evilrouters.net

a parody of the mac vs. pc commercials with south park characters. created as the final project for a multimedia production class at california state university northridge (csun).

the iphone 2.0 comes out tomorrow morning.

here i lay, on the couch, watching the videos and downloading applications from the app store (aim, facebook, google mobile app, remote, twitterific), even though i don’t have an iphone. yet.

you see, in about seven hours the stores will be opening up and i shall have one. i’m not really sure why, though. i mean, yeah, they’re cool and all, but i have a completely functional blackberry pearl sitting right here.

why must i have an iphone?

the truth is i really don’t know. but i must. and i shall. and i will.

a month or so ago, i downloaded jungle disk. i installed it on an older laptop i have running windows xp that has quite a few files on it i’d like to have backups of. i uploaded a few hundred megabytes of files to disk storage on the amazon s3 system and pretty much forgot about it.

a few days ago i was looking at my bank statement and seen a charge from amazon for $0.04 for the s3 storage. that got me thinking about backups again. i don’t really have any good backups here at home, other than keeping copies of “important stuff” on multiple machines — not exactly an ideal backup strategy.

i have an external usb drive that i’ve been wanting to use with time machine on my macbook to keep it backed up (it has pretty much became my “primary computer” in the last few months). i was keeping copies of important files on it, though, so i couldn’t just wipe it clean. instead, i first hooked it up to an ubuntu linux box that i have here, copied off all the important stuff, and then wiped it clean.

the external usb drive is now hooked up to the macbook and the first full backup (using time machine) is taking place as i write this (in textmate, of course!). it’s currently at 7.7gb of 105.9gb to back up. fun!

on the ubuntu linux box, jungle disk is hard at work backing up all my important files to the amazon s3 storage. i started out with 2.4gb of data to upload, mostly pictures and video that wouldn’t be easily replaced. with my cable modem connection (10 mbps down/1 mbps up), it’s going to take a while. once i get all the “important stuff” dumped onto amazon’s servers, however, and only occasionally add stuff to it, the backups will run much quicker.

i still have a few more pc’s to sift through in order to find everything i want backed up, but i don’t anticipate having more than 10gb or so of data stored on amazon’s servers. at their rates, that makes for very cheap off-site backups.

if you’re looking for a good solution to this same problem, i highly recommend amazon s3 and jungle disk. i’ve had no problems with either as of yet (granted i haven’t used either extensively). jungle disk is commercial software (only $20), but you can run it on as many pc’s as you have. they also have windows, linux, and os x versions that operate nearly identical. i haven’t installed the os x version yet, but i imagine i will before the day is over.

windows toaster

the windows toaster looks great, but sometimes it just won’t make toast. it either comes out burnt or raw, and you have to unplug the toaster and plug it back in again each time you want to try and make some toast. for every loaf of bread you buy you are forced to buy a new toaster to go with it.

linux toaster

the linux toaster looks absolutely awful: it has wires crimped together, things are just hanging out of it. the first time you make toast with it the toaster burns it; the next time it’s raw. you read the man pages and invoke the command line “toast -verbose -breadsize 50132 -eject -o z3321 > /dev/toast” and it makes perfect toast ever after.

mac toaster

the mac toaster has no settings or controls. it looks very stylish, but will only accept proprietary-sized bread which can only be bought from apple dealers at ten times the cost of regular bread. the toast is fine except that the size of the bread is so odd that you can’t actually eat the toast it produces, although it does look very good.

i just applied for the iphone enterprise beta program for my .edu:

“announcing the iphone enterprise beta program: a unique opportunity for it departments to try iphone 2.0 software before general release. if your company is selected to participate, you’ll test new iphone enterprise features within your corporate environment, then provide apple with valuable feedback. interested? click below to apply.”

