Linux MintPPC on an Apple iBook M7698LL/A

With May being the 11th birthday of my ancient Apple iBook from 2001, I wondered if it was possible to get it running a lot faster with something other than the originally installed OSX Tiger 10.4.11 operating system.

I'd never tried the various Ubuntu PPC distributions which came out over the years as I'd heard bad things about them. People were always reporting that the battery didn't charge or suspend malfunctioned. As for using the AirPort card to connect to the internet, you might as well forget that you even have one.

But then I found out about MintPPC 9 and, for a number of reasons (including the fact that I can't leave well enough alone), I downloaded and installed it on my iBook.

The installation took just over an hour and I was quite surprised that I didn't even need to add the Xorg.conf update which the MintPPC website recommends. I did it anyway just to be on the safe side although everything looked and sounded right straight away.

Unfortunately, that's where my joy ended.

MintPPC, even though it uses the LXDE desktop environment, was painfully slow to the point of being unusable. I only have 320mb of RAM in my iBook but I doubt that another 256mb would make any difference. I have the original 500mhz PowerPC G3 "Icebook" with 64mb of 66mhz RAM soldered to the board (not the later 128mb version) so it's never going to reach the dizzy heights of 640mb with only one extra memory slot available anyway.

Since owning my iBook (which I got from eBay for $40), I've upgraded the hard drive to 40gb instead of the original 10gb one, changed the CD drive to a DVD drive, and replaced the cable to the LCD (which, infamously, was one of the causes for a lot of product returns and a class action lawsuit for Apple due to the design flaw which pinched the wires in the hinge and made the display fail to light up). I've had this iBook apart several times and it was the worst computer for upgrading that I've ever had the misfortune to work on. But that's another story.

All the things which I took for granted with Tiger were impossible to get working with MintPPC. I had no wireless connection, no DVD playback, and, although I got used to VLC player crashing when playing flv videos on Tiger, it was set as the default for mp3 playback on MintPPC which was absolutely stupid because it crashed with those too.

AbiWord opened slower than MS Word and the same with Gnumeric compared to Excel. Even if it had been available, I don't think I would have had the patience to wait for LibreOffice.

I then started to get random freezes and couldn't even log out or shutdown properly. After several reboots things settled down more but this was a couple of hours in and I'd had enough. I also really hated the cheap and nasty look of LXDE.

So, without further ado, I reinstalled Tiger. It took about an hour to install and probably four more to do all the software and security updates. Putting all the software back on and adding my iTunes library took the rest of the day.

After all this, some good came of it. Tiger now runs a lot faster than it did before. I've deleted a lot of junk (especially music which I was bored with), and I probably won't ever bother putting VLC player or MacTubes back on because neither worked properly anyway.

My Apple iBook is now almost 100% functional. I can play DVDs easily, listen to music with iTunes 8.2.1, and surf the internet with Safari 4 or Camino 2.1. I discovered that using the "mobile" versions of the Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube websites made things even faster (although it's still impossible to play any YouTube videos which are converted to 3gp with my version of QuickTime).

If you are thinking of "upgrading" your iBook to MintPPC, don't! MintPPC is a nice idea and skillfully put together to get as far as it has, but unless you have a top of the range G4 iBook, it'll probably be useless to you.

Burning Bright (2010)

"A thriller centered on a young woman and her autistic little brother who are trapped in a house with a ravenous tiger during a hurricane."

I saw someone on Twitter mention that they were watching "Burning Bright" so I had to check it out for myself. I'm not sure that you could really describe it as a horror film but it did have some of the elements that we've all come to expect from the genre.

Starring Garret Dillahunt (Krug in "The Last House on the Left") and Briana Evigan (Cassidy in "Sorority Row"), "Burning Bright" at least used two actors with previous horror movie experience rather than someone you've never heard of even though their parts could have been played by absolutely anyone.

Basically, the whole film is an attempted murder using a tiger as the weapon. Johnny Gaveneau (Garret Dillahunt) buys an ex-circus Bengal tiger from Meat Loaf and, after using some illegal immigrants to stormproof his house, he locks the big cat in the now fortified building along with his two stepchildren. Obviously, Kelly (Briana Evigan) and her brother Tom (Charlie Tahan) spend the rest of the story trying to avoid being eaten.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, it would have been very good if only more use had been made of the tiger. Apart from one scene which mimicked the most exciting velociraptor attack in "Jurassic Park", you don't really get to see enough of the tiger and there isn't the feeling of menace that it should evoke.

Some of the tiger's antics are unintentionally amusing. From being able to smash its head through the wall in a "Here's Johnny!" moment to jumping through a glass door, you would think that a ferocious beast like that would have no problem savaging the hell out of a sexy, sweaty, piece of meat like Briana Evigan. All she got was a little clawing on one leg which made her perspire even more.

As much as I wanted to see Briana Evigan get eaten, I really wanted to see her annoying, retarded onscreen brother get devoured. If I'd been in her place, that kid would have been sacrificed to the tiger quite quickly. There are even hints (and a dream sequence) that her character would be capable of doing the same thing but it just didn't happen. The kid was such easy prey too.

Other ludicrous moments that annoyed me were that the tiger was not only impervious to sedative drugs but bullets fired at point blank range too. Even though I'm a cat owner, I don't know much about tigers apart from them being bigger than lions but I'm pretty sure that a handgun bullet to the face would stop one.

Anyway, given the predictable nature of films like this, I think you can guess what happens at the end without me spoiling it any more for you. The trailer gives it away if you watch it closely.

I actually enjoyed "Burning Bright" on a purely superficial and slightly sick level mainly because I wanted to see the tiger eat somebody. I felt sorry for the hungry tiger and, basically, just wanted to see it eat anything.

The acting was surprisingly okay especially as Briana Evigan carried the whole thing. Garret Dillahunt was underused but did well and the less said about the little kid, the better. I think it was a mistake to try and get sympathy for an autistic kid in a movie like this especially as he did nothing to make you want to care about him in the first place.

What worries me most about this film is that you just know that someone out there will probably try and do the same thing for real one day. In my darker moments, I've even thought about doing something like this myself but involving some very evil people, rabid feral cats and a tin shed. Now that would make a good film.

I'm torn as to whether or not to recommend "Burning Bright" since, although it had the potential to be very good and was quite an original idea, it didn't have enough tension or jump scares where it counted. If I had to rate it, I'd say it was average (maybe slightly below) but still quite entertaining. It was worth a Netflix rental anyway but isn't something that I'd rewatch.