It rained all day today. I stayed in and relaxed. I didn’t want to go out in the bad weather, and since it was Sunday and I had no firm plans I just relaxed. It was nice.
My Apple TV
I finally got my Apple TV a few weeks ago. Since I was really sick when I got it I didn’t really get to set it up and use it until around the 26th of March. Then I just never got around to finishing this post. So now here is my brief first thoughts on the product.
So far it has meet my expectations, and I am happy with it. Even though I have read mixed reviews about it, the Apple TV fix in perfectly with my home entertainment setup. Since I use a Windows PC for a DVR, a Mac Mini was not feasible for the same TV. I KVM didn’t work so well, and the DVI to HDMI cable never got the resolution right on the Mini. All that and the fact that Front Row was very slow to respond on the Mini, the Apple TV fit perfectly. I have a new Stereo with HDMI inputs and the Apple TV plugged in and was online in 10 minutes.
It is true that the Apple TV doesn’t have HD content, but what was watching on my Mini wasn’t in HD anyway. Eventually getting HD content would be nice, but I am happy with the product as is for now!
Easter Sunday Shopping
Today I took advantage of the Easter holiday to do some cleaning, and some shopping. I have been pondering upgrading my computer monitor for some time. Apple just lowered the prices of their flat panels this week so it sparked my renewed interest in upgrading. I have a 20″ Apple Cinema Display, so many would say why in the world would I need to upgrade? I believe you can’t have enough screen real-estate. My vision isn’t so hot so the bigger the screen the better. I was looking at several 23″ & 24″ models during the week. Most of them are noticeably cheaper than the Apple ones, but they don’t look anywhere near as nice as the Apple displays. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to shell out $600 for a big piece of ugly black plastic.
Since I was on the fence with my decision I went down to the Apple Store. The 5th ave. store in Manhattan is open 24/7/365. And sure enough on Easter Sunday there was a line to get down the stairs into the store. It was packed. I found a 20 & 23″ display to compare side by side. The 20″ looks small compared to the 23″ one. Of course the 30″ is massive, but none of my computers could handle that display. I also like to put my desktop and laptop on a KVM and no KVM that I know of would ever handle the resolution of the 30″, so that one was out of the running for the foreseeable future. After standing in front of a 23″ display and browsing on the web for a few minutes I was convinced that this was the monitor I wanted, and that it was well worth the hefty price tag. I bought the monitor and caught a cab home and was up and running with the new display in 20 minutes. So far it is fantastic.
I have cleaned up my old 20″ display and put it back in the original packaging (yes I try to keep all of that stuff since I know I upgrade more often than most people) and it is ready to be sold to a needing friend or ebay.
Once done setting up the new monitor I continued to clean up my apartment. I pulled my Mini I had been using as a DVR computer. It was working great but I decided that wasting a Vista license and my Mini as a DVR was not worth it. I put back the old DVR box, but realized that the power supply was making rather nasty sounds. I never realized how bad it was until it was off for a week and then I turned it back on. I ended up pulling that computer also and I will use my Cable box DVR for now until I figure out what I want to do with the computer DVR setup I have.
Now I am off to mop and empty my dish washer!
Technorati Tags: apple, apple cinema display, DVR, Mac, Mac Mini
Battle of the Mac Browsers
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)
Technorati Tags: Camino, Mac, OmniWeb, Safari browser, web browser benchmarks
Good Friday
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
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
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!
Technorati Tags: Google Earth, mashup, Personal Mapping
Clean Up
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.
Technorati Tags: bike riding, migraine
Time For Vista?
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.
Technorati Tags: Beyond TV, DVR, Mac, Mac Mini, Media Center, snapstream, windows vista
Data Center Tour
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.