I picked up this list from the Maximum PC April 2009 issue, there are some publications which are still worth buying in print and this is one of them. PC Geeks over the years have developed certain skill sets, some are through education, some through knowledge, and the majority of it is through breaking stuff. Well this is a list of things that I can relate with and I know a few people that can as well, there are people with a lot more skills and I’m one always willing to learn.
- Knowing the difference between the board connectors; PCI Express, DDR Memory, Dual Channel Rimm
- Benchmarking a PC
- Know basic HTML tags
- Bypass the Government content filter
- Run all your essential Apps on a USB stick
- Getting through to the real technicians of customer service
- Use photoshop to doctor a photo
- Wire your home with your know Ethernet and know how to crimp it
- Say NO to extended warranty
- Mooch Wi-Fi pretty much anywhere
- Use a DSLR in full manual mode
- Install a Hard Drive in a Laptop (Laptop broke down in the first month, damn annoying)
- Protect your Wi-Fi
- Take apart a damage external hard drive and extract the data
- Pull off an elaborate prank
- Set up a RAID configuration
- Securely Erase your data (They don’t know how to do that at Lockheed Martin)
- Solder like your life depended on it (I used to do that when I worked on my R/C Cars, would probably do some damage to a mother board)
- Rip CDs to FLAC
- Stream your movies, Music, Photos, and anything else to any location in your house
- Dual-Boot your PC
- How to hack a Windows Computer or Router
- Watch TV Shows on the Internet (Legally)
- Installing and configuring a Virtual Machine
- Protecting your tracks on the PC
- Run multiple monitors
- Know the important Linux Commands
- Avoid DRM at all costs
- Use Remote Desktop
- Rip a DVD to H.264
- Find everything you need to know Online
- Install Third-party firmware on your router
- Be an addict to Star Wars or Star Trek
- Be able to use the command prompt like a pro
- Be able to change your own tire
- Connecting to the ECU of your vehicle to tweak, or flash, clear codes
- Play Halo1/2/3 and still don’t want to sleep
I decided only a couple of weeks back that I wanted to vote, that I’m really tired of all this crap going on. Our country is on hold and everybody else is moving forward. A lot of our friends are depressed about Kuwait and you feel like their isn’t much you can do about it. I did something simple I just saw who were the candidates that fit my criteria, got their mobiles through friends and called them up. Some were good over the phone, and I asked when I could meet them at their election locations and I met with them for a about 20 minutes deciding who to vote for. It was a simple process of asking questions, seeing their nature, their replies, and asking about their past actions.
Going to the voting poll somewhat early in the morning was very important and I’m happy that I went and voted. I hope that this really works out and the next set of MPs really do something to jump start the country. We are tired of things going into a slow process which results with nothing happening, just the whole in country in a complete standstill.
I went in, they check your citizenship to make sure you are going in to vote. I walked in and tried searching for my letter. They have voting rooms by letter and I couldn’t find where exactly I was supposed to go, asked a few people but they weren’t sure where the letter M is located. I asked a bearded gentlemen and he told me the way to go and ask for me to vote for some Dr Something, who is probably of the religious right. Checked my name and the ID number (Raqam al Qaid), and waited in line to vote, the line was moving at a decent pace. After about 20 minutes I went into to vote and saw that the room had 7 people, and 5 of them were supposed to be people who recorded all the details on paper to compare later for fraud or mistakes. I made my four choices, folded up the piece of paper and placed it in the box. I felt good about the vote and I’m hoping for the right people to get a parliamentary seat, I have hope but I’m dreading the bad people who are bound to win.
I did some major clean up today, I got fed up with the lack of space I have and the pile up of papers. For some reason I had papers which I really didn’t need and magazines from three to four years ago which I have no clue why I kept, I flipped through them and threw them away. Then I turned my attention to the DVD stacks I had. I decided to turn all my attention to DVD stacks I have in the basement and a majority of them are DVD copies which I bought over the years. In 2007 I bought a few DVD copies but since then I didn’t buy any at all, some were DVD rips, some were shaky cameras and they drove me nuts, didn’t feel like driving back to Hawally and complaining.
