Ionut's WebSpace » Apple/OS X http://www.vioan.ro/wp Exploring Creativity Is My Passion Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:09:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 New photos and smartphone recommendation http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2010/07/27/new-photos-and-smartphone-recommendation/ http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2010/07/27/new-photos-and-smartphone-recommendation/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:21:14 +0000 ionut http://www.vioan.ro/wp/?p=443 Long time without posting on my blog, so, I think is time to update it a little bit :) . Yes, I am still here, but very, very busy with my work, attending to conferences and visiting different places. I just uploaded on Flickr some recent photos from my last trips (Lake Garda, Verona, Salzburg, Tirol, Traverse City, Michigan, Urbana-Champaign, El Escorial, Madrid):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vioan/sets/

I am thinking to change/replace two devices: Nokia E71 and the iPod Touch, with just one, a new smartphone and I have in mind: iPhone 4, HTC Desire and Nexus One, but I am still not decided which one to buy. So, I need your help, which one would you choose?

Desire: radio fm and sense ui but not android 2.2 and I am not sure if it will get 2.2 even if HTC said that it will get
Nexus: android 2.2 but not the others mentioned above
iPhone: 180-200 Euro more than the other two, and of course not all what I can have on the other two

BTW, openSUSE 11.3 is great, but you already know that :)

]]> http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2010/07/27/new-photos-and-smartphone-recommendation/feed/ 10 My ZFS Home NAS/HTPC Box Build http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2010/01/19/my-zfs-home-nashtpc-box-build/ http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2010/01/19/my-zfs-home-nashtpc-box-build/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:43:19 +0000 ionut http://www.vioan.ro/wp/?p=408 I was looking to build a NAS (Network Attached Storage) to store all my music, photos, files, e-books and important work related files. I also wanted to have a central place for my backups and to be used sometimes as HTPC. So, a “two in one” solution (NAS and HTPC).

Even if there are many ready-to-go NAS solutions I decided to build myself one and having the HTPC on the same machine. Here is mainly what I wanted:

  • low powered system (64-bit microprocessor)
  • used as a media server (stream movies/music)
  • to be used sometimes as a HTPC, so I wanted HDMI (for HD video)
  • ZFS file system with all its goodies
  • gigabit ethernet interface to take advantage of the network bandwidth
  • nice chassis with four hot-swappable 3.5″ SATA HDD (I am using just two HDD right now because the motherboard has only 3 SATA)

My NAS/HTPC specs are here:

home_server1es34069

I choosed FreeBSD as operating system, because I am more familiar with it than with Solaris. I recompiled mplayer with vdpau support (for HD video).

Here are the steps:

  • download the latest mplayer snapshot from their website
  • download these two files (ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/include/vdpau/) and put them in /usr/include/vdpau (create that directory)
  • ./configure –disable-x264-lavc –disable-x264 -–enable-vdpau
  • gmake
  • gmake install
  • check to see if you have vdpau support with: “mplayer -vo help“. If you see something like: “vdpau VDPAU with X11” then everything is ok.

Some additional steps/configs:

  • add zfs_enable=”YES” in /etc/rc.conf
  • add  the following in /boot/loader.conf:

vm.kmem_size_max=”1024M”

vm.kmem_size=”1024M”

vfs.zfs.arc_max=”100M”

  • zpool create storage mirror ad4 ad10
  • zfs create storage/archives
  • zfs create storage/backups
  • install samba, duplicity, rsnapshots, rsync, unison, ushare, …

Right now, everything is working very well, I am very happy with the setup, but I still didn’t manage to have sound over HDMI, so, a temporary solution will be to connect an additional speaker system to it.

I don’t need any fancy remote control, I have a logitech wifi keyboard/mouse, because I like to be able to read the news in the morning (during cofee time) using google reader

The total power consumption is about 35W idle / 45W load which is pretty good, I think.

]]> http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2010/01/19/my-zfs-home-nashtpc-box-build/feed/ 6 Yahoo Mail and free IMAP http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2009/08/26/yahoo-mail-and-free-imap/ http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2009/08/26/yahoo-mail-and-free-imap/#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:31:09 +0000 ionut http://www.vioan.ro/wp/?p=400 If you are using yahoo mail, like me, then you missed for a long time IMAP access for your inbox. They provide just POP3 access and  I don’t want that. I would like to have/access the messages also via web interface and also to have them on my computer for offline access. So, the solution is Zimbra Desktop and you can use it on Windows, Linux or Mac.

“Zimbra software is open source, meaning we make both the software code and the application itself available to anyone at no charge. Also, Zimbra Desktop is a full version; there are no missing features or catches”

For a complete list of features see this link: http://www.zimbra.com/products/desktop_features.html

If you have any issue with it you can find the answer on their wiki.

Here is just a screenshot:

zimbra_desktop

]]> http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2009/08/26/yahoo-mail-and-free-imap/feed/ 0 Hmm, finally, I did it … http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2009/08/06/hmm-finally-i-did-it/ http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2009/08/06/hmm-finally-i-did-it/#comments Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:39:30 +0000 ionut http://www.vioan.ro/wp/?p=395 After playing around with a Mac Pro for more than two years (I have it as my workstation at work, but I preferred to use as main working machine my Sony Vaio SZ, running OpenSUSE), finally, I changed my mind and I’ve now made a decision on my new laptop. I also considered that would be great to take advantage of the ‘Back To School’ offer and to have as well an iPod Touch, to complement my Nokia E71 smart phone. So, 6-7 days ago I ordered online a MacBook Pro 13.3″ with the following specs:

  • MacBook Pro 13.3″
  • 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
  • 320GB Serial ATA Drive
  • Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter
  • Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter
  • Backlit Keyboard (US) & User’s Guide (English)
  • SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

and of course

  • iPod Touch 8GB (2nd generation)

The laptop is coming with Leopard but I can order Snow Leopard on their website just for about 8 Pounds (http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/uptodate/).

Apple’s tracking information says:

In Transit to Customer – Shipment on Schedule

so, I hope that I will have it tomorrow, right now I’m like a 5 year old boy waiting for his gift.

NEXT POST: my impresions and preparing my new MacBook for Scientific Computing, so, stay tuned …

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