I’ve always been a desktop guy. I have owned laptops but for some reason, I was always rather grounded to my desk. That is until recently… I went away on a trip and I had our back up laptop with me for work and well… it was sloooow. Bryci has her kick ass Macbook pro and I was using the laptop we use for B’s cam show broadcasts… so it’s your every day $500 dollar range laptop, nothing crazy.

On my desk right now as I type this, I have a collection of geek happiness that is here to make my job easier, my life easier I suppose. I am always interested in what other people use for their systems, what their desktops look like etc. I remember coming across blogs and sites where guys would post their set ups and sometimes it gave me new ideas foe the direction I wanted to move in, or at the very least, stuff to look at. With that said… I’ll try and better illustrate the whole desktop v laptop dilemma.

(Mac on left, Win7 on right, both with apple extended keyboards and Logitech G9 mice)

On my left, I have my Apple Mac Pro (8 core (2.8 GHz), 10 gig ram, 4 tb of storage + 2 tb of scratch storage for HD video encoding).  On my right, I have my windows 7 machine. It’s comprised of Intel i7 920 quad core (2.67Mhz). 6 gigs of ram, and 3 tb of storage and 1 tb of scratch space for Photoshop etc.

(drives sit in waiting for me to fill them with goodness)

Both machines have their own Apple 30+ screens for large desktop space, easier to work with etc. Both rock 2560 x 1600 screen resolution @ .25 dpi which is awesome for graphic work/hd video editing. I use the Win7 machine prob 90% of the day, the Mac is used for video editing almost entirely.

(i7 box on left and Mac Pro on right with Jack in the background sleeping)

It’s not that I think Win7 is better than OS-X, truth is I think OS-X is *much* stronger, I just am more used to Win over OS-X and most of my software is Win based. I used to have bootcamp on the Apple and I stayed in Win7 more than OS-X, then I realized if I grabbed a second system I could streamline, become quicker. System A is video encoding while system B is doing other tasks… it did speed me up, so that’s good.

So with that all said and done… now I am sitting here typing this pondering the future of my video editing tasks. I have more or less decided when Apple released their new Mac Book Pro in the next month or two… I’ll look at getting one of those, and sell my current Mac Pro. Reason is simple… the laptop can replace the desktop unit, still power the 30” screen and do everything I currently do and as an added bonus… I have mobility which I’d like.

A good deal of people I know live on their laptops, swear by them. I figure… buy the laptop, sell the desktop, pay the debt down from that and after all is said and done, I walked away with a new laptop for a fraction of the price. The new Apple MBP is said to have the i5 and i7 chips in them once released, so we’ll see I guess.

(not my laptop.. but it is the skin I just snagged)

I saw this skin for the 17” MBP laptop that made me drool so I bought one. I am such a geek. heh I don’t even have the laptop yet, so why did I grab a skin? Well, honestly… the last time I saw a cool skin they sold out quick and the movie company clamped down on the company making them so there was no second run. I didn’t want to lose this sucker, so I figured… $15 investment. If it turns out I don’t go that direction and get the new MBP… i can always sell the skin on eBay or something. meh

So that’s the dilemma in a nutshell. To lap or not to lap. I wanted my own Macbook for the longest time so I can continue writing with it, so this moves me one step closer to realizing a life time goal as well. Yes, I’m writing something… more on that down the road

I think at some point in the future, I am going to want to give birth to a baby laptop. Right now I cannot justify the added debt, but I can see the need possibly… someday.

Like, when they *finally release the i7 chipset in laptops. I know the new Mac Powerbook Pro’s are coming soon, they’ll have the i5 and upscale to i7 if you want to upgrade. If you have no fucking clue what I am talking about, i5, i7, these are intel chipsets for laptops.

Wait.. dur.. where are my manors?  Intel is a company that makes computer processors. (your computers brain or, central processing unit)

CPU

Ok.. where were we?

Ah yes… IRON FUCKING MAN

This is a sticker that yells I KNOW GIRLS AND I GET LAID. A LOT.

it normally would appear like this…

but with magic, we get IRON FUCKING MAN.

YES.

So, if this isn’t reason enough to get a laptop, how about this one… see part where it yells I KNOW GIRLS.

OMFGCANTWAITOMGOMGOMG

Seriously, getting an Iron Man decal on thy laptop is like putting on Old Spice aftershave. It just screams COME AND GET ME!

speaking of which, my balls are itchy. brb

back.

