There has already been a long debate about hosting your own DNS servers and mail servers but I’ve found once again relying on Godaddy total DNS management and using GoDaddy e-mail forwarding has made my three migrations over the last year a breeze. So I suggest to everyone:
Suggestion One:
Don’t mix your host and your registrar. You might not see your domain again.
For anyone looking to create their own site I urge you, never register your domain with your host. There are too many hosts out there that are priced well and say they have great service but when you find yourself needing to move the domain that they registered for you will tie you down.
This is probably the only suggestion I can give to the majority since the next two are more for the VPS or dedicated server owners.
(more…)
Purchased the ATH-ANC7s a couple weeks back and they’re the first pair of “real” headphones I’ve ever purchased over $40. At first I was looking at the Bose QC headphones but I couldn’t rationalize a $300 purchase. Instead I bought some Sony headphones a year ago and they’ve suited me enough to not really care too much. Now, work has been a little loud and it’s only going to get more chatery around my office so I started looking again only to be convinced that $300 is just too much for headphones–again–, even if I’m going to have them on for 6 hours a day x 5 days a week.
Then I read an article in Wired magazine reviewing noise canceling headphones and they rated the Bose QC 2s at 8/10 and their pick for best noise canceling headphones was these Audio-Techincas at $240 list. Soon after reading I went straight to Amazon and noticed the $130 tag, then eBay and found Amazon’s deal was huge so I ordered them through Prime.
After 2 weeks of using them I’m loving them. The sound is crisp and powerful, they sound so good that every other stereo that before sounded okay now sounds like crap.
The set is very comfortable. The design makes you want to put the headset on backwards but after putting them on I had to think the unique design contributed to comfortableness. The cups fit perfectly over my ears and the padding never irritates, they do make a suction after a long time of wear (if you have very short hair on the sides).
The quality of the headphones are notable. It comes with a great soft/hard case, especially if you’re planning to using them for travel. My one complaint, the cord it comes with is too short, at only 6 feet (standard) I’m in the need of buying a longer one. But with the set having a jack it allows for getting a male-male cord for use and let’s you use the noise canceling without any cord.
The Noise Canceling is good. I had wanted it to work perfect, not allowing anything in but as expected only the consistent ambient noise was canceled out. Something I didn’t expect was, voices actually sound crisper. At first I thought these were a waste because of the noises and voices I still heard but I found myself trying to listen for noise rather then just using them. So after a few hours I was comfortable enough to the point that I couldn’t even hear the phone sitting next to me with just some light music playing.
Overall, the phones are great. Wired rated them at 9/10 and I’d have to agree although I’m completely biased. And at such a large price discount they’re definitely worth it. I’ve already purchased a set for a fellow employee and I’d suggest anyone thinking of noise canceling headphones to get these now while you can.
Just in time for Cinco De Mayo, cases of authentic Mexican Coca Cola have been spotted at Costco. They’re able to sell it since they’ve conformed to the US and California’s regulations, such as labeling the CRV (the recycling deposit) and nutrition facts.
Link >> … Read More »
May 04
I already posted about using the technique of updating wordpress through SVN but it just dawned on me that the instructions I (and many others) used committed us to the 2.1 trunk. And since 2.2 is a few weeks away I’m thinking of how to transition.
If your running a few sites, the easy way would be to just run these commands:
svn switch --relocatehttp://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/branches/2.1/\http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/branches/2.2/
Not that big transition since I can control who gets the updates and who doesn’t just in case 2.2 doesn’t play well. If I don’t use the above steps I’ll just copy my nightly script and simply modify it with the above command to run a single update for everyone in a few seconds.
The other option would be to use the wp trunk rather than the stable release repositories.
http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/I’m not to keen with the latter but it is an option.
Damn the windows activation (for Vista) is horrible. If you have a problem and you need to activate it over the phone be prepared to be transfered around the world to 6+ people and finally be dropped. You’ll then call back needing to go through the same process again, only this time you’ll be way more pissed off since the first few people don’t understand you already have a case #. What ever happened to just giving the installation ID of 60 digits, answering a few questions, then them they read you back a number to input and you’re all good? This is absolutely ridiculous, especially since I paid hundreds for the “Ultimate” addition that isn’t ulti- anything.
When will it be time to forget about activations and DRM?
UPDATE: One hour 30 minutes and still no resolution.
Update: Hour 2 with morons.
After just a few days of using the Apple TV I’m thoroughly impressed. The major reason I purchased the Apple TV was because of all the hacking that’s been going on and with Apple practically saying, “it’s your box do what you will” we can expect some more great hacks, if running full OS X wasn’t enough. I had planned at least to install some Xvid/divX playback through a very simple hack but involves cracking the case open. Instead of jumping right into doing that I’ve instead planned to just use it as intended.
