Vanvalkinburgh.org

Looks like now they have no area codes available in WA. They let you change your number once for free, so I keep checking to see if a local number is available, have some 253 number, not my area code. No phone hooked up to it, nor is the computer turned on that its plugged into. Using virtualbox in ubuntu on a MSI Nettop 100, to run their bogus software. Don’t want to keep mac on 24/7, guess I could, not sure how stable the mac software is though. Not sure why I see ads on tv, since they don’t even offer area codes in my state anymore. Oh yeah I emailed them asking when my area code would be available, below is their response. Oh yeah to find their email, you have to search google, it is Dan@magicjack.com.

We apologize that your area code is not represented right now and we
are doing our best to add as many area codes as possible.
Sorry for the vague reply, but we will keep updating our lists as
fast as we can. Thank you.

Looks like their running out of numbers, and not adding anymore. Ahh well it was only around $30 on ebay. I should sell that linksys phone adapter I bought that I don’t need, was going to use it with vitelity, but changed my mind. Oh yeah you will be able to port a number to them “sometime in 2009″. Guess you don’t really need a local number, but then people that use the shitty local service, will get charged when calling you.

Instead of everyone switching to magic jack, how about get a skype phone adapter, both require your computer to be on 24/7, difference is skype is free. If everyone was using skype, you wouldn’t need to pay anything, its free to call skype people from skype. Then they’d probably start charging for it. Or pay more and get something that doesn’t need your computer.

Hmm not sure if I’ll get one of the 13″ MacBook Pros or a refurbished iMac. The iMac would be faster and have better video, but cost a little more then a new 13″ MacBook Pro, I’d get the $1,499 MacBook Pro, if I got one probably. By the time I can buy a new mac, they’ll probably have the cheapest 15″ MacBook Pro refurbished… So maybe I’ll get one of those instead. I like the SD card reader the new MacBook Pro’s have, then I wouldn’t have to use my card reader. They should add a SD reader to the iMac. I could get the old iMac model 3 GHz for just a little more then the new 2.93 GHz refurbished model, but want the new model with support for 8 GB of ram. I think what I’ll do is just think about it but never buy either, that way by the time I make up my mind they’ll be new models, haha. Or I might get one if my mac mini dies and can’t be fixed cheaply. Oh wait I still have my MSI Nettop 100 with ubuntu, so won’t need to purchase new mac, if current mini dies, can just use that. It can’t play games, but neither can my mini.

Update
Will probably end up getting a MacBook Pro. Probably the cheapest 15″ MacBook refurbished though, they should have em refurbished in three or four months. I suppose if I decide to get off my lazy ass and get a job, then I might be able to get one before then.

It’ll only cost $29 for Leopard users. I would of payed more then $29 though. I’ll also be getting the 3.0 firmware for my touch on June 17th when it comes out. MacBook Pros got cheaper, and faster.

My old mac mini still works and is fast enough for me. The only thing I can’t do is play newer mac games. I’ll just play games on my 360 and wii for now. Maybe I’ll consider getting new mac if starcraft 2 is ever released. Maybe I’ll buy an expensive SSD drive to speed it up even more. The 7200 rpm drive I have in it is fast enough though, so don’t really need a new drive. I will be getting a new superdrive, so I don’t have to use external drive to burn DVDs. Could always buy a cheap PC for gaming, if I want to play computer games.

Thinking about buying an ASUS Eee PC 901, or some other netbook with linux. Had aspire one, but that one had small SSD low ram, wasn’t worth it. Now there cheaper and better, Eee PC 901 even has a better battery then my aspire one had. Would be nice to have bigger screen then touch to browse web while watching tv, and a full featured browser. Maybe apple will release a new iPod touch with bigger screen… Probably not anytime soon. I think I rather buy a netbook from amazon, easy return policy, fast free two day shipping. Depends if ubuntu will run on this without any problems, need to look into that. Ubuntu netbook page. Hmm looks like the HP works pretty good on it. Wait that HP model that works, can’t even find it. But the 1000 that HP lists on site has a sound bug. Doesn’t look to hard to fix, HP mini has real HD and bigger screen then the Eee PC 901. Hmm strange their site says different then what amazon has… Pass on HP mini, want one that comes with 6 cell battery. Hmm maybe this aspire one.

