Mac Mini, a good way to go, with some caveats
Posted on June 24, 2005
I've been using a Mac Mini with Tiger for about the last month at work. Tired of dealing with video related lockups on my AMD64 in Ubuntu, I decided to give a spare Mini a try. Out of the box, the base Mini is not usable for a power user. It's at best sluggish, and at worst, like rush hour traffic on the 405 before the Sepulveda Pass. The primary culprit? The Harddrive. The slow speed (4200 rpm) of the drive is enough to make the box unusable. For the average computer hacker (not cracker) this isn't much of an issue. A couple of putty knives and a 7200 rpm 2.5" drive, and bam you're off. I got the Hitachi 7K60 for around $175 at Fry's, if I recall the price correctly. Fast forward a few weeks of use, and I'm able to use the box, but it still lags at times. The reason? 512MB of memory for a power user on OS/X is not do-able. The max is 1GB of ram in the Mini, and for $99 I just got new PC2700 ram, and let me tell you, it makes all the difference. No more lag when typing, opening applications, or tabs in Firefox. Give me another month of this and I'll let you know if I'm still as happy with the choice as I am now.
sIFRFonts.com Up and Running
Posted on June 22, 2005
I've finished the base level programming for sIFRFonts.com and have populated it with some initial fonts. Stop by and check it out and let me know what you think. In addition to the sIFR fonts themselves, I have links to various sIFR related resources.
Old news to most of you I am sure
Posted on June 14, 2005
Google's Web API is amazingly easy to program for. In ten minutes I had an integrated site search engine for a Glyphix client. Gotta love that.
White Stripes and the Pixies
Posted on June 07, 2005
I've been looking forward to this album far too much. I had high expectations after the reviews and Blue Orchid.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a "bad" album. Heck, I probably would like it better if I wasnt looking forward to it as much as I have been. But it's ok. There I said it... It's ok. I was hoping for, expecting, wanting... an incredible album. But it's just ok.
In contrast on Friday I went to see the Pixies with Mike. It was a great show, with the Bell Rays as the open act. Let me just say the energy the Bell Rays had was amazing, and I have to say it was probably the best opening act I've seen. The Pixies were amazing. Definately worth the ticket price and 11pm show. Kim Deal was looking a bit masculine, but her voice was just as sweet as it's always been, between her cigerette and beer brakes while Frank was doing his thing.
