OSX Hard Drive Clicking

After buying a new Mac Mini, I quickly became aware of a rather annoying clicking sound. Imagine sitting in a quiet room, working silently, then hearing a soft clicking sound. Imagine this sound happening seemingly randomly, at a frequency of about once every 5 minutes. It drove me up the wall.

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E-book Readers

Yesterday I was out partaking in some fine English brown ale and Chicago deep dish pizza, when the waiter noticed me reading something on my iPod Touch. He started asking the usual “Is that a Touch or an iPhone?” and “Do all iPhone apps work on the Touch?” questions, which I’ve grown used to at this point. Then he surprised me, by telling me about the Kindle app for the iPhone, and generally gushing about the Kindle hardware. I ended up discussing some of my first-hand experiences with various e-book readers, and eventually we subsided into trading favorite authors.

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Handbrake encoding, and a rare Quicktime crash

I compiled the latest Handbrake source code a few weeks ago and started testing it out on both my Mac and PC. I’ve got a collection of video that I’d like to have in H.264 format, and I want the files to work on the iPod Touch, iPhone, stream to the Xbox 360, and maintain enough quality to look good on a 40″ television.

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Radio Love-Hate

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with radio for years. On the one hand, I love not having to choose the next song. If you’ve been in the car with me and my iPod on shuffle play, you’ll often see me skip dozens of songs until I pick one that interests me. Having that ability taken away from me is cathartic, and I’m happier for it. I also love that the radio will make me listen to new music I haven’t heard before. It broadens my musical horizons, and introduces me to some great bands.

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Audio Hardware

I remember my father’s 8-track player, and the stack of music that dwarfed the workbench in the garage for years after the advent of cassette players.

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