Archive for December, 2007

End of the year

December 31st, 2007

As this year draws to an end in a few hours I thought it would be a good time to reflect on what has happened in my life in 2007. I suppose I can sum it up with a few keywords:

  • Work

It’s been an interesting year work-wise. First, I worked a lot. Not that I’m complaining because I like what I do and my efforts are recognised. Plus, I had the chance to become a team leader and take on more responsibilities. It hasn’t been exactly what I expected but I am enjoying it.

  • Travel

My trip to Asia (Japan, China) was really an adventure, especially China [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. It’s been a challenging but great experience. I wish I can do it again in a not to distant future.

  • Challenges

Because my girlfriend is now living in Canada (where she studies) I have to say it has been quite difficult. Things are fine when we get to spend time together. But it’s the periods in between which are challenging, especially for me. I’m not sure how things will work out in the new year. I guess time will tell.

  • Excess

In the second part of this year I’ve started going out and drinking more than usual. I’ve actually enjoyed it most of the time but it was a bit too excessive in some instances. As I like to say: too much fun kills the fun!

I am actually quite looking forward to next year. Hopefully it will be as interesting as 2007.

Happy New Year!

New Hardware…yeah some more

December 30th, 2007

After getting my hands on a iomega UltraMax I started to think about how to share the data on my local network. I have a Windows XP Mediacenter from Sony but being Windows it is not extremely stable nor adequate to really serves as a file server. Plus, it wouldn’t allow me to use the drive with Time Machine on my MacBook Pro. Therefore, I needed a machine running on Mac OS X so I can plug the hard drive and share it on the local network. So, yes, I bought a new computer. I wanted something not too expensive and small enough to fit nicely in my leaving room. Without further ado I present you the Mac Mini:

Mac Mini

I’m still setting it up but it looks promising so far. Now, I stop spending money…well, maybe!

New Hardware

December 30th, 2007

I’ve been thinking of getting a new external hard drive system for some time. What I was looking for was an affordable RAID-1 (data mirroring) solution so I don’t have to worry about losing data if the hard drive fails. Earlier this week I spent some time browsing for such solution and came across the iomega UltraMax:

iomega UltraMax

According to the reviews I read it seemed like good value for money. It supports both RAID-0 and RAID-1. On Saturday I popped down the Apple Store on Regent Street and there it was on the shelves. So, after arguing with myself for about half a second I decided to pick one up. Once back home I read the doc, set it up in RAID-1 (RAID-0 is default) and nothing happened. It wouldn’t appear on my desktop. After fiddling around for about an hour with no success, I checked online and found out that the doc provided with the hard drive was not complete and did not mention that after setting the hard drive up in RAID-1 you need to press the Rebuild button! Once the damn button pressed it was all fine.

Besides the fan being a bit noisy, it lives up to my expectations.

Merry Christmas

December 30th, 2007

I know it’s a bit belated but hey, Merry Christmas to all!

This yeah, as usual, I went back to France to spend Christmas with my family. It was nice to see them and spend some time playing with my nephew. We ate a lot, drunk to0 much. A typical Christmas I suppose. Now I’m back to London, back to work, business as usual. It’s always the same, a huge build up to Christmas and in an instant it’s over. Now, the new year is just around the corner. 2007 has been a very interesting year, full of surprises. I hope 2008 will be a good vintage too.

What’s up?

December 3rd, 2007

So what I have been up to I hear you ask. Well, between working too hard, going out too much and not sleeping enough, I’ve been fairly busy recently. And as usual I didn’t take the time to blog much. I can’t believe it’s already December! Christmas is like tomorrow and then it’s already 2008. I need to think of some new year’s resolutions which, of course, I will give up 2 weeks in. But I suppose it’s part of the fun of starting a new year.