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Well, I have had the MacBook Air now for 1 day. (well, almost 1 day) I like the form factor and the weight of it. It surprisingly fast for what it is. However, for what I do, here are some issues I have found. Read on…

First off, let me start by saying that I do not believe in dual booting. With all the various virtualization technologies out there, I believe one can achieve almost anything they want to do with a computer with one key OS. This is one of the reasons I went with the Mac platform. OS X, to me, is an extremely stable platform and from my point of view, I should be able to run my windows and linux apps all on one machine.

With that said, I don’t think the MacBook Air has enough juice/hard drive space to drive the applications that I want to run. With just a base install of VMWare Fusion and Vista Business 32-Bit and nothing else running. I am using 2o27 MB of ram with 21 MB free. With my base applications installed and the above Virtual machine, I am using almost half the hard drive space already.

For me and for my needs, I don’t think the MacBook Air will cut it. I kinda knew this going in. I was just hoping that I could make it work.

So, it’s back to the Apple Store later today and I am going to look at the 15″ MacBook Pro. From comparing the specifications, I think that’s the one I will be most happy with. (Damn, I was hoping for a good 13 inch Mac)

I don’t want to leave you with a bad impression of the Air. So, I will say the following about it: It’s a great laptop. I would say, for most users out there that want a good very portable laptop the MacBook Air is not a bad machine. As many others have pointed out, it’s a great supplementary laptop. (Which originally was what I was looking for) Supplementary meaning that you do not use the Air to replace your main computer, but use it for quick trips, traveling where you need quick portable access etc.

So, I leave you guys with a couple screenshots of my “MacVista Air”’s Desktop. I have GeekTools running with my console and top on my desktop. The second picture was to show Safari running side by side with Internet Explorer from the Vista virtual Machine in Unity mode.

Yes, I am a big fan of IronMan. Good Stuff!

PS We shot video of the unboxing of the MacBook Air and will upload it to www.youtube.com/technochubby when I get all this crap organized

Quick Edit: Right after I wrote this entry, I found the following article by Eric Benderoff: Apple’s MacBook Air Love Affair in which he sums it all up with “I don’t think I’m ready for the commitment the Air wants.” That there says it all

Well, I went and bought a MacBook Air today. I was going to go buy the black MacBook but once I looked at it compared to the Air. I went for the Air. We’ll get some videos done of it later today.  (quick kudos:  Thanks to Mary at the Apple Store at Town Square Las Vegas for the help)

Also, since we’ve been going towards the Mac platform of late, we are now in the process of selling our old laptops. I’ll be eBay-ing again this week.

On a final note, I’ll be updating this site to Wordpress 2.5 sometime this weekend.

Well, I broke down a while ago and bought a real Mac. Just a Mac mini. I decided after using it for several days that I really felt at home in the Mac environment. I like it so much, that I am now budgeting to buy a full blown Mac Pro and a Macbook Pro.

However, for the time being, we can’t afford to start switching everyone in the household to Mac, so we decided to play with putting the Mac OS on the PC’s that we have. (I do plan on buying Mac hardware as we are able)

I tried various “Hackintosh” “distros” as it were, Kalyway, Zephyroth, and other methods. However, for me, I have found the leo4all “distro” to be the easiest to install. I have had some issues with the “V2″ of leo4all. But, the original version works fine and has given me the least amount of configuration issues.

With that said, this is what I have running now:

Machine #1: (the same one we built at http://www.youtube.com/technochubby )

Processor: Intel Q6600
Motherboard: Asus Maximus Formula
Memory: Corsair 4×2gb DDR2
HDDs: Seagate 500GB, 500GB, 500GB, 1TB
Graphics: XFX nVidia GeForce 8800GT w/ 512

System Notes: On board LAN works no issues, SATA set to AHCI 4 of the 6 ports work no problem. Sound worked fine with the ADI1988 patch on the leo4all.

System #2:

Processor: AMD 5600+
Motherboard: Asus M2NPV-VM
Memory: OCZ 4×2gb DDR2
HDDs: Seagate 300GB
Graphics: onboard 6150

System Notes: On board LAN did not work, I installed a Netgear GA311 for wired and Hawking HWU8DDA for wireless. Sound Required the HDA patch with Linux Codec method. I could not get the on board 6150 to work right. Threw in a PCI GeForce 5200 and worked with no issues (nvinstaller)

System 3:

Processor: Intel Q6600
Motherboard: Asus P5E-VM
Memory: OCZ 4×2gb DDR2
HDDs: Seagate 300GB & 1TB
Graphics: eVGA nVidia GeForce 8600GT w/ 512

System Notes: On board LAN did not work, I used a Netgear GA311 instead, SATA set to AHCI 4 of the 6 ports work no problem. Sound worked fine with the ADI1988 patch on the leo4all. Did not try the on-board video, video card worked great with nvinstaller.

