBS, by competing for the highest score earned during the day, and the highest score earned during the month.

  The graphics are pretty good for a BBS game of the 90’s, and if played by several other users each month the competition can be pretty fierce.  The card shuffles are calculated for each day at the beginning of the month, so all users on the BBS play with the same deal each game, so it really is fair competition.

  Let’s compare this to a modern day version available on the iPad.  Besides the cool graphics and sound, we have the same 7 by 5 card layout, and almost the same game play.  In this iPad version you are able to run the suites past the King both directions, IE I can place an Ace over a King, and I can place a King over an Ace.  Some people prefer the Image BBS! Rules, as it makes the game harder, I do not think it matters. 

  You receive a time bonus in the iPad version, where you do not in the IMAGE version.  The bonuses for clearing a row in the IMAGE version is substitutionally higher than the iPad version $1000 vs. 300.

  While the iPad version does keep “High Scores.”  There is no daily high score in the iPad version.

  Both Image BBS and the iPad Golf Solitaire is fun, and pretty addiction.  If you connect to BBSs, give The Rat’s Den a “Call”.  You can download the necessary PETSCII “CG” Terminal on our forums in the Image BBS support group.  (Click HERE).

  If you are interested in the iPad version, click HERE.  It is available free with Ads, and $xxx for the version with ads removed.

  Thank you for visiting Brent’s World.  I hope you enjoyed this comparison of BBS online game vs iPad app.  Come back next week for a carry out review of Kitchen Hygge, our latest “Best Burger In Korea!”  If you wish to be notified when new content is created, click HERE!

  DISCLAIMER: This site is NOT monetized in any way!  I make no money off our reviews, or links that are provided.

Korean Movie Review – Ode To My Father 국제시장

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Korean Movie Review – Ode To My Father 국제시장

 It has been several months since I have reviewed a Korean film, for those that frequent Brent’s World we reviewed Cheer up Mr. Lee in May.  I am always on the lookout for good Koreans cinema, especially those films that give glimpse into Korean history or culture.  Such as the aforementioned title in reference to the Daegu subway fire in 2003, or when we find out that Oh Mal-soon’s husband died in a mining accident while working overseas in Germany in Miss Granny.  Which also plays a role in the film I am about to review

 While searching for more potential Korean films to review I stumbled upon  Ode To My Father which was billed as The Korean Forrest Gump.  As I really liked Gump for its delving into topics in American history that are often glossed over by most young Americans, I was curious enough to make it a must watch.

  Ode To My Father, released in 2014 was the 7th film directed by Yoon Je-kyoon and stars Hwang Jung-min as Yoon Deok Soo who is an old cantankerous store owner in Busan (Pronounced Pu-San), who doesn’t seem to get along with anyone, including his family.  He is being pressured by unknown business men, and the rest of the store owners on the street to sell KKotbun, a money losing import store he bought from his uncle when his aunt who ran it for decades passes away.  His niece asks Deok Soo why he gets so angry as it scares her, and asks him if he has any memories.

  We are then shown younger memories of Yoon Deok experiencing pivotal times in South Korean history, beginning with him being putting in charge of the safety of his youngest sister Maksoon during the Chinese invasion of the port city of Hungnam, which later became part of North Korea.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungnam_evacuation.  While boarding the SS Meredith Victory, Yoon Deok loses his sister and his father goes back to find her, but not before telling young Yoon Deok that he is not the man of the family and must work and study hard to support them until he returns.

  The movie takes us through Yoon Duk-soo’s life trying to make sure he fulfills his fathers wishes, by going to Germany in 1963 as a Gasterbeiter to work in the coal mines, where he meets his future wife Youngja (Played by Yunjin Kim), and earns enough money to buy his family a house, and pay for his brothers education.

  Yoon Duk Soo then goes to Viet Nam in 1973 as a technician to pay for his older sister’s wedding, and after the fall of Saigon in 1975 saves a young Vietnamese girl who is almost left behind after the Viet Cong attack a village, they are saving refugees from.  He returns to Korea with enough money for his sister’s wedding and a wounded leg.

