This is the time of year for New Year’s resolutions. Most people make some and most people break those resolutions within a few weeks. Some say that you should not tell anyone your New Year’s resolutions because when you break them you will not be embarrassed. Well, I suppose it depends what your New Year’s resolutions are. I have two major resolutions for the year 2012.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working with a school on getting a 2GHz Xserve G5 up and running to replace a PowerMac G5 operating as a server. The Xserve had no memory so we acquired 4GB of memory. In early 2011, I had upgraded the PowerMac G5 to dual Western Digital WD2003FYYS 2TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration.

The Mini-ITX form factor has been with us since 2001 and is a very interesting form factor if you are planning to build your own HTPC or have any need for a compact computers. Systems such as Apple’s Mac mini are close relatives of this form factor. Although I would seriously recommend looking into a Mac mini if you need a real HTPC, building your own compact system is a great project.

On Christmas day, I ordered an OWC Aura Pro Express SSD for my 2010 11-inch MacBook Air. When I originally purchased this MacBook Air, I wanted to keep things as inexpensive as possible to start out with since I was planning to upgrade to the Aura Pro Express SSD from the beginning. To that end, I had purchased the 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo 11.6-inch MacBook Air with only a 64GB SSD but with the absolutely essential 4GB memory upgrade. One thing led to another and I had not upgraded the SSD for almost exactly a year. That is, until now.

I have been using Wordpress for the better part of three years for varying projects. Before that, I used Blogger and a variety of other blogging and CMS engines. None of them really met my needs. One of my preferences is to run without a database if possible. Using a database makes everything more complex for this type of task. I understand and use databases for some projects but blogging is not one where I want to use a database.

Today, Apple released the first update to iOS 5.0 in the form of iOS 5.0.1. A certain percentage of users have experienced very poor battery life with iOS 5.0 and this update addresses that issue as well as addressing some other bugs and adding some functionality to some devices.

The great developers over at &yet launched a new web app today for keeping a team on track. I was able to get early access to &! last week before its launch today and I am quite impressed.

Today marks the release of OpenBSD 5.0, the next great release of OpenBSD. This release marks significant improvements in hardware supports and functionality. I have been using my own personal build of OpenBSD 5.0 for several months. It is a great improvement and also features lots of updates in many areas. Especially of interest to me is the inclusion Dovecot 2.0 for the first time in an OpenBSD release.

The CradlePoint MBR95 is part of the newest series of routers put out by Cradlepoint, the leader in the 3G/4G router space. This MBR95 is unique and special because it is the first of the new NetBSD-based routers to be a perfect replacement for your average small business or home wireless router. Join us for the part 1 of the MBR95 Mega-Review.