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Actually it’s more like amazement and frustration than sadness…. and I’m talking about “The Source”. Or what used to be called, in Canada, Radio Shack.

I did a quick drop in to the store today, to check out a piece of technology that they “used” to be good at. Door/proximity alarm systems…. they used to have oodles of stuff like that. Of course they used to have oodles of things “technical” and geeky…. but not any more and it’s getting worse.

A bit of background, my wife’s office is moving, and they can’t see the front door  ( which is a little odd, but there you have it ) so she asked me to find a mat or some time of system that would ring and alert them as to when someone had entered the premises. To me this is a n0-brainer, there are TONS of things out there that will do that for her. Heck Radio Sha…. errr the Source used to have one in every store and tons of them in the back…. I told her I’d check them out and get back to her.

So I dropped into my local y0u-know-what-by-now, and went to the back where all the cool things used to be…. it’s a LOT and I mean LOT smaller than it used to be… every time I go in there it seems to shrink….

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So – now that things are working again…. for now 🙄 , I thought I’d chat about something that worked the first time out – and it worked really Really well!

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve fallen down the rabbit-hole vis-a-vis Apple. I thought that I would give their MobileMe feature a try since I now had an iPhone and an iPad. My biggest concern was how I could access their Cloud storage from my Linux/Ubuntu machine…

I also need to say up front, how amazed I am as to how well the MobileMe environment works between Apple devices. It just works. They act like one device, if you update a calendar on one, it updates on the other, if you get a message or delete a message or send a message it looks, acts and does the same thing on the other.

Sure I could have created a work around with Google’s tools and gmail etc etc. But MobileMe acts and looks like it resides on your device, you don’t need to log into anything or do anything, it just works! Very impressive.

I managed to figure out how to transfer all my contacts and calendar from my Ubuntu machine to my MobileMe environment. Alas I have yet to find an easy/sensible/workable way to keep all of that in sync with my main machine. Even Windows doesn’t do that though, so I don’t feel too bad about that. If I do find something ( on either Windows or Linux ) you’ll be the second one to know.

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So once again I’ve proven to myself that Ubuntu – my favourite operating system STILL isn’t ready for prime time! 👿 I would have thought that after two years of getting things “better” they would have gotten some of the basic stuff right! I mean I ranted about problems with ATI Cards and Ubuntu TWO YEARS AGO…. and it hasn’t improved any where near where it should have. My title really does say it all…. What?! 😯

I’m thinking that I should change my graphics card…. it’s an ATI Radeon X700 Pro ( or to be specific – an RV530 Graphics Card from ATI. ) Sure it’s a little dated, but still has 256MB graphics capability and is a highly rated card. Plus if it’s a bit dated it should be “known” – shouldn’t it???

So it all starts with a “simple, little, upgrade” – who knew? I decided it was time to upgrade my Ubuntu from 10.04 ( Maverick Meerkat ) to 11.04 ( Natty Narwhal ). Each upgrade of Ubuntu gets better with certain things, but unfortunately breaks other things in the process. Why they won’t stick with what they liked and decided on in the last version boggles the mind however and can lead to grief. In my case, a lot of grief….. once again . 😡

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Yep, I’ve been away for a while again…. not that I haven’t been busy. I’ve been up to my eyeballs ( and beyond 🙄 ) in work. It would seem all that volunteer work I’ve been doing for some of the local websites in town has turned into a demand for businesses to update/manage/create their websites…. Hey I’ve got toy money again! Now if I only had the time to play with my toys…. let alone write about them 😥 !

So as you can no doubt tell by the post title, I’ve fallen down the Rabbit Hole. And while I’ve never been a fanboy of Microsoft, or Apple. I am kinda falling into a trance with what Apple has done, how well they have done and where they are going. To the point that I have their iDisk running on my Ubuntu desktop…. Wow. Just where will this lead to next?!

It all started with my daughters iPhone, it broke on her and she had to send it away for repairs ( at no cost to her I might add. ) Since it was gone for a while she started to reuse her old Blackberry and it quickly reminded her of what she liked about it, and what she didn’t like about her iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, she likes the iPhone, but not the fact that her partner and her kids like it more ( all the apps and games on it. ) To the point that it was either in “their” hands all the time, or being charged! The Blackberry worked very well as a phone, email, text messages and camera…. but no games for the kiddies…. So when she got her iPhone back she decided to stick with Blackberry.

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So, just in case you weren’t aware – Apple and the amazing Steve Jobs, have just announced the new iPad 2. And for those who may not have heard of this….. click on the links to learn more. It’s pretty cool.

As it should happen, I’m in a position right now to spend some money on a new toy.

To be specific, I’ve been torn between a new laptop, a kayak, and an iPad. Of the three my heart was leaning towards the iPad, but it had a major problem (for me) it came with no hard-drive and expandable storage. Now for most people this shouldn’t be an issue. The iPad is really a consumption device more than a  “work tool”, but I was feeling claustrophobic thinking about how limited my options might be in future.

A laptop can always be expanded easily just by popping on a USB drive, a Kayak…. well it’s got every river, lake, stream, sea, ocean in the world if I want it. It was just the iPad…. could I “live” with a measly 16 or 32 GB knowing that there would be no way to expand it easily for storage purposes? It has no SD slot, nor no easy USB ports…

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