scott

Battle of the Mac Browsers

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I read a few reviews regarding performance showdowns between several browsers on the Mac. I was very surpised by the results. Both reviews I looked over said that OmniWeb was the fastest browser overall. I currently use Camino, and I like the general functionality of it, but I was not happy to see that it performed horribly compared to other browsers. Safari scored well, but one of the tests did note they used a “daily” build of the browser that is significantly faster and newer version of the RTM version currently going around. I personally don’t care about using some kinds of beta software, so that note didn’t really matter to me.

Late this week I decided to swich over to Safari to see if I could notice the performance difference. I used to use Safari but switch for some reason that I cannot recall at this time. That was until about an hour ago when I realized that last year when I bough OmniOutliner & OmniGraffle I purchased the bundle from the OmniGroup, thus I already owned a copy of OmniWeb. With a 5 second search using spotlight (really), I found the email with my key code. I downloaded the latest version of Omniweb and now I am going to give it a try for a while. If I don’t like it or don’t see a major performance boost I might switch back but I will give it some time for now. I just hope I don’t run into any sites that don’t like the browser since it is a non standard one, but I heard that it appears to sites as one of the more common browsers so I am hopeful.

(For some reason my blogging software ecto decided to crash on me as I was finishing up this post the first time, so I will hopefully be able to recreate what I wrote)

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Good Friday

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After work I meet up with Jayson & Danny for some drinks at a cool bar. I was tempted to have a few drinks, but I kept to my self imposed limit of 2 drinks a night. We had a good time just hanging out and talking and drinking. We spent like 5 hours at the bar until Jayson and I wanted to go. Danny was still ready to drink however. He was pretty drunk. He ended up running out of room on the receipt while he was trying to write down how much tip to put on his credit card. It was kind of funny. On the plus side he made it home without ending up traveling 30 minutes in the opposite direction. That has happened on more than one occasion.

Work was a normal day even though it was the day before a holiday. It is freezing again, so I had out the winter coat again. I am not complaining since I like it cold, but I can’t stand it being so hot I don’t need a jacket one day and then I need gloves and a Pea Coat a few days later.

The Holiday’s, Well Sort Of

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Tonight I went to my parents for the first night of Passover. It is a holiday to me in the sense that I get together with my family and that it is a Jewish holiday. I of course don’t celebrate it in the traditional way (aka I don’t at all). It is good to see everyone though. Lots of little kids running around now a days. Morgan, Zack, and the twins are so funny. Evan is very cute just staring at everyone but she (yes it is a girls name too I am told) is too young to do much.

I didn’t eat very much. I never really do at these get togethers. The food is not the usual stuff I would eat. I was really tired so I was glad that I got a rid from Andrew back to my place. It is nice having quasi family live nearby, especially if they have cars!

Overall a good night, even though I at the time when I was tired it didn’t feel that way. Of course any night when I can get a hello and goodbye hug and kiss from Morgan is a good night! I will say it again, she is way too smart for her own good.

As for work, it was the normal fare today. I had a bunch of meetings. Then uncovered stuff that should have been setup better than it was, and a few minor issues crept up. Because of the holiday I didn’t stay to take part in a test that was planned. I hope it goes well since if it does we can prove to others what we have been saying for a while that VMware should be used more in our environment. I will see how it went when I get to work tomorrow.

Map Mashup’s

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From the totally useless yet really cool department I bring myself MapKit. I have read about and seen plenty of places doing things like this on their websites but this was so easy to setup and link to my blog I had to do it. It allows me to note spots on a map with information. I can also add photo’s and other data. It looks like they use Google Earth for their mapping functions. It is neat what you can do with mashup’s these days. I know it is a waste of time, but I think it is cool adding interesting places or places I frequent onto my map.

I think I set it up so anyone can add sites to my map. I encourage friends to post stuff, even though I know no one will want to. My friends will think it is to geeky to do something like that!

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Clean Up

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I spent a nice part of this weekend cleaning up my apartment. It wasn’t that it was that diry, I did need a dusting and stuff but it was just getting too cluttered for me. I know if I just put stuff away when I was done with them like my mom tried to teach me I wouldn’t be in the situation, but I have no excuse. It is nice to have everything nice and clean though. I even did some re-wireing of some gear to clean up my TV stand thingie.

Not much else to report this weekend. I tried to take it easy since I am currently petrified of getting another migraine. I am going to do some more reading up on what can be done to help prevent them. I generally know what causes my migraines but taking some more proactive steps to prevent or decrease the chances of getting them seems like a smart idea after the week I had.

Once it does get slightly warmer I can go out and air up my bike tires and get some biking in. I am currently contemplating moving out of Manhattan for various reasons, but I don’t know where I would bike if I wasn’t so close to central park! I guess that is another reason to stay in the plus column.

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Time For Vista?

