I always said I’d try to keep at least semi regular posting going, I wasn’t going to have one of THOSE blogs. Well, I have one of THOSE blogs now. Lets see if I can’t kick start things again.

Updates and stuff… in no particular order.

I am in no way an Apple fanboy. I’ve made my Apple/Mac slurs along with the best of them in the PC world, but slowly and surely more and more Apple products are creeping into my life. How exactly does that happen? I’ve had an iPod for a while, but who doesn’t. That hardly counts, even. Last year I bought an AppleTV, which makes for a pretty decent and compact video streamer when hacked for XBMC. (Though it may soon get replaced with a small Atom HTPC with even more flexibility). In September it was time for a new MP3 player and I bought a 32GB iPod Touch. My reasons for going this (expensive) route were the Nike+ integration (which I fully associate with keeping me running over the last 9 months). It turns out I use the Touch a whole lot more than I expected. Its a great little couch browser, theres some legitimately good games and apps available for it. Its got a good screen for doing video and media on planes and traveling and, in a pinch, it makes a decent ebook, though I still prefer my full sized ebook readers.

Fast forward to April and Apple finally updates the MacBook Pro line of laptops. I’ve been feeling the restrictions of my Asus 1000HE netbook for a while. Its was a good couch machine but the tiny screen and weak processor made it pretty much useless for doing any sort of photo work. I didn’t want a ginormous 15.4″+ lap-breaker system either. I missed the days of my 14.1″ ThinkPads. Anything larger than that is just too big for my purposes. I had my eye set on a 13″ MacBook Pro, fully expecting them to get the new Core i5, or at least i3 treatment with the new refresh. Unfortunately Apple didn’t see fit to go that route and continued using the Intel Core2Duo processors. After some serious thought and consideration I ordered a 13″ anyway. I don’t really need the horsepower of the i5, as nice as it would be, and the nearly $650 price difference between a 13″ and 15″ MacBook in decent spec just couldn’t be rationalized.

So far I really like the 13″. Its just the right size for a portable laptop. The screen is beautiful, even if its glossy, which wouldn’t be my first preference. The MBP trackpad can’t be beaten for control and I love the keyboard. The solid Aluminum block design is pure sexy too. I would like a bit higher res screen and an eSATA port, but at the 13″ level the only laptop that comes close is the HP Envy 13, and it costs MORE than the 15″ MacBook!

OSX had a bit of a learning curve but I’m pretty comfortable with it now. Having a Unix back end makes it feel like a Linux flavor to me. I’m not a convert, by any stretch. Its still clunky in a lot of ways and, despite what they say, I’ve had my fair number of crashes and even a lockup or two. Pretty much on par with Windows 7. I can’t say its better, I won’t say its worse. Its come a long way since the old PowerPC’s I last used from Apple.

Final verdict, pretty happy. We’ll see how it lasts longer term.

Next up on the techno-updates, shortly after my last blog post I got my Canon 7D and sold my 40D. Man, how I wish the 7D had come out sooner and I’d had it for Targa. If you had sat me down and told me to write out all the features I wanted in a Canon body for my shooting purposes I would have made the 7D. From the incredible focus modes, the speed, the feel, all the bells and whistles, there’s literally almost nothing else I’d want in a camera! I’ve only had the chance to use it at a couple of events so far, but I can tell I’m going to love this camera. Bring on the cars!

In late April, Daphne finally had her long-coming jaw surgery to fix her TMJ problems. It was a long time coming and we’re both glad to have it out of the way. Everything went very well and she’s doing great now. The surgery and recovery were pretty rough, but I think everything went as expected. There’s still some braces and recovery to go but things appear to be on the proper mend.

We head off for our summer vacation in a couple of weeks, off to Savannah, Georgia via Charlotte, North Carolina where we’re going to visit some friends. We’re going to be in Savannah for our 10th wedding anniversary. A whole decade. How in the heck did that happen?? Wouldn’t trade it for anything though. I can’t wait to get away…

More stuff to write, but I should save it for other posts so I actually keep updating.

Blogging from the Blackberry. What will they think of next??

