avablog

We’ve been in Decorah since the 25th to celebrate Christmas with Leah’s family. Yesterday Leah, Ava, Georgie, and I drive up to Minneapolis to visit relatives and get Georgie a new computer at the Apple Store at the Mall of America. We’ll drive home sometime tomorrow and get ready for Everyone to come to our house this Sunday for New Year’s Eve dinner.

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In case any of you were getting sick of all the cute shots of Ava: Shot courtesy Apple’s Photo Booth software.

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These FedEx guys rock! China to Bumf*#k, U.S.A. in two days? El mundo es un panuelo, si?

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This computer will be a pretty big jump forward from my old machine, but for day-to-day use, there’s not much I’ll do with it that’ll take advantage of all it can do. Kevin tells me he’s been impressed by this computer’s immediate predecessor’s ability to quickly rip DVDs, but I don’t really rip DVDs. Perhaps I should start.

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Leah and I were sitting on the couch last night, watching TV and chatting idly about my crazy scheme to get a new Apple MacBook laptop and give my beloved 900MHz iBook G3 to Leah’s mom in an effort to bring her at least into the late 20th Century.

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I’m fairly excited about the weekend. First off, Leah and I are going to see The Departed on Saturday night. If it’s half as good as I’m expecting it to be, I’ll have a good time. But I’m really looking forward to working a couple “old” computers. One is an Apple iMac 400MHz DV SE, […]

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The Apple iTV, available Q107. Bah! Why does Steve hate me?

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What do you get when you put up to 2GHz of pure Intel Core Duo power, an iSight camera, Front Row, iLife ’06, and a 13-inch glossy widescreen display into a sleek case? More than you thought possible for less than you thought possible. Meet MacBook, starting at $1099.

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It was a busy one. Our friend Judy was in town to receive some instruction on using her new 15″ MacBook Pro. It sure is a dandy little machine. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Apple comes up with for the iBook replacement. Judy really caught on quick. She was coming from an old […]

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And Steve was still sporting a turtleneck (note the hole in his right shoulder).  Woz looks sleepy.

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In deference to my in-laws, most of whom have a fairly low tolerance for technology (with one notable exception), I don’t make too many computer-related posts on this blog. But Apple did something today that stands to change the way people buy and use personal computers, and that’s big news. Starting today, you can officially […]

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Rachel, you can stop reading now. I’ve been working with our family friend Judy to set her up with a new computer. We’ve been telling her for years that she needs to dump her pokey old Windows laptop and come on up to the Mac, but she only recently broke down. Her budget for the […]

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It’s time to dismantle my mom’s dead iBook.  We never did determine just what was wrong with it, so it’s possible that I could get a good HDD out of the thing.  At the very least, we’ll get a working Airport card (first gen); those are going for over $100 on eBay now.  The HDD […]

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Huge, huge entertainment industry news.  Keep an eye on how this changes the face of Apple’s video content offerings at the iTunes music store.

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There’s a story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today about Disney being in serious talks to buy Pixar.  This would be a huge win for Steve Jobs.  Absolutely huge.  And not just because it would make his stake in Pixar worth about $4 billion.  Consider the investment genius here, from the […]

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Mike Evangelist is writing a book about his time at Apple.  I mean, it’s just too close to Mac Evangelist.  I ain’t going to fault the guy his marketing skills. He has a good piece in the Guardian today about the behind-the-scenes preparation for a MacWorld keynote event.  Since I’m waist deep in MWSF hype […]

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I’ve let the last couple MacWorlds slip by without too much notice. I really haven’t been in the market for any new kit, and I didn’t have the time to play with it even if I did somehow manage to shop for it. But I’m pretty excited about this month’s show, mostly because of the […]

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When Kevin was in town this past weekend for our New Year’s celebration, I decided it might be a good time to upgrade Ubuntu on my PC (a PC which, I’ll note here, doesn’t get used a whole lot ). Kevin’s a real guru when it comes to this Linux stuff. And thank goodness, because […]

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I’ve always enjoyed Webcams. No, no, not THOSE Webcams. Just regular ol’ Webcams pointed at stuff like cubicles or busy intersections or someone’s Halloween decorations. They’re a great combination of technology and voyeurism. I bought an iSight camera not too long after they were introduced. At the time, I wasn’t sure of much more than […]

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Leah’s been beefing about the performance of the gallery since nicheplayer was moved over to the mini. From what I can determine, the slowdown is probably twofold. First, Gallery2 is a bit of a pig. It’s just slower than the 1.x versions. Second, the mini has a notebook drive in it, which runs at 5400RPM. […]

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