1. Go to your itunes store on PC/Mac and go to the user account (top right hand corner – usually your email address)
   
2. Enter your account password when prompted
   
3. Next thing you see is your account overview. From here we’ll select “Edit Payment Information” (second from top right)
   
4. You’ll notice a message in red at the top of this page. In my screenshot you will not see anything other than a normal screen though.
   
5. Scroll to the bottom and press “Done”.
   
6. You are back at the account overview. Press “Done” once more to exit.
   
7. Now reboot your Apple TV (don’t do “Standby”) – unplug the power cable and plug it back in again.
8. Now try logging on to your iTunes account on the Apple TV again and purchase something!

This worked for my client and I hope it will work for you too. Let me know.

Enter the Amahi Home Server – a free, Open Source alternative to WHS.

The Amahi team have pooled the best of what the Open Source Software community has to offer and wrapped it up in an easy to install, configure and maintain package. I don’t know why it is available freely as no doubt a lot of time has been invested developing it. It puts other paid efforts to shame in my opinion.

The cornerstone of Amahi Home Server for me is the sleek integration of Greyhole, which is the Open Source counterpart to Microsoft’s WHS Folder Duplication. Instead of RAID it forms a very fast, reliable and more over efficient way to keep your data save by copying it (mirroring) across available hard drives, which can be of any size and flavour (i.e. USB mixed with internal SATA drives can form a pool).

I now have a DHCP, VPN, (redundant) file server, IRC proxy, UPNP media server, and bit torrent client all in one easy to manage package.

Thank you to the Amahi team for providing a well supported, documented and developed solution.

My set-up: Asus P5B-Plus motherboard with Intel Core2Duo CPU, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 4x 1.5TB Samsung F3 hard drives (storage pool), 2x 250GB Samsung SpinPoint hard drives (RAID1; operating system)

A further 4x 1TB hard drives will be moved from the Drobo to the new server soon.

Related: http://www.amahi.org/features/testimonials

All links and prices as of 26 July 2010 and provided by www.overclockers.co.uk; Prices exclusive of VAT and shipping; I am not affiliated with Overclockers UK and nor receive remuneration for referring readers to their website.

CPU

First, we need to determine a suitable processor and the only one that currently offers the best performance at an affordable price is the Intel i7 930 2.8Ghz CPU.

Cost: £184.99 excl.

In case you wonder, the next one up from the 930 is the 960 which currently runs you a cool £385.52 exclusive of VAT. Alternatively you could go with Xeon but I find the i7 gives me better all-round performance.

Motherboard

The motherboard (mainboard) needs to not only give me room to upgrade to a faster processor but also provide the bulk of features my new workhorse needs. We want SATA3 which offers us a staggering 6Gbit/s of bandwidth to connect our hard drives with. We also need a decent sound card and room for at least three PCIe x16 cards for expansion. Since we also need fast external storage connected to our rig, we should look for brand new and super fast USB3 ports.

I have picked the Asus P6X58D-E which offers us everything that we need and more. 2x SATA3, 2x USB3 ports, 3x PCIe 16, support for tripple channel RAM with up to 1600mhz. It also has 6x SATA2 ports (RAID0,1,5,10) and 8x USB2 ports.

Cost: £127.65

Main System Hard Drive

Speaking of speed, I really love my Crucial C300 256GB SSD drive in the Sony Vaio workstation laptop but for the desktop a smaller version will suffice as we can add another drive for our work files. So the C300 64GB 2.5″ SSD SATA3 drive it is

In case you wonder, it is one of the fastest drives out there and combined with the 6Gbit/s interface… it just flies! You wouldn’t want it for your work files though. We are simply going to use it for Windows 7 and our apps. If you really wanted more space and performance (who could resist?), just add two of these puppies and you’ll be breaking every sensible speed barrier.

Cost: £99.99

Work Files Hard Drive

The drive to pick to do work on needs to be big but also damn fast. Since we only have 2x SATA3 ports we have to make a choice as to whether we can afford to add a SATA3 PCIe adapter card and more SSD drives but reduce the usable space (unless you have a _big_ budget) or get both sufficient speeds and more than enough space for several HD video projects to work on at the same time.

We will go the tried and tested route with two Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB drives, providing us with around 270MB/sec sustained write speeds in RAID0 (striped).

