Today it's much cooler, only 79F (26C) in the shade at the moment. The last few had been very hot, surpassing 100F (38C) and causing the threat of rolling blackouts. (Some places did have blackouts because local transformers couldn't handle the load.)
When bought my new MacBook, I opted for the 80 gig drive, rather than the standard 60 gig, to give myself plenty of space. Thus, it is with great shock that I find it's already getting full.
Part of it could be the 20GB of videos for Anthony, the 21GB of images from my brother's wedding last week, or the 12GB of unprocessed photos that piled up over the last few months while I concentrated on finishing my book. I had to delete some of the videos to make room for all the wedding pictures.
So, after less than three weeks, I've decided to upgrade my disk to a 160GB drive. My Apple-employee friend Jason suggested just getting an external drive case and a new drive, copying my data over, then swapping the drives. That way, I'd be able to use my old 80GB drive externally, as a backup or for rarely-needed data.
Putzing around on the web, I found an article about a new 2.5” SATA external drive box, Trans International's minixpress 825. It's tiny, doesn't require external power when connected via Firewire, and can handle USB as well.
It's $100 without a drive, but since I need a drive too, I thought I'd pay the extra $228 to have it come with a 160GB drive (a Hitachi TravelStar).
Knowing that they were planning the first shipment just last week, I called Trans International to check availability. It turns out that they're expecting more on Friday or Monday, so that's fine. I did get some great advice from the guy at Trans International: don't buy the unit with a disk installed, but rather buy them separately: that way, you get the full disk warranty, separate from the unit's shorter warranty.
The cost differential was $1, so it was certainly worth it, and I placed my order accordingly.
Thanks Trans International!
Mr. Friedl ;
I have purchased the 3rd edition of “Mastering Regular Expressions.” I think it is a really
important book. I was always very good with the IBM mainframe pattern matching tools
but found the Unix pattern matching very obtuse. Your book is really helping me
understand how to use regex patterns. I have been using Unix for more than
two decades but found the documentation so poor on the regular expressions that I would
normally just write my own AWK or Rexx scripts to do the work. When I took a Perl class
I found that the chapter provided on regex was not much better than the man pages. I call
this explanation through cut and paste. Many an authors do not understand what they write
about so they just cut and paste from another. Your book clearly shows that you do understand
regex and can explain it to others. If you have the inclination, I recommend that you develop an
online module to teach pattern matching through the community college system. Many of the colleges online
course work allows one to be anywhere to either teach or take the class.
One question or comment might be, is there a set of test data files for the provided scripts in
the book?
Yours truly,
Ben Fisk