Regularity

Well, Hello again.
I'm working on trying to get back into the swing of updating on a regualas basis. I'm trying to figure out what direction I want to take. I'm not doing too many tech related these days. I have a little girl that I'm learning on the fly how to raise. I think I'm doing alright, but you never know. I think the most techie thing I've done in a while is I just upgraded my laptop to Windows 10. I wanted to get in before the deadline at the end of July. And so far, I'm liking the update. Now, I have had Windows 10 on my desktop and HTPC. I dont use my laptop too much these days. But I'm happy at the speed of which my aging laptop has again. Not like a brand new, state of the art laptop. But like it was a new laptop back in the day. It came preloaded with Windows Vista, and a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it was released. An Athlon x2 2.0 GHz CPU with 2GB RAM and a 250 GB HDD. The battery doesn't work too much, and the charging cord has seen better days. I am looking at spending the extra $100 to give it new life. I would be looking at a new battery, charging cord, SSD to replace the HDD, and new RAM. I could just expand the RAM, but buying two sticks that are matching would guarentee that they would work in duel channel mode perfectly. This could range in price from $70 to $100. The RAM, Battery, and cord will be inexpensive. The SSD would be the pricey item. I might hold off and see how the other pieces work out in the overall big picture. A SSd would be an instant upgrade in the way of speed. Boot times on this thing were rediculuous. But I still love my laptop. Well, this is it for now. Good night everyone.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

So here is the plan. I am going to be building a whole new system for the home server. This system is going to be utilizing an AMD A6 Quad-Core APU. This is a 2.6 GHz chip with integrated graphics. The integrated graphics will be needed for the initial setup, but then will run headless. I will be pairing this with either 4GB or 8GB of DDR3 RAM. I plan on starting out with a 32GB SSD for the Ubuntu OS. A SSD is lower power, and lasts longer than a mechanical drive. The storage will be handled with two 2TB drives to start out with; I will have the option to add another 3 large capacity drives. One will be dedicated to tv shows, and another to movies. Music isn’t really a concern with services like Spotify and Pandora. Maybe a small portion will allow us to stream music if there is a large enough base to be worth the trouble of ripping CDs. All of this will be housed inside a case, and currently the front runner is the Rosewill R5 Mid-Tower case. This case holds 6 hard drives, with the capacity for 10 fans. I like the option of having fans that blow air directly over the hard drives. This will keep the hard drives cool under pressure. To keep the CPU cool, I am looking into the Cooler Master Hyper 212 [+ or EVO]. $30, high performance. Sold.

On the software side, Ubuntu 12 is the OS of choice. In here, Plex will be running 24/7. Why Plex? The Media Server side is compatible with Ubuntu. And the client software can be installed and stream media on Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and the Roku player. That covers everything in my planned future house. Sold. For the networking, I am going to be setting up a media network. I believe that the internet is coming with us, and I want to build off this. The main can be used for guests, and general browsing. I want to use a separate router, switches, and boat loads of cables to set it up. I want to dedicate this for the media server to minimize usage, and to maximize the bandwidth available for streaming. Plan is set.

I want to test out the combo of Ubuntu and Plex on a old system to work out all the bugs, and to learn about the setup and performance. This will make the final build and setup easy as ever.

Crashplan

Crashplan is answer #2!!!

Upgrading my digital life.

