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I've added a new page to my website:
http://www.johnmasone.com/computerparts/

It's all the random old computer parts I've been acquiring for years. Lots of it is pulled RAM from upgraded computers. Small stuff that no one can really do anything with. Well hopefully SOMEONE can do something with it, but I sure have no use for it. I'll be adding more as I get more stuff.

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Top: Apple PCI 10/100 Ethernet Card. Manufactured in 1997.

Bottom: Startech PCI 10/100 Ethernet Card. Manufactured in 2007.

Non computer people are probably thinking "OMFG the new one is so much smaller" while at the same time, computer nerds are looking at this and probably thinking "10 years and thats the only size difference. I hope the new one also plays DVDs or somethin"

Actually there are cards that are the same size as the new one, and do much more, 10x faster networking for example (gigabit). And Apple makes a usb ethernet adapters that is a spec even compared to this card.

In the end, the 2007 card simply can't be any smaller. The pins have to be where they are, the metal bracket has to be where it is, and they have to be connected with a piece of board strong enough that it won't snap off when you're trying to install it. But from a non-computer nerd point of view, it is cool how it's the exact same card, just way smaller.

Oh and also, the 2007 card runs about $7. However the 1997 card, which is also an Apple card, probably went for $500 at least.

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I shipped my new server off to my datacenter in Michigan today. FINALLY. I have been waiting for a SoftRAID update and Mac OS X 10.5.2 update for about a month. It was torture. But my server is finally off. It should be online in a few days, and by this weekend I should begin the fun process of migrating services from the old server to the new server. It actually WILL be fun and I can't wait.

The new server is faster than the old one (Dual 800MHz vs Dual 1000MHz), but it also has faster RAM and a faster system bus. Still not a huge update speed wise, but it is also running Mac OS X 10.5 Server, the old one is running Mac OS X 10.3 Server. So when you add in all of these factors, it's going to work out to be a much faster server. And the new software is going to make it much more capable and make it easier to manage.

Very exciting!

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Unfortunately, I had just enough time to mess up the site, but not enough time to fix it and make it not look like crap again. Ooooh well.

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I just read this article on MacNN:

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/10/02/betavoltaic.battery/

This totally blows my mind. They are working on batteries that will last for 30 years before being depleted. The batteries use radioisotopes, they are not radioactive, and infact aren't even hazardous, you can throw them away in regular household trash. Its amazing technology!

And think what this means for your devices! Your laptop computer. Your iPods. Your Cell phones. Your digital camera. Your remote control. All of it, it could all be powered by batteries that will essentially last forever. Batteries as we know them would be completely obsolete. I'm completely blown away by this technology, and by how close it may be!

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So the label writer I've been using is GREAT! You select 350 labels, hit print, and BAM. It spits out a constant, steady stream of labels. When its done you've got a huge pile at your feet. I highly recommend these things to anyone looking to buy a label writer of some kind. They work the balls. They're soo cool, I even video'd it printing a batch. I realize thats going overboard, but its my site so deal with it :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbllyeLfX-4

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Hey guess what. Since I redesigned this homepage to it's current look, comments haven't worked. It might have looked like they worked. You fill out the form, hit submit etc, but nothing would happen. I just never finished the system. But now I have. And i've included some nice anti-spam stuff too, so I should never get any spam comments.

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I finally got a new camera! My old HP camera is REALLY old. 2 megapixels, no zoom, 4 batteries, friggin huge size. Its what would classify today as a toy camera for kids. So I picked up a Nikon L12. This is one mean camera. Its tiny. Its screen is huge. It only takes two batteries. They seem to last forever. Its very light. It looks like a camera, not a happy meal prize. It takes 7 Megapixel photos. And shoots video at full 640x480 resolution at 30 frames per second. Thats full non-HD quality video. And I also picked up a 4 GB memory card for it. I've been playing around with it and it takes real nice photos so far. I want to try and find a nice case for it I can strap to the chest strap on my backpack, and I want to find a small, really light weight tripod so I can shoot some urban biking video :-) Its a real nice camera and I plan on getting a whole lot of use out of it.

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What's the fastest way to rip ~300 CDs? Is it one of those ridiculously over-priced robotic CD arms that loads a spool of CDs into a single CD ROM drive one at a time? Only if you are a fool. I have a better tool for the job. Rip 7 at once. Rip them as raw audio files at the Drive's maximum speeds. Then as a separate independent parallel process, encode the ripped audio into compressed formats (.mp3 or .m4a etc).

This awesome Drive Tower of mine started it's life as a Power Tower Pro with 2 CD Rom drives in it. Once I discovered a method for ripping from all drives at once, I filled it out to 4 CD Drives. I wanted more, so I took an old PC Tower and removed the metal caging for it's 3 optical drives and riveted it into the Power Tower Pro , so it had all 7 CD Rom Drives. This was all good and swell, but the Power Tower Pro case is a really ugly tower, and it's really not made to be moved easily. Plus its way too huge. Thats when one of my old Blue & White G3's caught my eye. Its much smaller, and has these great built in handles so I can move it around really easily. So I got to cutting again, followed by some more riveting :-) And when I was done, I had this crazy CD Ripping machine.

BTW, no, I don't have a ton of CDs, I do CD Ripping and iPod Loading for customers. And no, they aren't just lazy people. Some people have a life and don't have time to sit in front of their computer all day. Luckily I'm not one of those people ;-)

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The primary RSS feed for this web site is now up. You can check it out over in the right hand column. The primary feed is the one that sends out all the entrys. The comment feed will send out all new comments, but the comment system isn't in place yet so you'll have to wait a bit before the feed comes online.
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