Category: Topslakr

Posts by Topslakr

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Review: 5th Generation iMac 20″

Yeah, I bought one. No story for why, no long explanation about it. I bought it because I needed a new desktop and I don’t regret it. With the addition of this iMac I am 100% Mac now, my Macbook for portability, the Mac Pro for the recording studio and now the iMac for my general desktop use.

I will admit that adapting to using a Mac desktop has been somewhat rough. I learned to use the Macbook with no trouble at all. Using the laptop with the massive touch pad and it’s attached 13.3″ screen fit me like a glove.… Click here to read more!

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Review: 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor

Unfortunately, one of the few camera and photography shops near me is closing. On the bright side though they are selling off everything in the store, from neon lights and shelves to lenses and camera bodies. I happened to have been in the area on Saturday so I stopped in to see what they had. I found a couple of items at decent prices. One of those items was the 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor.

This is a pretty basic prime lens, that is to say it does not zoom at all. It’s a very small, light weight lens and quite fast as lenses go.… Click here to read more!

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New Cameras and Lenses From Nikon

On August 23rd, Nikon released a number of new products. They added/replaced a number of thier professional lenses and released two new camera bodies. They replaced their current flagship cameras, the D2Xs and the D2Hs with the D3. The specs look great on paper and I can’t wait to see some reviews when they come out in November. In the mean time all of my drooling has been directed to Ken Rockwell’s preliminay look at the device. He seems pretty excited about it. For me, it’s falls in the ‘too expensive’ category. If you are a professional though this camera looks like it’s going to be a no brainer.… Click here to read more!

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Review: Apple’s New .Mac Service

As far as I can tell .Mac (Apple’s Website describing the complete service) has been overhauled in a very big way and for the better. For a while now I’ve been aware of the .Mac service which was basically a somewhat expensive way to keep all of your macs up to date with each other. It offered a simple way to sync bookmarks, address books ect as well as offering 1GB of online storage to use between your iDisk and the IMAP email they offered.

The iDisk itself was and is a very cool system. Basically it’s a place that you can keep your files so that they are available to all of your macs.… Click here to read more!

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The Wheels of Progress

Well, It’s been a while hasn’t it? Let me wipe the cob webs of the site (and the servers, but thats another post) and mention a couple of things I have in the works. First off, my Thecus N5200 has been having some trouble lately and I think it’s something that needs to be posted about. As it turns out the web interface for the product is severely lacking and does not in any way provide adequate data about the array’s health. Look for a scathing post about that coming up…

In other (better) news Apple has released some new software (iLife 08,iWork 08) and updated both the Mac Mini and the iMac.… Click here to read more!

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New additions to the Image Gallery

Well, I have returned from Nashville where I went to the Music & Worship Conference. Had a great time down there and I took a ton of pictures. I have posted all of the images that I didn’t delete in their unedited form. Out of the 1600 shots I took I’ve keep about 500, not to bad I’d say.

Have a Look. I’ve posted in two groups, one group is pictures from the concerts and classes and the other is shots from around the City as we took some time during our final day to look around downtown Nashville.… Click here to read more!

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Followup: Thecus N5200

Well, I have my first real drive failure on my hands. The array has been running for a few months now (though not without issue), and when I logged into it the other day I noticed I have a drive on the fritz. The array did not send me an email telling me about the issue but that could be understandable as the array is not currently degraded, I just have a drive with a few errors. I will place an order for a new disk and go through the process of replacing it. The manual says all I need to do is pull the bad drive and pop in a new good one.… Click here to read more!

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HP. Not Perfect, but Trying!

I like HP. They make a good product at a competitive price and most importantly they stand behind what they sell. I’m not going to get into details about my job or our server environment ect ect but I do want to relay a couple of things that have helped to cement my position on HP.

Shortly after I was hired on at the company I work for my boss and I (we’re a very large IT department…) were asked to get a server in house and prepared to host a new application in 10 days. Quite a tall order. We looked into a number of server from Dell, IBM, HP ect ect and settled on getting an HP ML 350 G5.… Click here to read more!

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Treo as a Modem: The Windows (Part 2)

Ok, Well, I took a minute to try out pairing my Treo to my Windows XP laptop to see what I could do. The short answer is that the process works and I can get online using the phone as a modem.

The long answer is that it happens in typical windows fashion. I paired the phone using the XP bluetooth tools. During that process it asks which services you would like to use with the phone, one of them is to use the phone as a modem. So far so good. As soon as I clicked on the check box though I swear to you 4, yes FOUR wizards opened on my screen.… Click here to read more!

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Cingular Treo 750 as a Modem

Ok, using my Macbook and my Treo 750 it was pretty simple to get online. I’ll outline my process here for anyone else who might be curious to try. I will also post about getting it to work with my HP nc6400, assuming I’m able to make it happen…

Step 1:

Install the Treo Cingular modem scripts. All you need to do is download this file and copy the contained files into the /Library/Modem Scripts folder starting from the root of your system drive. You will not find this folder in your users Library folder.

Step 2:

Pair your mac and your phone.… Click here to read more!