I have a few spare computer parts laying around in my life. So I have decided to make a home server. I don’t plan on using it currently in our apartment setup. I do plan on testing it and getting myself familiar with the setup needed and networking skills. I know for certain that at this time, we don’t have the infrastructure that is optimal for this network. I think I might use my parent’s house as a test bed, so to speak. But I have a few hiccups at this time. I have my elder AMD Athlon 64x2 2.7 GHz CPU with 4GB of DDR2 RAM. I am going to be using a few spare small capacity HHDs for the learning curve. On the other hand, I have a spare AM3 board that I could purchase a AMD Phenom IIx6 CPU and 2 or 4GB of DDR3 RAM to use. I will try it with the current hardware that I have on hand to see what the base performance will be. I want to use it to store all my media [Movies, TV Shows, Music, etc.] and stream it to my HTPC and any other computers and devices in my future home. My physical concerns are cooling. I want to keep the hardware cool but while minimizing noise. So I’m considering a new case for the build. Something inexpensive but with hard drive space. A full tower would be ideal because of the generous space for hard drives. This is still undecided. But I will be looking into lining the interior of the case with foam. This will reduce the amount of noise that will escape from the case from the fans, but will also reduce the amount of vibrations from the fans and spinning hard drives. As for the fans, I will use low noise, high air movement fans. On the software side, I will be trying out Ubuntu 12 as the basis for the first trial run. I think that this will do just fine due to its low hardware requirements. I just hope that this will not limit the streaming power. But if I am correct, I think that the heavy lifting for streaming content falls upon the device that is playing the content. So this is heavily in my favor. I am going to be throwing together a system in a case and getting the testing started. The fine tuning will occur when implemented in my future residence as some of it will require using features of the wireless router that will be used. Hopefully the ISP we choose lets us use our own router, so I will set up a second network to use for our own streaming, and allow the other one to be used for guests. Who knows. This will be decided as the time comes.

Dual Booting Awesomeness.

So here is the plan. We want to replace at least two computers with a single, machine of awesomeness. But the main issue with that is the fact that one of the computers runs OS X and the other is running WinXP. WinXP is dead but the laptop is so slow that upgrading to Windows 7 is kind of useless. And the iMac is running out of gas. The 1 GB of RAM is keeping us from going anywhere. So here is the recipe for our machine of awesome:

One Intel CPU

One Intel compatible Motherboard

One GPU [NVIDIA or AMD]

One awesome computer case [In the works right now]

One power supply

One DVD burner

Two 60GB SSDs

One 2TB+ HDD

8GB RAM

The plan is to install OS X on one SSD, and Win7 on the other SSD. The larger hard disk will be used as a storage drive for music and documents and such. We want to keep OS X due to the software library we have. And Win7 for its general computing and networking abilities. What is unsure right now is the input handing. We could use the Magic Mouse and Mac keyboard. Or we could purchase a nice Logitech or Microsoft wireless desktop. Or we could use both. I would prefer to only use one set of input devices.. But it is not my choice. As for the monitor situation… Dual Monitors. We are thinking somewhere in the 20 inch range. This way we are actually gaining some screen space from the iMac monitor we are using at the moment. And I think with this setup, we might invest in the wireless print server. This way we never have to worry about the printer being offline. We want to have a nice, powerful machine that we can use for everyday computing tasks while utilizing the creative suite we purchased for OS X. And believe it or not, we love both operating systems. This way we can get the best of both worlds. Our goal is to get the best of both while replacing multiple machines. We got this.

Quickie.

The absence is over. I am here again. I need to work on updating this again as much as possible. I have been busy at work and working on getting everything in my life in line. I have another addition to my Beatles wall and I am excited to hang it up. I also finished my first wedding shoot. While it is not perfect, it was a success. I measure this success by the fact that the clients [Jayme and Kate] like the photos that I came away with. Thinking back now I would have done things a little different, mainly in my preparation. But anyway, I digress. So I am also working on getting my digital life in order. I have finally [FINALLY!!!!!] settled on a video format. And it does require the conversion of over 400 video files. But it will be worth it due to being able to finally settle on a Media Center hub. XBMC has finally been declared the winner. This was made official with the addition of HGTV, Cartoon Network, Food Network, among others. It also has its own Android remote application, which can be very, very useful. I am working on getting my old DEVOUR up and running without activation to be used as a remote for the tv and media center. It is going pretty well. Along with the videos, I am working on getting all our audio CDs in the HTPC and with uncompressed audio. The songs take up a lot of room, but the quality is well worth it. Here is an example:

You are basically looking at about 10MB a minute. I think this will be a great archive of our audio CDs. We will be using Spotify as a main source of music, but this will provide a great hub of music archives. And so in case you are wondering, yes, I am OCD about my organization of my media files and keeping track of what we have and don’t have. Here is a screenshot of me keeping record:

Yes. I am that picky. And here is another one:

I am a little obsessive. That is all.