Stupid Homepage

see it’s impossible for one company / division to always deliver crap:

http://digg.com/software/The_cake_is_a_lie_IE_team_bakes_a_treat_for_Mozilla

So I own a PS3 for the sole purpose of playing Blu-ray movies. I love Blu-ray but I’d rather buy a Blu-ray player and us it with my xbox 360 sense I use that for media streaming and the occasional game here and there. Now that HDDVD is dead why is Microsoft being pig headed about using Sony’s player?

I’m sure the surge in Sony PS3 sales is accounted to the fact if you ask any sales rep at Best Buy what’s the best blu-ray player hands down the geeky rep will say the PS3 - I know multiply people who have a PS3 for movies only.

Microsoft if you want to stop the sales of the PS3 buck up use the blu-ray drive and lets setting the console war once and for all and net the Wii take over the world. Actually let Sony and Microsoft keep battling it out.. With games like Mario Cart Wii and Zelda the Wii will be the silent killer.

So if I was a music pirate I have two primary choices bit torrent and limewire. All pretty much a filesharing tools which have taken massive amounts of heat from the record industry. I heard a bouncy ass number on the radio and I have digital radio so the song displayed on the stereo in my car. Just doing a random search on your typical bit torrent sites returned a fair amount of results. Doing the same search in Limewire causing me to get a mix of amateur pr0n (guessing) and different versions of the same song song in different bit rates.

Both of these methods cause considerable amount of work on my part to get my free illegal music. Bit torrent requires a client I install on my computer and limewire is freeware with loads of “opportunities” to purchase a professional version of their software (the same as the free version without ad’s or other crap)

I fired up my simple web browser, went to the “knows where everything is” search engine google and typed the name of the song followed by MP3 and got my typical 5000+ O’s in the name google results. Trusting the top 5 are what I want “come on who looks past the top 5″ I clicked the first result. The website said click here to download this song. Upon clicking firefox notified me that my file was done downloading I imported it into itunes, my ipod sync’d and within seconds I was enjoying the song I wanted without effort on my part all thanks to google and its amazing search engine technology.

So my question is who’s the biggest culprit in ading the internets filesharing, pirate patch wearing ways — the Peer to Peer networks, Bit Torrent networks or Google / Search Engines?

I can’t help to think what Sony will do now that Blu-ray format has officially won the next gen (cough cough) DVD war. Do we all remember the debacle we had with the ever so popular Root-kit in CD’s? Do we really trust a company like Sony who stops at nothing to insure they get their way. A company who doesn’t seem to embrace open standards (UMD and Memory Sticks). I have a PS3 only for watching movies and I know the DVD player isn’t as integrated as music on the PC but the Blu-ray format has a lot of live interactive features in the works who know what they have up their sleeves? Are we sure the right format won the war?

So my Macbook Air wobbles!

that’s right while sitting on my desk it can’t seem to lay flat, causing it to tip in the lower left corder and it’s EXTREMELY ANNOYING.

I took it to my local Apple store because this obviously isn’t acceptable. I got the run around and was told that its within the specs of the manufacture and it isn’t replaceable or fixable. With a blank stair on my face I kindly asked him to surf the web and start typing a document, and if he didn’t notice the wobble I’ll pack up my new Curved Macbook Air a leave along with my disappointment.

After about 2 minutes of typing he said “Yep, that sucks!”

I guess the manager didn’t quite believe or understand the situation so she came to check it out her self. “Wow” I guess she has never seen a new curved Macbook Air.

So long story short (to late) they’re researching my problem and when they get Macbook Air’s in stock they’ll call me (yeah right) and switch out my Curved Macbook Air for a new more thinner model. The only problem is that they haven’t been getting shipments in as of late so who knows how long I’ll have to wait.

Can’t live with you, can’t live without you

Rather than writing a long review on the Air I’ll just sum it up in two lines:

- If your a multi-computer user. Get one
- If your a mobile computer user. Don’t bother

Side note:
Do not waste your money on the SSD version of the Air, read the reviews or take my word for it… It’s not worth it.

It’s that simple. I’m a multi-computer user. I have a MacPro at home where must of my work gets done. I use my laptop for reading a research and light coding. When serious work gets done I go straight to the MP. I was using my MacBookPro for my laptop needs and often thought that it would be nice to have a smaller machine that was more mobile. Believe it or not I think the 15" is too big for travel and after lugging it around the Airport all day, it can take a toll on your back (combined with everything else I pack in my bag.) So when the Air was announced I was immediately attracted to the concept and goals of the machine.

So I love the Air it’s totally replaced my Macbook Pro - It’s perfect for the way I work. Zero problems with the lack of USB ports and slower speeds. In today’s computing age RAM is king anyhow. I wouldn’t think of using a computer without 2 gigs of memory at least.

Because the Air is such a great machine to work on I’ve found a new problem.
Being a multi-computer user. The struggles of keeping a synchronized todo list, keeping code organized, email sync’d, photos organized, and music purchases straightened out. I know there are loads of great web based programs that would fix my entire set of problems but Apple has done such a great job at providing a great user experience with their software that ditching those and using the web based equivalent isn’t possible. That being said why hasn’t Apple solved these headaches of a multi-computer user? The Air wasn’t designed to be a single computer machine so you’d think they’d have a better solution for me and others with this problem.

In a perfect world…
I would work for a few hours on my Primary machine and push a button to tell it I’m done and take a nap. Wake from my nap and drag myself downstairs and open my laptop. Push a button to tell it I’m working on this machine now. Actually this is my perfect world so… it would ask me… "Do you want to sync your computer?" Because it noticed I updated some work from my other machine. Hitting yes would grab everything, the idea is it would be the same environment as my primary or other machine. After reading a few emails, responding and updating some bugs I would simply send my work back to the mother ship and go on my day like nothing changed.

So what I want is a massive version control system for my multi-computer life. I couldn’t work on programming without version control so why should I work without some type of version control between multiple machines? Apple if you’re reading this help. If not maybe it’s a project I’ll tackle myself.

"More is less"
- Chris

This weekend Natalie and I spent the weekend in Burbank, CA for our 6th Anniversary. Natalie actually surprised me with the Macbook Air so here we are and it truly is the hotness. It’s everything I’ve wanted in my MBP and everything my MBP isn’t but all in all I’m super stoked with it.More on the laptop after a weeks worth of usage.

I currently own an Macbook Pro and I’m 100% happy with it. When I travel or work away from home I’m always finding myself dreading lugging around my laptop. It’s not that its bulky but after lugging it around the airport all day (I’m cheep I fly coach) it’s more pain than pleasure.

I like to consider myself a minimalist so when Apple announced the Macbook Air I decided it’s the perfect companion for my mobile life. It’s light and the fact it has limited ports doesn’t bother me. (thats why we have USB hubs).

So if anyone wants to purchase a 3 month old Macbook Pro let me know. I need to make some room for my new business expense.

This past two weeks have been a roller coaster ride from hell. At Smartphone Experts we’ve fallen victim to the plague of web traffic growth.

One of our servers started trashing under heavy load. Nothing worked to fix the problem.

• We added more ram
• Moved assets to a separate server
• Optimized queries

Still the trashing continued.

(roller coaster graph)

After installing xcache our graph looks like this:

now my life is back to normal — Thanks xcache