Virtual Machine Assisted Development

A virtual machine is “software that creates a virtualized environment between the computer platform and its operating system, so that the end user can operate software on an abstract machine” according to Wikipedia. So you can be running OSX on a Mac, and have Windows or Linux running within that instance of OSX. You are not booting the computer into Windows, but you are able to load it on top of your operating system. In this article I discuss how virtual machines can assist your development efforts and make you more productive.
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Drobo Unboxing

The new Drobo is finally up and running. Here are some pictures of it before and after. It is currently running with two 500GB drives, with another on the way. I will write more about the Drobo as I use it longer but for now here is a slideshow and link to the photo album.

Jason Blogs: Drobo Unboxing photo album

Original Comic: Clown Cereal

Digital Life: Pepper Pad

The Pepper Pad from Pepper Computer is a remarkable portable device designed for the broadband activities you want to do most: browse the web, e-mail, instant messaging, listen to music, watch videos, play games, view slideshows of your photos, and control your TV. It runs on Linux 2.6 and includes a browser that uses the Gecko rendering engine which Firefox is based on. The Pepper Pad has a 20GB hard drive and built-in Wi-Fi support for 802.11b, WEP, and WPA-Personal. It also has Bluetooth device support and Dual IR emitters and IR receiver. The screen is an 8.4″ 800×600 SVGA TFT LCD that is ideal for viewing most webpages, along with 16MB of video RAM and 256MB of SDRAM memory.

User input is done through a resistive touch screen with stylus, a full split QWERTY keypad, a direction-pad, and a scroll wheel. These features combine with a powerful system and an intuitive interface to create a very rewarding experience. The remote control features allow you to pick a room and then choose the device you want to operate. The Pepper Pad can quickly be turned into a digital picture frame and touching the screen brings it back to the regular mode. There is even integration with the Flickr photo sharing service to upload your photos easily to Flickr from the Pepper Photo Library.

This rugged, splash resistant device weighs in at only 2.3 lbs and has a 3.6mAh Lithium ION rechargeable battery. Pepper Computer has created a device that is not just the combination of a PDA and a Tablet PC. It is a carefully designed work of art. They thought of everything when they designed the Pepper Pad; its ease of use and comprehensive feature-list make it an attractive buy for all levels of computer users.

Buy the Pepper Pad Internet Media Player on Amazon.com

Digital Life: Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo

The Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition comes in two flavors: a 600GB version and a 1TB version. Both feature RAID 0 right out of the box, with the option of setting up RAID 1. It’s designed for professionals and it has a sleek, industrial design. It supports FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 for fast data transfers. The drives are preformatted for Mac and can be easily formatted for Windows. You can even boot Mac OSX directly from the drive.

While the drive may look nice and it has a large capacity, the price-point seems a bit steep. At $899 for the 1TB version it should also do my taxes. But then again, I’m not the professional they are targeting. At least the drives are stackable.

Original Review: Konica Minolta Dimage G500

This sleek digital camera is one of the first products to ship following the merger between Konica and Minolta in 2003. The Konica Minolta DiMAGE G500 is the Konica KD-510Z, a product developed by Konica before the merger took effect. With 5.0 megapixels, a 3x optical zoom lens, and a compact, all-metal body with fully retracting lens, the G500 is a very attractive camera.

I picked up this camera because I have long been in the market for a new digital camera. The price was attractive ($280 after a $70 rebate) and it is compact enough for me to carry around wherever I go.

On First Look
I like the feel of this camera, though it is a bit weighty. The camera comes with a relatively small Secure Digital (SD) memory card, and can use SD and MemoryStick cards at the same time. The card included SD memory is good for 11 pictures at the highest level of quality, so you will probably need to get a larger memory card. It also has a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery which charges in no-time-at-all. The camera is also equipped with a usb port and cable for quick data transfers.

The Pictures
The pictures come out in great quality when the highest picture resolution is used, but can distort pictures at lower resolutions. Of course the distortion could have been my unsteady hands, but it still wasn’t much of a problem. The camera continues to refocus until the time you release the shutter button. This gives you the most accurate focus, as opposed to other cameras that stop focusing once you have pressed the shutter button.

While the camera isn’t as sensitive as other cameras, you want to try to keep your hands steady when you take a picture. Though the camera does have a place where you can screw it onto a tripod and take steadier pictures.

The Videos
The camera can also take videos, and with sound. I took a sample video and the quality was good, though my lighting conditions were less than desirable at the time. The sound quality was impeccable. Definitely a plus for this digital camera. The videos are saved as .avi files.

The Sound
As mentioned before, the sound quality is great. The microphone is located in the back of the camera, but that wasn’t much of a problem. You can still hear everything fairly well.

Conclusions
The Konica Minolta Dimage G500 is a great camera for general use, and is even good for most advanced user needs. It takes both good outdoor and indoor pictures. The camera offers great quality for its price, and it is a very attractive point-and-shoot unit. It’s definitely worth a look.

Originally posted on Infohuts.com, which has been folded into Shiwej.com.

Searching for a feed home

Many sites have RSS feeds that allow you to view excerpts from their most recent articles or posts. There are also websites and applications that help you to organize all your feeds in one easy to use place. Recently I have been looking for a specific type of feed aggregation service. I want to be able to view the latest posts from the sites I visit frequently in one place sorted by date.

There are two ways to go: a website or an application. The application I tried was Onfolio. Mark Jen has been using it and he likes it so far. I unfortunately did not have as good of an experience. My firewall kept alerting me that the program was trying to write to my Windows directory and registry. It does this in order to save feed data. It was just a nuissance specific to my computer setup and not their fault but it was still bothersome to keep accepting the access for Onfolio. Then when I ran the program it didn’t put all my news in one place but rather split it up among the categories. There is however an IE and Firefox plugin that lets you browse feeds on the left and see a listing of the posts on the right. This was what I was looking for as it can give the latest posts sorted by date and not by site. The IE plugin worked well, but I couldn’t get the Firefox toolbar to work. It kept saying that it couldn’t load the sidebar. This pretty much ended it for me. I need something simple to setup and use. It actually has too many features for me, if that is even possible.

So then I went looking for a website that can do what I want it to. I looked at Rojo, Kinja, and Bloglines. Rojo has all the features I am looking for, but they don’t seem to update their feeds often. They do however have a very nice site with a great selection of features. Kinja was the same story but the news layout is less easy-to-use, they have less features than Rojo, and they have ads spread among the aggregated news summaries. Bloglines doesn’t seem like it will let me combine all my feed sources into one news page. Though they are updated more often than the other sites I tried.

The verdict? I am still looking for a site that updates feeds regularly and allows me to create a personalized page of news similar to Findory. Though the problem I had with Findory is that I can’t just see news from specific feeds. Let me know if you know of a site I have yet to try that may be what I am looking for.

Slugshed: Beach Tease

Is the comic back? We shall see. Here’s a little something to wet your whistle and keep you interested.

Slugshed: 2004 Olympic Games

There is a new strip up. I’ve been very busy and I won’t have the time to create many new strips. Hopefully I can get some new ones up soon. Please keep visiting. Sorry for the delay, but life takes precedence over sites.

Slugshed: Bed Clowns

There’s a new strip up. It’s…..odd. lol. I’m hoping to keep up the schedule of new comics every Sunday. If things get busy for me and I have to slow down the site I will post an update. I hope you’re enjoying the comic, and if not you can go **** yourself.