Jim Barraud

I’ve started up a tumblelog. It’s called “nothing but flowers”. It’s where I’ll be posting things like links, videos, photos and random thoughts. I’ll probably be posting there frequently. Stop on by.

I’ve defeated Bowser. Now on to 120 stars.

I have to admit this years Macworld keynote was pretty lackluster. There wasn’t that sense of “Apple’s done it again!”. It was more “Oh, that’s nice”. Anyway, here’s may take on what was announced.

Apple TV Take 2
The new Apple TV looks pretty sweet. With the ability to download content directly to it, sync it with my mac and rent feature films this could easily replace countless stacks of DVD’s in my house as well as move out some media equipment. That is if it would work on my TV. I’m not in the High Def age yet so that leaves me out in the cold. But when the time comes to buy that new TV, an Apple TV will also be in the shopping cart. Out of all the announcements Apple made today, I believe this to be the most significant and exciting.

Time Capsule
This is a fabulous idea and I totally want one. But oh wait, I purchased an Airport Extreme that has the ability to hook up and share a USB hard drive. And before Apple released Leopard, the ability to sync time machine with this connected hard drive was a touted feature. Then when Leopard was released to the wild, the feature was dropped. Awesome, 50% of the reason I purchased the Airport Extreme was dropped. Thanks Apple. The optimistic side of me is hoping that a 10.5.2 update will resurrect this feature and that it wasn’t dropped in order to make selling this product more viable.

iPhone & iPod Touch updates
I don’t have either of these so I really don’t have much of an opinion. But I think charging iPod Touch owners $20 for a software update that provides additional apps that already exist on the iPhone while providing a software update that offers significant new features to iPhone users for free isn’t right. And the fact that all new iPod Touch owners get this update for free doubles that. If I was an iPod Touch owner I’d be pretty pissed.

Macbook Air
It’s a gorgeous machine. Beautifully designed and I love the simplicity of it. But it’s not a sub-notebook. It’s a notebook, just a lot thinner with less features. I think having it as thin as it is with the footprint of the 12” Powerbook would have made this a killer product.

10.5.2 Update
It wasn’t announced or released and it’s the only thing I really wanted. There are a slew of stupid annoying bugs in Leopard and I’m praying it will fix most of them. The most significant of which would be fixing iCal.

Jon pimped out our foosball table with floodlights at the Hive for better night time playing. Game On!

Driving Rain from Jim Barraud on Vimeo.

Outside the Media-Hive office window.

I’ve been pretty lax in posts around here lately due to wrapping up end of year projects at work, the holidays, and an end of the year vacation. But now the new year is upon us and it’s time to get the train a movin’ again.

Christmas vacation was a blast for several reasons. The first being it was vacation time for me and family. I pretty much disconnected myself from the outside (internet) world. I got several house projects done that the wife and I have been talking about doing over the past year. And it was pretty much a “Nintendo” christmas since Santa left a Wii for the family under the tree. And the wife and I bestowed the kids each with their own Nintendo DS for Christmas (now Daddy has someone to play with :)

But the biggest surprise for me was the gift from the wife. She blessed me with a new Canon Digital Rebel XTi. Which was a surprise indeed. Apparently it was between that and new sneakers. She choose wisely. The new XTi will serve as the replacement for my current Gen1 Digital Rebel. But it’s also sparking and a renewed interest in sharpening my photography skills. So if I had to make a personal resolution for the new year, that would be it. Sharpening my photography skills. That in addition to the standard resolutions of save money, loose weight, backup my data, etc.

So be prepared for more photographic goodness in the coming year.