Cost: £41.27 x2 (£82.54)

Just for fun: Samsung F3 RAID 0 benchmarks and a comparison with a Corsair Nova 32GB SSD (not even that fast an SSD when compared with a C300 I might add). A review and benchmarks for the C300 can be found at www.benchmarkreviews.com.

Memory

Hard drive speed is meaningless if your workstation cannot serve data to the processor quickly. Thanks to triple channel DDR3 running at 1600mhz that shouldn’t be a problem. However, we want loads of it so we might need to compromise again as that type of RAM is very dear.

OCZ Gold LV 6GB (3x 2GB) memory can be had for £136.16 and provides us with an excuse to buy two sets for just a little under £300 excluding VAT. Considering that RAM is probably the most important component apart we need, it is money well invested.

Cost: £136.16 per 6GB set (x2 £272.32)

Graphics Card

If you are working in graphics or video you need to look at the right graphics card for your editing workstation. Back in the good old days it was easy: just pick whatever model Nvidia Quadro FX you could afford.

Nowadays, especially with CS5′s CUDA support, any of the new graphics cards will do nicely and allow you to relax with a good game at a fantastic resolution

My choice is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 with 1GB vRAM and factory overclocked. Hardware support is build-in to support the latest video codecs and provide smooth scrubbing as well as prompt rendering.

Cost: £179.99

Power Supply

Our new workstation is nearly complete now. Just time to finish it off by picking the last vital component: the power supply. Choose the wrong one and your system won’t even boot. Or it will crash a lot.

Make mine a Corsair TX750W ATX and rest assured to have enough grunt even for two graphics cards (SLI) and another big, fast hard drive.

Cost: £89.35

CPU Cooler

Since noise is a major concern, especially when editing videos or trying to concentrate while removing spots and red-eyes in Lightroom, I have selected a Corsair H50-1 high performance CPU watercooler to help run the i7 CPU quietly. This is a pre-build cooler and only needs attaching to the CPU. It’s self-contained so you don’t need to worry about maintaining it either.

Cost: £51.05

eSATA

Lastly, I need something to hook up my eSATA RAID1 workbench that I use to offload and edit on-location as well as my BluRay writer which uses eSATA too. And my backup hard drives… . Since I have more than enough ports on the motherboard, all I need is a LianLi BZ-U05B USB2 and eSATA 5.25″ converter which fits into a spare drive slot in my case. It’s a nice, unobtrusive black to match the case and combined USB/eSATA ports.

For good measure I will get an Akasa SATA to eSATA adapter for the rear of the case, to which my BluRay writer will mostly likely remain connected permanently.

Monitor

Although I already own a very nice Dell 24″ LCD monitor – the 2407WFP-HC – I cannot help but noticing that it is a very crowed workspace! Even at 1920x1200px resolution I can barely write this article without gasping for air

Suffice to say that it is barely a suitable size for editing 1080HD videos, hence my eyes and heart are set on the bigger brother – Dell’s excellent 3008WFP with a screen resolution of 2560x1600px. More than enough room for previewing a clip in its proper resolution and yet have space for various bits like a time line or bins! And I can always use the 24″ for further palettes.

Summing Up

Before you ask, I already have a suitable Sharkoon Rebel 9 case which I intend to use for this system. The grand total of the above parts will run to £2,059.24 exclusive of VAT (plus £16.85 shipping). That’s for one heck of a fast system and includes a brand new 30″ monitor! Not bad for just over £2,000 (excl).

Of course, I do already own software and have a big bad NAS on which I store my media, as well as a fantastic BluRay writer with which to back them up. If you were to add a case, NAS and BluRay you would be just short of £3,000 (excl) depending on how big a data store you want to have.

Mine is running on a Linux box with 4x 1.5TB drives and there’s another with 4x 1TB drives = gross total of 10TB. I don’t use RAID, I use simple, fast duplication so I get the most from it too and it creates redundant copies

Enough of the geekery already. Time to flex the plastic and take a deep breath…

• Client: Specialised Homes Ltd
• Type: Medium Sized Enterprise
• Industry: Property Development

Specialised Homes is a property developer of luxurious, high-end homes in Surrey, specialising in providing a true full-service to their clients.