  In 1983 KBS began special broadcasts of family members in Korea trying to find lost family members,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBS_Finding_Dispersed_Families Yoon Duk Soo travels to Seoul in an attempt to find his father, but ends up locating his lost younger sister who was adopted by an American family and now lives in Los Angeles.

  At a large gathering with the family, which I assume is Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving), Yoon Duk once again gets upset and retreats to his room, where he is seeing crying and prays to his father.  Letting him know that he has fulfilled his wishes and scarified so his large family can be successful and that he finally found Maksoon, and that it was very hard to do so.  His father responds that he has in fact fulfilled al his wishes and that he is very grateful.  We are shown Yoon Duk and Youngja on the roof of an apartment, and Yoon duk finally decides to sell the store because he has realized his father is most likely dead, or would be too old to visit anyway, and we are finally given the reason asked so often by others throughout the film, “Why do you have to be so obstinate and hold on to this money losing store?”

  If you are looking for a movie with insight into a few pivotal moments in South Korean history, I highly recommend Ode To My Father.  It does a really good job of delving into life after the Korean War, the sacrifices made during Koreas rapid industrialization under the rule of President Park and how important family is to Korean society without being heavy handed.  While I do not agree with the comparison to Forrest Gump, that discussion would go beyond the scope of this already long review.

  Ode To My Father can be purchased on DVD at Amazon.com

If you have seen, or choose to watch the movie reviewed here, please do not post spoilers in the comments!  If you wish to discuss the film head on over to our forums, register for an account and reply to the following post. https://www.catracing.org/hendrb/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=27489

What’s in a name? The Story Behind Catracing.org

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What’s in a name?  The Story Behind catracing.org

  While I am hard at work on the next blog (Backing up your Windows 10 workstation to a network share), I thought I would take the time to answer a question I often get asked about my domain name.  Catracing.org?  Do they really race cat’s?

  Where did the name come from?  Why is it a .org?

  To answer this question, one would have to go back to when I fell in love with boats and sailing.  My dad and a several of his fellow doctors owned a Hobie Cat 16 catamaran they kept on a local beach in San Diego.  Some of my earliest beach memories are around 4 or 5 years old, where my dad, mom, brother, and sister would all pile on the catamaran and sail around La Playa basin.  I would go hang off the trapeze, which is a wire attached to the mast, that the crew or skipper would attach themselves to with the use of a harness so you could stand off the side of the boat to counter balance the sails healing motion.  You normally will hike off the windward side of the boat, however I soon discovered that you would get a lot more wet if you hiked off the lee side.  I was light enough at the time, that with everyone one board, and my brother or sister’s weight on the windward site we wouldn’t capsize the boat.

  Fast forward about 25 years, I bought my own Hobie 16, and began racing the boat in actual class regattas.  As the Hobie 16 is a 2 person boat (Unless you happen to weigh the minimum class legal crew weight, of about 250 some odd pounds.) You had to sail with a crew.  I was involved with a group of people that went to UCLA (Not sponsored by UCLA) who would arrange crew for the racing skippers.

The intent at the time was to setup a server that could facilitate private email, calendar, blog/newsletter type of services.  So catracing.org was born using Zimbra, and a webpage created on Apple’s iWeb.

  However shortly after all of this got facilitated and setup I got my job in Korea, sold the Hobie Cat and moved over the seas.  Since I had already paid for the domain name, and was only expecting to be an expat for a couple of years I kept it.  In 2013, after deciding to really get into photography the idea of the blog as it is today was formed.  It now serves as a foundation to improve my photography skills, share my experiences in Korea, helps other expats with reviews on pensions, hotels, and restaurants.  It also helps me with my technical writing abilities associated with my career in IT.

  The catracing.org domain name just lives on, even though the focus of my blog has evolved and matured over time.

  Sorry to disappoint those who either came here carrying torches and pitchforks thinking this was some terrible sport like greyhound racing, or wanted to see how we managed to organize a bunch of felines to run around a track.. 

  Thanks for stopping by!  Our next technical blog should be out soon.  If you wish to be notified by email when new content is posted you may register by clicking HERE!

Photography – Don’t Be Afraid To Pay For Help.

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Photography – Don’t Be Afraid To Pay For Help.

