… well, kinda.

After a bit of indecision last week week, I have now bought myself a Mac Mini. It’s a very basic Mac Desktop that comes without the mouse/keyboard/mirror… I mean, monitor. It’s still pretty pricey, but then that’s Apple for you.

The unit is a very small unibody device, that is just a little bit bigger than a router. It has a Super Drive around the front and a variety of connectors around the back. I have already opened up the Mac Mini to take a look at its innards, if I do need to upgrade the RAM, it will be an incredibly easy process. Which is more than can be said for other Macs (from what I’ve read).

So far I am pretty impressed, while the machine is not overly fast in the CPU department (2.4GHZ Intel Core2Duo) it does the job nicely. So far I’ve only been looking through the various bits of software and familiarising myself with Snow Leopard. Eventually I will be playing with Boot Camp and Parallels for virtualisation of Windows, the latter will be useful for work, and it will also be nice to have an additional Operating System that is NOT Windows on my CV!

I currently have my Mac Mini connected to an old 19 inch monitor through a DVI-D connection and that’s it. The Mini is wirelessly connected to my network and can access everything on my PC (which excuses the small 320GB HDD for me), there is no keyboard and mouse as I’m currently sharing my PC’s Keyboard and Mouse through a piece of software called Synergy.

With this software installed and my PC set up as the server, it means I can move my mouse cursor seamlessly between the two, and the keyboard switches to the machine that is being used at the time. It also allows me to copy the contents of my clipboard between both machines, which is pretty nifty.

So far I’m a happy bunny, considering an upgrade to Lion (lamest OS name ever?) next month.

A few weeks ago at work I got to play with a Mac for the first time and was pretty impressed with it. This has given me a bit of motivation to get a Mac of my own to play with so I can familarise myself with the set up and also hopefully provide better support for the system in future. I’ve been looking at the Apple store quite a bit since then and the first conclusion I came to is naturally it’s all a bit expensive… I mean great value of money, as corrected by the Mac Fanboy I met the other day.

The entry level Mac is £999 (21.5 inch screen) and a Macbook with a decent sized screen is £1500. This is a bit much for me, the lowest Mac is a fairly good price but I really don’t want the additional screen on my desk as I’d have to keep moving things around each time I wanted to print something, which will get annoying really quickly. And NO, I’m not getting rid of my PC as I actually want to play games at maxed out settings!

After much looking around I’ve started to look into the Mac Mini – this is basically a stripped down standard Mac but with no screen, keyboard or mouse. I believe it will suit my needs nicely as I can connect it to the second port on my monitor and let Synergy do the rest. I don’t need a hugely powerful processor, graphics, or a hard drive. The only thing that has got me torn is do I settle for 2GB RAM or pump it up to 4GB?  If I increase the RAM, it’ll set me back £650 and that’s with staff discount deducted. What do you guys think?

The foundations for the machine was a barebone setup I purchased from Ebuyer for just under £100, this included the case, a motherboard, a power supply and a wireless dongle. The full specs are:

Black Gloss Mid Tower Case – Not too big – Dimensions are: W 175 D 350 H 350mm
M4A78LT-M AM3 Motherboard – Has an Integrated ATI 4200HD graphics chip
500w Power Supply – Could’ve opted for less power, but it’ll cover any additional graphics cards that may need to be purchased further down the line
AMD Athlon II X2 255 3.1GHz – 2MB Cache – Again, could’ve gone for less power but I’m thinking about a time when a HD TV Tuner is required
Kingston 2GB Dimm of RAM
Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB – Big improvement on the old Digital Recorder as it provides over three times the previous capacity.
Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TD 500 Dual digital DVB-T PCI Freeview TV Tuner card

A DVD-Drive was not necessary since we already have a Blu Ray player under the main TV. The Windows install was achieved by USB Stick and any driver/software that is required in future can be installed over RDP or by said USB Stick.

Overall the machine is a nice little package, it came to around £265 with the actual TV Tuner Card being the part that pushed up the price. While it is more expensive than a lot of Digital Recorders that you’ll find on the market there are more possibilities i.e. sharing recorded TV shows and Downloaded media between PCs, upgrading single components instead of the whole thing, greater storage capacity (most recorders max out at 320GB), which can also be expanded if necessary.

I also find Media Center in Windows 7 to have one of the most user-friendly interfaces you can find. So hopefully I won’t be spending so much time explaining to my Mother how it works.

• Got back to work after a two week stint of annual leave making me feel more miserable than ever. The news of redundancy back in November wasn’t a huge deal at first – although naturally I was still pissed – but now the reality of it all has set in. My current job ends on the 31st March 2011.

• Blue Monday was last week, y’know, the most depressing day of the year. It’s an equation that takes into account debt, weather (it’s been shitty), the time since Christmas, time since failing New Year Resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of need to take action. I like to call mine a Blue Month, January has been bloody awful as a whole.

• I developed a Minecraft addiction, at one point I clocked up around ten hours in a single day. I’ve since sickened myself of this game after digging a 3 mile long tunnel in a few hours.

• Through the said addiction I failed my 70-272 MCDST exam. I didn’t put as much effort into study as I probably should have and I also attribute a fair amount of my failure to Microsoft’s crappy essay-length questions.

• I’ve managed to pre-order the Nintendo 3DS for £199.85 instead of the RRP of £230, which everywhere else is selling the unit for. Other shops are starting to drop their prices, I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that GAME will follow suit, as I have £20 worth of points that would knock the price down to £180 for me.

