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SSDs have finally come down in price to about $1/GB – very pricey still compared to spinning platters – but reasonable compared to some of the alternatives. So when a combination of rebates, sales, and gift cards aligned, I picked up an SSD a few weeks ago and put it into my Macbook that’s running Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” to see if it cleared up performance issues I was having.

And the answer is very emphatically yes. I can literally restart in the time it took me to launch Firefox with the old spinning drive.

However, it’s not been all roses – neither Sandforce nor OCZ Technology, the controller maker and the drive maker, respectively, support Mac OS in anything other than name, so fixing issues has been something of a challenge. I would say, based on my experience, that if you want an SSD in your Mac, and you are not technically inclined, pay the Apple premium and get the official SSD.

First issue: I’ve been vexed by a “stutter” or “freeze” problem since I installed the Agility 3 in here. As of today, the problem doesn’t appear to occur anywhere except in the first few seconds of Chrome or Safari, neither of which I use very often, so I’m marking the issue as closed.

The other issue that I think is resolved occurs at startup. From the time the blue background kicks in to when my desktop has finished loading is somewhere in the vicinity of 7-8seconds. However, I somehow remember the bit before – the gray screen section – as being faster on a spinning drive. This is perception-based though; it may actually be as fast, but because the blue Mac OS X loading section was so much longer, this seemed faster.

So a few tips based on my experience.

It’s not all roses, but it’s getting there – I love living in the future.

Though some might say “tl;dr”, this article caught my eye not just as a review of an interesting piece of hardware (which it is), but because of what is happening in the generic ARM space.

We’re not quite where we are with easily swappable and standardized x86/x64-powered hardware, but we’re getting there. These designs remind me of early x86 hardware, which were commodity parts, but also didn’t have standardized form factors, port locations, RAM setups, BIOSes and so on.

I’m guessing we’re all of 2-3 years away from being able to get a standard mATX or ITX ARM-powered motherboard, which we’ll be able to boot anything on, attach the usual battery of hardware to and so on. Possibly, we’ll be able to upgrade the chips by swapping them out.

Glad to see Phoronix is ahead of the game by getting ready for that future with its benchmarks…

On Black Friday, I ordered something that I should have ordered years ago: a pair of high-power binoculars. Specifically, Amazon had the Celestron 15×70 on a massive sale and after much agonizing, I did my part to boost the US economy.

They arrived today and I simply had to take them out for a brief peek at the stars.

Simply stunning.

On a clear night when the atmosphere is relatively calm over DC, I can resolve maybe six or seven of the Pleiades with my naked eye. Today, the sky was busy with rushing clouds when I finally pointed my binocs at the Seven Sisters, I stopped speechless, seeing more stars in just that view than I ever have across the whole sky.

Sure I have a telescope, but I rarely take it out. It weighs a ton, it takes forever to setup and in the rare few seconds you get the scope pointed in the direction you want, you get a lovely view that is promptly obscured by the light boink from your eye touching the eyepiece. Frankly, I cannot understand how a simple scope for beginner amateurs doesn’t exist – we have GPS, we know which way is north, it’s a simple matter to build a tripod that follows the night sky.

So for those of you who are considering getting a telescope as an introduction to astronomy, stop. Go buy a pair of binoculars instead. Sure you won’t be able to resolve the A and B rings of Saturn clearly, and no you won’t see the disc of Andromeda, but you will see all the Galilean moons clearly, you will see the Pleiades in more vivid color than you can imagine and you will see the individual Centauri stars separately. And you’ll see them just as often as you like instead of breaking your back hauling out the hulking scope.

And you can see them when you want, instead of when you have an excess of time and energy.

I think the next step will be to buy a pair of binoculars with image stabilization. As nice as having the option of mounting my binocs to any old tripod is, sometimes it’s a lot easier to just hold them up and gaze.

I have six days left on my AT&T contract. Coverage is terrible, but their customer service has been decent. The only thing that angers me is their constant text message spamming.

I also tried to get in on a second line with the $30 T-Mobile unlimited texting/data plan with 100 minutes, which suits me perfectly. T-Mobile screwed up and now I cannot get that plan at all as long as my name and address remain the same, because it’s for “new activations only”. To add incompetence to injury, they’ve taken my money and Angela in their sucktastic customer service (who works for Amor, and couldn’t figure out how to cancel or deactivate a line for 15 minutes) says there are no refunds. I refuse to give any more money to a thief, so, I’m not going down that route.

Verizon is not a GSM carrier. Neither is Sprint and therefore, I do not want to have anything to do with either.

Is there another carrier? One that doesn’t suck?

This article came across my Google Reader today, and it just … I love it. It makes me want to go out and buy 3D printer to participate.

The project website is here.

Dear folks who attach a confidentiality notice to the bottom of emails,

Hello! It’s me, reality. I realise you think you have established a legally binding contract by writing that bit of prose at the bottom of your email; the reality is – you have almost certainly have not. You see, the reality is, I don’t see your disclaimer until after I have begun the transaction (in this case, reading the email). In fact, since it’s usually the bottom most thing in an email, I haven’t seen the disclaimer until well after I have started reading the email. I certainly did not agree with you to not forward the email, or notify you if you made a mistake in sender, before I started reading (otherwise, chances are, I’d have opted out of reading the message). So we have this very lopsided contact – you can do what you want, and I can do nothing. You see the problem; maybe you’ve even heard of “unconscionable contracts”?

You might – and I stress, might – be protected if you’re discussing something which itself is protected. For instance – if I get an email from Dr. John Smith, MD, with a subject line of  “Test results”, then perhaps health privacy laws apply to contents of email. Ditto, perhaps, if John Smith, JD, Esq., emails with a subject like “My client confessed”. Of course, there is the problem of how I know to notify you without opening the email, which contains the contract, which automatically subjects me to your contract.

And that’s all assuming you’re in the same jurisdiction as I am! Which, statistically speaking, you’re not.

So, chances are, all you’re doing is sending useless bits. Again and again and again. And you should therefore consider whether it makes you seem like an ass to include a threatening clause that is not legally binding at the bottom of your email, instead of politely following up with, “I sent something to you in error; can you please delete your copy? Thanks.”

Very best regards,
-Varun.

Dear close friends and family who attach a confidentiality notice to the bottom of emails,

You are being asses. Stop it.

Very best regards,
-Varun.

It seems that “offer-remove-reoffer” is Microsoft’s new “embrace-extend-extinguish”. To wit:

I don’t know if this is your new sales model to drive people to upgrade, Microsoft, but stop it. It’s getting really goddamned annoying.

The iPad’s become unusably unstable. Safari crashes within 15 seconds of my opening it, Atomic within a minute. I can’t open Angry Birds or Orbital or anything else; even Settings opens only intermittently and forget about the App Store. Unfortunately, thanks to the way that the iPad is tied to my work email, I can’t erase it easily – I’d have to put it in DFU mode and hope it works, and in the process, kiss my work email goodbye (and all the other content I’ve generated on it). Considering the nightmare that will be involved in getting it setup again, I’m just going to leave it be, and use it only for work email. The situation brings up two points:

Food for thought.

For those of you who are trying to learn to tie a bow-tie for the first time, two tips:

The most helpful video I found was this one, if you’re looking for one, by the way:

(PS – it may help to do one run-through without looking at a mirror to allow your mind to make the mental connection between what it tells the fingers to do for the shoelace and what it tells your fingers to do for the bow-tie.)