- 164 Crappy DVDs = 246 KD (@1.5KD per DVD)
As I was cleaning up I found a stack of HD-DVDs from some of the movies that I did buy and think they are worth keeping. I still think these movies are a keeper, but who would have thought there would be a media war like the one we lived through. As for people like us who are early adopters are considered casualties of that war, I still don’t regret buying these movies.
HD-DVDs:
- King Kong
- The Matrix
- The Matrix Reloaded
- The Matrix Revlotuions
- Blade Runner
- Batman Begins
- Bourne Identity
- Bourne Supremacy
- Bourne Ultimatum
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Army of Darkness
I got my Flip MinoHD a while back now but I didn’t have a chance to really use it except a little recently. The box is nice and compact, comes with a few wires, a pouch, and the manual. The camera is smaller then I expected, its smaller then my Blackberry 8900, fits very nicely in my hand. Switched it on and it has some very simple settings, and you pretty much point and record right away. It records at 720p video which you can connect to your computer through USB, the USB connector is built into the Flip MinoHD, its at the top and flips out, then you connect it to your computer to either take the videos or charge it, to charge the Flip you also connect it to the USB.
It has very simple operations when recording, you just have one big red button to record and point in the direction that you want. There is a simple built-in software which I used to create the test video below. The sound recorded quality is excellent and so it the video quality, if you are looking for a simple point and shoot video camera for under $200 then this is the perfect camera. I was looking to use a camera to mount to my bikes while riding and mount it to the car while driving to make some fun videos, and it really did the job. You can do edit the video insert any effects but that must be done in something like Adobe Premiere.
- Holds 60 minutes of HD-quality video (1280 x 720 resolution at 30 frames per second; 16:9 widescreen) on 4 GB of built-in memory
- Weighs only 3.3 ounces, sleek design, fits into your pocket or purse
- Features one-touch recording and digital zoom
- Flip-out USB arm plugs directly into your computer to launch built-in FlipShare software
- FlipShare software lets you save and organize your videos, simple editing, make movie, email, or upload online
Flip MinioHD Test from Marzouq on Vimeo.
I honestly think they did a great job with this camera targeting a specific usage for it. I do think there is room for improvement but I gave it high marks because of the video quality I kept getting and sound capture, and overall extreme ease of use. Now you can the Flip UltraHD which does a little bit more for the same price, so I would go for this one at this point.
Price: $199
Link: Amazon
Rated:
I did something a while back with my Hazmat WHS a while back when I was building it that I forgot about it. I knew the backplane wasn’t full, I just assumed it had all but one slot empty, I plugged in one hard drive and it didn’t show up so I assumed I left the SATA connection empty inside the server which was the case. When I went to plug it in, I found out that I had another slot in the backplane open so out of 5 only 3 were being used and only 3 were connected. I plugged the two but I still had one slot empty. And at the same time I have received the replacement drive for the 2TB which worked perfectly, I was surprised Amazon dispatched it so quickly. The only extra cost I had was spending a couple of KD sending the damaged hard drive back to the states.
After adding the hard drive in the WHS console to the collective of the server I managed to bump it from 11.14 TB to 13.87 TB and still a lot of room for expansion. Now all I need is to get the port multiplier and a few other parts to continue my expansion.
There is always a list of things that I want to do that I never get around to do because of the lack of energy I have when I get back from work. Today I got back around 7:30 pm and it was a long day, the only thing I had for sustenance was KDD chocolate milk and that honestly kept me going.
