So, in the US an AppleTV got its price cut from 299USD to 229USD. With your new AppleTV you can, in the US, rent movies and such. Here in the UK though we don’t get movie rentals and nor do we get a price cut, an AppleTV still costs 199GBP. Rip-off. Thanks Apple.
I had not seen any real world power consumption figures for the new Dell R200 1U servers, so as I have a paid sat behind me I thought I’d stick a power meter on and see what they draw.
Power factor 0.90, Voltage 247V.
(Spec: Quad core Xeon X3220 @ 2.4GHz, 4x1GB RAM, 2x146GB SAS)
Credit where credit is due as they say. So I’d like to give some credit to Dear Auntie Beeb for releasing a Mac/Linux compatible version of their iPlayer. I knew I was going to miss Buzzcocks this evening so I aquired a DVI->HDMI cable and hooked my MacBook up to the tele. It worked better than I thought it would – most watchable. Shame DVI doesn’t do sound though…
Happy New Year. It is indeed 2008 already. I hope you had a good 2007 and here’s to a better yet 2008. That said, if you are 1and1 Internet, may you have a thoroughly miserable 2008. For some unknown reason 1and1 have delisted ‘southerndownhill.com’ from their systems. The domain is registered ’til April, there are no outstanding invoices on the account and there has been no email from 1and1 to say anything. Of course, its new years day now and they are not answering the phones. Joy. I think I’ll have a transfer auth code please!
So how was your Christmas? Did you get all you wanted? I’m not sure that flu was on the list of my better half and kids, but they got it anyway. I seem to have missed out for the most part, just a head cold mainly. 3 days in bed seems to have helped the others, just in time to go back to work… Hmmm.
My sister made her flight and spent Christmas day in the air. I cooked for 6 and I’m told it was good (I liked it!). I do wish children would read instructions, as getting all stroppy when you can’t do something is a bit silly when the piece of paper you discarded tells you how it all works.
I got a nice pen from my parents and a funky looking desk toy from the other half.
The 32″ from the boxing day sales was a present from myself to me 
Hope you all had a nice Christmas. Time to rest a little before New Years 
ATM I have two keyboards and mice on my desk. One pair for the G4 and one pair for the Macbook. The monitor allows me to switch between two inputs, so thats easy, but I had thought I’d be stuck with two sets of input devices. However, whilst looking at USB hubs in Maplin on Saturday I came across this little device, http://www.acrox.com.tw/productdetial_specifications.asp?id=124 which lets you switch 4 devices between 2 computers. Now I know USB is hot pluggable, but I can’t help but wonder how this will cope in real life. I’m thinking now that for 25quid I should just have bought it, but I figured I could get one for less that 25quid online, seemingly not though since I can only find this device, or anything like it, at Maplin.
Morgins’ ISP has decided to up the cost of the colo, so I am looking around at alternatives. I need 1U, not much bandwidth (I have 100GB/month ATM and its fine) and 0.75amps. It is the amps that cause the problems it seems. Any experience / advice / pointers gratefully received
Through the joy of blog comments (see here) the Junipers Network connect VPN client is now working for me on Leopard. This is good, as I can now switch my MacBook over to Leopard. Sadly that is not as easy as I had hoped, because Apple’s Migration Assistant can’t copy my user’s data again to refresh the Leopard system data from the Tiger install. I could probably hack it with rsync but I figured I’d just reinstall Leopard… I don’t remember it taking this long last time.
I am looking forward to little things like using Spotlight as a calculator, To-Do’s in Map.app 3 and tabs in Terminal. Thankfully since I last ventured into Leopard many of the things I didn’t like have been (or can be) fixed, like the transparent taskbar and Stacks icons (I kinda wish you could remove stacks altogether TBH).
Whilst I wait for my MacBook to finish installing I shall sort my pics from Paris at the weekend.
I’m still pondering desktop setups, but I have had what I think is a genius idea (like all my ideas, obviously ). If I get a monitor with dual selectable inputs, and better yet one with picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture, I can connect up both the Desktop and the Laptop to one monitor and switch between them as I need. I can have the best of both worlds… but still have a sync’s issue. Hmm. Further thought needed.
So I’m still pondering the best desktop set up for me, work-wise. At the moment I run an old G4 (1.2Ghz, 2GB) as a desktop and VNC my MacBook (orig 1.83 CoreDuo) so I don’t have to mix up my two Mail.App installs and because I want (need ) dual displays. I’m not unhappy but nor am I happy with this, so I am pondering how best to move on.
Thought 1 was to by an iMac and hang my exiting screen off it, then somehow sort my Mail.App mess out, freeing up my MacBook to be a laptop infront of the sofa and ‘lugabout’. Then Apple brought out Santa Rosa on the MacBook and, you know me, I started thinking again. Thought 2 then was to upgrade the MacBook and keep the G4, though I am unsure how this helps! Ho-hum. So then I saw these Asus eee PCs, leading to thought 3… all I need for sitting about is a web browser, a terminal client and the ability to connect with Juniper’s Network Connect VPN client. So, buy an Asus thing and an iMac. This means that I’d have my MacBook for meetings etc. I don’t need so many machines though, so sell the MacBook and swap the iMac for a MacBook Pro, which is thought 4. I wouldn’t have to sync Macs, I could take the MBP to meetings etc and have the eee PC for quick browsing etc on the sofa, or indeed round and about.
This leads to my wondering though, what the heck, other than .2GHz more CPU and 128MB more Graphics RAM, does the 250quid difference (HD size excluded) get me between the two 15″ MBP models? I am puzzled.