Posted by
Martyn Drake – May 25, 2009
Today I am working on editing and improving some videos for a work-related project and I'm now using the full version of Adobe Creative Production Premium which comes with most of the major Adobe products. One such product is Soundbooth which has worked miracles on reducing extremely annoying sound noise which was recorded with the microphone on overgain (hence lots of static, etc) – something I've done myself and am only too aware of.
The Dell XPS continues to impress, but am now a little bit concerned over the secondary hard drive which is making minor beeping noises whenever it seems to be working a little too hard. Western Digital haven't exactly been the most helpful (first they say it's normal, now they say it isn't and won't actually say what the beeping is supposed to mean).
I'm thinking that I should get Dell to replace the other hard drive and hope that'll be the end of the mess. In the mean time, I'm going to have to use something like Acronis TrueImage to back up the hard drive(s) for an easy restore – Dell do not provide 64-bit driver CD-ROM for this machine which requires a 3G dongle to get Internet access to download them.
Have managed to break the chain of my electric pushbike, so will need to go into work by bus all next week until I can get it fixed. Hopefully the part is still under warranty.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – May 15, 2009
Dell are sending out a replacement hard drive for the laptop.
This necessitates I break the RAID 0 mirror and re-install Windows and everything else again. At least I have a Blu-Ray writer to back everything up to it (providing the BD-RE discs arrive in time). Need to do some video editing this week for Kate, so will have to install the trial version of Premiere Pro. Should be interesting to see how fast it renders and re-renders video.
Speaking of Blu-Ray, I'm going to be backing up ALL of my old Mini-DV tapes to Blu-Ray disc in the (hopefully) not too distance future. Does anybody have a MiniDV video camera/playback unit with firewire (or USB at a pinch) they could lend me to do this? I'm a bit nervous having to use the PCE-1000 unit after the issues last year..
Posted by
Martyn Drake – May 13, 2009
Have just returned from two weeks away.
We set off to Dubai for a week before heading to Tobago for another. Photos of which can be found here (Dubai) and here (Tobago). I'm in the process of sorting out the video, but here are a couple of simple shots taken from the Dubai Mall: Bagpipes, Dancers, Carnival. Jennifer and I both had a wonderful time, and it's regretful that we're now stuck with rain all week after two weeks of glorious sunshine.
Work-wise, I've taken delivery of a Dell XPS M1730 laptop that consists of a 2.80Ghz Core 2 Extreme processor (overclockable through BIOS to 3.4Ghz), 6Gb RAM, 640Gb disk space (2 x 320Gb 7,200RPM hard drives in hardware RAID 0), Blu-Ray reader AND writer, 2 x NVIDIA 9800M GT 512Mb graphics cards in SLI configuration. It's a wonderful system except that bloody Dell have supplied both a 7,200RPM 16Mb cache hard drive and a 5,400RPM 8Mb cache HD instead of two 7,200RPM drives. What's even worse is that the primary drive is the slower 5,400RPM model. I'm also a bit miffed that although they supply 800Mhz DDR2 memory, but the chipset only supports up to a maximum of 667Mhz thereby squeezing more money out of the punter who sees no additional benefit.
Generally it's a very impressive rig, but it's let down by Dell's incompetence.
Am awaiting the arrival of Adobe Creative Production Premium suite for Windows to go with the laptop as I'm in the process of doing a lot of video editing and encoding for work at the moment. The irony of this is that Adobe After Effects includes software from my previous employers who made me redundant.
My boss, Kate Craig-Wood, is interviewed by CNBC here which features me in a cameo appearance as "engineer who plugs in SSD drive into server". Speaking of Memset, we have some very, very good miniserver pacakges at the moment. Prices are incredibly competitive in my opinion.
