blog.dreameffect.org » computers http://blog.dreameffect.org see what I have to say (in case you were interested) Mon, 05 Jul 2010 22:30:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 My Home Setup http://blog.dreameffect.org/2009/12/06/my-home-setup/ http://blog.dreameffect.org/2009/12/06/my-home-setup/#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:16:11 +0000 Ludovic http://blog.dreameffect.org/?p=269 The latest addition to my collection of toys is an Apple MacMini Server. The reason I decided to throw a new server into the mix is that I wanted to have the ability to develop and run my own applications as well as experiment with new technologies. For a while I was using my 2-year old Mac Mini as a server but with only 1Gb of RAM and a mere  1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU it didn’t really cut it. I now use it to watch TV and movies in my room. It works a treat. So now here is what my home steup looks like (click on the image to zoom in):

home setup

From the NAS I run an SVN server where I keep my home projects. On the MMS I have installed Tomcat, PostgreSQL and I’ve just deployed Atlassian Confluence (they offer a starter kit for only $10) so I have a central location where I can keep all the information I need.

And by using DynDNS I can have all of this accessible on the internet. I route all the traffic to the MMS and with Apache I proxy the Confluence requests to Tomcat and SVN requests to the NAS.

It’s a pretty cool setup which gives plenty of things to occupy myself with :) .

]]> http://blog.dreameffect.org/2009/12/06/my-home-setup/feed/ 0 New Kit http://blog.dreameffect.org/2008/09/06/new-kit/ http://blog.dreameffect.org/2008/09/06/new-kit/#comments Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:27:13 +0000 Ludovic http://blog.dreameffect.org/2008/09/06/new-kit/ A few months ago I purchased a iomega UltraMax. At the time it seemed like a sensible choice and to be fair it did work as expected. I plugged it to my MM (MacMini) and could back up my MBP (MacBookPro) and MM nicely. Plus I could share my music, videos, etc. to other computers on my network. On top of that it supported RAID-1 so my data could survive a disk failure.

Well, the problem is that about a month ago it suddenly stopped working. It started indicating that both disks had a failure. WHAT??? BOTH DISKS??? I thought I lost all my data (10 years of photos, all my music and personal files). I decided to take a look directly at the disks via a USB enclosing (once I managed to find one). It turned out both disks were just fine (what a relief!!!). It was in fact the UltraMax disk management system which decided to give up all together.

So what was the next move? Well, I decided that a more robust solution was the only way forward so I started looking around for a NAS drive. And at the end of my search I set my sight on the NetGear ReadyNAS NV+.

picRND4425_non_ds.gif

I’ve had it running for a month and I’m really happy about it. It runs with 4 500GB disks in what NetGear call X-RAID (automatically picks the best RAID configuration based on your disk configuration). It also comes with an iTunes streaming server, BitTorrent client and supports UPnP. That’s really cool because I can then watch videos or listen to music straight from my PS3. It’s obviously more pricey than my old kit but it is definitely worth it.

]]> http://blog.dreameffect.org/2008/09/06/new-kit/feed/ 0 New Hardware…yeah some more http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/12/30/new-hardwareyeah-some-more/ http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/12/30/new-hardwareyeah-some-more/#comments Sun, 30 Dec 2007 22:07:17 +0000 Ludovic http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/12/30/new-hardwareyeah-some-more/ 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!

]]> http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/12/30/new-hardwareyeah-some-more/feed/ 1 New Hardware http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/12/30/new-hardware/ http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/12/30/new-hardware/#comments Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:37:32 +0000 Ludovic http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/12/30/new-hardware/ 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.

]]> http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/12/30/new-hardware/feed/ 1 Great User Experience comes at a price: closeness! http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/18/great-user-experience-comes-at-a-price-closeness/ http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/18/great-user-experience-comes-at-a-price-closeness/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:09:28 +0000 Ludovic http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/18/great-user-experience-comes-at-a-price-closeness/ Today I attended the Symbian Smartphone Show here in London. And while listening to Mike Lazaridis from RIM, I couldn’t help but draw a comparison between the successes of the Blackberry and the Mac. Both platforms focus on providing a rich and seemless user experience. But they can do so only because they keep tight control over their platform. And although the closeness of these platforms can also be motivated by more monetary concerns, it is to me one of the key enabler for offering your customers with a complete experience.

]]> http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/18/great-user-experience-comes-at-a-price-closeness/feed/ 1 Upgrading to Leopard, or not updrading to Leopard: that it the question. http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/17/upgrading-to-leopard-or-not-updrading-to-leopard-that-it-the-question/ http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/17/upgrading-to-leopard-or-not-updrading-to-leopard-that-it-the-question/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:31:10 +0000 Ludovic http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/17/upgrading-to-leopard-or-not-updrading-to-leopard-that-it-the-question/ Mac OS X Leopard

You must have heard that Apple is releasing a new version of its operating system in a few days. Given that I bought my laptop only a few weeks ago, the news wasn’t that good to me. Now, I am faced with the choice of whether to pay the £85 to get an upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5, or not! Some of the new features seem rather nice. Plus, I always like to be up-to-date. So my first thought was to go for it. But now I’m thinking that it probably is going to be a bit buggy so I might as well let other people feel the pain. I guess I’ll just wait a couple of weeks and then I’ll upgrade.

]]> http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/17/upgrading-to-leopard-or-not-updrading-to-leopard-that-it-the-question/feed/ 0 Mac User Experience http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/02/mac-user-experience/ http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/02/mac-user-experience/#comments Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:50:28 +0000 Ludovic http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/02/mac-user-experience/ Following on my recent purchase of a MacBook Pro, I have to admit that I really enjoy the Mac user experience. The UI is very sleek. Plus, everything just works. Well, almost everything. As I mentioned in my previous post, my internet connection seamed very flaky on the Mac. it turned out it wasn’t my connection but the router (as my girlfriend suggested). So, guess what, I popped down the Apple Store again today and bought an Airport Extreme, the Apple router. After a bit of messing around, I got it to work fine with my current network configuration. So far, it’s all good. Let’s hope it stays that way.

]]> http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/10/02/mac-user-experience/feed/ 0 New laptop http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/09/30/new-laptop/ http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/09/30/new-laptop/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 21:50:21 +0000 Ludovic http://blog.dreameffect.org/2007/09/30/new-laptop/ On Saturday my laptop decided to surrender. More precisely, the screen started acting very weird and distort the image, rendering the computer virtually unusable. I thought it was only Windows messing around but it turned out to really be the display. I left it off for a few hours hoping it would fix things up but it didn’t. So what now, you ask? Well, a trip down the Apple Store, here I am sitting with a brand new MacBook Pro. I owned a few PCs but this is the first time I purchase a mac. So far the experience is quite pleasing. I’m still struggling to get all the software I need up and running, but mostly because of my rubbish internet connection.

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