The Not-Martin Special aka The Mark Special
The following post is inspired by The Setup
Mark Sheridan
Software Developer, iOS Ninja, Ragnar Enthusiast, Husband
May 24, 2012
Who are you, and what do you do?
I am Mark Sheridan. I was born in Dublin, Ireland on July 19, 1985. Even though I got married last summer, my name is still Mark Sheridan. In case any of you were wondering…no that is not a recent picture. It's from 3 years ago.
What do I do? I currently work full-time for a software integration consulting company, you all know the company, since it will probably only be my coworkers who read this anyway. I love spending some free time working on side projects, both technical and around the house. I also enjoy hookers and blow running and watching the tube, although not at the same time. By tube I mean television, although YouTube is kinda cool too.
What hardware are you using?
For work, I use a sweet MacBook Pro, pimped out with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HD. I also use this machine as my media server at home, which I'll explain a little further on.
I finally brought myself to buy a 16GB wifi iPad last month. I was originally going to get the iPad 2 when the price dropped by $100 to save some money, but decided on getting the new iPad when Best Buy offered it to me for $50 off the regular price. Not sure if many people know this, but I found out that Best Buy cannot return products to Apple when customers return a product, therefore they are forced to sell the item as at discounted "Open Box" price. So, there happened to be a returned iPad when I went. I snagged it for $449, opened it up and the plastic was still on and all. Win!
On the mobile side, I use a 16GB iPhone 4. Since I'm a guy, I got the black one, not the white one, because that's for girls. I also have a Motorola Razr as my work phone that I have only turned on maybe twice in the past year.
At home I currently have phone service through Optimum, but am in the process of porting my home phone number over to Google Voice and using the OBi110 to save money!
And what software?
My favorite app on my MacBook is Plex. Like I mentioned before, I use my MacBook as my media server at home. I have an Apple TV 2, and the unfortunate thing about it OOTB is that you can only stream videos that exist in your iTunes Library. The problem here is that iTunes only plays MP4 video files. I have many AVI and MKV files that I want to be able to stream to my Apple TV. The solution? Jailbreak the Apple TV and install the Plex client. Then, I can access my whole video library from the Apple TV and stream with no video quality loss. Win!
I use Dropbox for backing up all my important files and pictures to the Cloud. Thanks to my good friend Martin for giving me the mechanical turk. I won't get into details about what that actually is, but let's just say after he turked me, I had a lot more room for storage! (That's what she said!) (And by that, I mean I have the max amount of free space allocated by Dropbox for now)
For my music collection, I bought in to iTunes Match. I did run into an issue with using iTunes Match though, that I had to find a work around for. Apparently, you cannot load audio files onto your device (iPhone, iPod, iPad) that cannot be synced up to iCloud. The problem here is I download a certain radio show that has a lower bit rate in the file, therefore iCloud does not upload it. The work around to this is I use a software called Switch to convert the audio files to a higher bit rate file that iCloud can use. Now I can keep listening to my favorite show on the go! =)
On my iPhone and iPad, my most used apps are Mail, Messages, Facebook, Instagram, Runkeeper, Twitter, and Words With Friends (or as my wife calls it, Pooping With Friends)
What would be your dream setup?
To be honest, I hate this question. I believe we are always chasing a dream setup. By the time we get what we want, there are new things out! It's an ongoing game of cat and mouse. And what's life if it doesn't involve dreaming?
@trumrk out!











