Upgrade Older MacBook OS X 10.6.8 to El Capitan 10.11.6 in Stages Part 2

The Memory Replacement Works

I was able to get the new memory that was not working replaced.  It works and the upgrade went well.  From 2gigs to 4gigs in two memory modules.  That is the maximum so that's the full extent of all available upgrades for this all white 2009 macbook.

I am still using this 2009 macbook now, here in 2020!  But of course, the OS can't be upgraded any more than El Capitan, OS X 10.11.6 is how it will forever be.

I've had a pause since Part 1 of this post because of a family member becoming ill and I am now a full-time, 24/7, volunteer caregiver.  During that time, OS X became, MACOS and Logic Pro X 10.3 which was current 2 years ago, upgraded to 10.4 and now 10.5 and those upgrades were not supported by El Capitan.

Logic Pro X 10.5

Logic Pro X 10.5 is a major upgrade and is awesome.  Luckily, I inherited another non-functioning macbook that is a later model than this old 2009 model.  I'll have to do an entry on that 20 hour episode soon.

Thanks for reading, I'm also a music streamer on Twitch at www.twitch.tv/nocats_net see ya there, Jay Nocats

Jay Nocats

www.nocats.net

twitch.tv/nocats_net

Upgrade Older MacBook OS X 10.6.8 to El Capitan 10.11.6 in Stages

I ordered some RAM memory expansion for the inherited old MacBook I have. It failed to be recognized by the machine. I swapped it with the old chips 3 times and the old worked, the new did not. Emails back and forth with the supplier and I'm waiting again for a replacement.

The MacBook is from early 2009 and was upgraded once already but it was very slow and the startup time was too much for the user.  It also had MS Word failing to work and hanging the machine and I un-installed it and re-installed
etc., with no improvement.

Even with out the new RAM, I figured I would try it with just the SSD upgrade.  That's not such a bad idea since it will let me know which upgraded component made a difference.

I installed an SSD drive I got locally and that worked. It required a re-install of OS X. Luckily, I have the original installation media with this machine. They don't even do that for you any more. Imagine that, you spend $1,500 or so and they can't give you a 25 cent disc. Also in the original box was the $20 upgrade to Snow Leopard that I remember helping to install for the original owner, that was applied and it brought OS X up to 10.6.3.


That wasn't enough to upgrade it to El Capitan. Upgrades from Apple were required to bring the system up to 10.6.8, the minimum to upgrade to the next step. Then I had some trouble finding El Capitan or Yosemite on the download list over at Apple.

 It is not available

 There are many combined upgrades available, but the OS X version number that ends with a zero, is not there on their download list.

The only way to install a major OS upgrade is by using an application that installs to the machine that handles the upgrade. The only way I found that was by searching, google-ing and finding the question and answer in a forum.

 One of the answers had a link that worked. ( some do not work ) That set up the application that then loads the next major OSX version.

That got the machine to El Capitan 10.11.6 which is where it is at the moment. Sierra is not likely going to run on this MacBook, and that's OK.

Part 2 will be a test of how the memory upgrade went, if I ever get the replacement.  Also working on a video of the upgrade.

Link to WWW.NOCATS.NET blog about my vlog

Testing HTML Clickable Image Link Using Blogger

Testing HTML Clickable Image Link In Blogger

I was surprised to find out that Blogger doesn't have a widget or tool to include both a link and an image.  I thought I was missing something and didn't see it or had to enable something.  This is HTML day one using href tag so I thought I didn't find it yet, but no, it's not there, it's not me.

The link, however does use the href html tag, which is good since all that needs to be done is to replace the link that is included in it, which is just a link to the image in a larger box, with your own link.

In the Blogger editor there is a toggle switch to go from their "compose" mode, which is wysiwyg-style mode into HTML mode.  So they do anticipate the need for some HTML editing and adjusting the basics that they provide.

It works fine and below is the successful test of two link options.

Look for the href tag for the image you included, then just replace that with the URL of the link that you want to have as the destination URL that your user clicks on the image.  That's it.  I'll be doing a YouTube video also on this for more detail, but that's really all there is to it, except that if you want it to open in a new page, then just after your URL, add the following html code.

target="_blank"

Note: I had to go live with this test post since the "preview" only shows a static non-functional image of the resulting post, can't click on anything.

I'm making this image a clickable link to prior blog post.

Below image should link to same blog post but in a new window
 

Thanks for reading, I update more often now, see you soon. - J.

Is It Possible To Tweet An Image With A Link? Here is the Test

When I've clicked on images in Tweets, Twitter only shows an enlarged image.  It doesn't then link to the URL that the tweet contains; that link is only in the text of the tweet.