*click*

“we appreciate your interest in the iphone enterprise beta program.”

cool!

the mac os x 10.5.2 update is out, sooner than i expected. among the various improvements is an airport update that “improves connection reliability and stability”. that’s exciting to me since i’ve had some issues with that.

if you don’t use software update (why wouldn’t you?), grab the standalone installer.

in december, i ordered a shiny new apple macbook for work. i went for the 13″ 2.2 ghz model (small size is important to me) and wanted to outfit it a little better than it comes stock. specifically, i wanted the 250gb hard drive and some additional ram.

i don’t remember the exact price at this moment, but to upgrade the macbook from the standard 1gb of ram to 4gb was going to add over $700 to the cost. since i was also about to place a huge order for pc ram (for work), i checked the pricing from our preferred ram vendor, silicon mountain memory. for 4gb of ram for the macbook, the standard price was right about $130. because of the huge order of ram that i was placing, i actually got it for just over $100 (bulk discounts ftw!).

to have ordered the same thing from apple would have been a huge waste of money.

note: i’m not affiliated with silicon mountain memory other than as a happy customer.

today is february 1 and, as promised, microsoft office 2008 for os x has been made available on mvls for volume licensing customers.

w00t! downloading it now…

i just registered textmate. evidentally it’s been 30 days already since i got this spiffy macbook because the trial just quit working when i tried to make that last blog post. i had to go buy it before i could use it again. i work at a .edu, so i did the educational discount thing and got it for $51 usd. that’s the most money i’ve personally spent on a piece of software in years. i haven’t even began to explore all the functionality that textmate has, but i have a good feeling it’s worth it.

textmate brings apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. by bridging unix underpinnings and gui, textmate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

i feel redeemed. now if you’ll excuse me i must go drink some more apple kool-aid. =)

(hopefully the textmate folks won’t mind that i stole their image to use above. if they do, let me know and i’ll take it down.)

contrary to the postings on various blogs, the iphone has not “gone corporate”. yes, at&t is offering the iphone to business users. that’s not “corporate”, however.

in order for the iphone to “go corporate” (i hate that term), apple needs to update the software on the iphone to include support for synchronizing — seamlessly and effortlessly — with corporate email and calendar systems. in other words, exchange.

love it or hate it, exchange rules the corporate world. it’s an unfortunate fact of life. corporate i.t. departments often operate under policies that dictate what types of mobile devices may or may not be permitted, based on various factors (not the least of which is security).

i work in i.t. at an educational institution. i’m also responsible for keeping our blackberry enterprise server running. we run exchange. there have been times, in the past, where we allowed certain folks to use non-blackberry mobile devices for synchronizing their mail and calendar. now that we have bes running, no new non-blackberry devices are permitted (the aforementioned folks were “grandfathered” in, and get to keep using their existing devices.)

in my experience there is nothing better than blackberries and bes from a support and administration standpoint. when (approved) users get a blackberry, we (i.t.) don’t even need to see or speak to them. we generate an activation code, e-mail it to them and refer them to the owner’s manual in order to get it activated. let me tell you that i deal with some very non-technical folks, and we’ve not had a problem yet.

as i.t., we’re also responsible for security. i used to have nightmares about what might happen if one of our users lost their mobile devices. not anymore. when a user loses their blackberry, they know that it is extremely important to notify i.t. immediately. within a few minutes, we remotely lock, wipe, and disable their blackberry. if they happen to find it, we go through the 10-minute activation process again and they’re good to go.

after a night of heavy driving at a political party a little over a month ago, we got home and i realized i didn’t have my blackberry. i went into the home office, vpn‘d in to work, rdp‘d to the bes and wiped and disabled my handheld. problem solved. (i found it in my girlfriend’s car the next morning, by the way.)

what was i saying? oh yes, the iphone.

don’t get me wrong — i like the iphone. it’s quite sweet. i’d like to have one of my own; it’d compliment my new macbook nicely (i’m a recent “mac convert”). until the iphone supports things like remote administration/wiping/disabling, forcing i.t. policies, and end-to-end encryption, i can’t use one.

fix those problems and license activesync (imap? “corporate”? c’mon now) and then we might be able to call the iphone “corporate”.