My trusty old Xbox has been getting long in the tooth lately, but it doesn’t owe me anything. It has been the best $100 appliance I’ve ever bought, hands down. Hacking it to run Xbox Media Centre made it the ultimate media service appliance, playing every movie, TV show, MP3, Shoutcast stream or movie trailer I could throw at it from my PC to whatever TV I wanted around the house. Though I haven’t quite taken the leap yet, XBMC has made me seriously consider getting rid of cable. Who needs the ads, the static schedules, the crappy quality? Unfortunately after 5 years of heavy use the ‘ol ‘box has started complaining, its transplanted 120GB HD has started making odd noises lately and the fans sound like rutting sheep most of the time. So enter… Microsoft’s arch nemesis!

The AppleTV has been out for a few years now and people haven’t really known what to make of it. Essentially a media slinging appliance tied into Apple’s iTunes store it started off fairly pricy and never really found a home. Recently, though, people smarter than me have gotten their grubby little paws into its guts and started opening up new possibilities, chief among them Boxee and XBMC. There’s something twistedly satisfying in running XBOX Media Centre on an Apple Product.

First, the good. The AppleTV is a compact, fanless little pie-box that fits unobtrusively in any setup. It features HDMI and Component video and Optical/RCA audio outputs. No composites for you folks who haven’t joined the 90s though, sorry. Also present are ethernet and USB connections while an 802.11n wireless interface hides inside. There’s no buttons or direct interface on the unit itself, not even a reset button. In typical Apple fasion its form over function.

Once you hook up the unit you’re presented with some very basic setup menus and thats it, you’re ready for all your iTunes needs! The interface is very minimal but effective providing you access to your local iTunes libraries on machines visible via Ethernet/Wireless as well as online content from Apple. The movie content available from Apple is quite impressive and streams quickly, with trailers starting in under 10 seconds. HD (720p) content takes a bit longer but still well within the realm of reason. I haven’t done any movie renting yet but the prices are in-line (cheaper!) than blockbuster. I could definitely see using this service. TV shows are available as well at around $15-20 a season or $1.99 an episode. Considering the intended purpose I had in buying the ATV though, I can’t see these getting much use.

Also available within the Apple interface is a very diverse library of Video Podcasts. These were an unexpected perk and I spent an entire weekend watching lectures from the TED conference streamed quickly and in high quality straight to my TV. These podcasts aren’t anything you can’t find on their respective websites, but having them all in one place and on your TV makes them vastly more accessible. Video podcasts are available on all kinds of subject matter from travel, cooking, educational, sports and video games. The CBC has a pretty good selection too!

Installation of Boxee/XBMC was just about as dead simple as any operation could be. Using a USB stick an installer creates a bootable patch system that you load onto your ATV by turning it on with the stick inserted. Wait 5-10 minutes and it does all of its own work. Thats it! Now when you load the ATV interface you have new options for both Boxee and XBMC including functionality to update to the latest versions as they’re relased. The Xbox was easy, this is absolute childs play!

Boxee is an offshoot of XBMC geared more towards social sharing of media and streaming online content. I see where its going but it doesn’t really hold a lot of appeal for me. First off, I really don’t find any draw in the social interface. I don’t care what my friends are watching and if they want to recommend something to me they’ll just tell me. The streaming content would probably have more value except its 90% US-based content which is regionally filtered. Without jumping through VPN hoops most of it is not available.

XBMC is the same app we’ve come to know and love on the Xbox. The patch stick installer installs the latest ‘Atlantis’ Alpha build which has an extremely nice looking 720p geared skin that looks amazing on an HD TV. No more analog fuzziness! All the codec support is there and media is played over Windows shares without a hitch. There’s a couple of functionality bits that aren’t present but for the most part everything is great! It IS an Alpha build, anyway!

There’s always some bad, however. The biggest issue I have with the ATV (and by extension, anything running on it) is the remote. ALSO in Apple form-over-function style, the remote is a stick of gum affair with only 6 buttons. Four directions, play/pause and menu. The Xbox remote that I’m used to, by comparrison, has dozens of buttons allowing XBMC to be controlled in a number of ways. After living with the Apple remote for a few days I no longer actively hate it, but I’ll be very glad when the XBMC/Boxee folks figure out how to allow me to use my Harmony 550 Universal remote to add a bit more control to the package.

