I just finished building a Custom PC for a friend of mine; it’s built around a Celeron G850 and an ATI Radeo HD 6850.  Not too shabby for around $400.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I just finished installing this printer (wireless) on my network. It’s a bit a pain in the butt to install because for some reason I can’t set it up via Wi-Fi Protected Setup; I was forced to setup the wireless connection by temporarily tethering it to my iMac via USB and run the dinky software from the CD that came with the printer.

It has a surprisingly small footprint, but it’s LOUD when it prints…but for $130, it’s nothing to sneeze at.

Popularity: 1% [?]

i5 only, though.

It’s big and beautifulz! No more hackint0sh for me…well, at least for the time being…

Popularity: 1% [?]

After much procrastination, I finally got around changing my photo backup strategy: cloud storage.

Since I switched to digital in 2003, my only means of backup is to manually mirror to an external drive and burn DVD copies (stored off-site) whenever I find the time to do so.

But with a library that’s almost 500GB, the strategy has been really tedious at best…and with the questionable reliability of hard disks and optical media, it prompted me to change into something more reliable.

After thorough research, I’ve decided to give Backblaze a spin for the following reasons:

- Unlimited storage. Good thing that competition has driven providers to offer this feature.
- Minimal upload throttling. I’m going through my initial backup now and according to their website, it would take me roughly 14 days to complete…but i think it’s going to be faster than that because in less than a day 4GB of my data has already been uploaded Update 2/9: Hm..Backblaze seem to have started throttling my upload speed a couple of days ago by more than half…I was supposed to be done with my initial upload 3 days ago.
- Support for Aperture
- Support for external USB/Firewire drives.
- Defaults to backup everything. You use the client to EXCLUDE folders/files for backup.

So far, so good…but I found the following annoyances:

- Changing the settings pauses the backup for about 2 hours unless manually started. Why?
- No percentage completion on backup status. Dropbox offers this and I think this is basic and should be present in all online backup services.

I’ll probably end up signing up with them unless i find some showstoppers on the initial backup.

-

Update 2/1/2011: Wow. Mozy just dropped their unlimited feature. I wonder if the rest (including Backblaze) will follow suit?
Update 2/11/2011: Update finished. ~480GB. Impressive. They’re getting my moneyz.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I am mildly upset that in less than a month after I purchase the Epson R2880, the replacement has been announced: the Epson R3000 available by Spring of this year.

Just mildly upset because I got the R2880 for $425 after rebate (I knew the replacement was comin but I didn’t think it was that soon…and I simply couldn’t pass up the deal!). And while the new features are great (larger ink capacity, slightly larger gamut, WiFi/Ethernet, auto Photo- and Matte-black selection, better paper handling and an LCD display) I don’t really print that often to appreciate them.

In the end, it’s all about the prints: With the Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper, Ilford Pearl or Epson’s Ultra Premium Lustre, it’s hard to imagine how much better the R3000′s going to be (it uses the same ink technology albeit smaller droplets) in terms of printouts.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I didn’t bother to update to 10.6.5 because there was no compelling reason for me to do so…but 10.6.6 is a worthy update because of the introduction of the much-anticipated Mac App Store. This update for me is similar to 10.6.3 and 10.6.4…except I don’t have a SleepEnabler.kext because as of this writing, there isn’t one available that is compatible to 64-bit 10.6.6.

I had a minor setback when I upgraded, though: After the first reboot, the application icons are all whacked-up and I I’m greeted with this error whenever I try to launch an app:

“You cant open the application (null) because it may be damaged or incomplete”

Fortunately, the issue was not as bad as I thought and was addressed by simply rebooting into Safe Mode first, then reboot again as normal.  For us Hackint0sh users, you start with the “-x” at the command prompt.

The App Store is interesting, but it got me upset right away because Aperture 3 is available for $80 when I paid $150 a few months ago.

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you’re like me, you already have a PS3 Eye when you bought the PS3 Move Bundle (because buying the game and just the Move controller doesn’t make a lot of sense when you can buy the bundle for LESS).  So what do you do with that extra PS3 Eye?  Well, my Hackint0sh doesn’t have a webcam and I’ve been meaning to get one…instead of buying yet another webcam I googled for a driver for the PS3 Eye for OS X.  Lo, and behold!  It does exist…and it works!  So I can now have video chat on my Hackint0sh without spending another dime.

Popularity: 3% [?]

SSD’s have come down in prices for a bit that it made sense for me to upgrade the Hackint0sh main drive to use one.  The dilemma I had was that I didn’t want to start all over again on the install.  After a bit of googling, I found this blog entry.  I used SuperDuper to clone the drive, and followed the advise to use the Chameleon Package Installer even though I actually used Rc3…but I encountered a KP upon first boot.  So what I did differently this time after cloning via SuperDuper was to follow my own directions on making the drive bootable.  I took a step further and updated the Disk UUID and recreated the Extensions kext bundle using the Kext Utility.

And Voila! I am now typing this on my SSD-fortified Hackint0sh.

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you used this guide to update to 10.6.3, then updating to 10.6.4 is a cinch:

• Delete SleepEnabler.kext
• Delete AppleHPET.kext
• Save AppleHDA.kext
• Upgrade to 10.6.4
• Reboot
• Download and install the latest SleepEnabler.kext
• Restore AppleHDA.kext
• Repair permissions
• Reboot

At this point, everything should be fine and dandy.  I’ve read somewhere that USB issues on wakeup from sleep has been addressed, so I re-enabled sleep on my system.  I’ll update this post on my findings.

Popularity: 3% [?]

It’s one of the rare occasiomns where the number of star ratings on the App Store just failed me.

At version 1.02, it’s one of the apps where the developers chose style over substance. I would not reiterate the review here: just go to the App Store page for this app and search for my review under user name “bubuli.” As of this writing, the review is ranked “most helpful.”

Update 5/6: I just updated the review to expound on my complaints about the app…but alas! the “Most Helpful” count got reset!  So you will just to weed through the review until it got ranked up again.

Popularity: 2% [?]