Second story on digg

Another of my submissions to Digg.com got promoted to the front page. Huzzah!

Insanity . . . subsiding

I'm not going trade my computer in. With the discount I would lose and the restocking fee I would pay, it would cost me around $300. I was already planning on upgrading my RAM (an extra gig rather than 256 MB) and when I need more hard drive space I'll get a USB 2 external drive. The processor speed bump was minor, the video RAM only matters in video games (which I don't plan to do much of) and the wi-fi isn't worth much when the computer is two feet from my ethernet switch anyway. So I'm going to keep my computer and continue to be very happy with it. The price for the older iMacs like I have has dropped to $1299, so I can get back the difference between that and what I paid. If you're thinking about getting a Mac, this is a good time to make the switch, whether you're getting the newest iMacs or you can find one like I have for $1299.

I think I'm going to be sick

Apple just upgraded their iMacs. For the same cost you can now get a computer with a faster proc, double the memory and hard drive (and video RAM), and a dual layer superdrive. Oh, I think I'm going to be sick. Excuse me.

Update: I read that if they upgrade a product within 10 days of you purchasing it, you're eligble for an exchange. I hope so. I would probably lose the 10% discount I had Friday, but this seems like a much better deal.

iMac

new computer boxI did finally make up my mind and end my search for a computer. I settled on an iMac G5. I bought it Friday night at the Apple Store in Kansas City. It just happened to be the release party for Tiger, the new version of the Mac OS, so the place was packed and they were giving scratch tickets at the door. A few people won an iPod or a laptop, but everyone else got 10% their purchase that night. That worked out very nicely for me. Here are some of the specs from my computer, if you're interested:

Monitor: 17" widescreen LCD
Processor: 1.8 GHz G5 600 MHz FSB, 512k L2 cache
Memory: 256 MB PC3200 DDR (soon to be upgraded to 1.25 GB)
Hard drive: 80 GB SATA (7200)
Video: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 64 MB of DDR SDRAM (AGP 8X)
Optical: 4X/8X/16X/8X/24X slot-loading Superdrive

There are more pictures in the gallery. So far I really like it. The Mac OS is very nice. I'm working on a new video of Emma, using the built-in iMovie, and I should be posting it online soon.

We're back

This website, along with all of brendoman.com and a great deal of our webhost, Vizaweb, has been down for about four days. There was a spam attack that caused our site to overload a server, so we got suspended. It took Vizaweb four days to get back to me and reenable our site. But we're working on protecting the site from spam attacks so this won't happen again.

Multi-player drawing.

Eric Deis - Beauty and Chaos Through Time and Space, which is a fancy name for a bunch of people drawing at the same time. Quite cool, though.

(via Digg.com)

Ready.gov visual aids

Ready.gov is a little Department of Homeland Security website that they whipped up to both prepare you for surviving an attack and scare the crap out of you. But they uses pictures throughout the page that can be much more fun if you add some captions.




After exposure to radiation it is important to consider that you may have mutated to gigantic dimensions: watch your head.

Estate tax

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the usually conservative editor-in-chief of US News and World Report, had an editorial this week about the estate tax. In the 2000 campaign Bush talked a lot about getting rid of this "death tax" which he claimed would put family farms and small businesses under. The funny thing is, that's not how it works. The first S1.5 million of an estate is exempted, and there are no examples of what Bush described ever happening. Bush and the Republican Congress began reducing the estate tax in the 2001 budget, and the House has a motion to repeal the tax altogether. This will cost close to a trillion dollars over ten years. Democrats have proposed a compromise that raises the exemption amount to $3.5 M per person. That sound more reasonable that repealing the tax. The article has more numbers and some good background on the issue.

Digg.com front page

It took me three tries, but I got a story onto the digg.com front page. I guess it's ironic that it would be a story about Linux when I'm about to switch to a Mac. But I don't think I'm really giving up on Linux. I'm still going to use it for my server, I'm still going to use the Linux-like stuff about the Mac OS, and I'll continue to test Linux distros. But some of the little annoyances about Linux are starting to wear on me. I think Ubuntu has just about reached the point that a basic user can install it and be good to go. But I'm not a basic user. I want to edit video, attach my digital camera, etc, and the Mac will make that easier.

Choosing a Mac

I guess I'm getting a little more serious about this now. Brendon, having made this switch recently, has some ideas for me. I'm thinking that my money might be better spent at a Mac store for a new Mac than on eBay for last year's model. A new Mac would get me more power, a better warranty, more choice in what I get, and the newest version of OS X. Now I've narrowed it down to three Macs:

  1. A Mac Mini as souped up as I can get it
  2. A mid-range G5 iMac
  3. The cheapest G5 PowerMac

I'm still open to ideas, especially from anyone who has made the switch or is familiar with Macs.

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