• I’m now studying for the 70-272, properly this time. I’ve kicked my Minecraft addiction and gaming is taking a back seat. I get to play Dead Space et al when I’ve been good.

• I’m losing chubb again, I’ve walked home from work three times in the last week.

I’m sure February will be a better month as a whole, it can’t get much worse than this so I shall try to be positive.

Another thing that made Monday a good day was the arrival of my new laptop. I had ordered it the Tuesday before and thanks to Amazon’s crappy estimate system it came late. It was supposed to arrive on Saturday – I even stayed in for it! *facepalm*

Oh well, never mind, it’s here now and it’s an awesome little machine.

The laptop I ordered was a HP Pavilion DV6-3141EA, it’s a 15.6″ Notebook with the following specs:

Quadcore AMD Phenom Processor – 2GHz per core
6GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 (512mb) switchable to a ATI Mobility Radon HD 4250.
500GB Hard drive (7200rpm)

The laptop was originally listed to have a Blu Ray drive included (and the pic on the site even shows this) but HP are notorious for changing specs and unfortunately I was too late.

Blu Ray drive aside I’m pretty damned happy with my purchase. It’s a reasonably powerful laptop for the price point (£700) and is suitable for playing older games. I’ve tried Counter Strike Source so far and it can run the game at over 60fps in places, which is sufficient for my needs. I will try other games though, I have Killing Floor installed and ready to go. I’m also curious at how the Bioshock games will run.

I will post a pic of my laptop tomorrow, I’m currently writing this in bed and can’t be bothered to get up and get my SD Card? What? It’s -8 out and I’ve got no heating on at the moment. (through choice!)

This entry is a test, it may not look very special but it is. This is the first entry I have posted from my HTC Desire. I’m using the WordPress application from the Android Marketplace.

It’s pretty nifty as I am able to carry out all the usual functions I use for this site such as: posting new entries, editing existing ones and validating comments. All in all very satisfactory and handy for blogging during breaks at work or when on lengthly train trips.

I would also like to point out that I have installed a new plugin that will enable you to comment to my blog entries using your Twitter account (if you have one). Just simply click on the ‘sign in with Twitter’ button at the bottom of the entry. This will take you directly to Twitter for account authentication before returning you back to the entry you wish to comment on. You can then comment as usual, simples!

I could introduce the same thing for Facebook accounts, but I really don’t want to.

PS: Bulmers Summer Blend cider is pretty nice!

For the last month or so I have been considering getting hold of a DSi XL when it launches on the 5th March. Like with any purchase I have to consider whether I actually need one, I’m looking for some opinions on this!

Here is my small list of pros and cons for purchasing this device.

Pros
• The larger screen is a huge plus.
• Larger stylus could be handy.
• WPA support. Sadly my DS Lite doesn’t support this (I swear a firmware update could’ve sorted this) and I haven’t been on WEP since 2006, and I’m not likely to take that down just for a few games online.
• Access to the DSi shop.

Cons
• I already own a DS Phat and a DS Lite.
• Is it really worth buying another generation of DS when its successor is possibly a minimum of a year away?
• Not 100% sure if I’ll make adequate use of the DSi shop.
• Not 100% sure if I’ll make adequate use of online. Snaking players in Mario Kart DS will probably drive me nuts and I’ll almost certainly get my ass beat in Pokémon. As for other games, I’m not entirely sure until I play them.

So there we are. Even though my cons list is a little longer than my pros (I probably forgot to list a few), I still cannot decide.

Please post your opinions in the comments below. If you haven’t used my comments section before it will require validation, so fill in your info before posting. Email addresses are not displayed or used for anything else and you can also link to your website!

Yup, my replacement camera arrived today and I’m not quite sure what the Royal Mail were on because it was delivered at 7:30am this morning! It’s a miracle that it arrived before 11am, let alone that early!

Anyway the reason for the replacement is because the lens mechanism stopped working properly last weekend. Basically the motor keeps revving long after the lens has expanded and there’s a lot of hesitation when it comes to retracting it when switching off.

Now to get the old camera back to Amazon before I get billed for both, whoo!

Ok, I’m a few days late in posting this but who cares! I ordered myself a Fujifilm Finepix S2000 HD camera a week ago on Thursday from Amazon. I selected first class as my delivery option and got an estimated delivery date of the 16th January. The following day I got an email saying it was dispatched, but on the 16th it didn’t arrive. The same went for the 18th, 19th and well you know how it goes.

On Thursday the 21st it still didn’t turn up so I sent an email to Amazon asking them to track the order. They told me they had no info and asked if I could wait until the 27th January before emailing again in which they would send me another camera if it didn’t arrive.

Sods law kicked in, at around 4:10 in the afternoon the camera arrived. I know the moment I emailed, it would arrive. >_<

The camera is damn good, it’s packing 15x optical zoom and image stabilisation (which is good for me since my hands are shaky as hell due to my excessive sugar and caffeine intake) and HD vids (not quite 1080p, but it’ll do). I’ve been playing with the features so far and it’s pretty awesome. The only problem is I only have my Budgie to test it on. Check the pic at the top of the entry, not bad for one of the first few pics, eh?

I’ll be sure to post further test pics here soon.

After the mega-fail attempt to buy a TV on Boxing Day and the Electronics Store not having the choice of TVs I thought they would I finally picked it up from Tesco. I’ve been looking at the display models over there since the end of October.