I have a "request for comments" from my more technically inclined friends.

I am in the likely market for a NAS to store and play multimedia. The requirements are that the NAS is headless and administered via Ethernet. It has to be able to store up to at least 2TB and possibly have 4 HDD storage bays. 2 HDD storage bays are OK though for the first try. I need to be able to run SlimServer on it so that I can connect to my music through the SqueezeBox, and it should probably have DLNA and/or UPnP support. I also would like to get something with a somewhat active user/developer base too. Lastly this is a green thing, but it just makes sense to have wake-on-lan. Oh and Raid 5 would be great.

I found these NAS devices, but the only one that gets the best vote so far is the Thecus 5200Pro

• Drobo
  
  • easy to use, developers active, but no SlimServer support & Ethernet is an add-on device (yuck)
• Thecus N3200Pro
  
  • developers active, SlimServer supported, Ethernet administration, good multimedia streaming, no wake-on-lan
• Thecus N5200Pro
  
  • same as N3200Pro with added wake-on-lan!
• Netgear ReadyNAS Duo
  
  • 2 drive bays are not so future proof, less expensive!, no wake-on-lan, great media streaming support and SlimServer
• FreeNAS
  
  • Flexible, I can add SlimServer myself, enclosure+mobo+drives may cost more in the end, won't support hot-swap

So does anyone have any comments or notes on similar projects? It is primarily for streaming media, but I will also use it to store all photos, documents and important digital data. Two bay solutions are okay, but I would really like raid 5 for this for data security which I think requires three or more discs.

Tags: audio, dvd, media server, nas, question, raid, slimserver
Current Mood: curious

On Wednesday night Jenn and I watched an episode of Good Eats about puff pastry. In the episode he filled some of the puff pastry with a dessert filling. It got me thinking that we could do the same thing except fill it with the left-over cooked apples and cooked pears that we made for the crepes that I made on Sunday.

I made a lemon-grass phad-thai style dinner and then followed through on making the puff pastry stuffed with apple and pear filling. The result of the pastry was amazing. While it was a little humid making it difficult to deal with the pastry dough, it still puffed up very large, had a good crunch, with a lot of flaking and the filling really stood out. It was super simple to make too. I may do this again tonight :)

From www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/salmon-turnovers-recipe/index.html:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Lightly flour the countertop. Roll puff pastry so there are no seams. Cut into 4 squares.

Place 1 tablespoon of filling in the center of each square. Brush inside edges of puff pastry with egg wash and fold over to make a triangle. Using a fork, seal the edges. Poke a slit or two in the top of each turnover. Brush tops with egg wash. Bake in oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Tags: alton brown, dessert, food, puff pastry
Current Mood: accomplished

I always wanted a way to stream audio from my PC and the Internet to any stereo in my living area. The limiting factor was that I didn't want to have an always on PC and the cabling would inevitably become a burden when I wanted to change between local audio and living room audio. Another downside was that media centers like the Xbox 360 were cumbersome to use due to long start-ups for playback (turn on the PC, turn on the TV, turn on the receiver, turn on the xbox, run media center, etc...)

This past week we solved our digital music desires with a Squeeze Box Duet from Logitech. The Squeeze Box Duet is a combination of the Slim Devices Squeeze Box and Logitech's Wireless DJ Music System. The two were paired to work together as to make a great streaming server with a great remote interface.

The box has an ethernet port as well as wifi to make connecting to the Internet as easy as possible. It also has output ports for analog audio, optical and digital coax. To setup streaming, the box connects to either the Squeeze Network website or a locally run version of the squeeze server. When running locally, it can retrieve music from personal collections. The online side of it is very rich. It has access to traditional radio stations through a great local search feature, streaming radio services like Live 365 and Radio IO, user centric sites like Pandora and Last.FM, as well as subscription services like Rhapsody and Sirius. It will also stream podcasts.

The beauty of this thing is that you can search for most of the audio streams from the remote within a very short amount of time and streaming is just about instant. For the podcasts and other niche categories they can be added through the squeeze network interface on a PC which is instantly accessible on the remote. So far, Jenn and I absolutely love it.

Tags: audio, home theater, squeeze box
Current Mood: geeky

It finally happened! I saw Counting Crows live! I tried and tried and tried so many times but NJ and NY concerts sell out so quickly for big name bands that it is painfully difficult to see the acts you want to see.

The concert was great. It was at the PNC Bank Arts Center, which is an outdoor venue. The sun set behind the audience as Sarah Bareilles opened the concert at 7pm with songs from her first album, Little Voices. I loved the performance. Sarah has a great voice and got a few chances to show it off during her set.

