lavalier

Azden SMX-10 Stereo Shotgun and Generic OLM-10 Lavalier Microphone Review

May 16, 2011 By Stephen Leave a Comment

This pair of microphones serves me well. I mainly use the Azden SMX-10 when recording videos in public, resorting to the OLM-10 when recording unboxings and such in quiet settings. Sound quality is decent and they’re small enough to fit in my bag. Considering that one can walk out of B&H Photo with both microphones and change for a $100 bill, I call that a win!

GPS Time Rollover Failures Keep Happening (But They’re Almost Done)

This is week “1111111111” in the GPS system. Tomorrow morning it will roll over to week “0000000000”. How well will various systems handle this change? Not well, judging by what we’ve seen so far!

Ranting and Raving About the 2018 iPad Pro

I remain enthusiastic about the iPad Pro, despite getting a scratched screen and my concerns about durability. It’s a worthy successor to the original and offers enough improvements that I’d recommend the upgrade for just about anyone who uses their iPad for serious work. It’s still not yet a laptop replacement, but this is due more to a lack of desktop-class software for iOS than anything in Apple’s control.

SMB 3 is Going to be Huge, in both Scope and Impact

May 6, 2012

Microsoft is about to release the third major revision to their ubiquitous network storage protocol, SMB. Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V 3 will really highlight this technology, and I predict it will transform the way people think about networked storage for Windows systems. But SMB 3 is big in another way, too: there are tons of new features, and not all will be implemented by everyone.

What You See and What You Get When You Follow Me

May 28, 2019

Social media ought to be social, not just a broadcast platform. That’s my feeling at least. It’s been a while since I’ve ranted about “write-only” social media accounts, so I thought I might as well do it again. And at the same time, I thought I would update you on my promise to the people who read, follow, and interact with me online.

vSphere 6: NFS 4.1 Finally Has a Use?

February 3, 2015

Way back in the 1990’s, UNIX admins delighted in upgrading from NFSv2 to NFSv3. Then NFSv4 came around and … crickets. Now VMware has become the first major/useful/mainstream application for NFSv4.1, so the floodgates are open! But are they?

Sony NEX-5 Camera Review

September 15, 2010

The world of photography is like so many others: A vast gulf separates the amateurs and enthusiasts, from equipment to nomenclature to skills. I am decidedly in the amateur camp when it comes to photography, but I recently upgraded to a new compact interchangeable-lense camera, the Sony alpha NEX-5. It is an excellent match for my needs, allowing me to expand my skills and explore more advanced photographic techniques without sacrificing portability and ease of use.

The Four Horsemen of Storage System Performance: The Rule of Spindles

August 25, 2010

Why do some data storage solutions perform better than others? Mechanical performance, RAM caching, I/O capacity, and the intelligence of the system all have a part to play. Today we examine the rule of spindles: Adding more disk spindles is generally more effective than using faster spindles.

The Rack Endgame: Open Compute Project

September 17, 2014

On reading my thoughts about the evolution of enterprise storage, many pointed out that this looks an awful lot like the Facebook-led Open Compute Project (OCP). This is entirely intentional. But OCP is simply one expression of this new architecture, and perhaps not the best one for the enterprise.

It’s Time To Move Beyond Passwords (Especially On Web Sites)

January 8, 2016

Sure, single sign-on puts all your eggs in one basket. But this is vastly preferable to trusting that hundreds of third-party baskets are secure, especially when they prove on a weekly basis that they aren’t! It’s time to put distributed passwords behind us and switch to systems like SAML, both for businesses and consumers.

How Fast Is It? A Storage Infographic

October 29, 2010

How fast is a hard disk drive? How about the various flavors of SATA and Fibre Channel? Check out this handy Pack Rat infographic to answer the question, “how fast is it?”