The task was to create a new website to help promote the comprehensive range services offered and generate new sales enquiries for their business. Following the recently redeveloped brand identity, I designed an easy to use yet sophisticated looking website.

The website is optimised for a specific range of matching keyword phrases to make sure the correct pages are displayed for people looking for not only their core services but also secondary and tertiary.

Text is kept concise and is written to not only capture visiting Search Engines but help human visitors find the right information while skimming through the pages.

Synopsis: Manufacturing in the UK unfairly gets bad press. Despite reports of its imminent demise, Britain remains the world’s 6th largest manufacturer. Output reached an all time high in 2007, although right now the sector is suffering from the downturn. To take the temperature of industry in the UK we went to the midland town of Derby, which hosts a surprising range of companies producing goods for both domestic and export markets.

• Client: FBC Media
• Channel: CNBC (Media Info)
• First Broadcast: 18/06/2010
• Website: CNBC World Business
• Producer: Diana Muriel
• Camera: Axel Segebrecht
• Category: Business & Financial News

View the video on Vimeo and on your mobile phone (iPhone incl.)! You can now also enjoy the video on YouTube and in HD.

Connections

Visit Sam’s MySpace page or fan him on Facebook!

Sam is now also on Twitter: @sampickettmusic

Posted from: Surrey, UK

Flickr Photos

View the entire set on Flickr.com.

A word about licensing and usage rights

Please note that all photos are © Axel Segebrecht and made available under the Creative Commons license “Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK“, which allows you to use the images for non commercial use only.

The photographs were taken exclusively for artist Sam Pickett’s promotional use. Please link back to his MySpace page and state my name with all photographs (i.e. photographs by Axel Segebrecht). If you are really nice, you can also link back to my website.

Posted from: Surrey, UK

Some of the photos I shot on Tuesday for folk rocker Sam Pickett are now online on my flickr.com album. Let me know what you think by posting your comments or sending me a tweet. Don’t forget to check out Sam Pickett’s MySpace page.

Flickr Photo Set

View the entire set on Flickr.com.

More photos to follow soon. Watch this space!

A word about licensing and usage rights

Please note that all photos are © Axel Segebrecht and made available under the Creative Commons license “Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK“, which allows you to use the images for non commercial use only.

The photographs were taken exclusively for artist Sam Pickett’s promotional use. Please link back to his MySpace page and state my name with all photographs (i.e. photographs by Axel Segebrecht). If you are really nice, you can also link back to my website.

Things you need:

- Canon 7D DSLR
- Photomatix Pro (Mac, PC, incl. plug-in for Aperture and Lightroom)
- A computer (Win/Mac)
- A suitable subject or scene to photograph

Photomatix Pro is a nice little gem that makes creating HDR images a breeze. There’s free trial available and you can get 15% off the purchase price thanks to Barleme Design. Please visit their post about HDR to get the coupon code!

With the elementary notes out of the way, let’s get shooting HDR with your 7D:

Set 7D to M (manual shooting mode)

Go to the Menu by pressing the Menu button and navigate to Custom Functions.

Select the C.Fn1 Exposure entry and move the big wheel until you hit 5. Then press enter and scroll to the -,0,+ entry. Press enter again and exit the menu.

Set 7D to your preferred ISO (or auto)

Press the Q button and use the cursor stick to select exposure/AEB setting. Use the small wheel on the top right of the camera to spread the little bars out until they read -2 and +2. Press enter (big wheel button).

Press the Q button and select the shooting mode to High Speed Continuous.

Take aim of the scene you want to photograph and press down the shutter button and keep it pressed for a second! If all goes well you will hear your 7D take three images in rapid succession.

That concludes the 7D settings for shooting HDR images. You should now have three photos of the same scene with three separate exposure settings on your CF card!

Take those files and load them into Photomatix, which will then stitch them together into a single image for you. Play around with the settings to your hearts content and don’t forget to read the excellent tutorial on HDR over on Bartleme.at.

Here are two I prepared earlier:

I hope you found this little tutorial helpful. Have fun and don’t forget to share your images on the HDR Flickr Group.

Banner copyright © by Bartleme.at

Apologies for the rather dodgy looking photos of the 7D. I only have one DSLR and that was having pictures taken of itself, so the iPhone 3GS had to stand-in.

Photos of 7D and nature by Axel Segebrecht.