neuro-designs

This the new Mac Mini that we got to temporarily replace the aging iMac G5, which is now back in repairs for the third consecutive time. We call it “Atom”. Strangely enough, it’s the office’s first Snow Leopard machine.

And of course, the obligatory unboxing:

We just love well-designed books. A few days back, we just got our pre-ordered ABC3D pop-up book shipment from Amazon arrived at our door step. As simple as this book may be (After all, it’s just about the alphabet from A to Z), it is intricately engineered as a very sophisticated pop-up book. Here are some more shots on the book, and a few of its pages:

It’s sad really, that other than our friend Andrew Shu’s wedding invitation, we never see any local pop-up books that are engineered as good as this one. So, come to think of it, this is money well spent.

Here’s a promotional video of the book:

You can find more information about the book at its website.

Starting yesterday, we have a new personnel on board. Aldin Siahaan is our new Account Executive, and will be dealing with our domestic clients and attend to their projects.

It’s been a few months since I had my workstation upgraded to the 24″ iMac, and since it’s been a few months, dust has been accumulating as well behind the glass screen cover. The glass screen cover, although I personally think it’s good, has its own flaws as well. That gap is a major issue, since it allowed dust to get in and stay there. Luckily, the cover is held by magnets that are easily detached, so we can clean the screen ourselves without having to take the iMac to a current Apple service center.

A while ago, we also got a good deal on a Belkin Pure AV Display Cleaning Kit. Not that we’re promoting Belkin or anything, but trust me, since it’s a low viscosity gel, it won’t drip when you sprayed it on your display, and it comes with its own micro-fiber cleaning cloth. So when it goes to cleaning the displays in our office in general, this always comes in handy.

But how do I clean my iMac’s actual LCD? That’s the reason why I also managed to get these items:

A regular household gloves pack (I prefer those surgical latex gloves, but I can’t seem to find a store that sells them in packs), and a reliable suction cup, preferably with a locking mechanism to make sure that it sucks on a surface perfectly. Why would I get those? Those are the tools I used to safely remove the glass cover and clean the LCD. I found the technique by watching this video I stumbled upon in YouTube:

Pretty neat, huh? And I’m always happy when my workstation is sleek and clean. To me, it gives a morale boost to work until the end of the day.

A few days back, we had a problem with two of our line of UPS at the office. It turns out that the ones we used for the networking equipment and the PC didn’t have any automatic voltage regulators built in. And when we measured the voltage, guess what? It’s only 170 volts. It was simply nothing and far below what our nation’s electric company promised their customers: A full load of 220 volts. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. The problem is, the voltage downsize happens during broad daylight. We would probably understand better if it happened while we’re not working late at nights.

Enough is enough, we decided to purchase an APC Line-R 600I AVR and had it delivered to the office. So far so good, it steps up or steps down (which is unlikely) the unstable voltage as needed. We installed it for the networking equipment for the time being, as that is far more crucial than the PC in the corner of the office.

We’re going to see how this goes, and if it succeeds curing our electrical voltage problem, we’ll get another one for the PC.