Author: Topslakr

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One Laptop Per Child

The One Laptop Per Child project is nothing new in the world of us geeks. What is new is that they will soon be available for purchase in North America during a narrow window in November.

If you are not familiar with the project then by all means check it out, it’s pretty amazing. Basically, a group of people got together and decided to put together a super durable machine for children in 3rd world nations. This thing has battery life from 6 hours to 24 depending on use. It had no internal moving parts to break like fans and hard drives.… Click here to read more!

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The Recording Process

When a band first approaches me to record an album the first thing they mention is how they want to record the band playing all at once. It takes everything I have to not roll my eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to record the album like that, there are a lot of benefits. It will absolutely give you a better performance over all and a lot more energy, it really does add to the vibe of the record. The problems these days is that bands are much too unrehearsed to actually pull this off.

In order for you to be able to record the album like that the you need to know the songs, perfectly.… Click here to read more!

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Website Down Time

We are back online. Seems we had a power issue and the servers didn’t come back online when the power was restored. Biggest surprise is that the Thecus N5200 came back online just fine… Didn’t see that one coming!

Topslakr

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Blog Enhancements: Header Image Rotation

For a weekend project I’m going to try and get an image rotation for the header working. CodeC11b set this up once before and I’ve been meaning to set it back up. I tried a few months ago but was unsuccessful. We’ll see if I have better luck this time.

The static image with the grass and tractor is great but I have a few other images I’d like to use and it would be a nice thing to keep adding to. I’m always out shooting new pictures and every once in a while I see something that would work pretty well for that sort of short wide format.… Click here to read more!

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Followup: Thecus N5200 – Perfect in Failure

Right, so 56 days after the massive failure I have another degraded RAID on my hands. This time I didn’t get any emails to tell me about it. Not sure why, I’ll assume the email part is my fault to give Thecus the benefit of the doubt…

I happened to load up the admin website for the device as I’ve gotten into the habit of doing and noticed the Array was degraded. I took a look at the disks and drive 5 was missing. Strange… I took a look at the logs and it showed the array going into a degraded mode but no mention of the drive falling off of the face of the earth.… Click here to read more!

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Update: Thecus N5200 – RAID Repair

Well, I have to admit: I am one lucky guy. I have been running a truly degraded RAID array since day one of my experience with the N5200. To get up to speed you may want to read my other post about the device: Thecus N5200 Review

So, today my replacement hard drive arrived for a failure I noticed recently. I took a look at the RAID and double checked the reason for the replacement. My #2 drive was showing some bad sectors and was listed as a ‘warning’. Not a failed drive but a drive on the way. Better safe then sorry I thought.… Click here to read more!

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Grow Your Own: Sorting Out Step 1

Alright, I’ve made the decision to try to produce some of my own food. Now what? Seems step one should be to do a bit of research.

The root of this decision comes from a British television series called River Cottage. It’s basically about a guy who leaves his life in London to start a small farm to feed himself. This is not what my intention is really; I want to feed myself but I don’t want to leave my job or support myself off of the surplus. Not today at least. The show was hosted/created by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall so I figure that it’s to him I should look for some advice.… Click here to read more!

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Review: Jinzora Media Jukebox

I’m always looking for better ways to access my media when I am away from the house. For a while I was using Microsoft’s streaming server because I had free access to it through a company I was working for but it was very limited. To access the music you had to be using a current version of Windows Media player which was a hassle. For the music to stream you had to actually copy the music files to the server and create a station. You basically had to create static playlists, when you wanted to add or remove a song you had log into the server to make the changes and copy the files.… Click here to read more!

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It’s Time to Make a Resolution!

As my more loyal readers will remember, I don’t believe is waiting for January 1st to make a ‘resolution’. I think that whenever you come to a decision you should do what you can to fix it right now. I am making a decision right here, right now (September 24, 2007) to do what I can produce my own food. I’m not saying that I am going to start a farm and produce all of my own food but by the year 2010 I want to be producing a substantial portion of my food.

The fact of the matter is, I’m not comfortable with the way food is produced these days.… Click here to read more!

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Apple’s Support is Still Top Notch

This morning, while eating a spot of breakfast, I noticed a crack in my Macbook. I was not completely surprised by this. I had noticed some weakness a few weeks ago during one of my laptop cleanings and I recall some mention of this issue on the Apple support forum shortly after the Macbook’s release.

(As an aside, I do not recommend you browse those forums for any reason. They are filled with 90% Whiners and haters. Nothing good will come of it. It’s like looking for political information on a conspiracy theory site, everyone is skewing something to further their motives.)… Click here to read more!