Update
Bought Acer Aspire One AOD150-1165 10.1-Inch Sapphire Blue Netbook – 6 Cell Battery instead of ASUS Eee PC 901. Will put ubuntu on it, once I get it. Same price that I payed for old aspire one that had crappy SSD drive, this one has a real hard drive. Hmm maybe I should of bought that newegg DIY bundle instead, ahh well I can buy that next month. haha. Or send netbook back and buy it. Don’t want that bundle, rather get a quad core processor, if I get AMD. So I’d have to manually pick everything out. Ahh well I have 30 days to try netbook out, if I don’t like it I can send it back.

Update
If I get it and it doesn’t work, or ubuntu is to much of a pain to get working on it, I’m going to send it back to amazon and get refund, have 30 days. Also I’ve read that acer’s supports sucks, and to get an rma is a pain, also heard from somebody else that somebody they know has an acer and they break down a lot. Must of got lucky with last Aspire One, good thing I sold it on ebay.

Said they only had one left, like the fact that you can use any headphones you want with it. But the headphones they come with will probably work fine for me, if not I’ll probably buy some really expensive in ear headphones. I think the iPod touch 2G has built in bluetooth, Apple said you’d be able to enable it in firmware 3.0. I’m waiting for the next iPod touch though. Might need an 8 GB microSDHC card soon. I like being an ass and buying the last one in stock, looks like they’ll have more on the 6th. Wonder if there’s anything else I want/don’t need that only has one left in stock. Hmm maybe I should just get the fasted 4 GB microSDHC card I can get… The cheap one I have is kind of slow. But works, so not a big deal. Might take all night though to copy all the music I selected to it.

Motorola s705 Stereo Bluetooth

Just bought a DSTTi card from echostore.com. Probably could of got it cheaper somewhere else or different card for cheaper, but echo store probably has faster shipping. Also payed by paypal, which is nice. Got a 2 GB microsd card from them too. Dealextreme has the DSTTi for cheaper, but slow shipping, uncle ordered an R4 from them once, took like 2 weeks or something, don’t want to wait that long.

Update
Cancelled the order, and they cancelled it really fast. To paranoid about how long paypal takes to show the money they took out of my bank. I will definitely consider echostore.com in the future, very fast communication.

Blackblaze is out of beta now, so I’m trying it. Get 15 days free, probably not enough to backup all my data. If this thing makes me lag while playing 360 online, then I won’t be paying for it. Probably will make me lag, stupid comcast.

Update
Somebody on twitter said to cap upload since it’ll probably make it lag. I think that’s what the “Throttle” does, move it closer to faster network, and hopefully that means backblaze will use less bandwidth, and leave more for everything else. Could always setup QOS, but to lazy, and I think that worked anyways. At first I moved the throttle to faster uploads, and my network monitor said I was uploading at around 60 KB/s, and nows its staying under 40 KB/s, shouldn’t lag now. Oh yeah using the network monitor that comes with iStat menus.

Oh yeah the only bad thing is, it looks like I’ll have to do a new complete backup when I get a new mac. Another good reason not to buy a new mac, or I could just wait till I get a new mac to buy backblaze. That might be the best solution.

I was right about the throttle thing, just look at their speed test page. Hmm maybe I should move it backup to the default…

“A connection of 6998 kbps upload would backup:

73807 MB in a day”

Stupid power boost. That fast upload only lasts for a short time. I think it use to only be for downloads though.

Buy em while you can on ebay. These might sell out faster then the DVI Adapters.

Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapters

Just bought 5 mini display port to HDMI cables from monoprice, going to resell em. They sold out pretty fast last time they had em in stock. So I should be able to sell these.

iTunes 8.1 likes to hang and takes a while to start music. I updated to it when it came out, good thing I have time machine, I restored iTunes, so now I’m running the older faster version of iTunes. All my music is stored on a NAS, mounted as a samba share, perhaps the new iTunes doesn’t like that. Apple should of said in change log, that it is slower for some users, and only recommend you update if you have new shuffle. You also need to restore iTunes Library, iTunes Library Extras.itdb and iTunes Library Genuis.itdb in users/Music/iTunes. Found that from apple’s forum. Guess the only fix is to downgrade.

Currently I’ve tested the following distros on the acer aspire one:

Ubuntu & Xubuntu
Xubuntu is faster, both are easy to get working, just download a custom kernel from aspireonekernel.com.

Dream Linux
Currently that’s what I have on it, everything seems to work, didn’t do any tweaking. Seems somewhat slow, probably because I haven’t done any tweaking, to bad it doesn’t do it for me. Used the OEM installer, as I couldn’t see the buttons in the regular installer. I think I prefer xubuntu over this, so probably won’t tweak it. Perhaps I’ll try the recently released zenwalk linux 6.0.

Fedora 10

iMac is a better system then the mini, and well worth the extra amount. I’ll need a new desk if I want to use my other monitor though. Probably get the cheapest 24″ one, not sure though. Won’t be getting 8 GB of ram, that’s over $1,000 for just the ram… iMac’s are probably even harder then the mini to upgrade, I think I saw a guide on ifixit.com or something like that. But I won’t be opening it, maybe I’ll pay somebody in the future to upgrade it for me. Damn if you want faster processor you have to get more expensive one, wouldn’t mind a 3 GHz processor, don’t care about HD size. Maybe the $1,799 one then, almost 3 GHz, better video then the cheaper ones. Wait you can get $1,799 one with 3 GHz processor…

Update
Will probably order the $1,499 one from frys.com in May or June. I won’t be charged tax if I order from them…

Update
If you look at the design page for the iMac, you’ll notice it says “With iMac, details make all the difference. For example, because it’s made from a single sheet of aluminum, you won’t see any seams or screws except for a single compartment on the bottom that provides easy access to the memory slots.” Sweet so I can upgrade the ram in the future, when the price of 8 GB goes way down. Looked on ifixit.com, and you’ll see the memory compartment in step 4, the only step that matters to me.

Was just looking at DDR3 prices, and its cheaper then I thought, $150 from apple is way to much, you can get it cheaper from just about anywhere else. After looking at the article on macminicolo.net, it looks like I might not break it this time, maybe I should buy a putty knife too. Oh yeah if I upgrade it myself, I’ll put my faster/bigger drive in it too. I’ll just wait a while, and get it with a little faster processor, and maybe get ripped off and have them upgrade ram. Don’t like opening mini’s, pain in the ass, well unless you break it, then it doesn’t matter. My case is broken on old one too, so maybe not faster processor, just more ram.

I’m very proud to announce that we are one of the only DNS vendor / service providers that was not vulnerable when this issue was first discovered by Dan. During Dan’s testing he confirmed and we later confirmed that our DNS implementation is not susceptible to the attack that was discovered. In other words, if you used OpenDNS then you were already protected long before this attack was even discovered.

Not only is opendns fast, but the dns flaw, doesn’t affect me or anybody else using opendns. I’ve been using opendns for a long time, probably a year or more. I’m not sure how long, but it works fine. Not sure why anybody would continue using their ISP’s dns servers, considering how opendns is faster, more secure, and you can setup content filtering too, and best of all its 100% free.

Oh yeah and its really easy to use opendns, on your router, set your dns to the IP address’s opendns’s site shows. On my linksys router, all I had to do was set static dns 1 and 2 to the IP address’s they list on their site.

Forgot to say they also have Phishing Protection. Which is nice, just incase somebody else at my house, like my mom, gets tricked, or somebody tries to trick her, or they try to trick me.

OpenDNS Blog » OpenDNS – Keeping you safe day after day.