I already live out of iTunes so the unsupported codec didn’t pose a big problem. All my TV Shows have already been encoded for iPod playback so 90% of my video was ready for use. The other 10% had been movies I ripped to DivX to playback on your Heleos DVD player. I truly dislike re-encoding video especially when the original format is already compressed (divX) but I tested out a few conversions and they looked great.
It took me a day or two to export 30-40 movies straight from Quicktime through the “Apple TV” export setting on my MacPro and I’m positive that exporting this much video isn’t practical for the majority. Especially since my assumption would be the majority having more video than I and wouldn’t have a fast pc or mac that could export 10 videos at a time.
After getting all my video to a codec that the aTV supported the device shines. The one problem I have now is whether to export my future video for iPod or aTV. It should be easy since I’m not getting rid of cable anytime soon so I’ll just export any full HD downloads for the aTV (like Lost or Sapranos), otherwise all other TV downloads will go for my iPod which I use daily at work. And all movies will be exported through QT Pro or if it’s a DVD I’ve found ripping it straight to from handbrake is the ideal process.
Quality of converted HD content looks surprisingly good. I downloaded a full HD tv show and converted it’s original format to h.264 through QT pro. After streaming it over wireless, on a g network might I add the video looked great. I didn’t notice any difference in quality from the original format of HD DivX playback on my computer then through the aTV.
Another majorly mentioned drawback to the aTV is streaming HD over wireless. Some say that anything lower then a n network wont work but I’ve got a G network streaming video perfectly fine with about 5 seconds of beginning buffer and solid fast forwarding. It takes forever for iTunes to sync with it in the beginning since it sends 30+GBs of data but ever since I’v had no need to drop a cable.
In conclusion the aTV doesn’t have any drawbacks (for me), other then the minor process of waiting 30-50 minutes for converted HD downloaded video to be supported. And it’s wonderful not having to worry about burning DivX cds or finding a CD/DVD to play some kid video. With it’s simple interface we can pull up a full media library from upstairs on our TV in seconds.
Including in that library is podcasts, photos and images. Watching video podcasts is great. I only wish now that I had a faster internet connection so I can drop cable TV and just download all our HD shows to playback on the aTV. Or what would help, HD content downloads from iTunes.
I’ll still be following the Apple TV hacking scene and I’m sure they’re going to compel me to break the box soon.In the meantime I’ll order a new 2.5′ drive so I can keep the factory drive untouched.
In case you’re wondering I have taken some measures to make my torrent experience a little safer/anonymous. In the process of trying tor for OS X I ran into some problems, it’s damn easy to setup for firefox but not so easy for Azureus–being the only OS X bittorrent app that allows proxy. Hopefully 
XTorrent will add the functionality soon. But with Azureus not working so great, I just really dont like the UI and the plugins aren’t too easy to mange either I gave up and knew I had to do something else. I had mentioned to Jared I would just setup Tor on Linux and run it as a VM through Parallels but instead I went with uTorrent on Windows and I’m surprised at how much I prefer uTorrent right now. Even in a VM it’s working great. Tor is noticeably slower but it works and I’m not in too big of a rush anymore.
The times I am in a rush it’s to get TV shows downloaded for a morning re-encode for my iPod I use Xtorrent. Reason I’m in a rush, Meredith and I watch TV shows for lunch at work and it’s nice to see those shows the day after rather then postpone them a few days.
I just can’t figure out what to do. Either return the 360 and get the Wii (if I can) or just keep the 360. I just made a spreadsheet for cost comparison, I guess I need to do a matrix for pros and cons now.
My hope is the Wii will make us want to play games again, I’d think Sara would love it. There’s a web browser so we could watch youtube on TV and it’s a little cheaper then my current 360 setup.
The 360 does DVDs, plays the classics, and will have an HD DVD add-on which will end up costing more. The 360 is hard to explain, it’s a full powered tech gadget that does tons more then just play games. But I find myself not using all those bells, especially since WCME doesn’t support XVID and DivX streaming. Then the games come into the picture. The games that are coming out look amazing; Gears of War, Lost Planet, Tony Hawk and Halo 3. The graphics on the 360 kill the Wii so much I’m worried to play those standard def games after playing what I am now like Dead Rising and Tony Hawk’s P8 demo.
But the Wii has something more important then graphics, FUN. And fun for all; all the games look exciting, the graphics look crappy but like the DS it’s not noticeable when the game has playability.
So it’s either a tech gadget that does DVDs, HD DVDs, Media Center and a little more vs. a really fun game console. I’m leaning toward the Wii and the iTV from Apple. That way I’ll get my HD downloads streamed the right way and I’ll have all the fun I could have with every classic Nintendo game available for download.
Now I just have to get a Wii (just in case I decide to ditch the 360, :). I do have a couple plans: Toys ‘r us and the mystery spot on launch day.
I’m amazed with some of the great conversations on digg these days. Most are flame wars but some are very good. A recent example, digg – Why Do Atheists Care About Religion?. I really like the comment digg’ng and bury’ng just in case those trolls and incoherent people that you remember in the old days of slashdot threads ever show up.
