Showing the size of the iPad compared to the case

I was down my my local MicroCenter last night and figured I'd stop-in and see what they have. Those of you with Fry's stores nearby don't know how lucky you are. MicroCenter comes close, but still...

Anyway, I wanted a carrying case for my new iPad and I had read that you could use the netbook carrying cases and save quite a bit of money. So, once in MicroCenter, I went to their Apple section and grabbed an "iPad case" and proceeded to the massive shelf piled with dozens and dozens of netbook/laptop cases.

After a bit of digging and thinking about what I wanted, I avoided one of the fully featured "mini laptop" bags as that defeats the purpose of the iPad. Plus, there aren't any ports/etc. on the iPad to speak of, so I figured there'd be little reason to haul a bunch of crap around in the bag.

Thus, I opted for a more slimline type sleeve/case. There were several to choose from in the 7-10 inch "netbook" range which would work for the iPad. However on my way to the checkout, I noticed one last case that made me dump the neoprene sleeve - and it was $5 cheaper!

I found a black nylon Case Logic 7-10.2" netbook case with bonus hard drive case. The actual case the iPad goes into is made from a tasteful black nylon cloth (like a suitcase) with a couple "leather" accents which actually look decent. The case is lightly padded (probably 1/8" or so foam) and almost fits as though it were made for the iPad. It's a bit taller than the iPad (maybe 0.75 inches) but nothing really noticeable. And, even with the InCase rubber protector I've got on my iPad, you can easily slide it into the case because the zipper goes almost all the way around the top and one side.

The bonus hard drive case I figured would be handy to hold the iPad power adapter and USB cord.

Best of all this case was $14.99 retail at MicroCenter and it's even cheaper at Amazon ($12.99 as of writing this)! For comparison, the cheap neoprene iPad sleeve I was using for sizing in the store was $29.99!!!

I'm very happy with this case, it's fit, and just how it feels. With the solid, weighty iPad inside, it fits in your hand like a small text book. Oh, and it's about as thick as the iPad AC adapter when zipped shut with the iPad inside.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and bought a real NAS for use at home. I decided on the QNAP TS-219P for a number of reasons I'll discuss in the post. Also, I have plenty of screenshots showing the QNAP UI and a couple simple benchmarks comparing the performance to a USB disk attached to an Airport Extreme.

When it comes to a home server, I've usually gone the "cheap" route. That means building my own server from old PC parts, setting up my own OS, and maintaining it myself. I've had good luck with this and certainly learned a ton about FreeBSD, Linux, and other stuff doing this.

But, the problem is that those old PCs take up space, make noise, and eat electricity.

One day, I decided that I was tired of paying the electric bills and having that big mid-tower server sitting around in my way. After all, for a home "server" I just need network storage to dump files on for the most part. Sure, it's nice to have an SSH server or the occasional thing like that, but not critical compared to the storage component.

That's why I've been using a Guardian MAXimus hardware RAID 1 USB disk attached to my Apple Airport Extreme (AEX) router. The Guardian Max gave me the mirrored RAID I wanted for my network storage since the AEX doesn't do anything with RAID at all.

Since I had the router turned-on all the time, attaching a disk to it for network use seemed like a good solution. I could ditch that huge PC and just have the AEX "airdisk".

This worked fine for about a year, and then I got fed-up with the slow Time Machine backups and the fact that the AEX router spins the disks down after some ridiculously short period of time like five minutes. Every time I tried to access the disk, I had to wait for them to spin up and become available. Then, once they were up, the performance was, uhh, shall we say "lackluster" at about 3-5 MB/sec.

One day, I stumbled across the QNAP line of dedicated NAS (Network Attached Storage) appliances. These were exactly what I wanted. Small, very low power, handled RAID, and could even do stuff like run SSH servers, websites, and other stuff. And, the key thing: they were reasonably priced (note I said "reasonably" not "cheap").

So, after much research and basically finding only good reviews of the QNAP series, I opted for the $400 TS-219P. This toaster-sized box features two hot-swappable bays and an ARM processor. The OS is Linux under the hood, but the appealing thing after adminning my own boxes was NOT having to admin this one! It is basically a plug-and-chug storage appliance.

Today, after upgrading to the QNAP, my Time Machine syncs are super snappy, I can set the disk spin-down time, and my direct SMB transfers are in the neighborhood of 25-32 MB/sec. Much better! The QNAP works with my Mac, Windows and Linux machines for storage, plus it provides an SSH tunnel server for private surfing on the road. I can also use it to share files with family members using a web interface rather than FTP or something like that. I generally don't even log into the admin interface for weeks at a time -- because the QNAP just sits there, day in and day out, doing its thing exactly as I want it to. It gives me no hassles - I get enough of those from my day job!

