Minnie is fixed

I ordered a new Pioneer slot-loading laptop DVD burner for our Mac Mini. It arrived yesterday and I installed it. I have opened up the case before but removing the DVD burner and replacing it was a little tricky - and a lot nerve-wracking, but I managed to get the new drive in without breaking anything so I'm very happy. The computer recognized it and after asking me to confirm the region code, it worked straight away without any problems. The 'action' on it when you put a DVD in is a little different from the old drive. It needs a little bit more of a push to get it to 'eat' the disk, but at least now it ejects it as it's supposed to. Something interesting that I noticed with the burners was that both of them had their manufacture dates on them. The original burner from Apple with the Apple logo sticker on it was manufactured October 2007 but the new one that I just put in was actually manufactured 3 months earlier! No wonder it was so hard to find someone with that model in stock.

Apple released a new version of their Safari web browser and I'm trying it out both on the Mac and on my Windows rig. So far, it's working really well. It's fast and tidy - like a cross between Firefox and Chrome. It has a similar start page to Chrome and an interesting place for the tabs - in the title bar! Not sure how they managed to do this on the Windows version, but they did and it works quite well for me. It even spell checks as I type this blog. Handy.

We've had a few good showers over the last couple of weeks, filling both our water tanks. It seems that out of all of Australia, we've been extremely lucky with the amount of rain we've received with just the right amount to keep Cilla's Garden looking great and keeping water in the tanks and pond. Other places in Australia have not been so fortunate. North and North-West Queensland have had far more rain than they bargained for with entire communities being cut off by floodwaters. To the south in Victoria they could really use some rain to help with the fight against the bush fires that are still burning down there.

This blog - Our Spatial Planet - has some satellite images of the bush fires. It gives you some idea of how vast these fires are.