Pepino's Notes

I finally got an iPod two days ago. I was going to hold out till Apple came out with video iPods but with the new low prices, I coudn’t resist getting one now. I got the 60 GB model which has a color screen. It is great to be able to bring my photos around with me. I like that feature a lot. I also got the Monster Cable cassette adapter for the use in the car which works and sounds great.

But the thing I am really thrilled about it are Podcasts. FM radio really sucks now. It was so good in the seventies and still good in the eighties. The nineties sucked though and it only got worse. A few large companies are controlling almost all the stations now so you get fed bland and boring radio. Safe radio. Now, with Podcasts, you have freedom.

FREEDOM.

I love that word. With Apple’s smarts the iPod is now like a Tivo for radio. You can listen to what you want when you want. And the choice of what to listen to is fantastic. I can now listen to the BBC on my way to work or I can listen to what Adam Curry, the proclaimed father of Podcasts, has to say. Awesome.

Here is a much better write-up of falling in love with a new iPod. A friend of mine, Eric, just got an iPod recently and also wrote on his blog I heart my iPod. Not always a work-safe site though. You were warned.

From Apple Matters. Apple(R) today announced that in just two days iTunes(R) customers have subscribed to more than one million Podcasts from the new iTunes Podcast Directory. “With the release of iTunes 4.9, listeners are voting with their ears,” said Adam Curry, co-founder of the PodShow Podcast Network.

Wow.

We were done before midnight too! Other good news too. I found out my friend Thuan now knows how to configure Cisco routers. Kewl. I have an unused Cisco 2620xm at the school which used to be used as the router from the T1 but has been replaced with a Cisco 1721 which we got when I changed service providers from MCI to SBC. Anyway, with different Cisco IOS software we can now use the 2620xm as a VPN/Firewall instead of our current crappy D-Link.

My Blogger site will probably not get much action until school is underway. I really only have it up to be able to test items that we might be using at the school. I’ve been active in my personal WordPress blog in the meantime. Cheers.

Large purple flower
Originally uploaded by Pepino1976.

Just posted some new pictures to my Flickr page. They were taken in the school garden where I work this morning. This is also a test of my first real post from Flickr to my WordPress blog.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

My friend and former colleage from Scient, Thuan Ngyuen, will come and help me setup and install the IBM server tomorrow. I’ll be able to pick up a few pointers from him and this will help insure that it is set up correctly. I am mostly Macintosh oriented even though I am getting more and more Windows machines to support. Anyway, if all goes smooth and the server performs good, I’ll be ordering another one of the same for some other chores.

Woohoo! The new Windows server I had to get for the school arrived today. An IBM x306 server which will run Windows Server 2003. I needed it to run certain apps which my Apple Xservers (one G4 and one G5) do not run. This should be interesting. I plan to configure it this Saturday.

I love WordPress but I am having trouble finding a theme I like. The one that interests me the most, Grubby Slipcovers, while displayed on various theme sites, is not available for download because the site it is on is no longer available and returns a 404 Not Found error. The other theme I like is Zig Zag but it does not validate as valid XHTML because of various errors but seems to display fine. I suppose I can eventually look at the code and correct it. Hmm.

GmailStatus. Don’t know why I’ve waited so long to start using this, but it is great for checking my GMail account. It puts a small icon in the Finder Bar which I have set displaying my unread message count. If I hover the mouse over it I can see how much space I am using of my current 2 gigabyte allotment. Super cool.