July 2006

Well.

I have now done 2 days with my new MacBook and I still love it. I got the thing set up in a matter of minutes and was on the internet almost immediately and making my previous post (with the scary pic) within a few seconds.

I have got my head round downloading and installing software on here too. Basically, you download DMG files which are a bit like ISO files on a PC, but when you launch them they mount like you have added a new drive to the Mac. No added “virtual drive” software needed here! You will commonly get a large pretty picture of the application you have downloaded shown and you then drag and drop this into the Applications folder to install it. You can then “eject” or “unmount” the DMG file and delete it. Pretty clever really. Nice not to see all those DLL files going everywhere for a change!

So far, I have installed:

• Adium X (a cute little substitute for MSN Messenger)
• Firefox (well… why not!)
• Transmission (for torrents! of course)

Apart from those I don’t really need to install anything else at the moment. The MacBook comes with a 30 day trial of Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, but I can’t really see myself using it that much, but if it’s on the torrents I will probably get it sooner or later. I fired up my CV in Word and it looked the same - but the actual application itself is pretty ugly.
I love playing with the PhotoBooth application and iPhoto too. Most people slated the FrontRow application that you can use to turn the MacBook into a sort of Media Player using a bundled remote control. I have used it an found it to be excellent! It’s so smooth and playing an internet movie trailer over wireless works perfectly! Well cool.

It’s also nice to see a battery meter that does’nt go from 80% full to “beep beep!!! switch off now or die!” like my old ThinkPad laptop did. The infamous “Microsoft Minutes” are also banished. Files actually finish downloading when they say they are going to! I can also open the lid and be surfing the net by the time I have sat back down on the sofa! It is just a “sleep mode” and I need to establish what the battery considerations are when using this mode, but its nice!
Amazing.

“It just works!”

Got my MacBook.
Typing on it now.
Sitting on the sofa.
Watching the football.

It’s so cute….. and sexy…..

So, it’s Tuesday already on my first week out of work and the phone has’nt stopped ringing!

I have had a phone interview yesterday from which we both agreed that I was too experienced for the role and that I would be bored after a few months.  I have had another phone interview this morning for a contract position and am now going to meet with the company tomorrow morning to see if they like me.  The job is in Northampton, about 10 miles away, so I am not overly keen - but it pays the bills!

I also have an interview with a company in Miton Keynes on Thursday morning for a permenant role as a Wintel Administrator.  The money will be better than the contract position and will be nearer to home too.  This may be a better option perhaps?

So… it’s all go go go!

Not quite sure how I had time to go to work before all this!

A while ago I wrote a post on my views of the future of the Bittorrent network in response to an article by Dave Winer.

In my post I outlined a service where you could subscribe to a web based interface and manage/download your torrents from. Once they were downloaded to the web server you could then get access to them via a direct HTTP download.

If a user could sign into a website and select a torrent from a list to download and then have the website download the torrent file for them into a folder held on that website - then that would make life alot easier. The user could sign off the site and still have the torrent downloading for them. People could be forced to share the files back to a preset ratio and also, locally held completed copies of the torrents could be made available immediately to the user and then seeded back too.

Two such sites have appeared today on the del.icio.us popular list and appear to offer that functionality.

TTorrent.net provides a 3 tier paid service allowing different storage sizes and number of simultaneous downloads.

Silence Is Defeat offers a basic 50mb service via an array of access methods (web, FTP, SSH etc). The basic sign up fee is only $1 via PayPal.

Personally, at the moment I would not use either of these options.

Yes, I like getting my torrents quickly and for those people that suffer ISPs that use traffic management or port throttling then this may be the best option for them. Ttorrent.net’s maximum service is 15gb storage and up to 15 simultaneous downloads for $25.29 per month or $202.68 for the full 12 months. Quite a lot really! SilenceIsDefeat have the better idea of lower (donations) charges but offer lower disk space. If a site introduced a service that charges a flat monthly rate - say $10 and offers 20GB storage which is cleared down at the end of the month, or a monthly bittorrent bandwidth quota, then this will get my vote.
But what it does mean is that the services will be seeding the torrents longer than a client may do, which makes it better for us in the long run!

I have just returned from our local shopping centre and have placed my order for my MacBook.

I decided to go for the 13″ screen, 2ghz SuperDrive model though.  Should be easily good enough for what I want.  And with the store staff discount my wife gets I got over £100 off!

Winner!

Just got to wait until Wednesday to pick it up as they had none in stock.  Grrrr…