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This week I decided to install Windows Vista. Now hold on I know what you are thinking. Yes I still use a Mac as my primary machine. That is why I decided to put Vista on a computer or two. My work laptop has been sitting in my office barely used day in and day out for weeks and I figured I would play around with it. According to Microsoft Vista will run on it just fine. WIth nothing to lose since I do use my Macbook as my main computer for home and work I figured what the heck. As I am writting this post it is running windows update. So the jury is still out on this one.

At home I decided to put the Mac Mini I had doing pretty much nothing to better use and I setup a dual boot of OS X and Vista now that Boot Camp 1.2 is out and it supports Vista. I figured I might as well put my copy of the OS to use. I am replacing my current machine I have running my Beyond TV DVR and put the Mini in its place. I even read an article from the folks at Snapstream that showed how they tested the Intel Mini with their software. I also read and verified that the 4 products I use (Beyond TV 4.6, Firefly Remote Control Drivers, USB-UIRT IR Blaster, & the Hauppauge USB2 Video Capture device) on that machine to run the DVR are in fact compatible with Vista now, so I said why not. I have been having issues since day one with the MCE 2005 install I had been using on my old machine so I was up for a change. I have been using that machine less anyway now that I got an HD DVR box from my cable provider, but since I already own all the gear and it is free to use I am not getting rid of it just yet.

The install and setup of the DVR box was relatively painless. I put Vista on it earlier this week, and took some time today to swap the old machine I was using for the Mini, and then setup the software and all the drivers. The DVR setup is slightly better than the ld system, but it is a bit cluttered since I need to use an external Hard Drive for video capture. The Snapstream article explains why. Initial tests are showing me that the problems I had with MCE 2005 are resolved (for now) with Vista. Until There is an equivalent DVR for the Mac (EyeTV in my opinion is not anyway near as good as Beyond TV) I guess I will be using this setup. More information as I discover them.

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Data Center Tour

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Today was busy with meetings and an offsite tour of a data center. We are looking to take some of our self hosted gear and put it at a hosting facility. We looked at one in the city today. It was a decent facility but not the nicest I have ever seen. It does meet our needs, but we need to audit what we want to put there and get a real space and power estimate. Other than that, nothing else went on that was worth noting.

Back in the Swing of Things

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It is Thursday an I have successfully completed two days back at work. Both were filled with meetings and other stuff keeping me running around, so I am glad that I made it. Not much else going on in my life yesterday and today. I was glad I was able to make it through work. Jayson & Danny meet up Tuesday night for drinks. I missed it, but I was glad to get the rest. The trains ended up getting messed up so I was glad I I didn’t go out. The commute Wednesday morning to work was also screwed up from lingering issues related to Tuesdays train problems. Everything was back to normal today so I was happy.

I look forward to finishing the week without getting sick again and resting this weekend.

Out of It

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I have been offline for the better part of the week trying to get over some really bad migraines. Thus the no posting. My anniversary post was actually written about two weeks ago but just not posted. I am just now able to sit at the computer for longer periods of time. Aside from the flu I had 3 years ago the medication issues I had about 2 years ago this was probably the worst experience in pain in my entire life. The bad part is we still don’t really know what triggered everything. Probably couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I am only on month 2 of a new job, so missing any time is bad, but missing a total of like 3 days in a week is not good.

I am hoping to be bak to work tomorrow. I just hope I don’t have any repeat events. On the plus side I discovered (not sure why I never knew this before) that the ER has this nice cocktail on IV that can kill a migraine. It isn’t even pain medication, but whatever it is does the trick. Now all I have to do is be able to sleep normally again. I goto bed normal time or early and I wake up yawning. I still can’t figure that out, so I am still concerned about going back to work. We will see what happens tomorrow.

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4th Anniversary

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As amazing as it seems to me, today is the 4th anniversary of me starting this blog. I have had a few hosting providers. Bloggar for a few weeks, then I tried it myself, then Gus’ server, and now Typepad. This blog was not the first time I ever wrote a journal about my life, but it was the first time I published those thoughts for anyone to see. Who would have guessed that I would get sighted in an online article or two, referenced by official blogs of some of the tech companies I write about, and my personal favorite emailed by the Chairman of the board of a company that I bashed their product. It has been an interesting 4 years. There have been times when I thought I wouldn’t continue to write this thing, but then there are other times like tonight when I sit here writing way past when I wanted to goto bed for the simple fact that I want to take what I am thinking and put it down on “paper”.

The amazing thing is I started writing this site for myself, and didn’t care if anyone read it. I still feel that way but I get a kick out of hearing from friends or strangers that read the site. Looking at how people find the site on google and other search engines is also interesting. Of course that isn’t as interesting as me finding my own site while searching for topics on google. It is never good when your search result for something brings up your site as a top search because you were previously blogging about an issue that you can’t find a resolution for.

Hear is to another 4 years of me documenting what I find interesting in my world. Or just writing about whatever comes into my head as I sit at the keyboard!

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