Elemental-Gear

We are taking the summer off

Jim and I have been super busy with work and family stuff so we decided to take the summer off; we will return with new episodes of Elemental-Gear this fall.

Elemental-Gear Episode 12

We make our triumphant return with Elemental-Gear Episode 12 where we take a look at eSATA and SAS then we engage in a heated discussion regarding Apple and Microsoft.

Our Picks for Episode 12 are Orb for yours truly and Jim picked the fsutil command.

Elements we talked about during Episode 12 were:

Direct link to Episode 12

Elemental-Gear Episode 11

In Elemental-Gear Episode 11 we announce the winner for our contest then talk about building a 2TB file server for $2500 and look at the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.

Our Picks for Episode 11 are Darik's Boot and Nuke for yours truly and Jim picked HDTach.

Elements we talked about during Episode 11 were:

File Server Performance Chart:

Direct Link to Episode 11

10th Episode Contest

Since we just had our 10th episode we also thought we should have a little contest. Our one of a kind give-away entails answering a single question:

If Elemental-Gear was an element on the Periodic Table of Elements what element would it be?

You can use existing elements or make up your own; the only requirement is, be as creative as possible. Email us your answers with a brief description justifying your element by February 17th 2006; a lucky winner will be announced on our next show and will receive a pimped out Thermaltake A2021 XRAY 5.25" Drive Bay Kit (only one entry per listener will be allowed).

Elemental-Gear Episode 10

With Elemental-Gear Episode 10 we revisit the world of virtualization which we introduced in Episode 5 and describe how to setup a virtual testing lab using Microsoft Virtual Server. We also talk about Virtual Networks, using a NAT server to connect your virtual network to the “real” network, and reusable Windows images.

Our Picks for Episode 10 are the Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP in particular the Alt-Tab Replacement, Tweak UI, and Open Command Window Here PowerToys for yours truly and Jim picked the SC.exe command.

Elemental links for episode 10 were as follows:

Direct Link to Episode 10

Episode 10 Supporting Files

The accompanying files for Episode 10 are available for download below:

The rest is coming soon...

Elemental-Gear Episode 9

Elemental-Gear Episode 9 marks part 3 of our series on Digital Video where we cover capturing video from camcorders and TV broadcasts and making DVDs out of these videos. We talk about the differences between codecs, especially AVI and MPEG, discuss optimal MPEG 2 Encoding settings, and mastering DVDs using a couple different products.

The concepts we cover in this episode build on the topics we covered during episodes 6 and 7, so you might want to listen those episodes if you start to feel lost or don’t exactly understand where we are coming from.

Our Picks for Episode 9 are the GSpot Codec Information Appliance for yours truly and Jim picked the www.free-codecs.com website.

The elements we described during episode 9 were as follows:

Direct Link to Episode 9

Elemental-Gear Episode 8

Elemental-Gear is back and the underlying theme for Episode 8 is “Pimp my PC”. We will be talking about our experiences while building new systems over the holidays and how we made these PCs visually interesting, we will also present an overview to PC modding.

We will also have a codec update, as you may know DivX 6.1 is out, and there is a newer Beta version of Dr. DivX 2.0. We will continue our series on Video in Episode 9 where we will be talking about capturing video from different sources.

Our Picks for Episode 8 are the Session Saver Extension for the FireFox browser picked by yours truly and Jim picked the 64-bit version of Daemon Tools.

The elements we described during episode 8 were as follows:

Below are couple pictures of the system that I build, Jim's pictures are not ready yet.

D irect Link to Episode 8

Episode 8 is coming in January

Elemental-Gear will return with Episode 8 where will continue our discussions regarding digital video early in January of 2006.

We also have some great shows lined up for next year and are planning on introducing another short segment that’s geared around hardware.

Happy Holidays to everyone, see you next year...

Elemental-Gear Episode 7

With Elemental-Gear episode 7 we are introducing part 2 of our series of episodes on video. We will be covering extracting digital video from DVDs and encoding that video into different formats. The purpose of doing this is to provide us with a stable, long term, space efficient, and high quality format for storage with flexible playback options on different devices. We talked about using 3 different encoding program: the DivX Create Bundle, Dr. DivX 2.0, and Auto Gordian Knot 2.25.

Our Picks for Episode 7 were the VLC Media Player for Jim and DVD Shrink yours truly.

The elements we described during episode 7 were as follows:

DivX 6 just came out for the Mac as well, we didn’t talk about it during this episode but it’s out there for all you Mac user, it includes the DivX Converter, DivX Codec, and DivX playback support if you want to check it out.

Direct Link to Episode 7

Elemental-Gear Episode 6

With Elemental-Gear episode 6 we are starting a series of episodes on video. We will be covering video capture/extraction, video encoding, mastering DVDs, and basic video editing, but before we get started on all these fun topics...today’s episode covers some fundamentals and we will be talking about video delivery formats, digital video formats, and video codecs.

Our Picks for Episode 6 were the DIRUSE command for Jim and I picked Alcohol 120%.

The elements we described during episode 6 were as follows:

Direct Link to Episode 6

Elemental-Gear Episode 5

Elemental-Gear episode 5 gives an introduction to virtualization, covers virtualization software from VMware and Microsoft, talks about the benefits of using virtual machines, describes setting up a basic virtual machine, etc...

We also introduced a new segment called Picks where we each pick a little utility or application and talk about how it makes our life easier.

Our Picks for episode 5 are DoubleKiller for Jim and Konfabulator for yours truly.

We described the following additional elements during episode 5:

Direct Link to Episode 5

Episode 5 is Coming Next Week

We will be talking about Virtualization during our next episode using products from Microsoft and VMWare to setup virtual servers and workstations for different usage scenarios.

Elemental-Gear Episode 4

As promised Elemental-Gear episode 4 is all about backups, backup strategies, backup software, and backup devices. We have discussions on how to perform different types of backups, how to pick the right backup devices for small business & home users, and other related topics.

We described the following elements during episode 4:

Direct Link to Episode 4

Elemental-Gear Episode 3

Elemental-Gear episode 3 covers storage and storage sub-systems; we talk about different hard drive interfaces including (IDE, SATA, SCSI), disk controllers, RAID arrays, applications of RAID arrays, and related utilities.

If you are curious about dual core processor comparisons between the two big CPU manufactures check out this article entitled AMD’s Dual Core Athlon 64 X2 Strikes Hard.

We described the following components during episode 3: