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Wednesday, February 3, 2010



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Good Quality Digital Prints

Camera
Today I got in a discussion about the resolution that a print should be for it to be considered "good quality."  As a computer scientist, I fell back on the definition of photo quality prints and research based on what the human eye can see.  The other position was a little more subjective (i.e. "good quality" is defined by one person's interpretation of what looks "good").

Photo quality prints are between 240 pixels per inch (PPI) and 300 PPI depending on the information source.  Beyond 250 PPI you will be hard pressed to find any human who can determine differences in print quality.  In other words, a 250 PPI print will

Monday, January 11, 2010



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The Rise of Multicore

Electronic Chip
Multicore CPUs are the latest computer performance optimizations to go mainstream.  Most computers sold today (netbooks excluded) have at least dual core processors.  Some consumer desktops have up to 8 cores on a CPU.  There's no doubt that future computers will see many times the number processing cores seen on the typical desktop today.  But to understand why this trend is occurring, we must first understand why chip makers turned to multicore CPUs to drive performance.

Throughout the 1990's and into the early part of the 2000's single

Saturday, January 9, 2010



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Tethering Your Mac to a Blackberry (Bold 9700) on T-Mobile

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Blackberry Bold 9700
Ever since I got my Blackberry Bold 9700 I wanted to tether it to my MacBook Pro.  For those of you who don't know what tethering is, it's when you connect your computer with your phone so that you can use your phone's data connection to access the internet on your computer.  Tethering is by no means a real substitute for Wifi.  But when Wifi isn't available, tethering is a great way to get on the internet.  This post details how to set up tethering between a Mac (OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard) and a Blackberry (Bold 9700) on T-Mobile's network.


Pairing a Mac to a Blackberry






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Tethering Your Mac to a Blackberry (Bold 9700) on T-Mobile (2)

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Configuring Dial Up Networking

Open Bluetooth Preferences by navigating to System Preferences -> Bluetooth.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010



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The Myth About GHz

Electronic Chip
Typically when people I talk to discuss how 'fast' a computer is, they reference clock speed.  A common question is "how many GHz does your computer have?"  But clock speed is only one piece of what determines how 'fast' a computer is.

I am typing this post on a computer that has a 2.53GHz processor.  In the next room I have a computer with a 3.2GHz processor.  Guess which one is faster?  I'll give you a hint, it's not the computer with the 3.2GHz processor.



Monday, January 4, 2010



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Why Do You Care About 64-Bit?

Electronic Chip
Simply put, 64-bit computers have the potential to be much faster than 32-bit computers. Not only can 64-bit computers process more per clock tick, they also have the potential to put more data in memory.

32-bit hardware can physically support 32-bit word instructions and addresses. In 32-bit hardware, this limitation exists because 32 pins are used as instruction inputs into the CPU. For this reason, 32-bit computers can only address up to 232 bits of memory (4GB) and they can only crunch up to 32-bits of data at a time. So, 4GB is

Sunday, January 3, 2010



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Using Apple Time Machine with FreeNAS

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Time
If you are like me then you don't want to shell out a ton of money for Apple's Time Capsule and you want redundant network storage that works with Time Machine. This post details how to setup Time Machine on your Mac (OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard) so that it works with FreeNAS (version 0.7).

FreeNAS (link) is an open source Network Attached Storage operating system based on FreeBSD. It supports a wide variety of services, including AFP and SSH (it also supports Samba for those of you who are Windows users). FreeNAS also works very well



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Using Apple Time Machine with FreeNAS (4)

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Attaching Time Machine to FreeNAS

By default, Time Machine does not attach to networked storage (other than Time Capsule, of course). Fortunately, it is very simple to change that default setting. First, ensure that Time Machine is turned off (System Preferences->Time Machine). Next, open a terminal window on your Mac and execute the following command.




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Using Apple Time Machine with FreeNAS (3)

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Configuring SSH on FreeNAS

Select Services->SSH from the top navigation bar.




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Using Apple Time Machine with FreeNAS (2)

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Configuring Storage on FreeNAS

After FreeNAS has successfully been installed, upon system startup the IP address of the NAS Server will be displayed on the screen. Open a browser and type http://<Your FreeNas IP Address> in the address bar. When prompted with a login screen, type admin for the username and freenas for the password.


Friday, January 1, 2010



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Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for Clayton's Software and Technology Blog

The privacy of our visitors to Clayton's Software and Technology Blog is important to us.

At Clayton's Software and Technology Blog, we recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use and visit Clayton's Software and Technology Blog, and how we safeguard your information.  We never sell your personal information to third parties.

Log Files
As with most other websites, we collect and use the data contained in log files.  The information in the log files include  your IP (internet protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you visited throughout our site.

Cookies and Web Beacons
We do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site.  This could include only showing you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to login to some of our features, such as forums.

We also use third party advertisements on Clayton's Software and Technology Blog to support our site.  Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed.  This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

You can chose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security.  However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites.  This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.