Archive for category Appley
Come on down the mountain…..
So all most as if on queue two weeks after I signed up for the Google Music beta, I got my invite.
So what do I have to report about Google type cloud music over the amazon variety of cloud music? Well no limits for size (20,000 total files though). The other big difference is the addition of a background applet that auto magically syncs music back to Google when I download new music… I’m not going to lie that does not seem like the brightest idea to be running on my part since it leads the possibility of all sorts of neat things that I won’t get into here… needless to say it’s nice if your like me and you want your music to auto magically upload… Not great if your a security paranoid person.
Other nice features, all my playlists went up as well as my files so I didn’t have to rebuild them. And the Android app appears to be somewhat nice. It’s already replaced the default music player and double twist on my phone. So that’s a plus, my guess is that I will probably end up defaulting to Google music before this is all done and said…. Of course I say that and WWDC is right around the corner and you know Apple has this stuff up their sleeves….
Techonology Hates Me…
Posted by Tom in Appley, General Carnage and Bloodshed on March 31, 2011
So for last couple of posts I’ve talked about moving from one mac to another… and well it appears the my windows PC reads my blog because when I was surfing the internet on Monday after work my screens decided to do it’s impression of a 3d effect trying to impress me it failed miserably….
So the good news is I’ve sourced a new video card… the bad news is I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep running the Boinc CUDA apps that look for aliens and fold proteins on that new video card.
More migration notes… bootcamping
Posted by Tom in Appley, musings of a back porch, whiskey hazed on March 23, 2011
Ok so this one is going to be quick… I got a new mac… yea!
I posted previously on the migration process after a about 24 hours things started to magically get faster, which tends to make me thing there is some sort of background system process running that updates things to the new mac from the old mac. I don’t knot it’s just conjecture or maybe I just need to reboot the damn thing.
I’m thinking I probably needed to reboot the damn thing after dumping some serious knowledge on it.
Ok so if any of you have heard me gripe about my apple store experience in 2007 when I bought my first mac…. you know the story where the dude selling me a very expensive looked down his nose at me and said “windows isn’t going to be the first thing you install is it?” I find that I’m back to a kind of circle of life moment with my mac and windows.
It seems that my upgrade Windows7 that I bought for my old mac is tied to that hardware so I couldn’t use it on the new mac, ok not a huge deal I will use winclone and clone the dmg into the bootcamp partition… yeah that worked not at all. Which left me with… well maybe I can suck up my bootcamp windows into vmware… nope no dice. Honestly after about three hours of dicking around with I decided it wasn’t worth my time.
So now the real question comes out, do I really need to bootcamp my mac? Part of me says yes I do! Then the rational side of me kicks in, 95% of the time when I booted into windows was only to download updates and that was a bit of a pain. I can’t say that I have any real intentions of using this mac as a gaming rig… ok I do have steam on it and compared to my old mac Left4Dead is pretty sweet. When it comes to gaming though at least the kind of gaming I do the PC is the platform of choice. Yes mac are starting to do games, here is the other side of that coin I have no real desire to build a new PC other then my CPU is getting to be a bit long in the tooth. The GPU isn’t far behind.
From a overall perspective what I would like to do is move off of the PC entirely and run all of my media on a apple platform… that however seems kind of expensive but man that shit would work. I can say from a IT guy perspective it’s in my best interest to be familiar with all platforms out there so I guess I will be keeping my PC around even if it is just for gaming and looking for aliens.
Mr. Data
What ten years of hard drives look like on computer recycling day….
Keep until the end…
Posted by Tom in Appley, beer flavored, It's hell to be me...., musings of a back porch, Not doing things the easy way, Observations that no one else cares about on May 10, 2010
Long time readers of the blog… and I think there is a grand total of 4 of you now. Probably remember the last round of upgrade fever that hit the batcave which resulted in a TiVo, a MacBook Pro, and a sooner then I would have liked upgrade to my current desktop rig. That last bout of upgrade fever was 2007. Honestly it was pretty much kicked off by coming into a couple of bucks because of a house I sold. I think I may have gotten into beer brewing at about that time too, and I have yet to hear anybody complain about that (when enjoyed in moderation).
So flash forward to 2010 it’s 3 years since the last major bout of upgrade fever… and honestly I don’t think it’s returned. Do I look at the new Core i5 MacBook Pro’s and go “damn that is one sexy machine”? Oh hell yes I do. Am I going to stick with Mac as my laptop platform of choice…. at this time I’m going to say that the answer is yes. I don’t feel this over riding urge to go and purchase a new laptop simply because it’s new. Other then a different body style and upgraded guts what does this new mac do that my existing mac doesn’t do?
In a word not a damn thing. Actually I’m starting to think that I may pull windows off my mac with the exception of a vmware environment. Why install windows on a mac? well in a word “games” and I have to think about the last time I played a game on my mac (spring of 2009) after that I’ve booted into windows just to update it and the AV software, I’m normally back to the mac os within a hour or so. At this juncture it seems kind of dumb to keep a windows partition on my mac. Vmware has matured as a product that it’s pretty usable for those one off devices that won’t work with mac (which in my world are far and few between).
What I find interesting is what I choose to do on my mac vs my pc….
Photos… mac
Videos… editing the one time… mac… watching pc
surfing… pc unless I actually unpug the mac and take it to another room… and honestly I would just assume leave the technology in the office when I get home / get done working.
games… pc
blogging… what ever is most convenient… which again depends on what I’m doing quick dumps seem to go better on the pc… longer sessions (pretty much anything with the category of “musing of a back porch”) tends to be written on the mac. Not that the mac is any better it’s just more portable which lets me get creative in other spots.
When I think about how I use mobile technology I know that a iPad while cool would probably not be used as anything more then a media tablet and digital photo frame. And if I had pictures that I wanted to show off in HD on a 10 inch screen I would so buy one. But I don’t and I tend to be more old school in my technology usage (I still prefer a command line for Christ sake) and combination of mac-book air with a mac mini seems like it would do well for me. At the very least the mac-book air wouldn’t burn my legs like my mac book pro.
Why a Mini and a Air? The Air would be for the day to day stuff, surfing and writing… The mini would be for more cpu intensive apps (vmware, iphoto editing, something with more then a 12 inch screen) of course the cost of those two items is just about to the point of a mac book pro and why buy two when you can have one at the same price.
The part in all of this that drives me up the wall the most? Other then a slightly undersized hard drive (which is fixed very easily by a afternoon and $75) I have zero problems with my mac and it does everything I need/want it to do! I don’t know if I’ve finally hit the point of not needing the latest and greatest or if maybe just maybe I have found technology that can fulfill my needs for a extended period of time.
God it’s hell to have my problems. 
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