I won’t have a laptop for some time… but someday, when my balls stop itchin… I’ll check, check, check it out.

Have you ever wished you knew Adobe Photoshop better? Maybe you wish you knew how to create a website yourself, or how to custom code something. Maybe you have an idea for an iPhone app like I did and you’re thinking… why can’t I do that?

Most people don’t move forward with their ideas or innovations because quite bluntly, they don’t know how to. Sure, you could go to some professional school and take a full course and that would definitely do what you need.. but the price is usually a little steep as well, right?

I had always heard about Lynda.com from magazines, and other websites but honestly, I had never checked it out until recently.

Holy shit.

The site has a monthly fee of $25 per month or you can buy an annual membership and save money if that is more to your liking. They cover every program I can think of, no joke. Each course is offered as part of your monthly fee, and each course is in video so you get to watch and follow along. Don’t get something, back the video up and watch again until you do. Seriously, it’s that easy.

I have a buddy that likes to use Sony Vegas as his video editor when making movies for online use. I myself use my Apple, so we use different programs but I wanted to show him how they can make him better so I took a screen grab showing the Sony Vegas course.

Remember, you don’t pay per course, you pay a flat monthly rate, all you can eat sort of thing. Take 1 course, take 50 course, whatever you have time to learn really. Stay one month or stay a year, again, your choice.

Click for larger if you’re curious.

As you can see, this course is 8 hours, 48 minutes long and you will go from newb to knowledgeable in that time frame. They do this with every program you can think of. Hell, they even cover simple shit like facebook, gmail, wordpress blogging, you name it, they do it. They know that everyone online has different needs, so they try and cover everyone’s. No matter what your experience level is, these guys have got something for you to improve your game.

I honestly was trying to think of something they don’t cover, and no, I couldn’t find something other than old obscure programs that have been replaced with newer better versions anyway.

For Photoshop… OMFG they cover everything and then they cover some more. Seriously. Any person could subscribe to Lynda.com and become a photoshop god at retouching their photos or creating new things so fast it’s silly.

I wish I was making something for this glowing review of Lynda, but I’m not, I just found it to kick serious, serious ass and wanted to put you guys on to it. Bryci pointed it out to me after she had it pointed out to her. We both have subscriptions now.  They check for active connections so no, you can’t buy one and have two people use it at the same time… it’s like gmail… “you’ve been signed out of this account because this account is active on another computer” sort of thing. No worries though, these guys completely deserve the extra coin.

If there is any part of you that wants to quit your current job and better yourself so you can get a better job… here’s your chance. This site is *highly* suggested.

As an added bonus… here is a free week pass to check them out.

http://www.lynda.com/deke   <— click this and you will get a 7 day free trial, no catch. It is worth signing up for, and after 7 days if you no likey, no worries. I found this code online and shared it with some friends already so I know it works.

You’re welcome. (yes, it’s that freaking awesome if you’re a knowledge whore like myself)

I now have my windows system set up, beside the apple system and holy shit is this fun. I can multitask like fucking crazy now. I leave the Mac side up in video editing mode so I can throw videos in and go go gadget video editing. The windows side of course, does all my medial tasks.

It’s messy… sue me.

Left side, Apple. Right side, Windows. See? Best of both worlds. Windows 7 takes care of the stuff I do running the servers etc and the Mac side handles the video editing goodness. I have a lot of videos to edit, so yeah… shit gets hectic. Well, used to get hectic

maybe someday I’ll clean this up and take more pix… who knows.

A year back, I picked up my new Mac Pro and loaded the sucker up with 10 gigs of ram and 4 1 terabyte Seagate 7200.11 drives. They were new, cutting edge Seagate and Seagate is well know for goodness so meh, why not.

Shortly there after, Seagate started to have the odd issue with the 7200.11 drives. My buddy Paul msged me to tell me of them failing and data loss occurring. I am pretty crazy about data back up so I figured… meh.. I’m good.

Nope. Nope I wasn’t good.

Yesterday, one of my drives came a crashin down. I was lucky enough to get the stuff off it for the most part, but I did lose some I think. I went and grabbed a 7200.12 today to replace it and I found out that if I send my old busted up 7200.11 to Seagate, they will supposedly replace it free of charge with a new 7200.12

See, the upgraded the bios on the drives so the issues that was causing data loss has been solved. Ok.. geek talk over. That was my night though, well, day… we hit up Mama Panda and that was sucktastic… this little Chinese buffet place here in town that well, sucked my balls

5:18am says time for bed.