I just finished replacing the hard drive in my Mac Book Pro. Unlike most notebook computers, this was not an easy task. I had to remove 25 screws, remove the keyboard and disconnect two ribbon cables from the mother board before I could remove the old hard drive. Fortunately there are many good tutorials on the web to follow. I used a video tutorial at Other World Computing.

My model came two years ago with a 160 Gb drive. It was just plain out of space, especially after taking all the photos in Europe recently. Although I find the Mac must better in terms of applications using disk space, the documents, music and photos all add up.

I decided to go with a 7200 rpm drive, instead of the traditional 5400 rpm. That meant I would only get a 320 Gb drive, instead of 500 Gb. I bought the Western Digital drive online at newegg.com for $99, plus tax. Shipping was free. I arrived late in the day.

I put the new drive in my external hard drive dock. This is a cool device that holds either a 3.5 or 2.5 bare SATA hard drive. I ran SuperDuper to clone the existing drive to the new drive so once installed it would boot right up. Since this external doc is only USB 2, it took awhile, 5 hours in fact. It was now 11 pm and I was wonder if I should start this project. Of course I could not resist.

I put a piece of paper on the desk and wrote down where all the screws were coming from and place the screws there as I removed them. When I finally was removing the keyboard, the ribbon cable came disconnected before I could look underneath to see where it was attached, which gave me a bit of a startle. But I finally figured it out.

After the old drive was removed and the new on installed, and all the screws put back, I turned the computer on. It seemed to not start and I was now worried. But I guess it was just trying to figure out what to boot from since it had a new hard drive and shortly it started up.

I am very happy with the performance. It seems to be a much faster computing experience. The increase in performace could be from the faster hear drive, the larger hard drive with high density or the fact that I have much more free disk space. In any case I am glad I went with a faster hard drive. Only by testing a 5400 rpm 500 Gb drive compared with what I installed would one really know the best solution.

Categories: Computer Hardware
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We can’t say we have traveled to all places in the world but we have been to many cities on most of the continents. We remember visiting Beijing, China and seeing all the bikes there. We rode bikes in the busy streets of Tokyo, but that may not compare with what we saw in Amsterdam. This is a city that really does have the infrastructure setup to support biking as a way of getting around.

There were dedicated bike lanes, often separated from the street by more than just a painted line. At some of the intersections these bike roads had their own traffic signals. You had to be careful walking in the city to make sure you were on the pedestrian walkway and not in the bike lane.

We saw bikes being ridden by all types of people, kids, the elderly, business men and women, college students. The bikes were quite different than what you see in the US. These were not bikes made for racing, but more of a utility nature. They were kind of heavy and clunky, similar to what we used to see when we lived in Japan. But these bikes were often setup to carry things, including multiple people. Some had two passenger seats behind the drivers seat. Or as in this one, a small child up front and another behind. No one was wearing a helmet, however. Not sure how safe this type of riding is.

Here is something that we first thought was a bike truck.

But this type of bike was often used to haul kids that were placed upfront.

There are so many bikes in the city that they had this multilevel parking garage at the main train station, just for bikes.

And people were riding the bikes both day and night. It was truly an amazing bicycle city.

Categories: Photography, Travel
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Our Mediterranean Cruise offered only a single port of call in France but it was a spectacular one, maybe the most beautiful of all the places we would visit. As we we getting up in the morning we saw that the ship was approaching Villefranche and the view was breathtaking. It was a small coastal town located in the heart of the French Riviera.

This was the one port where the ship could not actually dock but had to anchor off a ways from the shore. We were then transported to the shore in ferry boats.

As the ferry boat approached the shore we were able to get a better view of this beautiful place.

We wanted to take the train to Monte Carlo so we had over an hour to wait. We walked through the back streets of Villefranche and enjoyed it’s charm.

After the 6 mile train ride we were in Monte Carlo, which belongs to the Principality of Monaco. It is known as the play-ground of the rich and famous. Our first place to visit was the Prince’s Palace, situated on top of Monaco Rock, home of Prince Rainier III.

The changing of the guard takes place every morning at 11:55am

The Cathedral below, was built in the 19th century. This is where the fairy-tale wedding of Prince Rainer and Grace Kelly took place and where Princess Grace is now buried.

The famous Monte Carlo casino was across the bay so we decided to take a water taxi over.

That provided a wonder view as we approached Monte Carlo.

After a bit of a hike, we finally made it up to the Monte Carlo Casino. This Casino was once the main source of income for Monaco. The building was built in 1878 and the domes on the building are all made of copper and can be seen from across the bay.

We saved our money and didn’t go inside, except for a peak. I doubt they would have let us gamble there anyway. You had to be dressed in business attire to even enter the Casino. The cars parked outside were as expensive as our house.

It was then a train ride back to Villefranche.

We boarded the ferry to go back to the ship. It was just starting to get dark and looking back we saw a picture postcard view.

[More Pictures of Villefranche and Monte Carlo]

Categories: Travel
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Someone special in our family reached a new milestone, birthday wise. I decided to make a birthday card, instead of buying one. I wanted to get an image from each of the 60 years of Ann’s life but we don’t have any images of many of the early years. I know that is something our kids may not understand and certainly something our grandchildren would never comprehend. But I was able to get an image for a few of the early years and then every year since 1966. I put them all as thumbnails on a single 11×14 page, which I had printed. Click this image to see it enlarged.

Ann seemed to like the card and gift. She can take her new camera on our upcoming cruise.

Later we decided to go for a walk. Since we are no longer on day light savings time, we did not have much sunlight. What a good chance for Ann to try out her new camera. Here are a few of the pictures Ann took with her new camera.

Those are pretty good pictures in low light conditions for a point and shoot type camera, don’t you think? By the time we were about back home it was getting quite dark. I had brought my Nikon D300 big camera along and took the picture below of Ann with very low light conditions, hand held at 1/30 second without a flash, at ISO 2000. A flash would have made the background look black. Yea, my Nikon D300 Digital SLR still has a role!

Categories: Family
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Long before most people had up a personal website, I started a website at one of my domains, kelsch.com. The problem with websites is trying to keep them current and updated. Eventually the information there was so out of date that I gave up and changed kelsch.com to a family blog. Blogs, such as this one are much easier to keep up and post new information. I have setup several blogs for different purposes, as have most all of my children.

I still have several websites I do maintain. I decided to do a make over on all of them using some of the techniques I have found including:

• Flash based slide show that goes through about several images.
• RSS feeds from the various blogs and photo galleries.
• Contact form

So with these feeds the website keeps current without any need for me to do anything. I can change the images for the slide shows at any time by using Lightroom, selecting 30 images, and doing an export to the right folder, then FTPing them to the site. It only takes a minute.

See the screen shots below. Click on any of them and visit that website.

Here is a screen shot of what Kelsch.ORG looks like now [Visit Site].

Here is a screen shot of what the FranzKelsch.com site looks like now [Visit Site].

Here is a screen shot of what KelschFamily.NET looks like now [Visit Site].

Here is a screen shot of what my Photography site looks like now [Visit Site].

Here is a screen shot of what my Tech site looks like now [Visit Site].

See my detailed tech blog entry for additional information.

Categories: Web Development
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