Category Archives: Computers

Software, hardware, you name it!

The iPad

★ Posted on at 09:38 pm ★

soba

Introducing Soba Woba, my friend’s Japanese Spitz. She’s just a few months old and after Alfie, I’m quite familiar how quickly puppies grow up, and you only have a few weeks before you realize that they have grown so much.

* * *

Was tracking my iPad delivery over the last couple of weeks, and even went as far as trying to source one before my delivery was due. Finally, it arrived on my birthday and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Currently typing this post on the iPad. I also got a wireless Apple keyboard for my birthday (good that your friends ask you exactly what you want). I could probably type via touch on the screen, but nothing beats a proper, physical keyboard for speed and efficiency.

It’s an interesting interface, selecting UI elements via touch and doing most of the text entry via keyboard. I guess for things like this, a laptop is still ideal, but I was already using the iPad, so I decided to get this post out of the way on it.

Plenty has been written about the drawbacks of the iPad not doing Flash, so you miss out on some videos on websites, but for the most part, I like that the iPad is very portable, and the quick access and almost desktop like experience with regards to the web means it beats a laptop for when I’m just wanting to quickly check up something.

It’s also a better screen compared to the iPhone for reading books, which I have tried loading onto the iPad. Saw my friend’s Kindle 3 and I have to say that as a reading device, it’s nearly ideal with it’s size and weight. Lying in bed, you don’t have to really support the full 600gm weight of the iPad, so it also makes a decent reading device. Laptops weigh more and flicking the screen to turn the page is just so much more intuitive than fumbling for arrow keys.

I have only had it for a few days now, so haven’t fully explored what it can do, but I have to say it’s not a giant iPhone as the experience is very different. At the moment, I’d still consider the iPad a luxury item, as you can do most of the same things on a laptop. However, there are some fun elements to it, like Garage Band. I have tried that as a means of producing music and it is fun. I’m also looking forward to trying one of the painting apps and see how I fare with that.

* * *

iPad aside, have less than a month to finish the syllabus for the upcoming CPA exam. With my birthday out of the way, I’m a little more committed to doing that, so will be spending the next few weeks busy hitting the books.

Autumn

★ Posted on at 08:18 pm ★

20110326-0011

Had brunch at New York Tomato this morning, a quaint little place between York St and New St. The dish is scrambled eggs with panchetta and figs on sourdough toast. It was quite delicious.

* * *

Feels like autumn now. The sun isn’t quite there when you awake in the morning and the temperature has dropped to below 20 degrees. Figs are now in season, and they are now my favourite fruit.

A little behind on my studies, so trying to get back on track with it. Heh, putting off installing a new game on my PC, so that I don’t get distracted. Did a little more gardening this evening, potting a bay leaf tree and getting some parsley shoots into a pot. Also transferred some mint from it’s styrofoam container to a proper pot. It’s been useful having fresh thyme, rosemary and sage on demand. At least the first two are pretty perennial so I have less problems with them. Some coriander is sprouting from seeds I got from my cousin, so wondering how long they will last before they bolt and seed.

* * *

None autumn related geekery. Mandatory “Skip me” sign has been put up.

Also testing Linux Mint on my Eee PC now. Actually downloaded it to try it on a first generation Eee PC, but the 480 pixel vertical resolution was problematic as I couldn’t see and select the correct dialog boxes to continue the installation. Tried it on my current Eee PC and running the Live CD environment now. Booted into the GUI within a minute, got all the hardware detected and after setting up wifi, I am productive with a web browser open and instant messaging enabled.

Browsed a few sites to test the media capabilities (Linux Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu without the user licensing restrictions of using proprietary codecs) and Youtube worked fine, the iPad demos on the Apple website worked fine as well (meaning Flash and Quicktime works out of the box). Browsed my NAS (which is great as it announces itself on the network so there’s no need to go hunt for it) and played music files without any fuss. Video files are still a pain over the network due to the sizes and you can’t really stream it without stuttering (unless you attach 9dbi antennas to your wireless cards, which is what the HTPC in the living room has now)

Heh, the design is pretty polished from my point of view, but I had to adjust the font sizes as they are bigger than I am used to (wasted space on my Eee PC at those sizes). The CPU fan is also constantly on as some part of it is requiring constant processing, and the process manager seems to indicate GNOME as the culprit. Wonder if LXDE would be a lighter environment. Multitasking is still snappy enough, even on this Atom processor, but wondering what I could really do with a proper CPU.