Another weak spot is 720p playback. Under XBMC the ATV can be picky about 720p HD content due to the fact the aftermarket software can’t make use of the nVidia 7300 GPU to help with the rendering duties. So while you can view high def video with no problem when downloaded from the iTunes store, XBMC can struggle a bit. Hopefully this is something the community will resolve as well, but at the end of the day I don’t really care about high def that much.

One final gripe is the fact that the unit never actually turns off. Since its designed to constantly be synching your media, downloading podcasts, updating catalogs from the iTunes store, its constantly talking over the network and occasionally spinning up/down its 40GB internal HD. I wish this weren’t the case but I hooked the ATV up to a Kill-a-Watt power meter which tells me its drawing 17W at idle (21W under load). Thats not the end of the world, I guess. Over the course of a 3 day weekend with plenty of use the ATV drew just over 1kWh. I’d still rather it just shut down completely, however.

For $209 from the Apple Refurbished Store I think this little unit will fill my media needs nicely for a while to come. Sure, there are more capable streamers out there, such as the Popcorn Hour or gaming consoles like the PS3 and its BluRay drive, but those options are easily twice the price and, much to my own surprise, the lack of access to the iTunes store would be a big loss in those units.

… when did this become a tech blog?

Hmm, Technology.

After my HD died I spent the weekend rebuilding my machine from a 4 year old clean-system backup image I’d made onto a spare 200GB drive. It was time to clean house anyway, right? Well, fast forward to a week later and a power outage while I was at work killed the replacement. Oi vey. Well, I’d been looking for an excuse to do a major upgrade anwyay, right? A couple of used hardware bits from friends later and I’ve joined the multiple-core computing era. Nothing too fancy, just a Core 2 Duo E6600, 4GB of RAM and an Asus P5B Plus board. Of course video cards have taken an architecture leap since my last machine too so I picked up a 9600 GT card. Overall its just a mid-range machine but its more than enough to handle Lightroom and catch up on the PC gaming I’ve been missing.

In a twist of fate, my building this machine coincided with the release of the Microsoft Windows 7 Beta so I figured I’d give that a shot. A quick and easy way to try out a 64-bit operating system. At least until August when the Beta self-destructs. So far I’m very impressed, it runs well, feels ‘lighter’ than Vista and I’ve had very few problems. I have no qualms about recommending Windows 7 to anyone looking to take the jump from XP, especially if you need a 64-bit OS to take advantage of lots of RAM. (XP and all 32-bit operating systems can only address just over 3.2GB of RAM, no matter how much they show you on properties screens.)

First up was Call of Duty 4 which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. The single player is quite short, maybe 6 hours or so, but the level design is excellent. I can’t imagine the amount of work it takes to make levels like that! I hear the multiplayer is the best part of the game but I’m allergic to playing online FPS games. They destroy my already limited faith in humanity.

After that I fired up Steam and bought Mass Effect. So far it seems fairly entertaining, though after CoD4 it feels pretty unpolished. I know its supposed to be more about the story and feel like a movie, but its a terrible shooter and the graphics engine just doesn’t wow. Its worth the $20 that I paid for it but I’m not bowled over by it so far.

Lastly, and the game I’ve enjoyed most so far, Prince of Persia. This one is a bit of a departure for the series, but for the type of gaming I do, a very welcome one. Some people say its too easy, and they may be right. You can’t die, the combat is easy, the puzzles lead you by the nose a bit, but thats FINE. While I enjoy gaming, I’m not a power gamer. I don’t want to be frustrated or to have my every reflex challenged. I want to spend time enjoying the ‘art’ of a game, not wonder what kind of masochist its authors were. I recommend this one highly for a fun experience.

Anyway, enough geekery.

Sunday was the first Navigational Rally of the year with the ASCC Gold Hills II which was a stupendous success. 20 Entrants in a Navigational rally is unheard of in our region and everyone seemed to have a great time! The weather was perfect with a bit of a warm spell between January deep-freezes and everyone made it to the finish without undue drama. I spent Saturday morning wiring up a borrowed TerraTrip 202+ into Daph’s car for the event which seems to have gone well, especially since Daph came home with a 1st place in Experienced Class! With the advice of Dan Sprongl from Four Star Motorsports I hooked it up using a DSI/VSS interface and by all accounts it worked flawlessly with only three wires to connect, even if it was a bit nerve wracking splicing vital vehicle wires to do it.