– — –

I have also been working on getting OSX on my UX280P with no luck. The leo4all install method gets the farthest. But it does not seem to want to play nice on the screen and I can’t even get to the initial install choices. I need to do some more research on this.

I have given my mac mini to Angel and she is liking it. Dana is still pushing back on the switch for her. (she finally got her vista laptop set up the way she likes it, I understand) I gave system 3 to Andrew.

Eventually, we plan on going full blown Mac hardware, it’s just not feasible for us to do so at the moment. but we’ll get there.

Welp, it’s been a couple months since I have updated.  I figure I better get around to it.  Anyways, we’re settled and are liking our new digs.  We’ve been re-organizing and getting ready to do some cools stuff in the coming months. My son turned 6 (wow, they get big fast!)  I had another birthday.

We’ve been working on a tech site that I am going to start posting my tech stuff too.  It’s going to be at www.TechnoChubby.com .  We plan to use this site for everything we like tech.  (By we, me and my friends and some of you :P)  If you go to that site now, it’s got our first iteration of it, but it’s going to be getting a major revamp here soon.

After that transition takes place, I am going to use this site more on personal stuff.  I’ve always wanted to blog more on my thoughts and views on things, not sure why I haven’t.  But, I plan to…  lol.

We’ll see how this all goes in the coming weeks.

I while back ago, Angel, Dana, and myself were invited to become “Ambassadors” for the online virtual world of Entropia Universe. This entails us working in their booth during CES - the Consumer Electronics Show in our home town of Las Vegas, Nevada.

We met the likes of Skalman, Neomaven, Jenna Star Mercury, Buzz Erik Lightyear, Neverdie, Robroy, Myhn Ah Byrd, Casay, Linden the Chosen Avery, Zephram ZC Chochrane and more. 

Throughout the convention I took a lot of pictures.  Check them out:

Entropia Universe at CES 2008

Pictures from CES 2008 with the Entropia Universe booth and party with NEVERDIE.

433 Photos

Some of the pictures in the album were from NEVERDIE’s party at the Crib Suite at the palms.  (Warning: Some of the pics are r-rated)

All and all it was a good time and a lot of work.  We met some new friends and are excited again to move forward for plans within Entropia.

If you are a interested in playing or checking it out, go to www.Entropia-Universe.com and if you are looking for a good society to join and have some help learning the mechanics of the virtual world, check out our society at www.ZOKU.eu and say hey to me Zentro “Zen” Zatsu.

Press Blurb:

Entropia Universe is the only virtual world with a real cash economy.  With over 670,000 registered accounts from more than 200 countries, its business model is entirely unique with free client software and no monthly subscription fee.  Entropia allows players to explore animal-filled wildernesses and large expanding cities that offer a variety of entertainment and social interaction for its participants while earning cash without having to deposit money.  Entropia will be the first virtual world to go public on a major international stock exchange.  The IPO will be filed by Credit Suisse by the thrid quarter of 2008.

I thought I’d add that up there since I had to say something similar to that about a thousand times….  LOL

We had a good time and would gladly do it again.  See you in Entropia!

This will probably be my last post for 2007.  A lot has happened in the last month.  We moved to a better and semi-permanent location.  We found a place in Henderson, NV we liked and it will be our “home base” as we do plan to travel in the coming year.   It’s a nice 3 bedroom apartment, townhouse style with attached garage.  Pictures below:

New Apartment 2007

Our new apartment in Henderson

31 Photos

We had a good Christmas.  Draylan got lots of presents.  I am telling you we spoil the hell out of my son.  If we don’t do it, he has plenty of aunts and uncles that do it for us.  lol

I am still playing Entropia Universe.  I have been meaning to get more time in world but I have been busy with the move and all.

I have found another time sink however.  It comes in the form of a PS3 game called Eye of Judgement.  It’s a hybrid console and collectable card game similar to Magic: The Gathering and Yu Gi Oh.  It’s played using the Playstation Eye and a game board where you lay cards down and they battle.  I’ve never been into card games before, but this one has me hooked.  We’ve started a local Saturday night “Eye of Judgment” night where some of our friends get together and we play.  If you are in the Las Vegas/Henderson area and play Eye of Judgment, give a comment or send me a note and we’ll send you an invite.

Anyways, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year!  2008 wil Rock!

With the recent release of Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and my current frustrations with Vista,  I have decided to take a look at the Mac platform for my production work.

Yes yes, I know that I have been blogging about Linux and it’s variants, but for what I do, I need something that I don’t have to fuss around with much.  I need to be able to edit video and audio.  I need it to “just work”.   Linux is making great strides in multimedia, but from my perspective, there is still too much configuration required to make it work the way I want it to.

