I'm here in support of my wife and Daughter. My wife is Russian and is here seeing her family and Introducing our (nearly) 3 year old Daughter to friends and family over here. So I was wondering how I would keep myself entertained for the duration of the visit as I have only basic Russian language skills and am far from the focus of the holiday.
The kitlist for the trip was initially going to be the following:
Apple Macbook Air
Apple iPad 64 Gig
Apple iPhone 3GS (used as camera for the trip mainly)
A few things then cropped up... My daughter is Cartoon crazy and if I filled the ipad with those there A) wouldn't be much room for some films for me and b) I wouldn't get to use it much!!!
So I unexpectedly got an offer on a cheap 13" Macbook Pro with a 320 Gig Drive, so the MacBook Air was replaced with this. I could fit alot more films on this rather than the 120 Gig SSD of the Air.
I then bought a 2nd iPad (A 64Gig 3g model) which I could dedicate to myself.
I thought I would transfer as much of my itunes library as possible to the MBP. Unfortunately this didn't happen as time got the better of me with a heavy workload. In a bit of a panic I had a brainwave... My media server is a macmini. Small,quiet and pretty portable. Maybe I could take this with me? Surely it would mean taking a screen/keyboard and mouse? Getting out of hand!! Another brainwave.. I could remote into the mini and run it headless. BUT todo this I'd need a certain amount of network infrastructure. I was going to use the Airport "create a wifi network" feature todo this for the ipads/iphone but what if I took a small router? Luckily I have a few such items already. I decided on the Solwise 3g router ( http://www.solwise.co.uk/3g-routers-3g11nmrw.htm ) I have both the older 54g wireless and the newer 802.11n model which has the benefit of being powered by usb too. I try not to be without one of these little boxes in my kit bag.
I could power this from the usb of the mini and it will provide ethernet and/or wifi for the mini and wifi for the IOS devices
I tested it quickly in the office before I left and it worked perfectly.
So the kitlist is now:
Apple Macbook Pro 13"
Apple Macmini 2 Ghz (mediaserver with 640 Gig HD)
Apple ipad 64gig wifi
Apple ipad 64gig wifi & 3g
Apple iphone 3GS
Solwise 3g11nmrw Router
Apart from me forgetting the mini psu and having to turn back on the drive to Heathrow Airport and only having 1 travel adapter for power, its all run very smoothly... I have all my media library here in the middle of rural Russia, and have even managed to sort 64k 2G (no 3g in alot of Russia yet) mobile internet.
With Temperatures over 40 degrees here right now this is really helping to keep me sane..