Since I have nothing better to do, I’m going to attempt at putting Mac OS Classic on a usb thumb drive. Basically the emulator and the required files, the emulator Mini vMac, is available for os x, windows, and linux. So I should put both the mac and windows version on my thumb drive. Wonder if simcity classic will run in that.

Mac on a stick how to page

Update
2263
Done looks like it works, that was easy and fast. Didn’t try the windows version of Mini Vmac yet though, not sure if it’ll work in wine. Can’t run simcity classic, not enough ram in emulator, have to use a different emulator.

TEST                   COMPARISON            FROM                 TO             DETAILS
 
** TOTAL **:           *1.22x as slow*   10679.8ms +/- 0.8%   12978.4ms +/- 1.8%     significant
 
  3d:                  *1.03x as slow*    1897.4ms +/- 1.7%    1960.2ms +/- 2.6%     significant
    cube:              *1.13x as slow*     579.0ms +/- 5.1%     651.4ms +/- 6.3%     significant
    morph:             1.18x as fast       914.4ms +/- 1.2%     773.4ms +/- 3.7%     significant
    raytrace:          *1.33x as slow*     404.0ms +/- 1.0%     535.4ms +/- 7.0%     significant
 
  access:              *1.66x as slow*    1581.2ms +/- 2.0%    2631.0ms +/- 1.6%     significant
    binary-trees:      *1.40x as slow*     165.2ms +/- 12.7%     230.6ms +/- 7.0%     significant
    fannkuch:          *2.11x as slow*     506.8ms +/- 0.6%    1070.0ms +/- 1.6%     significant
    nbody:             1.06x as fast       656.2ms +/- 1.4%     617.0ms +/- 6.4%     significant
    nsieve:            *2.82x as slow*     253.0ms +/- 3.9%     713.4ms +/- 1.3%     significant
 
  bitops:              *1.27x as slow*    1765.4ms +/- 3.4%    2238.6ms +/- 2.2%     significant
    3bit-bits-in-byte: *1.75x as slow*     257.4ms +/- 2.1%     450.8ms +/- 8.1%     significant
    bits-in-byte:      *2.49x as slow*     240.8ms +/- 3.3%     600.0ms +/- 3.2%     significant
    bitwise-and:       1.74x as fast       986.2ms +/- 5.1%     567.4ms +/- 2.5%     significant
    nsieve-bits:       *2.21x as slow*     281.0ms +/- 3.6%     620.4ms +/- 0.8%     significant
 
  controlflow:         *2.95x as slow*     109.2ms +/- 3.3%     322.4ms +/- 6.0%     significant
    recursive:         *2.95x as slow*     109.2ms +/- 3.3%     322.4ms +/- 6.0%     significant
 
  crypto:              *1.68x as slow*     640.6ms +/- 0.8%    1079.2ms +/- 1.6%     significant
    aes:               1.03x as fast       306.0ms +/- 1.0%     297.0ms +/- 2.7%     significant
    md5:               *2.39x as slow*     164.6ms +/- 2.3%     393.2ms +/- 2.4%     significant
    sha1:              *2.29x as slow*     170.0ms +/- 0.7%     389.0ms +/- 3.0%     significant
 
  date:                -                   759.4ms +/- 3.3%     734.6ms +/- 7.4%
    format-tofte:      1.30x as fast       484.4ms +/- 1.0%     374.0ms +/- 11.1%     significant
    format-xparb:      *1.31x as slow*     275.0ms +/- 8.8%     360.6ms +/- 4.5%     significant
 
  math:                *1.35x as slow*    1242.2ms +/- 1.0%    1676.0ms +/- 5.9%     significant
    cordic:            *1.75x as slow*     497.0ms +/- 1.6%     868.8ms +/- 3.8%     significant
    partial-sums:      1.23x as fast       517.2ms +/- 2.4%     421.2ms +/- 7.6%     significant
    spectral-norm:     *1.69x as slow*     228.0ms +/- 2.3%     386.0ms +/- 9.4%     significant
 
