Nerd Stalker

Download MP3 Apple Mini and Announcements / Microsoft Surface and Announcements Sorry, Microsoft Surface Users: No Google Search App For You http://is.gd/oWD080 With cash reserves dwindling, Nokia looks to raise $1 billion from bonds bit.ly/QYpy9F French media finds way to make money off of Google - make it a law bit.ly/S4oy5h via @arstechnica Uber Co-founder Garrett Camp's BlackJet is Uber for Private Planes http://dthin.gs/Rch66R Speed Round:  Waze Is The Only App To Gain Meaningful Marketshare After Apple Maps Fail, Onavo Finds http://tcrn.ch/QLm1eJ Amazon Pushes Kindle To Kindergarten Kids in U.S. bit.ly/RJVS4k via @FastCompany Get a copy of the entire Web bit.ly/R7DMoR FCC Updates Small-Business Tool for Fighting Cyber Threats bit.ly/Pki5aa via @SocialGreg @EntMagazine Tips of the Week: Chrome extension blocks political Facebook, Twitter messages with pictures of kittens. bit.ly/PSMsnX Our interview of @markwschaefer - Author of the best selling ...

I've rediscovered that when you go to any non apple store you get lots of misleading and incorrect answers to any mac related questions you have. So I'm at the point where I'm ready to connect the mini audio to my bose system. The mini has a optical out option, but the jack can be used for either optical or your regular 3/4" headphone jack. So I went to Radio Shack to look for a cheap optical to RCA cable as my old bose only takes RCA. Radio Shack tells me only the Apple store has such a cable, and that Apple likes to make things you can only get at the Apple Store (bs), I know they don't know what theyre talking about so i'm off to Best Buy. Best Buy tells me essentially the same crap so i'm finally off to the Apple Store. I park far far away from the Apple Store and make the trek, they tell me theres to such cable and that going optical to RCA makes no sense anyhow so I may as well go 3/4" to RCA. They show me the cable they have which sells for $30...

Ok so I went to the tiny apple store at the santa rosa mall (don't ask) and picked up my hdmi to svid cable. When I got back home that evening in sf I hooked it up and it worked instantly, I'm very impressed. Now I'm just shopping for a blue tooth keyboard and trackball, why a trackball? Cause using a mouse on the couch would be lame. Also still shopping for an external drive, was thinking of trying to replace the existing drive but it looks like a pretty giant pain in the arse to do, that and the fact it uses a notebook sata type drive, i'm still deciding on what to do. Frys sent me an email that my killer deal ram I already bought is out of stock, god they suck.

So the mac mini was delivered the next day i bought it via fedex even though i picked free shipping cause it was so close in Sacramento, kick ass. Problem is we were not home to receive it so I had to wait 2 days and got it today. I'm already cruising dealram to buy a couple chips to bump it up from 512k to 2gb of ram. I'm also having a distant thought of replacing the 80gb sata hd with something bigger. In the short term I'll buy or build an external giant drive. So I've been looking into the pvr solutions for the mini at first I was sold on the elgato solutions but after reading amazon reviews I'm gonna do more investigating. One big issue is that the remote that comes with the elgato will not control my directv box thus forcing me to use it like I was using my old vcr. That is keeping it on channel 3, telling the elgato to record at various times but selecting the shows via the directv box a bit of a pain but better than a monthly fee? not sold yet. Tivo is start...

Well I finally did it, I pulled the trigger on a computer to "build" a home theater personal computer (htpc). After a ton of research I finally decided to go with the Apple Mac Mini, comes with Leopard, remote, front row, etc. Reason is I want the family to have a really easy to use music, photo, and video viewer. I also plan to throw a giant usb 2 external drive on it then get some sort of pvr solution for it like that from Miglia or El Gato . I looked at buying or building a computer from scratch and throwing something on it, the front runner was Windows Media Center . But i've been running a very unstable xp box for years and as a result I've been pushed to Ubuntu Linux which is a fantastic desktop solution for me. Anyhow all the virus/trojans one can get so easy on windows is a challenge let alone how often one has to reinstall the os. I think windows mce was a bit more than my family needed although I will keep an eye out when the vista version is released but t...