EEFY!  

Wow!! This guy’s insane!! I’m not sure if he’s all Parkour crazy, but it’s damn impressive. Read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour

Yesterday I went to the Apple Store to pick up a new toy. The Apple Magic Mouse. Surprisingly, they were sold out (outside of the one that I managed to find ungaurded on a table looking lonely… that now has a home). I read a few reviews before actually going ahead and buying the mouse, and most of them, if not all were favorable… except about the ergonomics…. which frankly, I don’t entirely agree with.

I use my computer pretty much 24/7 when I’m awake. The mouse is one of my most used things (as you can see if you ever look at my older track pad that has a few smooth spots in it where I’ve worn it down), so ergonomics are important to me, and if they were awful, I’d notice quickly, not?

I’ve been using the Apple Mighty Mouse (previous rendition of the Magic Mouse) for about a year and a half with little to no issues, and it’s got a similar form factor to the magic mouse. The big difference… I use a wrist guard protector thingie (Gel Pad) and honestly that makes a world of difference.

So far my experiences have been pretty good. I’ve added MagicPrefs and it’s given me a bit of funky functionality, but all in all it’s taken some getting used to, and now I’m really loving it. Swiping back and forth to go around in my browser is much more user friendly, and scrolling around the same way that I used to with the ‘ball’ on the magic mouse is also pretty damn awesome.

If i have any hiccups, I’ll blog about it, but for the time being, I doubt I’m going to. Oh, and something interesting that I discovered is that the mouse actually has a tactile service which covers more than 75% of the face (up till about the apple logo)… Wonder what they’ll add to this (gestures to unlock? gestures to reload a browser?)

UPDATE: I also forgot to mention Better Touch Tool, another great piece of software for multitouch

After a few weeks I’ve discovered that the better implementation of the two seems to be the PS3. Why? you may be asking yourself, but it seems to have implemented a better streaming method, as when my TWC Turbo (15Mbit burstable to 30Mbit) is playing up, or I’m downloading something for work, it seems to continue to chug along, where the TiVo doesn’t. Sadly, I’m also about to give up my TiVo for a shiny new DirecTV DVR (thanks to TWC’s ineptness. GO CUSTOMER SERVICE!).

So the time is now! We’ve got lift off! I’ve put the disk in, and given it a whirl. Honestly it was the simplest online streaming service that I’ve ever used (at least to get it up and going, and to navigate). Now that I have both devices activated (basically when you put the disk in, it gives you a code, you go to the site, put the code in, and wham)

On load (I’ve got 60+ titles in my streaming queue), it took a little while (but that could’ve just been timewarner). It was reasonably quick, and ended uploading them in no more than about a minute. The navigation using the video remote for the PS3 (standard Sony one) was seamless and easy.

All in all the quality was OK, but not amazing for HD/SD, the TiVo was actually a lot better at quality, but the interface was better with the Netflix disk. I’m eager to see what the software update brings over time

After looking around the internet, I found some video that’ll show you the way around (thanks to joystiq for the video)

So it’s coming… I’ll review it when it gets here :

So it’s coming, Netflix streaming on the PS3. For those of you who don’t have Netflix, or don’t know what it is:

Netflix was originally a DVD to your door rental service with no late fee’s and no shipping charges (simply your monthly charge and a website to queue things up). Over time they’ve started to move towards being more of a streaming service. After partnering with companies like Microsoft (for the Xbox360, and now the MediaCenter Edition of Windows 7) and TiVo, their streaming service has become hot news!

There were quite a lot of rumours as to why Sony didn’t want Netflix streaming on the PS3 (such as they have their own movie / series store, which is actually pretty awesome quality overall, just expensive). With the big jump that the Xbox360 had (Netflix, Last.FM, etc…) on the media centre role, and the recent price drop of the PS3 making it more accessible, this was only a logical step for the companies gaming console to start to make money (as the Ps2 did).

Interestingly there are two things to take away from this, Netflix is going to roll out streaming directly to the PS3 using BD-Live (Blu-Ray Interactive Internet Enabled Stuff), and then later there’ll be a software update to enable this (and possibly other things??). What’s interesting is that there are a LOT of internet enabled Blu-Ray players on the market that don’t support Netflix right now… also opening the market for other movie streaming services (Amazon, Blockbuster, etc…) which don’t have the same kind of penetration in the home as Netflix does. The real question is, did Sony drive the BD-Live delivery (they own Blu-Ray after all) or did Netflix drive it?

Here’s a few of the sites that have covered it:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/26/netflix-coming-to-playstation-3/
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/26/netflix-for-playstation-3-requires-a-disc-software-solution-com/
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/28/netflix-details-ps3-disc-distribution-for-november-confident/
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/26/netflix-ps3-disc-must-remain-in-system-until-2010-update/
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/26/netflix-is-coming-to-the-ps3/
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/10/netflix-streaming-coming-to-ps3-but-via-blu-ray-disc.ars
http://gigaom.com/2009/10/25/playstation-hooks-up-with-netflix-streams-follow/

P

So for work I’ve been investigating the use of a centralized unified configuration management tool for all *nix (and ESX) hosts throughout geo locations, the idea would be to actually ensure we had a unified configuration. Over time scope creep for things that you don’t actually log into, or as you move through a fast moving enviroment (like ours) things change, and there’s not the time to go back and fix this.

What I’ve been researching is essentially the way to define a role throughout our infrastructure for say RHEL5 Web Server, and then as soon as they deliver the server online, it checks in, and wham it’s got what it needs and then over time as we change things, it’s easily maintained. While investigating here’s an interesting video that’s come up, the people are:

• Igal Koshevoy of AutomateIt
• Brendan Strejcek of Cfengine
• Luke Kanies from Reductive Labs for Puppet
• Narayan Desai of bcfg2
• Adam Jacob from Opscode for Chef

While they don’t argue much, my honest opinions are that right now my favourite is Chef, their latest release removes the nasty openID requirement, which is GREAT. I’m not sure how well any of them scale at this time, but thus far my attempts with puppet have been little more than unfortunate failure, probably on my part, but nothing about it makes me want to rush forward. However while I’ve not given Chef a good and proper go, it’s got the most pleasant community, nicest site, and the fastest responses / releases I’ve seen of the lot!

I’ll update with things about my foray into Chef over the next few days.

Patrick

So, I’m going to be putting up two new blogs to detail my exploits in specific areas. One will be a round my exploits in learning to be a good cook, and the other will be around my exploits in all things virtual. The general format will be similar to Cody’s blog for the Virtualization blog, while the cooking/food related blog will generally simply be an exploit (or ‘meal’) per week, detailing issues I came up against, and how I got around them, as well as a final result (and judging from sometimes guest judges). We’ll see how it turns out

Patrick

Today starts the first day of the rest of my  life it’s my plan to go ahead and start changing some stuff that I’ve been planning on changing for a while. I’ve recently gotten married, and I’m happier than can be, but it’s time for me to fix some other things Fun time ahead…