Anyway, I wanted to provide some screenshots showing the UI as well as a couple simple benchmarks using Xbench.

First, here is the old benchmark using the Airport Extreme router with the disk attached. Note that the hardware RAID1 enclosure was not the limiting factor in any way:

Now, here is the new and improved benchmark using the QNAP on the same network/etc.:

Much better, huh?

Here's a random screenshot I took to show how the QNAP appears in Winbloze since the rest of my screenshots are taken from OS X:

QNAP includes a program called the QFinder which locates the NAS when first run and allows you to configure it even if you don't know the IP address/etc.

Next up, we see the pics of the actual QNAP administration UI. I went through every menu so that you can see what the various options are. I forgot the System Administration menu, so that's last. I was too excited setting-up my new toy and taking all the screenshots was getting tiresome. Note the nerd goodliness of iSCSI, remote syslog, etc.

Well, I hope that all this work answers a question someone has or helps them decide whether a QNAP NAS is the right choice or not. If you buy one (or not), I'd appreciate your using the link to Amazon below as a means to say "thanks for all the screenshots"!

"TS 219P- NAS (Network Attached Storage) Superior Performance All-in-One Server with iSCSI for SOHO and Home Users" (Qnap Systems)

"TS 439 Pro- Turbo NAS (Network Attached Storage) - Superior performance server with iSCSI for Business" (QNAP Systems)

P.S. this is my first post written with Ecto. I had to do some stuff manually in WP that I couldn't figure-out in Ecto. Let me know if you have any trouble.

The Apple Safari logo

Mac OS X has a built-in tool called Preview that is lightning fast. Compared to Acrobat, Preview is a Ferrari while Acrobat is a Yugo. Thus, I prefer to open my PDF files in Preview and not inside a bloated web browser. I also like to save them, as I often will save a PDF and look at it later.

Until recently, I have been using FireFox on my Mac. But, due to some crashing, slowness in the Gmail RSS reader, etc. I have been trying to use Safari 99% of the time. So, while I had an add-on in FireFox to force downloads of PDF files, I couldn't seen an obvious way to do this in Safari.

After a bit of digging around, I found this little gem. As of this writing, I'm using Safari 4.0.4 on Snow Leopard 10.6.2, but the tip has worked for years, so it should work with most other combinations.

Here's how you stop Safari from opening PDF files inside the browser and instead save them to the disk:

1. Quit Safari
2. Open a Terminal (in Applications -> Utilities)
3. Paste this into the Terminal defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES
4. Restart Safari

It's that easy! Now, when you click a pdf link, the file will be downloaded to your normal download location on the disk and you can open it with whatever tool you want.

NOTE: This will NOT work with the Windows version. There probably is some similar tweak you can do, but the above tip uses OS X specific commands!

The problem is puzzling and annoying. You try to File->Quit in Leopard's Mail application and it just sits there. If you wait long enough, it might quit on its own, but typically, you must do a Force Quit.

I tracked the issue down to something to do with IMAP accounts. When I had Mail configured for only POP access, it would quit on-demand any time. However, as soon as I added just one IMAP account, Mail again refused to exit cleanly. Clearly, there's something wrong with Apple's IMAP implementation in Leopard and they aren't exactly jumping to fix it.

Anyway, I found a "fix" that worked for me. I now have six IMAP accounts setup in Mail and when I try to quit, it exits within a second or two, cleanly. This may or may not work for you, and make sure you have a backup just in case -- although this shouldn't cause any problems, you know the standard "do this at your own risk" disclaimer applies.

1) Exit Mail and make sure it has fully quit (use Force Quit if required).
2) Run these commands from a Terminal:


sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum;
sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum index;
sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum subjects;


You can just cut and paste the lines exactly as-is.

3) Open Mail, wait for any of the initial inbox checking to complete, and test quitting.

I suspect that if you have lots of mail stored on the server that it will still take a few seconds to shut everything down, but in my case with very little existing mail, Mail now closes in about 1-2 seconds.

Hopefully Apple will release an update at some point in the near future, but there are reports of this happening all the way from Leopard 10.5.1 through the 10.5.4 that I'm running.

Please post below if this helps you so everyone can gain from the experience.

One of the great things about Apple's OS X is that it's based upon a BSD Unix foundation which makes it very easy to create scripts using Perl, Python, Ruby, AppleScript, or any number of other languages. However, while this is great for people who are comfortable with using a shell commandline, scripts like this generally aren't ideal for the typical user who wants everything done via a GUI.

I found a program called Platypus which creates standalone applications from your scripts which can be executed in the typical manner that you'd expect from any other application. Platypus lets you package artbitrary files, set associated file types, and do other things normally associated with a full-blown compiled app, but written instead in Perl or whatever you prefer. What a great way to create quick programs without delving into Objective-C or anything like that!