  regexp:              *1.02x as slow*     444.0ms +/- 0.8%     452.6ms +/- 0.5%     significant
    dna:               *1.02x as slow*     444.0ms +/- 0.8%     452.6ms +/- 0.5%     significant
 
  string:              1.19x as fast      2240.4ms +/- 1.4%    1883.8ms +/- 4.4%     significant
    base64:            1.17x as fast       500.6ms +/- 6.2%     427.6ms +/- 5.1%     significant
    fasta:             *1.09x as slow*     437.4ms +/- 6.4%     474.6ms +/- 4.3%     significant
    tagcloud:          -                   356.2ms +/- 7.4%     347.0ms +/- 6.1%
    unpack-code:       2.29x as fast       709.0ms +/- 5.3%     309.0ms +/- 5.7%     significant
    validate-input:    *1.37x as slow*     237.2ms +/- 10.8%     325.6ms +/- 8.4%     significant

Safari 3.0.4 is 1.22x slower then firefox 3 beta 3. Firefox seems a lot faster at browsing sites, but I’m not really sure if it has anything to do with javascript, for the reason firefox is faster. Now I’m going to switch back to firefox. I don’t mind testing a beta.

The test was done with SunSpider.

I got OS X leopard yesterday, and my uncle wasn’t lying, when he said Safari is faster then firefox. I made an apple script to do most of the work for me, but not 100% automatic. Now I can mess around with the new features. I setup spaces, you can assign applications to the spaces to. I’ll upload the apple script eventually. Maybe in a week or two. Or maybe my uncle will post it on his blog. Hmm Gimp 2.4 is released. Wait only the 2.4 RC3 is available for OS X, and I already have RC3. Could compile it myself, but I don’t want to.

Easter Egg

Just think if you were on a network with thousands of pcs, sharing their computer… I would probably fall off my chair.

Pretty Box

Why didn’t I just pirate OS X Leopard?

They took the time to put that on their box, non like microsoft.

Install

By the time I was done taking a dump, it was almost done. I didn’t take a picture of it when it was almost done though, only took two pictures of it checking the dvd, one with the flash on, and the other off.

Can’t wait until firefox 3.0 is released, its a lot faster then the stable version. Don’t want to loose any data, so I probably won’t be running the unstable fast version. Oh yeah and fireftp, doesn’t work with it, but no script does.

Download firefox 3.0

Download it at your own risk! I take no responsibility for any data you loose, neither does mozilla. Now I need to backup my profile, so I can run the alpha again.

Looks like I’ll be testing this, until its stable. I can’t provide any pictures or videos on how fast, and sexy the mac version is, you’ll just have to download the mac alpha yourself. Make sure you backup your profile though. Its under yourname/Library/Application Support/Firefox.

Hmm might of just found a bug, sort of, doesn’t really effect anything, the sidebar just looks funny, when scrolling.

I’ll provide one screenshot, of the download manager.

One warning though, stuff seems to open to fast, like right clicking an image, and clicking properties, or even copying and pasting, it’s way to fast. Hopefully the stable release will fix this issue.

I’ll take back the very slow shipping, it wasn’t that slow, considering it was free shipping. I thought it was going to take the full 9 days, but I got it today instead. The speed is only around 20 MB, because its formated with ntfs, don’t want to loose all my data, and I don’t have anything to back it up to. USB is like 18 MB. The ntfs-3g driver sucks, its slow, but I found an alternative, Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X. Works fine for me. ntfs-3g got around 11 MB. Hopefully Paragon NTFS for MAC OS X, will get faster.

Now on to the pictures.

There it is in the nice dirty box it came in, well that box was inside a shipping box.

That’s the back of it, in case you wanted to see it.

Took it out of the box.

Took the enclosure out of the fancy box thing it was in, and ejected the thing you put the hard drive in.

The hard drive is screwed in.

There it is all hooked up, by firewire.

More External HDD Pictures