I don’t really have 16TB total.

Yep, this post title is a little misleading, I know. Drobo can handle 4 disks of 4TB each. Disks that big don’t exist yet as far as I know. Right now, I have two 256GB drives in it. The OS sees one unique drive, and when you format it, you have to set the maximum capacity you want the Drobo to handle. I set it to the max, 16TB.

When the current drives will be almost full, Drobo will alert me, so I can add a new HD or replace one already there. It’s super easy to use, and definitely the best personal storage solution on the market right now.

Why does it show 17.59TB?

I don’t know.

What’s the problem, sir?

I’m looking for a 24 inch monitor. From what I can recall, a usual 24″ screen has a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels, with a 16:10 ratio, and an average price of $400-$500. Now most of the 24″ market is filled with 16:9 screens, having a resolution of 1920×1080 (like a HD TV), for a price of $300-$450. You can still find what I call regular (they’re not so usual now) 16:10 24″ screen for $500 and more…
Do you see the problem here? Basically, manufacturers removed pixels on their screens (1200 to 1080), dropped the prices (that’s usual in the computer market), and then raised the prices of regular 24″ screens. WHAT THE F*CK?!!!

Why such a move, any idea?

I’m pretty sure manufacturers want to align their screen resolutions to the ones found on TVs, having the same ratio of 16:9 as well. Indeed, not only 24″ monitors have a resolution of 1920×1080, but also 20″, 21″ and 23″ offer that same amount of pixels. I guess the ‘official’ reason for this move it to help the average Joe who doesn’t understand anything about pixels, so that when he see 1080, he thinks “yeah that’s like a HD TV, so my PC will be HD”. But I’m sure the unofficial reason is just to trick people and therefore make more money… Even Apple got into that 16:9 trend with the new iMacs!

What happened to the 1920×1200 monitors? They’re hard to find… Why raise their prices? To make more money… Computers are not TVs, and the more pixels the better.

What’s the conclusion?

This is simply another modern (disguised) robbery! And I guess the end is near for 16:10 monitors…

I’m ashamed that because of our human activity, we endanger (directly or not) other species that never asked for that. Obviously species extinction has always happened, but climate change accelerates the phenomenon and some species that could have adapted can’t because it’s going too fast… and it seems to be faster every year…

I recommend you take a look at the Blog Action Day website, as well as the Twitter account to read more about it.

8GB of RAM can seem overkill, but not so much actually… okay, a little bit… I usually have 4GB available all the time. The thing is, I can have all the programs I use opened a the same time. By all, I mean iTunes (a RAM sucker), Photoshop, Illustrator, Xcode (the tool I use to program for the iPhone), Safari, Skype, iChat, even Windows through Vmware, and a LOT more… and the computer doesn’t run slower at all!

I start to get used to such power and I had to change some habits I’ve had before, like closing some programs before opening others. Everything is snappy and very responsive and as you can guess I’m more than happy with my new toy.

The thing is, I listen to that song quite often… and everytime it starts, I get that weird feeling where for half a second I think my phone’s ringing…

I wonder if I’ll ever get a call at the exact same time the song starts playing… probably not.

I hardly used Twitter for 9 months, until I realized it’s not that much to keep up with friends and family, but with the whole world. To me, this is the main difference between Twitter and Facebook.

How about you? Do you remember the first day you used Twitter?
Share your experience in the comments.

1. The iPhone is an amazing device
   Everyday I’m stunned by what can be done with it. I’d never thought we could do so much with such a small device in 2009! It’s a very exiting platform to work on. 2 days ago I was on the highway going to Ottawa, testing an app I made that gets the latitude and longitude with the GPS, sends them to a website that answers with the country code and state, all done in less than 5 seconds! How amazing is that?
2. The SDK is one of the best ever made
   Apple provides awesome development tools. Interface Builder is really cool to use for building the GUI. You can test and run your application on your computer through the iPhone Simulator (it can’t handle the GPS and camera features though). The Performance Tools are extremely powerful and help a lot debugging apps. This all makes iPhone development fun.
3. It’s all about simple and efficient apps
   When making an iPhone application, you have to make it easy to use. Because consumers use their iPhone mostly while moving, they don’t have time to read lots of text, they don’t want to navigate through lots of different screens, it’s hard to tap on small buttons… So you need to make simple and efficient design. And that’s what I love!

Obviously I wouldn’t work full-time making iPhone apps if I knew I wouldn’t make money, and I expect to make a living out of it. But in my career I’ve almost always chosen a job I love over a paying one. Because when you do something you love, it doesn’t feel like work.

Follow Tony Hawk on Twitter

For the techies: I’ve used the WP-Lifestream plugin: http://www.ibegin.com/labs/wp-lifestream/