What I Wanted To Do:
- Work on Gundams
- Do some rewiring for Backplanes on Hazmat Server
- Work on the rewiring for the Logic 80
- Organize Books
- A few things I’m forgetting
What I Did:
- Ate dinner and blanked out in front the computer about to fall asleep and can barely keep my eyes open
Last week I got a little preoccupied at work so I ended up getting home late, and I would stay up watching a few shows or anime. So after a few days of this I only had about 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night, and I thought I would catch up on the weekend. That wasn’t really the case, ended up going to the 12 am showing of Star Trek on Thursday so we didn’t get home until 3 am and didn’t sleep until about 4 am. Then the next I was up early going to breakfast at around 9:00 am, then I was busy for the day but I knew I was running our of battery and needed rest, so I took a deep nap from 3 pm to 8 pm which messed up the next day. I didn’t get any sleep at all at night, I even managed to breakfast at Earlybird with Monichum, went to work and finished a few meetings, then headed over to some family stuff for the rest of the night. So essentially I have been running on little to no sleep and so I have had this constant headache with me that just doesn’t go away and I didn’t want to ruin my sleep so I held out for the night but that really messes up your sleep I didn’t manage to get to the tasks I wanted to get done. Deprivation
This is the Windows Home Server (Hazmat) sitting next to my 24U Rack which houses the Netgear 24 Port Gigabit Switch, ReadyNAS 1100, UPS, Access Point, and soon to be rack mount server. Sitting next to the big Lian Li case is the eSata attached Storage Tower, which takes up only two eSata ports on the PCI-X card, which has two more eSata ports for later expansion if I wanted to add another Storage Tower.
I have been dumping more and more data into my second WHS Server, Hazmat, for a while now. I had about 7.5 TB of space available without duplication, and after a couple of months I have reach 94% of the capacity and I didn’t want any of the files being stored on the OS drive, and I haven’t even switched on duplication for the files which makes the total space needed about 15 TB. I took snap shots of the WHS Console, and by clicking on the smaller images you get the larger images to see all the details.
Luckily I ordered a couple of 2 TB drives to bump up the amount of space by about 6 TB, so to about 14 TBs which would be the equivalent of 12.9 TB of logical data. The setup I have is pretty simple, I have one backplane in the Lian Li case which I plan increasing once I cannibalize the old WHS server which has two extra backplanes fill with 1 TB drives, which adds up to another 10TB worth of space. Instead of plugging in more backplanes I decided to take advantage of the PCI-X slot in the mother board, so I plugged in an eSata controller to integrate the 8-HDD Raid Tower which housed all the other disks. You can even tell the ones that are mounted by the Disk Management screen on the Console where the drive temperatures that can’t be read, and say “n/a”.
I order a few thing from Amazon every once in a while, and this time around it has been a while and I needed the hard drives at least. I always skim through amazon for a few good books, but I always find it really difficult to buy a book online. What usually would do is read a couple of books in the bookstore and then write their names down to order them online.
As usual the package was stopped by customs, last time I ordered more equipment and it wasn’t stopped. I know that it was stopped because of the hardware, it seems that customs are on overdrive these days and they are taking DVDs and stopping a lot of packages these days. Happily managed to get my items out of customs:
- 3 x Western Digital 2 TB Drives
- Michael J. Fox – Always Looking Up
- From Concept to Consumer
I think I have a love of building PCs and seeing these creations come to life, such simple steps to building great machines. I’m going to dismantle and pretty much cannibalize the first Windows Home Server and use it as parts for the current WHS Server. I’m also building a rackmounted server as test bed and I managed to find another Asus P5Q WS motherboard, I have to say that it is probably one the best motherboards I have used and its a real work horse.
I have about 8 TB in the new Hazmat Server, and that has been the capacity since day one. Now that I’m going to use the parts from the other server I’m planning to expand that to about 18 TB or more. WHS safeguards your data by spreading it across multiple drives and switching on the “Duplication” feature which basically keeps a copy of it, meaning I would need about 16TB to duplicate all the data I have, which I don’t have at this point. I have to commend Microsoft, for once, on a great product such as WHS, I think they need to dedicate more support and development for it since it can really make having a server at home a very simple task. The hardware setup is fun for someone such as myself, and the software setup is a breeze so I don’t mind that I keep reinstalling or reconfiguring. Then there are the new WD 2TB drives, I already ordered a couple of those and I am waiting to see their performance and durability, I’m hoping they drop in price quickly because right now they were a little too pricey. I’m planning to use the Kandalf case from the gutted WHS Server and use it as a power house machine, I have had the skultrail motherboard laying around for a little while now and its a powerhouse of a mother board, but its so damn big that it doesn’t fit in any normal case, it needs a special case and this beautiful silver case will do the job wonderfully. I also have this sudden urge to build some Lego Technic machines, those were the days I loved putting those machines together.