The chromebook Experiment

The acer C720

I've been contemplating for a while on upgrading my 7 year old laptop, and I read a few articles about the Chromebooks.  I think I didn't manage to upgraded my laptop, rather it's a downgrade, but one day I consciously started testing my online usage, I spend like 90% of my time in the browser, that being chrome.  And I am all the way google, email, Calendar, and all.  So I decided to give this a shot, at $200 my lose is at a minimum, if the experiment fails.
So far what I like most about it, is really the 7 sec start up, and I'm at the login page.  It's quiet, the keyboard is a bit cramped, but I can get used to it.  The screen is small 11.6", but I think I like this form factor.  I've never liked laptops over 14", I consider those portable desktop replacement.  I've had a 12.1", a 13.3" and a 14", never even considered anything larger, this would be my first 11.6".  I'm sure not everyone would agree, but this is my opinion about laptops, they should be small and portable, naturally this comes with compromises, such as processing power, screen resolution, but I don't want to lug around a 15.6" laptop.
Anyhow, I am actually typing this on the Chromebook, and so far so good. Since I do photography as a hobby, I will be testing what workflow I can work out on the chromebook.  I've already testing downloading images from an SD card, worked like a charm, and it already uploaded it to Google Plus Photo's, though I still need to figure out how to edit before uploading, or maybe I'll just edit once uploaded. That's for the future to write about.

Private VPN

I finally figured a good use for the RasspberryPI.  I created my own humble VPN.  Though I followed an online guide, so I can't take credit for it, it worked geat.  Exept that I couldn't surf the net while the VPN was active, but I could reach my own NAS.  Still a few hiccups to work out.  This is the article if you are interested. http://readwrite.com/2014/04/10/raspberry-pi-vpn-tutorial-server-secure-web-browsing

Sabayon dropping 32-bit version

While not too surprised about the decision I was hoping I wouldn't have to re install my laptop for a while, that is why I chose a rolling release distribution. I decide to install the 32-bit version because my laptop only has 3GB of memory so I won't benefit from a 64-bit Distro. But I guess I have no choice as the 32-bit version will be supported until January 2015.  Check out the article http://www.sabayon.org/article/important-sabayon-x86-32bit-being-deprecated

Upgraded Desktop to 14.04

  As soon as Ubuntu 14.04 came out, I wanted to get the upgrade.  And the other weekend I did.  This meant a bit of instability on the first few boots, but it went away.  One thing I didn't check on, which I should have is the status of my Software RAID.  It seems after the upgrade it went out of sync, and I didn't give it time to sync up.  So yesterday, I ran an update, and accidentally thought of checking my Disk status.  And that's why the system was bit hung.
  My desktop is a bit of a mix.  I use GNOME, and KDE, my wife uses GNOME.  This sometimes causes conflicts, on my desktop.  I am hoping to clear those up.  For example, I can't properly run a distro upgrade from KDE, I had to login it GNOME, where I was able to upgrade my system, not sure why, but it worked this way.  Is upgrading worth it, so far I haven't seen the benefits, except that digiKam is the upgraded version, which I am happy for.

Testing

Testing pictures upload

This is just an experiment of posting an image

Editing on iPad

First I downloaded the photos to my laptop.  Selected the best I want to share, then edited, resized, and uploaded.  Just to think that later a frame would be a good addition.  So on google plus photo's I went to edit and wala done.  I ordered a wireless SD so editing and downloading will be instantaneous.  I tried the Wireless SD card, and I like it so far.  It is not fast, but I knew that before ordering.  I can start the camera up, and transfer the files to the iPad, Phone, or even my laptop/desktop.  It is a great feature, I feel like I upgraded my camera, and it works with my DSLR as well as my bridge.  I would recommend it to anyone.  If speed is important, make sure you read the reviews, the Transcend WiFiSD I got is a bit slow, but I don't care for speed that much in this case, while the price was decent.  The next problem I may face is the fact that I got the 16GB iPad.  My First tablet which was a Galaxy Tab 10.1 16GB I never ran into space problems, but then again, I didn't have so much content on it.  The iPad has my Favorite National Geographics subscription, which takes up approx 500MB/Issue, that's about 6GB, just Natgeo :)  and it is beautiful on the retina display :-)  Till later...