Platypus is completely free and open-source, although you might consider making a donation to further the development of the tool (links are on his site). Some of the features include:

* Supports shell scripts, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Expect, Tcl, AppleScript
* Supports arbitrary interpreter -- thus support for any script type
* Executing scripts with root privileges via Apple's Security Framework
* Drag and drop files, which are passed to the script as arguments
* Graphical feedback of script execution: progress bar or text window with script output
* Can create applications which run in the background
* Sophisticated app bundle configuration for associated file types, identifier, version etc.
* Graphical interface for bundling support files with script
* Built-in script editor, or linking with external editor of choice
* Set own application icon or select from presets
* Command line tool for automating script application bundling

Grab Platypus and package your interpreted scripts for easy distribution and execution on OS X! If you need further help, there is a two-part tutorial on using Platypus (part 1, part 2).

With my Tivo (Series 1) yearly subscription about to renew, I was hoping that Apple would grace us with an Intel-based Mini with built-in video capture, thus allowing DVR functionality when combined with FrontRow and the Apple remote.

Alas, what was announced is just a plain ole' Mac Mini, except now it's based on the Intel Core (single core or dual, your choice) and does include FrontRow and a remote. Why couldn't they include the capture functionality and complete the package??? I guess it's another year with my old but beloved Tivo...

Apple also announced a boom-box type gizmo that you can plug your iPod into. This would be really cool to have at work, if I could listen without headphones, but considering that there have been 3rd party amplified speaker bases available for the iPod for some time, I don't find this announcement very exciting.

You may have heard that PortalPlayer has added Bluetooth and WiFi support to it's latest chip (which is the heart of the iPod), and therefore, rumors are that the surprise Apple conference on 2/22 is going to be the announcement of BT/WiFi enabled iPods. However, there is a less ground-shaking announcement: they are opening the first Apple store that's open 24 hours per day, seven days per week in Manhattan.

It's been many years that the "experts" have been predicting the demise of Apple against the Wintel monopoly. However, IMO, the opening of this store indicates that quite the opposite is true. Apple has become the choice of the real nerd crowd, due to its use of the FreeBSD core system and the fact that real nerds don't mind paying a bit for quality. With the huge success of the iPod, I think that the "halo effect" is going to cause a significant surge in sales of Apple computers to people who have enjoyed the start-to-finish simplicity of the iTunes/iPod combination. The recent Intel switch lends "credibility" to the people who might have been on the fence and gives the haters one less thing to cite in their poor accusations that Apples are too expensive. Anyway, back to the story - if the demand for computers and iPods did not exceed the normal 12-hour retail store business day, they would not be opening a 24/7 store. Time to go look at AAPL stock now that it's come-down in the past couple weeks...

It's incredibly hard to find a good e-mail client. I read something at one time (perhaps from the mutt authors) that "all e-mail clients suck, ours just sucks less." That's very true IMO and it's even harder to find one that's decent and free (I do like mutt for text mail BTW ). Thunderbird aims to solve both issues.

I've been using the 1.5 beta for some time now and found it pretty good. It's not significantly changed from earlier versions, at least from my admittedly basic use, but it does appear to be stable and fully usable. The release version appears identically usable (so far).

For those who don't already know, TB is a non-nonsense, basic mail reader, which is what many people prefer. Mail readers that try to do everything, and end-up doing it poorly like Outlook (jeez, the Options settings alone in Outlook 2003 are hideously organized!) are a dime-a-dozen. TB just does mail and usenet, and does them well -- although with the built-in extension support, I'm sure you can force it to do other things if so desired.

Improvements in 1.5 include:

• Binary patching, like FireFox 1.5 does. Means smaller downloads and faster updates than before.
• Interactive spell checking, similar to the red underlining that MS Word does.
• Various security updates, both for the program itself and also helping to expose phishing scams.
• Other goodies listed here.

I have no reason not to suggest that you try it out if you use Outlook Express currently. It will import your Outlook Express settings, contacts and mail effortlessly while providing you with a significantly improved security framework that does not encourage spyware, suckware, and malware to enter your machine.

If you're an existing Thunderbird user, I also recommend upgrading to 1.5 based upon the experiences I've had. You will likely find it very comfortable to use if you liked earlier versions.

Looks like there will also be a MacBook Pro laptop model with integrated iSight camera. It will also be based upon the "Core Duo" (dual-core Pentium-M "Yonah"). Should be interesting! I'm not sure if I'd spend the money on revision 1, as Apple typically does alot of tweaking after finding the problems with rev1 stuff, but hopefully there will be some thorough reviews from people who actually buy them