I found myself in a particularly nasty place yesterday. I had followed advice given to me by an Apple engineer and either what they told me to enter in terminal was wrong, OR, I mistyped. Either way the result was a iMac that would not boot and gave a kernel panic at every grey boot screen. I tried resetting the PRAM/NVRAM via command-option-P-R, I tried booting from single user mode, booting to safe mode and booting from the DVD to bypass the HDD. None of these worked and all resulted in the kernel panic.

So i call Apple care and the guy there was fantastic and he determines a fried logic board and happily gives me a case number to have it repaired under warranty. Now I have been a Mac user for long enough to know that you don’t (Most of the time) go from working fine to rebooting and having a fried logic board. So I racked my brain and spent hours on Google and I am happy to say I fixed it, and I will share with you what the issue was and how I fixed it in the hope it may help many others in the future.

Now for reasons I won’t delve into I have an EFI Firmware password set on my Mac. I presume if your reading this article your the same. The EFI firmware password essentially stops you doing any of the important key combinations at boot, resetting PRAM/NVRAM, single user mode the whole shebang.  Now this is useful in many many circumstances except when your screwed like I was. Essentially when I thought I was resetting my PRAM and NVRAM I was doing absolutely nothing. If your as screwed as I was and cannot get to a DVD to boot OR you have forgotten your password there is only one way around it.

1. Add or remove a stick of ram. Obviously if you have one stick in, add one and if you have two in remove one.
2. Power on the mac and immediately press and hold command-option-P-R.
3. The system will restart with the ‘bong noise’, allow it to do this 3 times. On the third ‘bong’ you can let go of the keys.
4. The machine will now boot with a cleared password and reset PRAM/NVRAM.
5. You can shut down the machine and replace the original ram configuration.

I hope this helps anyone that was in as much hot water as me! Good luck

Now that it is the new tax year here in the UK, we receive our interest on our cash ISA’s. The Egg Cash ISA is advertised at 6.05% variable. One thing I really missed when I signed up for it was the term ‘variable’. The two things that made me sign up for it was the 6.05% advertised interest and the guarantee to beat the Bank of England base rate for a year. The latter made me instantly think that it would provide me with a decent return, I know better now!

Whilst Egg have not done anything wrong, the point of this article is to be very careful when you sign up for these things and make sure you investigate the interest clearly. Instead of the £181.50 I thought I would get in return (6.05%) I in fact got £126.29 which equates to a 4.21% return. £55.21 less than I thought! You must also remember that if you pay in installments you also won’t see the return you expect, maybe self explanatory but it’s easy to forget in the heat of the moment.

Moral of this story is take your time and read and do calculations, don’t hurry to sign up like I did as for such a small amount of money it can cost you fairly dearly.

Originally uploaded by eenu.

Feel free to visit my latest album of my visit to Bath, UK, this easter. There are some pretty nice shots in there. If you want any of them, the copyright belongs to me so please email me to ask permission at dave ‘at’ davidjmoore.com and I will see what I can do

We are at the end of the tax year here in the UK and as such I have just completed my accounts, and planned the investments for the next financial year. I will be posting about my new investments in a post later this week but I thought I would give you a look at how my net worth has increased since 1st Jan 2008. Through the first few months i curbed my spending, it was far to affected by consumerism. I also created a new savings budget and have cautiously tracked all spending, even the spending of the cash in my pockets

A few of the steps taken were:

1. Planning specific meals and write a shopping list of ingredients needed. Savings of £5-£10 per shop.
2. When I want something, I add it to a list and revisit this list everyday. 9 times out of 10 my impulse to buy has faded within 24hrs and my sensible brain has kicked in telling me I don’t really need the wanted item.
3. I have moved money around to new higher interest accounts.
4. Tracking all money spent in iBank. This includes money i spend out of my pocket which is recorded on my iPhone at the time and entered in iBank when I do my accounts.
5. Sold some old junk on Ebay and some old phones on Envirofone.
6. Received Lots of cashback on my Egg Money Card (Balance paid in full each month).
7. Working from home saving money on food and coffee, compared to students union shop and coffee vending machines.
8. Reinvesting in Zopa. Interest rates beat any UK savings accounts rates.

Well it would appear that all the steps I have taken have paid off, in just three months my net worth has increased by 57.91%!!!

This is set to drop evenly until the end of the year as I will effectively be unemployed until November but the old plan will be recreated when I start earning again so it shouldn’t fall to much.

How has your net worth done so far in 2008?

Just a quick post to wish Apple Inc a very happy 32nd birthday!

Born on April 1st 1976, Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone. (Part of Text Courtesy of Apple)