Moving forward, I have decided to try OSX out on a “hackintosh” BEFORE I spend real money on Apple hardware. (again, I know this is oxymoronic considering what I said in my last paragraph, but I don’t mind playing with the OS first then getting the hardware properly)  

With all that said, I decided to see if I can get Leopard running on one of my test machines.  Specifically, one of my Toshiba laptops with an AMD processor.  Since I do not trust downloaded software for the most part, I decided to buy a legitimate copy of Leopard to work with.  I figure, if all doesn’t work well for me, I can sell it.  (normally, I would just buy a Mac, but I can’t float the 2,000 for the time being - besides, 150 bux is better than 2k to try it out)  

For yet another piece of irony, from my research so far, I need to have a running copy of 10.4.x to get the AMD patches onto a Leopard install DVD.  (I had to download a copy of this - LOL)  It’s just temporary, but it’s funny to me none the less. 

I am in the process of doing the 10.4.x install now and was bored during the wait so I decided to do this post.  I will post the details of the install if all goes well.

For a long time now, I have wanted to run an Internet radio station.  Since I have been back in Entropia Universe, I have been hanging out on Club Neverdie a lot.  They have a live music stream that goes into the virtual world.  

Recently, they opened their stream for rental.  This interested me, so I am going to rent the stream during an event I will be hosting on Club Neverdie.  I found out they use SAM Broadcaster and Windows Media Services for their stream.  I’ve been a user SAM Broadcaster for a bit, but it was always one of those things that got pushed aside for other projects. I decided to take another look and set up some stuff with my servers.

First off, I set up one of my servers in my Data-center as a streaming audio server.  For this, I used the Icecast2 server for Linux.  Fairly straight forward set-up.  I installed Centos 5, then did an install of Icecast and edited the config files to the settings I liked.

I then installed SAM Broadcaster on one of my laptops and plugged in one of my portable HD’s with a copy of my MP3 collection and had SAM catalog it.  This too was fairly straightforward.  After the install and cataloging of my mp3’s, I set up a stream to my Icecast2 server and I was broadcasting on the Internet.  Good stuff.

This config is all fine and dandy for most people that just want to broadcast occaisionally.  For people that require constant or continuous 24/7 streams, I saw a slight flaw, your internet connection would be constantly used in sending the broadcast out to the server.  So, I came up with a plan.  Read on…

Read the complete Post.

For some time now, I had been migrating data and stuff off of our large server at the data-center.  It had a couple failing drives and I was going to have the company re-do the machine.  To prepare for this, several months ago, we moved most of the sites off that box.  One of these was the Order of Z guild website.  (a guild I run that covers several games and is many years old)

In the migration process (a few months back)  I had issues with the database transfer, so I kept the pointer and old database running to the old box.  Now, normally I am very careful about taking notes and notating what I have done with what.  For some reason, I did not flag this in my server configuration notes that I keep.

Fast forward to present day,  a couple weeks ago, I started disabling services on the box to be re-done.  I double checked everything.  This machine had several virtual machines running on it, and I turned each down one at a time and waited a day before proceeding. (to ensure no customer/client services were not interrupted) I did do the double check on the host server (which was also the main DB server).  I saw the OZ database and just assumed that it was the old one. (part of the reason for this was that I had created the new DB on the new box, when I was attempting transfer, it had data so I assumed it was being used)

So, I flag the support team and let them know that that box is ready for re-doing.  They confirm with me that it will loose all it’s data.  I say “Yep! Go for it!”.

About four hours later.  I go to the Order of Z site, I get this error message.  Long story short, I figure we got hacked.  NOPE,  I had them wipe the database remember!  DOH! 

Anyways, I do have a few back ups, I will be looking through them to see which is the most recent.  I will get the site back up and running.   I will probably take the time this time to do some of the upgrades I wanted to do.

 In the mean time, the teamspeak server is still up.  I am still working on my new guild in Entropia Universe, www.zoku.euyou guys are all welcome to come join us. (Janu and Thor have been in-game)  We have some interesting people, you guys are also welcome to join the forum if you miss shooting the shit.

If you’re an Order of Z member and have any thoughts on the matter, please comment.

Recently I gave away/sold most of my computers (desktops and old laptops).  I needed to make way for the new.  One slight problem, I don’t have any systems that I can test software/OS’s on not in a VM.  I found a sale at Fry’s recently and bought a Toshiba A215-S7407, nice little machine, runs linux and Entropia Universe.  It’s my “test box” now. 

However much I like Linux, I still need to keep a native windows partition on the box to do various things.  I hate that when you buy a laptop/computer pre-built or from a major manufacturer, it comes with all this friggen software and the system runs slower than you expect, or you get all these crazy pop-ups.  GEEZ people,  I just want a base OS with nothing major installed, just the drivers.

These “companies” are concerned with spam and what not, that to me, they are putting spam on these computers when you buy them. I think there are a lot of people out there now-a-days that know what they want on their systems.  What, these computer manufacturers might be making what, an extra 20 bux tops on loading these machines.  I’d gladly pay the 20 dollars extra just to have a machine with a bare OS and all the correct driver’s installed.

Ok, rant off.