What would you buy that was "refurbished"

I've been shopping for a new TV lately (don't worry there will be more
to come on that in a later post I'm sure) and a lot of of online deals
are around for refurbished product. I started wondering what I would
buy that was refurbished and whether the risks of failure are higher
or not with a refurbished product (especially something predominantly
electronic). My first thought is that something that has Bern repaired
once is likely to have undergone closer scrutiny and therefore less
likely to fail. That said however, my Xbox 360 is staring down the
barrel of it's 3rd RROD and would tend to suggest otherwise.

I don't have a conclusion but would love to find some data on the subject. .

Sent from my iPhone

An actual lunch break

I know this is my 3rd blog post in two days, what is going on.

My last project has been pretty flat out with plenty of late nights, early mornings and weekends spent working away. It's very much the culture of my workplace and I'm working toward changing that starting this week by actually taking lunch breaks, rather than just grabbiong something and heading back to my desk.

So as I took a break I left my phone on my desk, took the iPad packed with weeks of missed articles and sat down for lunch.

It's such an occasion I thought I'd post about it.

Sent from my iPad

The death of Foxtel (at my house)

Last month after much deliberating I decided to drop my foxtel subscription. This was probably a long time overdue as almost everything we were watching was from abc kids or was on the AppleTV. With the recent addition of atvflash making it vey simple to add DVDs I already owned to my instant access library the foxtel iQ2 was lucky to get turned on.

With my subscription dropped I've moved the funds normally allocated to that to iTunes vouchers (either US or AUS) hopefully when they are on sale. The reality of this is that $100+ per month equates to more than we can watch in a month even at the sometimes inflated iTunes prices for shows. I'm still running on the $100 US credit I bought 2 months ago and there are plenty of episodes of Stargate: Universe or DollHouse to go. The key for me however is having the US account not only for the additional content available but also for the availability of TV in HD which the AUS store doesn't offer.

The only real loser in the whole equation are the lifestyle watchers in the house due to the lack of shows on iTunes. I have a cunning plan however to enlist the help of a certain relative currently in the UK and setup another account with access to all the Channel 4 like 'location location location' and still be ahead of my foxtel subscription cost.

It is annoying that all this content isn't available on each store and it's yet another reason why it's easier to be a pirate than actually purchase digital media. It's something that the digital distributers need to address if they ever have a hope of reducing the piracy levels.

Sent from my iPad

Would I buy another 360?

So I was playing some Battlefield: Bad Company 2  last night (my current shooter of choice) and my Xbox 360 started locking up. It's a behaviour I've seen before, just before it started giving me the RROD (or NRROD E74) error. After a few more lock ups I gave up and decided to catch up on some more TV.  Today it started me thinking, my warranty is all but expired would I be bothered getting another 360 if this one died? I know there is the new Xbox 360 Elite Slim Console is available with better cooling and whisper quiet fans, but would I bother supporting the console again after 2 RROD incidents.

I still have the Wii which is actually getting more gaming time as the littleone is quite the fan of Mario Kart and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (commonly referred to as "Wah Hah"). And while I'd miss the FPS Gaming (the main reason the 360 gets switched on) there area a few new Wii titles, like Golden Eye Wii and Metroid: Other M, that could go some way to filling the void.

It's only really a musing at the moment as my 360 hasn't actually died yet but given the signs it's looking likely.

Maybe it's time to dust off the DS and pick up Puzzle Quest 2 or the new Dragon's Quest, it's been a while since I've play any decent RPGs. There is also Monster Hunter 3 and Fire Emblem that can more than consume my gaming time as well. It's just a pity that Nintendo is still to implement some good online co-op or multiplayer experiences.

AppleTV and atvflash the first month (part 2)

Deciding on exactly how I was and should store all the media and make it accessible to the appleTV (and hopefully the other MacBook and iDevices) should have had more thought before I lobbed headlong into the setup of the system.

In the end I have a NAS that both serves as backup and streamer for all the iTunes content which hasn't changed. It's in the use of local storage and external that it all started to go a little crazy. Originally with the rush of blood of increased capacity, I could and did add external USB drives and move my apple storage. However my first choice of drive was non powered and turned out to just get too hot all the time. Then (after another lengthy syncing process) i moved to a mirrored 2tb USB option which worked well except for the power management settings which turned the drives off when not being used which only served to confuse the poor appletv every time it tried to access it.

In the end the best solution (and current option) was to leave the main apple storage internal and managed by the iTunes sync and add the external drive for all the DVD backups and access them through nitoTV. This is working quite well although I chose to reorganize the derive format aft the initial media scan which caused me more grief. The media system recognized the drive but was horribly confused when the partitioning was different to the original config. Every time I scrolled passed the menu it crashed the appletv. After some creative telnet manipulation I managed to restore the setup and the system is running fairly smoothly now.

The new features and extra storage are fantastic but there are a few lessons to be learnt in planning the drive layouts well in advance of flashing your appletv.

Sent from my iPad

AppleTV and atvflash the first month (part 1)

I'd like to be writing this covering all the awesomeness of the
appletv after it's smooth update to atvflash but sadly it hasn't
really worked out like that.

To be fair I don't think it's entirely the fault of atvflash I think
it's starting to get on a little and the constant life on at
reasonably high temps of the media cabinet are taking their toll. That
combined with it's recent role of toy car circuit aid hasn't helped
either. I think the extra load of atvflash have just been a bit much
for it.

Having said that now it's mostly setup it's running smoothly again and
hopefully won't be too many more hiccups.

The biggest lesson learn is planning (which really should have been
obvious given I'm always going on about it at work). Many if the
issues and much of the time could have been avoided by having a clear
setup in mind before reallocating external storage for the 4th time.

Back to the setup though, the main reason for going to atvflash in the
first place was to give me a good solution for playing DVD backups.
With a little set of hands in the house it's a dangerous place for
physical media and now running a bluray player it's a very long time
from startup to movie which can be hazardous when trying to satisfy
the content demands of a sub 2yo. I could have taken the option to
convert to mp4 but my main machine is a G5 iMac and the processing
time for an average movie can be in excess of 25hrs vs 25min for a
straight DVD backup. There are the obvious size savings when using
h264 but given the cost of storage and the ability to expand the
appletv via USB there seemed to be no reason to waste processing
cycles on space saving.

It was the storage setup that ultimately caused all my hassles but
that will have to wait for part 2

Sent from my iPhone