Tuesday 13 November 2007

Apple iPhone

So I bought one this weekend on impulse, wasn't really looking for a new phone but liked the look of it when I played with one in my local O2 store. Nice little touch that they had alot of functional units with WiFi access etc. Made the difference, if it had been a plastic replica I probably wouldn't have bought one.

I'm seriously impressed with this little device, when I manage to tear myself away from youtube and use the other functions I'm amazed. The camera, although it has no zoom or flash, is good enough for everday shots. The sms chat layout is superb and easy to follow. The Google maps, weather and stocks pages are another handy little feature.

As my missus said, I've not had a phone before which has held my interest this long. Normally I play for an hour tops and put it down, still haven't put this down yet! The iPod portion has been hammered today.

I'm uploading some photos to my galleries now and will update this with them when I get chance.


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Sunday 11 November 2007

Moving To The Dark Side - Part II

Was shopping this weekend and I spotted the iPhone in the O2 store, had a little play and decided to take the plunge and grab one. I am seriously impressed with this thing, I've been going crazy for YouTube since I brought it home and was checking my mail in McDonalds this morning LOL.

I'll post some shots from the camera when I synch them but I have to say I'm impressed with them. Anyway, back to YouTube.


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Thursday 8 November 2007

Moving To The Dark Side

Ok,

After all the shenanigans with my PC's lately and the simple way in which I deployed two Mac Mini's onto my network I slowly transitioning to a full Mac network. I had an issue with one of my legacy Netgear routers this week and I am really starting to lose my rag with the 2 dsl lines I have installed!

I decided it's time to make the move, the 'dirty' machine I currently use will disappear. Its only used to test applications etc before I deploy them onto the network. With Mac's being less prone to virii etc I just won't need it. The server I currently run will be dropped for a *nix one simply to allow me to run more from it including network monitoring such as Nagios. Also alot cheaper than OS X Server!

My missus will be running a Mac Mini dual booting XP [eugh!] for her gaming needs, I'll disable the network port under XP as she doesn't need to be online so it should be secure. She can use Leopard for browsing etc. Eventually I want to replace all the games with Mac versions and drop the XP partition but we'll see :)

The last hurdle will be replacing my little Fujitsu tablet PC, I will miss the little thing. It's handy for meetings and general stuff but no good for processing photos on. I guess I'll get a new generation Mac Book Pro to replace that some time late next year.

I also need to replace my lovely little hand made corner desk with a full size unit to allow us both to use our machines at once. I'll have to grab a new chair and display too, I'm toying with the idea of getting a nice apple cinema display but that's alot of £'s.

Anyway, that's all for now, no dount there will be more on this later so tune in again soon.



H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Saturday 3 November 2007

Slimbridge Revisited

I like Slimbridge, it has a diverse range of birds there and allows you to get close to them. Here are a couple of the shots I've processed from my visit there last weekend.


























H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

HTPC - The long, ardous and expensive quest!

All I want to be able to do is archive all my movies, TV shows and PVR recordings to a machine from which I can watch it. I don't want to have to plug in different units, encode them to different standards or use differing disks for each media. All I want to do is sit in front of the TV and press the remote to play the files.

After an expensive quest, including a £400 Sony PS3, ending in a collection of odd units which won't play the files I decided to try the Mac Mini I bought some time ago [July 19th] and have never used. I researched it and installed something called Media Central on there, threw a couple of files at it and 'BAM!' plays them without issue! So at this point I starting throwing all my files at it to test it and it works on all the differing formats I have.

Coupled with an Apple Remote [more on that shortly] it's an excellent one box silent solution! So I've moved the 1.83Ghz downstairs, purchased a 2Ghz unit [that I'm writing this on now] and looking for another for the missus to play her PC games on when dual booted with XP. So I'll be buying a 3rd Mini on Monday!

Now I ordered the Mini on Wednesday and chucked an Apple Remote into my basket without checking, the 2Ghz model ships with remote *sigh*. Nevermind though. at least I have a spare now :)

Happy days, I'm currently catching up on all those shows I've been missing at long last.



H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net