I could go on and on but shall stop here.

/end geek talk

* * *

A lot of sidetracking, but have already put a plan in place to get back on track with the studying.

Mini Workstation

★ Posted on at 11:18 pm ★

20110219-0009

Alfie at the park. Love how the sun at the edge of the picture gives Alfie a sort of hair light. Still trying to find new ways to be creative with how I frame and shoot photos.

* * *

WordPress 3.1 finally came out and I decided to upgrade it. Doing it through WordPress broke the installation itself. Tried some suggestions I googled, and ended doing it the old fashion way using an FTP client to upload the files one by one. Heh, typing this post out means I fixed it.

The new version of WordPress has some improvements, like an admin bar at the top of your site when you are logged in to have quick access to creating new content and managing comments. I’ve seen this implemented on other blogging software before, so this is sort of a catchup for WordPress.

Other than that, I haven’t really noticed any new features, so I will take some time to go through the new admin interface. Upgrading the website to be HTML5 and CSS3 compliant will be something I will work on for the next few weeks.

* * *

Vyanne’s cousins are staying over at our place, so access to my desktop has been restricted, as the study has also been converted into a guest room, so I’ve converted the Eee PC (which I’m typing on now) to be a more useful tool.

It dawned on me that Dropbox can be used to sync simple applications like a basic text editor and an FTP client, allowing me to work across all the computers I have without worrying about syncing between machines or worrying about file locations. Dropbox is very transparent and does this for you. The 2GB they provide for free is adequate for most of the things I need to sync so it keeps things simple for me. Next stop is setting up a basic web server on Dropbox and I already have some ideas on how to do that.

* * *

Just some comments on the Eee PC, as I’m always keen to find out what’s the most productive equipment I can use for doing my work. I’ve had it for a couple of years now and the stuff I have used it for has definitely justified the cost for it.

I like that it is really portable at 1.1kg, it really gives me a computing device with many options while on the go or just around the house. The battery has degraded from 6 hours to about 2 and a 1/2 but even with the weakened battery, it still has enough juice to allow me to be productive on the go. I also like that replacement parts are easily accessible from eBay as I have replaced the keyboard before and could also get a new battery if I wanted to.

The 8.9″ screen was adequate before, but as I try to be more productive with the Eee PC, the screen becomes more of a hindrance. Heh, the Atom processor is ok for almost everything I need it to do except for the occasional high definition web video or editing photos.

* * *

So for me the ideal laptop starts off with the weight. Anything above 1.3kg would be a dealbreaker for me. There are currently laptops with 11.6″ screens and a high enough resolution to be productive on and this is the largest I would go as anything more probably wouldn’t fit in my camera bag. Anything faster than an Atom processor would fit my usage requirements for a portable laptop.

The above criteria narrowed it down to a couple of choices, the Apple Macbook Air and the Lenovo X120e. The form factor of the Macbook Air is ideal and the Core 2 Duo is still a decent performer. $1,199 for the form factor isn’t half bad considering laptops of this class a few years ago were above $2,000. The proprietary nature of Apple hardware meant I wasn’t going to be able to do any repairs of my own. The alternative would be the Lenovo X120e, which unfortunately, isn’t currently sold in Australia (global businesses with regional market targetting) has a processor that’s close to the C2D’s performance, a nice matte screen (dislike the glossy screens of current laptops) and lots of I/O options. Even specced out, the price is pretty decent but the weight balloons to about 1.5kg.

So still in search of that ultra portable computing device (an iPad doesn’t quite count) that would help me do stuff away from my desktop.

Heh, this post has got a bit too wordy for my liking.