  Something has been bothering me for some time.  I took the following HDR photo on one of my bike rides along the Han River a couple of years ago.

  I always felt that it was one of my best photo’s, but upon showing it to a fellow photographer I was disappointed right away that he noticed the image plagued with halos, which are quite common with HDR photography.  It really stands when it is printed, and this is really a photo that I would love to have on my wall.

 

  While the photo has won awards on Pixoto and Gurushots.  I do not feel it has gotten the ranking it has deserved, and I believe that to be because of the the halos.

  Honestly, my photoshop skills are not that great so I decided to start looking around for a service that could correct the photo for me at a reasonable cost.  Searching around the web led me to COLOR EXPERTS International, Inc.  It appeared from their web site that they offered exactly what I was looking for, the question now all came down to cost. 

  After a quick chat with their service representative I was instructed to upload my photo and they would have a graphic artist take a look at it and offer a price.  I received a quote of $30.90 within a couple of hours.  At that price, why not!  My only concern was that I had originally exported the JPEG from Lightroom with the settings I use for posting photos on my blog.  I wanted a full quality JPEG, so off went another email.  They advised that a higher quality photo could up the price, but go ahead and upload the newer photo and they would let me know.  The full quality JPEG did not alter the cost, and less than 2 days later I received the corrected photo.

  No more HALO’s.  This is the photo I had always wanted!  I quickly replaced the image on Pixoto, and in less than 24 hours it is already my 3rd highest ranked photo!  I am hoping to finally beat my best photo!

   If you have a photo that you feel its potential is not being met due to imperfections that are beyond your skill to fix.  Don’t be afraid to reach out and get help, even if you have to pay to get it!  I would highly recommend COLOR EXPERTS International INC, They are Courteous, Fast, and do great work!

  DISCLAIMER: COLOR EXPERTS International Inc. is not reimbursing me nor offering me free or discounted for this blog, nor is my site monetized in any way.

  Thank you for stopping by Brent’s World!  If you would like to be notified when new content is posted.  Please register by clicking HERE!

We also offer discussion forums at www.catracing.org/hendrb/forum

Technical – Apple Switching to their own ARM based processor, what does this means to you?

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Technical – Apple Switching to their own ARM based processor, what does this means to you?

  If you watched the Apple WWDC keynote address on June 22nd or have been following the tech sites you are already aware that Apple will be ending its partnership with INTEL and using their own processors in all of their future Macs.  Why did Apple do this?  What are the advantages?  Will there be any disadvantages?  As a long-time user of Apple products I will try and answer these questions.

  There are several reasons why Apple may have chosen to go down this road, and it is not the first company to build computers using their own processors or custom chipsets.  Some of my viewers may not remember Commodore Business Machines, CBM for short, but they designed the bestselling home computer in 80s and early 90s called the Commodore 64.  It’s predecessor and immediate follow-up the Commodore 128 contained only Commodore made chips.  This included the MOS6502 (Commodore owned MOSTek), the sound chip called the SID, and the video chip the VICII.  It was not until Commodore purchased the Amiga that they used a CPU designed and produced outside the company.  The Motorola 68000, which incidentally was also the CPU used in the original Macintosh.  This method of manufacturing all of your products components is called vertical integration, and has several key advantages such as being able to control development, production and supply and it costs significantly less to have everything in house.  Apple should be able to significantly reduce the production costs by doing their own chips.

  Another factor that may have driven the switch from INTEL processors, is for the same reason Apple went from the Motorola/IBM PowerPPC processors back in 2005 (Also announced at the WWDC.).  The power requirement/performance ration was stagnating and was seriously hampering Apples roadmap for their mobile devices (Macbook and Macbook Pro) computers.  There was just no way Apple was going to be able to put their latest processor, the G5 into a portable computer!). So Apple had to break with a partnership that existed from the very beginning of the Macintosh design.  This could have not been an easy decision and could have ended up being a technical nightmare!  Imagine the work involved in not only having to recompile your operating system to work on a different platform, and fix any bugs that came with it, but come up with a way to make most of the software that has been written for your product for the last 11 years work.  Fortunately Apple was not new at this, and they had a plan!

