Remember, you’ll need to use a Dual Layer DVD.

My previous mass-storage device took only older IDE disks, which was proving to be a bottleneck. iMacs don’t come with eSata yet, so the fastest interconnect is FW800. The Stardom Decktank houses two SATA disks and comes with a FW800, FW400, USB2.0, and a bunch of card-reader slots. Here’s how it looks in action:

For now, each bay holds a 1TB drive. One for backup, the other for additional storage. The unit runs much quieter than my previous setup. And the disks are held in with Stardom’s standardized enclosures:

so one could conceivably get a few more of these and swap them around. I don’t think the Decktank supports hot-swapping the disks though.

So far my favorite apps have been Exposure, Bloomberg, and Midomi. Exposure’s “Near Me” feature of showing photos taken in your current vicinity is great; Bloomberg’s slick black interface is cool and easy to read; Midomi’s incredible accuracy is fun to say the least (has not been very successful with J-tunes though). Of course, I use Twitterrific regularly, but the lag between button presses is getting annoying. Rotary Dialer is a fun party favor, and Tap Tap Revenge is entertaining when killing time.

Overall I have been quite satisfied with the iPhone purchase. The battery and occasional lag are the most annoying insufficiencies, but can or should be compensated for in due time (there are plenty of 3rd party battery-pack options if you include iPod battery packs; lag I suspect are memory / coding bugs that will be fixed on updates). MobileMe / push of email, contacts, and calendar have been working pretty well for me. Props to the team for extending an extra month for free after the initial hiccups!

So, am I missing any apps you’re enjoying?

One Spaces tip I recently discovered for moving windows among spaces – click and hold the top of an application window and change to another space (Ctl-1/2/3/4 on my system). The application window stays stationary, while the background space changes.

Beats having to use the Expose / Spaces combo and drag / drop an application window.

This was a personal discovery, but there are more tips at Leopard Tricks that I’m enjoying.

Some nuggets of hope in Nobi’s responses about the younger generation in Japan.  Maybe it’s time to kick-start a local WWDC, eh? :)

After murmurings of a law suit by other RSS-affected MacBook owners, Apple seems to have put a few more resources behind resolving this annoyance and released a firmware update fix.  I installed it this weekend, and I am happy to report that this entry is being blogged from a MacBook which miraculously did not require the startup screech of death (by holding down the power-on button for about 30 seconds) after waking up from sleep-mode and passing out roughly two minutes later.

So all of you who couldn’t stomach the idea of being without your MacBook for a week to 10 days during its repair, I highly recommend installing this firmware update.  I can now put my MacBook back on the Best Laptop Ever pedestal.

The basic deal after putting your favorite workout music on the device is you get to choose from a number of objectives for your run: a target distance – say 3k, 5k, or 10k; a set time to run – say 30 min., 45 min., or 60 min; or a set number of calories to burn – say 400, 500, whatever. All of the options are customizable, so you could set to run for 88 minutes if you wanted.

During the run, you have the option of listening to a female voice (a sort of gruffly sultry mix) or male voice announce every fixed unit of your target how much you have left. In other words, if your objective is to run a set time, she’ll chime in every 5 minutes with how much time has elapsed, or how much time is left if you’ve passed the half-way point (which she announces enthusiastically as well). If your objective is to run a set distance, she’ll chime in every 1k or 1mile doing the same thing as with time. You can of course mute the “trainer” if you want, but I found it quite useful and surprisingly not annoying – music fades to the background so that you don’t have the voice yelling in your ears.

Another surprisingly fun part of this kit is its online integration with Nike+. Not only does the nano store up to 1000 workouts, but it presents each one in a nice graph and subsequently allows you to compare all of your runs with yourself – to gauge your progress – or with the million+ other users who are logging their runs. If you click on the thumbnail and look at the path, you’ll see some stats from my last run. Each little circle on the yellow line represents when I listened to the trainer-voice – the evenly spaced ones were the fixed-interval announcements, and the randomly spaced ones are when I clicked to hear my progress. You’ll notice the yellow line is also a bit squiggly, basically visualizing my speed throughout. There’s a pretty big hill towards the end of my run, so that probably slowed me down a bit :P

I’ve only tested the kit once, but it feels quite accurate. And it’s super exciting to finally have the stats to my runs logged without any hassle. Sitting down with pen and paper to jot times and calculate progress is the last thing I want to do after sweating for an hour. This is a seriously well implemented example of how technology is making my life easier and more enjoyable.

Technorati Tags: fitness, ipod

4. Should I buy a Mac or a PC? Should I buy a laptop or desktop?

Both Macs and PCs are used and supported on campus, and most students have PCs, although a rising number (about 30%) have Macs. Nonetheless, Residential Computing actually recommends Macs over PCs, because we’ve found them easier to support, and more importantly far less susceptible to viruses and network break-ins. Essentially all security problems here, which often result in network disconnection, are on Windows machines—see the security section for more detail. Those who favor PCs point out that more software is available on this platform, and most computing in non-academic contexts is done on PCs. A majority of commonly used public computers are Macs, with the balance being PCs and enclaves of Linux/Unix machines.

(bolding is mine, of course) What I find amusing is not just the blatant plug for Macs, but the usage figure – 30%!? This is the premier university in the heart of startup central, Silicon Valley, VC-land, whatever you want to call it. Nurturing a future generation of entrepreneurs on an as yet little-used platform globally could have some interesting consequences. Of course, it’s nice just to see great deals being passed out to the students!

Swap Batteries Without Shutting Down
Running low on power? Your 15-inch or 17-inch PowerBook is so accommodating, you can swap out batteries with minimal interruption. Put the PowerBook to sleep. Remove the current battery. Pop in the new battery. Wake up your PowerBook. You don’t even need to save your work.

Awesome. Can’t wait for the Intel PBs ;)