Hopefully we can keep up this rally momentum! Next event is the BAC RallyCross #6 at AMP this Sunday!

Isn’t it funny how inanimate objects can ‘hear’ things? My desktop is getting a bit long in the tooth, considering I built it so I could play Half Life 2, which was released in November, 2004. Lately, I’ve been thinking about getting a nice shiny new multi (Probably Quad) core system that will eat Lightroom for dinner, and this morning I walked into the office to see my Desktop on the BIOS screen:

S.M.A.R.T. STATUS ALARM: DRIVE ERROR - BACKUP AND REPLACE

Hmm. The system won’t even boot without flipping back to the BIOS. Bad juju. The drive is no loss since its a 7 or 8 year old 120GB Seagate and most of the important stuff is off. Its rebuilt now but I think its time to go shopping!

Remember folks, backup early, backup OFTEN!

… is it a phoenix or is it just crap thats on fire?

Spoon died, spoon came back as shiny new hardware that was better in every way… except longevity. It died again. Now its back! I wish I were more optimsitic.

Anyway, the sites are all up but they’re restored from the backups that took place in mid June. We’ll just pretend the weeks between then and now didn’t happen, okay?

I’ve got a lot of stuff to put back together but in the meantime here we go again…

… Sort of. Today was the first Bluenose Autosport Club RallyCross event! We had a decent turnout with 13 entrants, two of which were new faces. The Audi behaved about how we expected. We’re still having fuelling issues that are probably pump related. Right from the start it was bogging and by the third run it could barely be coaxed to move. There’s a number of things we need to address in that area though so we’ll see what the actual issue is. We have the parts and a plan to address things so hopefully we’ll be ready for the next event.

We also started a new feature for the RallyCross events with a knockout elimination round at the end of the regular runs. It turned out to be great fun and there were actually some really entertaining battles!

Click here for a full gallery of the day’s event.

In other news that matters to pretty much nobody but me I picked up a new server from eBay to replace spoon.org. Its moving up from the 90′s into the early 2000s! From a ratty old Desktop PC, Celeron 850MHz with 384 megs of RAM to a flashy Compaq Proliant DL360 Dual Processor server! Fancy! You’ll probably notice absolutely no difference other than possibly a day or two of downtime while I transition.

Sunday we got our first chance for some up-close-and-personal time with the Audi and… well it was interesting. We’ve known from the start that the car needs some TLC, which isn’t to say its a bad car, it just needs a fair bit of wrenching before its ready to go. Currently as it sits the stock 20V Inline-5 motor has just been reunited with the transmission but not a lot else. So far we’ve managed to connect all the electrics, except for a wayward O2 sensor, and connected the starter. We’ve determined that the radiator is going to be a bit of a challenge since its a custom high capacity frankenstein job designed to be used in the Turbo motor that was previously in the car. This isn’t a road block, we’re just going to have to figure out some creative mounting and piping. We got to the point where we were ready to turn the key and see what happened but were thwarted by a dead battery and what turned out to be a seized alternator. Still, we should have the car mobile fairly soon and we can start working on making it street legal again which will pose its own interesting challenges.

The WRX is running well and I gave it its first interior vacuum yesterday, there were lovely reminders of Christmas all over the trunk in the form of pine needles. There’s not a lot of question about why the back bumper is scratched up. Good thing I’m not one to have a show-car. Anyone want to buy a 1993 Honda Civic Si Hatchback?

In non car news I finally got around to installing Ubuntu 7.04 on a machine today. I’m both pleased and disappointed with the newest release. On the plus side the installation gets smoother and smoother with every iteration. It takes less than half an hour to go from a paperweight to a fully running, configured and USEFUL Linux desktop complete with all the basic applications you might want. The eye-candy in 7.04 is very slick, even on the dated Radeon 7500 chipset of my T40 Thinkpad too. Unfortunately, however, they’ve taken a big step backwards in laptop support. Whereas 6.06 supported just about all the laptop oddities right out of the box like touch pad scrolling and ACPI suspending, 7.04 for some reason seems to have lost/broken them. I really don’t find the idea of going back and hand-fixing everything appealing. This is really a minor gripe though, if I were looking to use Ubuntu as my laptop/desktop full time it wouldn’t take long to correct these issues and the other improvements in this release would make it well worth it. Vista-what?