Stuff happening
Posted by stephen on Friday, 23rd December, 2005 @ 11:08
Oops, been a while again since I've done anything to the side, must get more disciplined about it. I'll blame Christmas for now.
I'm currently sifting patiently as Apple Mail downloads in 256 message batches thousands of bounces to a load of spam that was sent last night from various names at freakymousemats.com. Grrr. I'm all setup with SPF for my domains, but no one seems to use that yet (I can't complain really, I don't actually check for it on my server either). Unfortunately I tend to sign up to various services as sitename at freakymousemats.com, so I know when I get spam who's given away my address. Unfortunately, I can't say I remember all of these I've used and I actually need some of them, so I can't do the simple thing and throw away all email that's not to stephen at freakymousemats.com. Oh well, currently I'm diverting each of the pretend names they've used to /dev/null.
What else has been happening? Well, Christmas is just about organised and I found out Tuesday from Richard who's recently been on a diplomatic mission and has returned with lots of RegenTV work for January and early Febuary, so I should be staying up there for a week at some point when we're ready to deploy. We'll be trying to use wireless to deliver the service, which should be interesting!
As I'm working at home so much at the moment, I decided that it's better for the health of my hands and for my productivity if I sit in front of a desktop computer. As much as I love Linux for a server, it's just not my idea of a nice desktop environment, and Windows is just impossible. So, I decided it was time to liberate my Power Mac G5 from it's QuickTime duties behind my TV.
To replace it, my PC, surely Windows or Linux couldn't struggle too much to play back video from a network share to the TV? Hmm, well, it's probably manage if I spent more time on it. But despite a new GFX card purchase for a DVI port, and manually entered display timings required to get the native 1280x720 resolution, I could only get output from the VGA port to successfully work. And it suffered quite badly from banding. Complete Windows crashes and some X server hangups only added to my conclusion that this just wasn't good enough.
So back down came the G5 and for a little while I hooked my PowerBook into my monitor, keyboard and mouse. That does the job, but is a complete pain in the arse making and breaking the connections every time I want to use the laptop as nature intended.
The inevitiable solution? Why, a Mac mini of course! Rumours abound about an x86 Mac mini with DVR capabilities and iPod dock connection coming in January. So I should wait. But a little research and some logical thinking... OSX x86 hasn't been through anywhere near enough developer releases to be ready, the Yonah processor is apparently likely to initially cost $200 a pop at volume, so the chance of it being in a $500 machine is pretty low.
I could imagine there'll be a Front Row bundle in the next mini, but that's not a problem on my G5, so wouldn't be a problem on a current generation mini. As for DVR capabilities, even if this happens, which I'm not sure is likely, I suspect there's a high probability it'll be tied to the US market and so be rather useless to me.
My doubts about how much better a new mini will be and the discovery of a 1.42Ghz mini with SuperDrive and 1Gb of RAM for around ?170 less than the new price on Amazon tipped me over the edge. So, my G5 has been given a more suitable job for a computer of it's large stature and speed and I now have a ultra quiet, ultra tiny mini next to the TV. Hoorah!
