Popcorn Hour C200

I used to use a Popcorn Hour A110 as a media playback device at home. It worked well, but when the upgraded C200 was announced, I had to have it; there was no rational reason or justification.

Well, I got it, and its even more awesome than the old one; its just a lot bigger. Think old-school video machine! Pity I'm watching it on my old rubbish TV; time to get an LED/LCD.

PS. While I was looking at this, I also investigated a Mede8er. It looks pretty cool, but I'm more confident in the development and codec roadmap of the Popcorn Hour team.

Dell Mini 10v as a Hackintosh

Very short post; got a Dell Mini 10v, which is exactly the same as the the Dell Mini 9 I blogged about earlier, except, (duh) 1" wider. This makes a big difference in both keyboard and screen comfort, so I would recommend this over the Mini 9 any time.

Same motherboard, webcam, bluetooth, 3G modem, wifi, except its a regular drive, not SSD. No biggie for me!

Don't buy a DroboPro or a DroboShare

I posted about the Drobo before. This month, I ordered its bigger brother, the Drobo Pro. Think the standard unit, but with iSCSI and 8 drives - awesome, the hotness!

Except, for two epic fails;

1. It only allows one host to connect at a time using iSCSI
   
   • Which begs the question then WTF bother ?
   
   
2. It behaves exactly the same as the Drobo with respect to logical volume size (i.e. 16GB)
   

These are stupid restrictions. Even more of an epic fail is the companion product, the DroboShare, which also has two epic problems;

1. It doesn't support the Drobo Pro
   
   • So you can't network a Drobo Pro
   
   
2. It only allows one username/password to be created, and that user has full write rights
   
   • Which makes it absolutely pointless as a NAS device
   
   

Come on, Drobo, fix these stupid restrictions.

Posting a US parcel to yourself

I've always battled with Amazon, amongst other vendors who refuse to ship directly to South Africa. I used to always beg, borrow and hijack colleague's luggage, and trade favours to ship parcels in and out.

I had to return a Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 lens, which stopped auto-focussing. A colleague took it through, but they would only ship back to a US address. Now I was stuck!

Enter shipito.com, a US-based remailing company. For a deposit of $8, and for $8 per package, I get a US address which they'll re-mail to me (giving me the choice of options).

I was sceptical of the service, but my parcel arrived two weeks after being posted, and I am now a happy customer. I was e-mailed constantly about when my parcel arrived and when it was sent off, and they even filled out the customs declaration for me. They offer re-packing and storage facilities, but for now, one package at a time seems to work. Its a great service.

Hackintosh confessions

I love my Macbook Pro. I have the 2.53 GHz first generation unibody, which is a great machine. At the time I got it, November 2008, it was the smallest Macbook with a Firewire port that I'd be happy to use as a daily machine; this is important to me.

But it was too big, and expensive, to haul around when travelling for a day or three (longer than that, and I would have to take it). I needed a smaller machine for travelling around, one to check my e-mail, Skype back to home and browse. I didn't want an iPhone or an iPod Touch (my opinion on these devices is no secret), but didn't want to spend much more than R5k. Enter left-field, a netbook. These all follow the same pattern; Intel Atom N270 processor, small-ish disk (either regular or SSD, 1GB RAM and a 0.3MP webcam.

Good enough; now I needed to find one that ran Mac OS X. The winner at the time was the Dell Mini 9. I managed to get one with 2GB of RAM, a 64GB SSD and a built-in 3G modem. Bonus! Thanks to a very active and committed crowed at Mydellmini.Com, I have been running a Hackintosh since early December 2008.

I've upgraded from 10.5.6 to 10.5.8 (with 10.5.7 in between), and last week made it to 10.6 (and then 10.6.1), without a hitch. Other than deep sleep not working (which is in progress), everything is flawless, and I have a mini-Mac that meets my needs perfectly.

Thanks, Mydellmini.Com and Dell; you've solved my computer-travelling problems!

Snow Leopard upgrade

When it was rumoured that build 10A432 of Snow Leopard was indeed the golden master, I got very excited. Even though there were copies of 10A432 floating around, I resisted temptation and didn't install.

The primary reason was the potential transition from 10A432 to whatever the final build was; there was no guarantee that I would be able to upgrade. I would more than likely have to revert to 10.5.8, and then upgrade to the retail edition. Reluctantly, I waited until it hit retail, and I proceeded to install it onto my Macbook Pro; lo and behold, it was indeed build 10A432. Oh well, nothing lost except some geek cred. I did this on the 3rd of September 2009.

The upgrade was flawless; mostly everything worked, and the few things that didn't were resolved by the 10th of September. There are a few visible changes, but nothing earthshattering. The big improvement for me is in responsiveness (I haven't seen the beach ball) in ages), and the general overall snapiness.

A worthy upgrade indeed!

Component switcher

I have several devices that use the one component input on my old-school CRT TV. Thanks to my Logitech Harmony One universal remote (which IMO is the world's best universal remote), my AV receiver, TV and associated device power on and configure themselves correctly. What is a PITA is that I then have to get up, and change the input using a manual AV switcher to the relevant component device. This sucks.

So, from those thieves, I've ordered a Impact Acoustics 3-play switcher, which I can then program using my remote to change inputs. Now that should be cool!

PS. I tried the Zakspeed S-video / analog-audio / composite switcher, but it seems to interfere with a component signal. Kudos to them for accepting it back though.

PPS. Changing my TV might be a better option that all these hacks, but I'm not quite ready yet to drop R30k on an LED TV; besides, right now there are not that many options. I'll wait.