  So, what does this mean to me?  Well, in the short term.  Not much!  Apple stated at the WWDC (though they did not elaborate), that there are several new Intel Mac products in the pipeline, and I can not see any scenario where Apple is not aware they will still need to support the purchasers of the new “Cheese grater” Mac Pros that were released last year.  Could you imagine the pain and anguish of spending $6000 for a workstation and having it be unusable by the years end?  That would just be idiotic and it will NOT happen.  I base this on the fact that MacOS X continued to run on PPC based Macs until 2009, 4 years after the switch to INTEL was announced.  Which given my own personal model usage of 5 – 6 years between models, would just fit in to when I would be getting a new Mac model anyway.

  In the long run, when you decide to buy a new Mac should you be worried?  I would not be.  Apple is unmatched in the industry when it comes to these types of critical architecture changes, and that reputation is well earned.  This is not their first time at the rodeo.  They went from the classic Motorola 680×0 to Motorola PowerPC migration in 1994, the transition to Intel in 2005 as noted above, and now moving to their own ARM based silicon.

  While no transition is ever seamless, Apple has been one of the few companies that have been able to pull of switching their core architecture several times, with the help of emulation, virtualization, and “fat” applications (Applications that contain code for multiple architectures.). Software written for the Intel architecture should easily run trouble free on the new hardware, and while there are sure to be a myriad of features that will run on the new ARM processor, but will not if you have an INTEL Mac.  Your experience with Mac OS will still be usable and enjoyable.

  The only thing that I know I am going to miss in the future, will be the loss of bootcamp, as I rely on it, in order to run Prepar3D, a flight simulator.  Which due to it’s graphics overhead would not be usable in emulation.  Though that is only one single use, so it may be time to re-evaluate moving on from the flight sim world when that happens.  Given that Apple’s biggest third party app developers Adobe and Microsoft are already on board it will only be a matter of time before everything runs natively and the additional layers to run legacy apps disappears (As we saw with the phasing out of Rosetta with the Intel transition.)

  This is big news, and it will be very exciting to see what comes of this!  The advantages of integrated apps between the desktop, iPad, and IPhone and the increased performance/power consumption (and heat production) ratio far outweigh any growing pains.

  Thank you for stopping by Brent’s World!  Do you agree with my assessment of Apples move to their own chips?  Register and share your thoughts on our forums, or comment below.

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Walk The Wire – An Exciting New Memory man Mystery By David Baldacci.

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Walk The Wire – An Exciting New Memory Man Mystery By David Baldacci.

   Ever since stumbling on Total Control by David Baldacci, I have been a huge fan of his work.  Reading most of his suspense/thriller novels, which mostly center around government or corporate corruption.  Amos Decker dubbed The Memory Man, due to the fact he is afflicted with Hyperthymesia (The ability to retain all memory, down to the smallest of details), and Synesthesia, (A condition that makes people see things such as numbers in letters as colors) while sustained in the NFL.  These conditions make Decker is extremely gifted at his job.  It all comes crashing down when his wife and daughter are murdered.  Resigned from the police force, and homeless, Decker becomes a private investigator.  After a man turns himself in for his family’s murders, he is called back in the help with the investigation.    Which due to his success brings him to the attention of the FBI, where he is offered a chance to come on board a special group as a consultant.

   Which brings us to Walk The Wire.  The latest in the now 6 part series,  a gruesome murder takes place in London, North Dakota, an oil town currently booming due to fracking.  Amos Decker and partner Alex Jamison are called in solve the case.  Very little details are known about the victim, other than she was a teacher for a group of Anabaptists called The Brothers.  Was the murder the work of a serial killer?  Does it have anything to do with the Top Secret Air Force radar installation next door?

  As clues and bodies start piling up, and attempts on Deckers life are made, another pair from David Baldacci’s cast of characters makes an appearance, and an international conspiracy with far reaching economic implications is discovered.  Will it be stopped in time?  How does it tie in with the original murders?

  Pick up David Baldacci’s latest novel and find out!

Available at Amazon.

Kindle – $14.99
Hardcover – $17.40

  Thank you for taking the time to read my latest blog!  Be sure to come back next week for more great content.  If you wish to be notified by email when a new blog is posted consider registering by clicking HERE.