Something Stella and I have been talking about for a long time is cutting out cable TV. It’s expensive, and honestly, we don’t need it. With technology and some clever, here is how we are going about getting rid of the TV portion of our cable bill.
Of course, all of this is made possible by the Roku box that quietly lives in our entertainment center. While it’s not as slick or matching-with-the-rest-of-our-Apple-gear as an Apple TV, it’s not horrible looking, fits nicely in the rack and has a good feature set. It has HDMI out as you would expect. It also has digital audio, which comes in handy for the audio channels available (like SOMAFM, Pandora and others).
While I would love to have an AppleTV, the cost of media through the iTunes store makes it less than attractive. To be able to use it as iTunes for the entertainment system isn’t that attractive either since we have a Roku Soundbridge that will play damned near anything we want.
Ideally, I would like to add a new Mac Mini to this system with a Thunderbolt drive attached. That would give access to the web as normal like YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and everything else we use, plus iTunes and Hulu for those shows that are still web only. With Boxee or Plex installed, a Mini would be pretty rad. It’s a pretty low priority item, so the spend can’t be justified at this time, but hopefully one day soon.
Step 1 will be adding an external antenna to see what kind of over-the-air performance we actually get. Luckily they are cheap no matter where you go. Stay tuned as I will be documenting the entire process.
In 2007 I purchased the above camera, primarily so I would have something to take pictures with at MINI United in Zaandvort, Netherlands. I did some research, asked around and that’s the camera that was recommended more than others for high-end point and shoots. I sit here today, 5 years and close to 100,000 shots (I think) later, and it’s still a great camera.
It was with this camera that I became excited about my photography. It was with this camera that I’ve taken photos in 5 different countries and damned near every state in the US. It was with this camera that I discovered how fun it is to take photographs.
It was also, most recently, this camera that captured the following shots. (Read on…)
As you probable already figured out from the last post, I’m now 100% Mac. Also, for those not playing the home game, there was this from the weekend.
Since I didn’t have WiFi and I wasn’t able to get any work done, I did some writing.
It all started back in 2007 when I acquired my very first Macbook. It was the first generation with the Intel processor and I liked it. Alot. It’s been one of the most reliable PCs I’ve had and is still in active use today.
Jump ahead to 2009 when I got my iMac. 20″ to be exact. It’s been my workhorse, being used to generate countless websites, blog posts, photos and hours of video. As it stands, it’s about the 3rd most reliable PC I’ve ever owned and if it lasts another 2 years I will jump to the number 2 spot.
For the record, the PC I have ever owned was one I built myself. A PII700 running all Intel internals with Samsung drives and Windows 2000. Got about 5 solid years of use out of that before I upgraded to something a little speedier.
I title this post 100% Mac Shop because I have always had a copy of Windows running somewhere. Either in VM on the iMac or Macbook, or in the shape of a laptop or netbook. Friends, I am here today to let you know that is no longer the case.
Instead of getting a mobile device running Windows (and saving a bunch of money) I decided to go mobile on the Mac. And not a Macbook Pro either. A 13″ Macbook Air. Thin, light and limited on storage. A machine that I know will take advantage of dropbox and iCloud. A machine that I will use primarily for editing text (or coding WordPress themes). A machine that has enough space to offload photos and videos from week long events. And if I run out of space, there is always FTP or dropbox. A true portable machine.
I will be using this for light photo editing. I might even attempt video editing on it as well. For video, I’m going to almost bet that it will not be the greatest for encoding, so I will save that for the iMac.
Toss in my iPhone and there you have it! I’m all Mac. Only took me 5 years to get here too!
Back to back Sunday Posts? I know that’s never happened before and there is a very good reason for that. But first.
Recent addition to my quiver is the 13″ Macbook Air. I looked really hard at the 11″, aka the iPad Pro, but decided the larger screen and SD Card reader were a worthwhile $100 upgrade. Timing couldn’t have been better either as I picked it up barely 24 hours before I had an event to cover with a fair bit of travel. Here are a few quick notes.
Fast – Did I say fast? Yes, fast. The best way to describe how fast is by using iPhoto. On my 13″ Air, from click to fully loaded is less than 2 seconds. On a brand new 13″ Macbook Pro (with roughly the same number of photos) from click to to fully loaded was 12 seconds. The speed makes itself known everywhere too.
Battery life – I’m not sure about how long it will actually last, but I think the 7 hours claimed is pretty close to being accurate. Not to mention, when the lid is closed, this baby is sleeping and sleeping hard! Over night battery useage with the lid closed so far has been zero.
Portability – It’s not as light as the 11″, but close enough. And it’s thinner than my iPhone. Yet, it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap.
The Screen – Something you don’t notice right away, but after you use it for a bit, you start to notice that the screen on this is pretty great.
Comments are open if you have any questions about the Air.
And, for the first time, really, I actually used my iPhone during an event. Now that I’ve had it for a few months and have my groove down, it’s the perfect device for that kind of work. I was able to do things mobile that I always had to rely on external devices to do. For the first time I went to an event with only 3 devices (and it could have been two); an iPhone, my Canon DSLR and Macbook Air.
I’m excited to see what I can really do with these in the field this year!
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