What I've recently found is a possible solution to that, but I'm not really sure if it is correct.  I'll be testing that information here on this page.  It requires me to access the header area, which I'm not sure if that will work since I'm using a template on this blog.

I didn't place the information in the header since I found what seems like alternative or contradictory information.  I placed the html in the body.  Unlikely to have the results I'm seeking, but here goes anyway.

It didn't work when the meta information was in the body of the html, and it didn't work when all of the meta info was in the header either.  It did work when only the first line of the meta data was in the header.  So this is working according to the Card Validation provided by Twitter.

I'll test tweet this page and see if this image appears in the tweet now.

Here's the image I'll be attempting to use as a link back to this blog post.

Time to test it using Twitter's "card" feature.

I Saw the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus

I Saw the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus and it was nice.  The display is large on the phone with it wrap around the edge a little.  Ok, but they already had the Note Edge back in 2014, and of course, LG released one a year later in 2015.


galaxy note edge at androidcentral

lg smartphone curved edges at CNET

So what more is Samsung brining with the S8?  It's a Samsung, It's a Galaxy, it's new, it's likely more powerful than anything released in the past 3 years, it's definitely slick and well done, but how much more?  I don't know and in the short video I made of my first impression, it's hard to tell.  Here's the video.

You definitely don't want to drop the phone, (like I immediately did, but that's because of the massive clamp on it!) and we can assume that there will never be a case made for it?  :-)  After all why cover up the "edge" if that's the main feature of the phone....

LINK: Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus - quick little peek at the display

How do you really get a good idea of a phone without using it and putting it on your plan, etc?  It's always a risk but the latest new phones in 2017 are all going to be pretty slick and advanced beyond what we used to be blown away by.

Do I want one? Yes, of course.

Boss SE-50 Stereo Effects Processor Display Issue Requires Battery Replacement

I wanted to use my old Boss "Pro" Stereo Effects Processor that I had sitting around for a long time, many years.  The display had random garbage characters on the user settings area, the first 100 patches.  I had this issue once, years earlier and found that there is an internal watch style battery in the unit that is in a battery holder, luckily, rather than soldered on the board.

The board has to come out, however, since the battery is on the other side, the inside, once the cover is removed from the unit.  I did it once, but it was so long ago I don't even remember doing it.  I made a video of it and posted it on my  YouTube channel.

Boss SE-50 Battery Replacement

I only had a really cheap Chinese battery handy to use in it, but it did work, and if I have to replace it again, it's not that much of a pain to do.  The battery is a common CR2032, I've seen them priced any where from 5 for $1.99, like this one, to something like $3.99, not sure why the wide range in pricing on this item, I hope it has something to do with the quality, but somehow I doubt it.

I didn't really like this unit after I got it, years ago, but now I like it more since back then, I was trying to use it more for a guitar multi-effects unit rather than a signal multi-effects unit for line level signals and processing voice and sending other signals like keyboards thru it.  It's definitely better for voice and keys.

At first, all I was looking for was a gate to control the noise on my mic while recording video, but there's a lot of fun stuff on there.  I used the pitch shift for fun on one of the videos that sounded like a disguised voice, which I thought was a cool effect.

It's now in my signal chain going to my audio interface input after the mic pre and compressor.

It has a lot of different patches, most of them are available thru software effects but those can also take up a lot of processing power so it's actually nice to have this outboard gear available to play with a whole lot faster than searching for and setting and resetting software parameters.  With this, just dial some in really fast and adjust fast and save fast to the 100 available user memory settings, which are now able to be saved with the fresh battery.

Super Fast Easy and Free Drum Beats with Linux Mint and Hydrogen

You don't have to be a musician or musical to do this super fast and easy drum beat.  I made a quick little tutorial on YouTube to show how unbelievably easy it is to do.  It takes 5 minutes.

Using Linux Mint, I just used the GUI app to get Hydrogen.  I think it's also available for Win and Mac.  At first, I tried it out in a guest Mint OS in Virtual Box on my Mint host and it was ok, but a little slow and didn't handle the timing well, but I was able to build simple beats in patterns, arrange them into songs, and then export the wave file and play that on host. 

It processed everything fine, it just had trouble playing in time without audio glitches on the host.  That was definitely asking for a lot considering that a lot of the time, it can be a challenge to get audio applications working well on a non-virtual machine.  Not sure at the moment what we call that.  Does virtual have an opposite? 

After it looked good and didn't even crash once, I decided to go ahead and  install it on the host.  The timing issue was gone and it's a really good program, and a really nice surprise is that the TR-808 sounds are in there on default install, no need to go find and download any add-ons for it, or figure out how to make my own samples, very handy.

In my YouTube video, I replace the standard sounds for the 808 and make two simple patterns and then play them over the video while describing what I'm doing.

Here it is.  Hydrogen Drum Machine Video