Next up was Maroon 5. I was never too excited about their music, but they did play a lot of songs from Songs About Jane that I recognized. A lot of teenage girls recognized the songs better than I :)

Closing the concert were The Counting Crows. They make me smile every time I listen to their records albums. Even if the song is supposed to be depressing it's still very entertaining to listen to it. Jenn was excited that they played "A Long December". They played a lot from their older albums and I think three songs from their most recent album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. CC played great and I liked all of the flourishes that Adam Duritz puts into his stage presence. It gave the lyrics a kind of innocence as if they were written through the eyes of a child, but with the experiences of an adult. The set closed with "Holiday In Spain" which is one of my top favorite songs.

Tonight I'm headed to Philly to see Live with Collective Soul and Blues Traveler. Saturday is the house party so it should be a full week!

Tags: 2008, concerts, counting crows, summer
Current Mood: crazy

I'm an active person, and I like to go out and enjoy very engaging sports like snowboarding, rock climbing, hockey and swimming. I also like to visit remote places in the world and hike up mountains, or swim in bio-luminescenct bays at night. For the most part, if I get injured during these activities, I chalk it up to the fact that I was doing something extreme and consider it to be part of the experience (wanted or not).
( read on... )

Tags: back, bulged disc, pain, scoliosis, voodoo doll
Current Mood: indescribable

As requested, here are the photos of the new house... I still need to photograph the basement and the bar, but the rest of the house pics are pretty much from within the first week of ownership. I will follow later with pictures of the house in its finished state after all or most of the painting is complete.

Tags: flickr, home, house, new house, pictures
Current Mood: working

In the past week and a half since we closed on the house, we've been very busy with painting and cleaning. We were at a point in the last few days where we had most of the food and silverware in the house, but plates, pots and pans in the apartment. Making food was a little difficult.

My lower back, all the way down to my tail bone, is extremely sore from working on the house this weekend. I painted quite a bit, and also took down wall paper. I even worked on the outside of the house a bit too. Advil is helping a little, but not too much. On Monday I took it easy and I plan to do very little today just so that I can recover. Things are moving along though and we'll probably be moved in within a week. After all is done we'll have to go to the apartment and clean it up so that we can hand it back over to the apartment complex.

Tags: apartment, cleaning, house, pain
Current Mood: exhausted

Five things I love, stolen from sue:

1) Jenn and I are now the proud owners of an absolutely amazing house. We love it; it's awesome.

2) I turned 30 today and I still feel like I'm 28.

3) I've been with my employer for just over 4 years. They are giving me opportunities to grow into bigger and more important roles, and it's still a fun place to work.

4) I drank more than I should on Memorial Day, and feel crummy today for it. Buuuuut, I loved that I could walk back to my house from my friend's place and just crash.

5) I love my wife for everything that she is and how she is so thoughtful and wonderful to me. At the end of the day once I finish with all of my selfish interests, she is there to make me smile and close the day happily. I try my best to do the same for her.

Tags: five things
Current Mood: happy

Jenn and I just got back from watching the new Indiana Jones movie. Jenn wasn't too into it, but as an Indy fan, I loved it. We went after spending a couple of hours pouring over the numbers on the HUD-1 statement for the house. We meet with the realtor tomorrow, Friday May 23, at 9:30am at the house for the walk-through. Then we get our cashiers checks and drive over to the attorney's office to sign off on all of the mortgage papers.

It's pretty intense that we're down to the wire on this home purchase. I get these weird rushes of excitement separated by long interludes of apathy. It's hard to describe. I think I'm just not trying to get too excited to keep from going a little crazy in my head. Let's see if I get any sleep tonight. It's unlikely, but the movie definitely helped tire me out.

Tags: home buying, house, hud-1, indiana jones, movie
Current Location: crappy apartment
Current Mood: tired

Last weekend I went out to the Verizon store to check out the new CDMA HTC Touch. I was pleasantly surprised by how the interface felt. It's not as polished as the iPhone as every fan boy might say, but it covers a lot of features in a phone that I wanted. HTC did a good job at hiding some of the WinMo interface, but did not go deep enough to completely hide you from it. So far, though I haven't really been in the trenches of WinMo and given what HTC did hide, I can stay away from a lot of the inconsistencies.

As the subject of the post suggests, the HTC Touch followed me home. I had it for about a week now and I think I'm going to stick with it. The EVDO network is great with Pocket IE, but I know it's going to be even better with Opera Mobile 9.5. The touch keyboard is not as bad as I thought it would be. It took a day or two to get used to it, but like any on-screen keyboard it will always have its quirks.

Out of all of the things that makes this phone great, the biggest one for me is the size. It is wider than the LG Chocolate that I had before, but so much thinner. The first couple of days of owning it I was afraid that I lost it. However, it was just sitting there in my pocket.

Tags: htc, mobile, phone, touch, verizon
Current Mood: touched