Back to the US: Media controller?

I've gotta start thinking about what we're gonna do about a media controller once we've settled in the states. I already have a projector, so we're covered for wide screen movies for the time being. We'll need something for everyday viewing and I'm thinking that'll be an iMac 24" with an Elgato DVR attached to it. Can we keep it in the living room for everyday use? I dunno. It won't be cheap either.

MarsEdit

Found an article on a really cool new product that brings blogging in-house. I'll have to check this later during my vacation to see if I can install it on my server and get it up and running as an experiment. I'm pretty happy with blogger.com and I haven't even used OSX Server's blogging capabilities at all.

ScreenRecycler

These guys are making software that will allow you to use another computer's monitor (via networking) as an extension of your own computer. Great concept. Will be useful with two laptops. Nice graphics guys. Looks like a six-year old drew your "recycle" logo.

More hard drive woes

Well. I've been juggling around my hard drives again. My older OWC Firewire drive has been making some loud noises. I thought it was the fan in the enclosure, but then I realized the 120GB drive doesn't have a fan! I don't even remember what year I bought the drive. It's definitely older than 5 years and I've been running it 24-7 over the last year and a half if not more. I lost it once during a power outtage here in Japan, but I was able to rebuild it...

I bought a 250GB drive here in Japan, but have had my own set of problems with that Buffalo enclosure. It would run way too hot and the drive would shut down. It wasn't any good for backing up my files to since it would automatically unmount during intensive drive activity.

So, I've taken the OWC drive off line, cracked the Buffalo case and now the drive enclosure running naked, but more reliably. I've begun to consolidate the OWC drive and a portable 80GB USB drive to the Buffalo drive and should be able to use that for my file storage. I'm left without a backup solution for my critical files, but I've done that before. It's not ideal, but I can't spend the money on another drive or enclosure that will only run on 100V.

What I really need is a MacPro! Then I could throw in all my drives into one happy place. Until then, I'll reclaim my old G4 PowerMac and get that thing running with Tiger Server when I return to the states.

I could also buy an enclosure back in the states for less than $50 from newegg.com. I would need Firewire and USB connections along with an internal fan. I'd hate to have heating problems again.

Juggling harddrives again

Well, I can't trust my OWC firewire drive anymore. It's a 120GB in an external enclosure I bought a while ago, I have no idea when. Recently it started to sound pretty loud, so I thought the enclosure's fan was cranking away, only to realize that it doesn't have a fan! The noise was the HD spinning up. Enough is enough!
I used to use it as network storage for all of our important files, so I move all that over to my Buffalo 250 HD. That drive had problems of it's own: over heating. It wasn't until I cracked the case open on that drive that it has begun to work reliably. It took me a while to figure that out as you can see.
Moral of the story... only buy enclosures with fan units on them.

Schwinn 2007 Campus Electric Bike

Dubhgan would probably get a real kick outta this. We had been talking about ebikes just after he arrived since he was getting a little tired of making a long commute from his house to his Japanese lessons every weekend. I don't know how many kilometers it is but it probably takes him about 35 minutes to bike each way in urban conditions.

Most of the systems around here use sealed lead acid batteries and cost in excess of US$1000. We looked at a few bikes made in the US and they were pretty pricey too, especially including the shipping.
This Schwinn might not offer a better solution, but it still looks like a cool bike. Interesting new battery technology and drive train. I actually can't tell how the electronic drive train works. Most ebikes have an obvious connection linkage with the manual drive train, but there's nothing to see from the photos on Schwinn's website.