Nothing like a candy cane martini. Happy Holidays and Merry Xmas!

Last days at Miramar

Some seals woke me up as I was packing to leave Miramar.

Windows 7 RC on a $200 Acer NetBook

I really wanted to see what I could do with a NetBook. Acer is selling their old model (Acer Aspire One AOA150-1742 Refurbished Netbook Computer - Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz, 1GB DDR2, 160GB HDD, 8.9” WSVGA, Windows XP Home) for $200 refurbished and I bought one. I installed Windows 7 RC on it and am currently using that as my primary computer. It's looking pretty good.
Obviously I expected Windows 7 to be better than the 7 year old XP that was on the NetBook, but what I did not expect was how much faster Windows 7 is and how well it works on the Netbook. And some of the UI components are very interesting, almost at the MAC level.
Some of the NetBook hardware is strange, the touch-pad being the most ugly, but I am using a bluetooth mouse all the time, so I can avoid that. The screen size (1200x600) has not been a problem so far and the weight and convenience of the Netbook is great. Battery life is 2.5 hours and will be a problem eventually, so if I were to keep this I would invest in the 8 hours battery.

Using Acronis to add harddrive space for better laptop performance

I always travel with a small computer, and I used my Lenovo (IBM) X60 when I travelled around the world back in 2004. It survived a drop from the Great Wall as well as cracks in the armor and screen.

Performance was getting bad, mostly because of a 60GB small 2.5" drive and no real swap area. I decided to add the 7500/320GB drive from centralcomputers.com ($60, a bargain).

The only problem was how to get the existing configuration onto the new drive. I knew that Ghost from Symantec could do the job, but was unwilling to deal with software from Symantec as it is cumbersome to install and remove and always seems to take over your entire PC.
I googled other alternatives and found two I looked at:

1. DriveImage XML (free)
2. Acronis True Image (free 15 day trial)

I tried with the free option (very slow btw.) and found that it just does not work. The drive would not boot after the transfer, so I dropped that (after the fact I found other claims to the fact that it does not work).

Acronis is another story. Great sw, easy to install, easy to remove. No reboots needed.
I mirrored the two partitions from the old 60 GB drive to a harddrive on another PC (using a USB/SATA connector), connected the new 300 GB drive, formatted it, mirrored the partitions from the PC to the new drive all using Acronis True Image. Very easy to use..

One thing I had to do after the transfer: 1. Expand the small (60 GB) partition that was copied from the old drive, to the 300 GB drive.

Done; I now have a much faster laptop. And room to grow.

Afternoon double espresso and a leftover scone at the local Peet's in HMB :)

I've been looking for a solution to stream music around my house. I have all my music, podcasts and playlists on a PC, so when my old battery operated radio died last week, I went looking for a small easy to use device that would wake me up to digital 'Klassisk DR (Denmarks Radio 24 hour Klassical music streamed over the internet).

I found this design by Tangent-audio, a company from Denmark (too close to B&O). It streams ~11,000 radio stations from around the world, allows me to pre-select the radio stations on their website, connects to my PC for Music, even connects to a Upnp server AND has a radio.

It even looks nice. Easy decision...

Aprils Fool's Day Hoaxes

Every time Google releases a new feature we all look at it. This one was too obvious, mostly due to it mentioning April 1. But the eflux capacitor was a nice touch.

Made me go to the Top list of April Fool's Days Hoaxes. I really like 3,7,8 and 10.

Reflections In Amsterdam

Some really, really cool kids hanging out in a side street in Amsterdam.

Bangkok temple

One of the many spectacular temples in bangkok

This is a picture of an old bike I saw floating in the Amsterdam canals. The city is crowded with bikes and some are doomed to end in the canals. I love the red garbage bag next to the rusty bike and the reflection of the trees in the water.