When we last left off, I was busy prying open my new Mac Mini to get at its deliciously compact innards with a screwdriver and putty knife. Opening up and messing with the internals of the Mini is much more annoying than it should be, but I was able to shove two new sticks of RAM and a new hard drive in the machine with minimal warranty-voiding destruction.
With it finally sitting attractively underneath the TV, I spent some time upgrading it into an actual useful media box befit of the pedigree looming overhead. It’s still a work-in-progress, but the requirements for a living room media center running OSX are a bit different from the workstation/gaming PC setups I’m used to:
Through my television’s tenure, it has done little else beyond displaying PS3 and XBox 360 games in glorious high definition. I tried cable at one point, but canceled it from inactivity; it’s not that I don’t want to watch cable and shows, but the few which are interesting aren’t worth the $50 or so a month.
Then internet video came along, and all anybody needed to access content – for free! – was something with a web browser and video output. Unfortunately, not many machines have both a decent web browser and outputs to a TV, and it turns out the simplest solution is to just hook up a fully-featured desktop ().
A week ago, en route to our respective workplaces, Sui and I noticed a poster ad for Gunnar Optiks on the BART. Being an optometry student and optican (and thus being familiar to pretty much all the noteworthy lens and frame manufacturers; they like to indoctrinate early), I was surprised that she had not heard of these guys.
One workday Google search later, we found what they were offering: fashionable, Oakley-style glasses, catered to heavy computer and television users, designed to reduce eye strain over work/play marathons ().