Nova Launcher

Here's the first regular video I've made with my Sony HDR-CX380! What an improvement over the Kodak ZI8! I just set it up and recorded.
Anyway, this is Nova Launcher, one of the many replacement launchers you can get for your Android phone. So far, out of all that I've tried this is my favorite.
I can hide apps I don't want to see, show the number of missed messages in several apps, and I can increase the number of rows on the desktop to 5 rows.

Practicing with the Sony HDR-CX380

Today I was sitting in my backyard and was experimenting with my Sony HDR-CX380. I'm a firm believer in practicing to get used to new equipment so today I was exploring the camcorder.
I know my hands aren't that steady and some shots were done by hand, and they are ok, nothing spectacular. I have a tripod that I've used a lot with my still camera and it definitely doesn't move smoothly and it is hard to get it to hold in one spot. Again, I need more practice . . . a lot more!
Here are some of the highlights of my practicing today.

Sony HDR-CX380 camcorder

I've been upgraded to a Sony HDR-CX380 video camera! I'll start using it in place of my Kodak ZI8 camera more.
It's a nice camera with capability of recording 1080p. There's also 16GB of internal storage which you can expand by up to a 64GB SD card, which I have done.
It also has the capability of taking 8 megapixel still shots as well.
So far I've used it a little and at the end of the video will be a snipet showing a brief comparison with the Kodax ZI8.
Look for more videos on the Sony in the near future.

Foscam FI8905W Unboxing

Had someone messing around with my truck in the late hours of the night and we've seen other suspicious activity in our neighborhood so we thought that it would be a good idea to get an outdoor wireless camera to see what is going on in our front yard. We don't expect that the camera is going to be able to get a good enough face shot for a positive identification of someone, but at least we'll have more information and then we'll decide what to do from there based on what the camera captures.
So based on price and reviews we picked up the Foscam FI8905W for around $95. I set it up last night and it is working rather well. Still playing with the settings in the software.
The software definitely is very very poor. The software works best with Windows XP! It has issues saving video in Windows 7 and Windows 8. Luckily I can run XP as a guest on my server so I don't have to have a dedicated machine wasting energy just to monitor the camera.

Showing the bootup of our Dell Inspiron 1525 with the SSD

In this video I simply show how fast my Dell Insprion 1525 boots up just so you get a feel for how much faster the SSD is compared to the old hard drive that was originally in the laptop.
A SSD isn't going to magically make the laptop process faster, but when loading files from the disk it will be faster. Is it very noticable day-to-day? No, since this laptop is only being used for internet browsing and watching videos. Programs load faster but it would be seconds faster, not any huge amount faster.
The most telling is the battery life, before I was getting around 3 to 3.5 hours of battery life, now, I'm getting close to 5 and sometimes even 6 hours.
Was the upgrade worth it? Yes, I believe so. If nothing else for the batterly life but I think due to some of the performance increase (just disk loads mind you) it might make us keep this laptop longer and not be so apt to need a new one in the near future.

Hyper-V on Windows 8 Pro

I have a mini-server farm setup on my desktop machine to learn more about SharePoint. There are four servers and one client for that setup. I have two drives, C: and E: and I've had all my virtual disks located on E:. What I was finding is that the servers were bogging down, of course, because they were all trying to interact with the hard drive but were having resource contentions and slowing them down.
So I though, ok, I'll move a few of the virtual machines to the C: drive just so two hard drives are doing the work that one was doing before.
I just figured I'd have to power down those virtual servers to move them, but NO! Hyper-V will move the files while the virtual machine is still powered on! Very Cool!
Actually what it does is copy the files first, then points the live machine to the new location. All part of Hyper-V's live migration capabilities. I just figured that on a desktop operating system I wouldn't be able to do that figuring that was reserved for the server world.
Glad Microsoft got this one right as so often they put artificial limits on capabilities in the software. The one that immediately comes to mind is no native UPS support in Windows Home Server 2011! Server and desktop O/S support it, why not that?

Upgrading to a SSD in our Inspiron 1525

We've had our laptop for quite a few years now and to breath a little more life into I thought it'd be good to upgrade it. Now laptops, generally, aren't very upgradeable but there are often two components you can upgrade. Memory is one, but for us our laptop is already maxed out at 4GB. So the other is the hard drive which is often quit a battery hog along with the screen. By replacing the hard drive with a SSD drive can enhance the speed of the computer by the fact that programs and files open much faster, but also should enhance the battery life. Before the SSD drive it would get around 5 hours of battery life. Not sure how much yet until played with it more.
The toughest part of the swap was getting the SSD to plug into the internal SATA ports in the laptop as it was skinnier than the old hard drive. Took quit a few tries before I was able to get it in.