Tuyen's Blog

The great Mac Mini home theatre experiment

Over the past couple of weeks, the components for my ultimate Mac Mini home theatre have slowly arrived. The main component - the Mac Mini - came first. It's the latest model (released March 2009) with the following specs:
 
2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB of RAM
120GB Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor
 
Got a great deal on eBay. About $600 for a barely used one plus the guy threw in a Western Digital 320GB external hard drive he used for Time Machine back ups. This exact same configuration through the Apple Store would have been $749 plus tax and that's without the external hard drive.
 
Since storage was going to be an issue, I also picked up a brand new Drobo for $335 (retails for $429). I had a spare 1TB hard drive lying around so I popped that in. I'll be adding more drives over the next few months - probably the eco-friendly Western Digital Caviar Green SATA drives. They come in 2TB, 1.5TB, and 1TB models and I'll pick whichever one I can get the best deal on. Great thing about the Drobo is that the drives don't have to all be the same size or model.
 
I first hooked up the Mac Mini to my 42" Panasonic Plasma (TH-C42FD18) via a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter. Then connected the audio via a 3.5mm to RCA cable (will do TOSLink when I have a better sound system). Flipped over to the second HDMI input on my TV and BAM! Got the Mac OS desktop. I'll do another post later on video quality, codecs, and the pros/cons of Front Row.

Tim Lincecum is so money

It's apparent that Tim Lincecum is the best pitcher in baseball today. A complete game 4-hitter with 0 ERs lowers his ERA to 2.30, just 0.16 behind Dan Haren, the NL leader. He also racked up 15 K's to extend his major league lead of 183. He's tied for 3rd with 11 wins, just 1 behind Matt Cain and Jason Marquis. Aside from the stats though, he's just dominating and confusing hitters. Granted, it's just the Pirates but any time you can rack up 15 K's against any major league team is an impressive feat. Let's hope he can duplicate today's magic against the Phillies on Saturday.

Whiners of the world unite! AT&T sucks...

Let’s all do what we can to ensure that happens — to ensure Apple gets the message. Every time there is one of these ridiculous AT&T failures, tweet about it, blog about it, write Apple about it, or scream about it. Do whatever you can, but don’t just sit there and take it any more.
via techcrunch.com

Just read this great article by MG Siegler over at TechCrunch. Basically, it's about how AT&T service stinks with the iPhone. By itself, this is not big news. Their service has stunk since the day I bought my first iPhone on launch day 2 years ago. What's great about the article is the above quote that rallies all iPhone owners to rage against the machine. If folks like Jesus Diaz had their way, we'd all just lie back and take it.