iPod Nano!

Traditionally, the MP3 player has been split into two distinct markets: flash-based and hard-drive based players. While flash-based ones gave you a higher price-per-megabyte, they had no moving parts, but lacked some of the features of the hard drive players. Now Apple has decided to blur the distinction between these two markets with the iPod Nano.

My iPod Nano arrived early yesterday and I am totally blown away by it. It has all the features that my iPod Mini had, plus most of the features of the iPod Photo, and is flash-based. I can't believe that I was actually considering an iPod Shuffle as a second player!

People who dislike iPods due to their lack of FM radio and recording abilities will still complain about the Nano. Regardless, the Nano is easily the most feature-packed flash MP3 player out there. I love it!

So I tried Fedora Core 4...

I tried Fedora Core 4 shortly after it was released (which was not very long ago). It seems like a nice distro, but the multimedia support is horrid! With Ubuntu I was able to get my multimedia working 100% after a few minutes with the excellent Ubuntu Guide. With Fedora, I literally spent hours trying to find the right RPM repositories with the multimedia codecs I needed. Even after all that effort the video playback just simply wasn't as smooth as in Ubuntu.

Bottom line: for the average desktop user I would have to recommend Ubuntu 5.04 over Fedora Core 4.

Twisted by the dark side, StoneWolf has become...

I just picked up one of those Force FX Lightsabers made by Master Replicas. As you can see, I chose the Darth Vader model. It definitely has to be the coolest lightsaber toy ever created. This is the lightsaber every Star Wars fan has been wishing for since they were a kid. Now if only I could find myself a Jedi to duel with...

Before I even took it out of the box this thing was getting all sorts of attention. People of all ages were asking me all sorts of questions about it. And when I say "people of all ages," I mean it! Kids, parents, and even grandparents were asking about it. I guess I was fortunate to get the last one!

Now I just need a replica Ghostbusters Proton Pack and I'm set.

What to do with an old computer?

I have an old computer which has not seen much use in the past year-and-a-half. I want to get some kind of value out of it, but not sure how. The specs are as follows:

Pentium III 800Mhz Coppermine
384 MB RAM
30 GB HD
GeForce 2 GTS 32 MB

Other than that the hardware is very typical. It has a couple of generic network cards, a 56k modem, and a very old 24x CD-ROM drive. The monitor on it is not functioning properly (Acer, go figure). I haven't been using this computer because my Thinkpad T42 out-performs it in every way.

Anyone have any suggestions for what to do with it? I do NOT want people outside the network to be able to access it, so a web or FTP server is out of the question.

One idea I have been kicking around is to have it as a Linux-only box. However, I don't think that will be terribly useful because I already have a WinXP Pro/Ubuntu Linux dual boot on my laptop. Another idea would be to just have it as a Windows printer/file server for everyone on my network to use. Then again, I can't see much value coming out of that.

The computer may be "obsolete" depending on your perception of how fast a computer needs to be, but I know this machine is far from useless. I am open to any creative suggestions anyone out there may have!

New Job (Co-Op Term)

Rather than go to school during my summer semester, I decided to do an 8 month co-operative education term. What that means is that I learn in a real workplace and get paid for it. It sounds like a pretty good arrangement to me! Some of the stuff has been kind of interesting so far, but it has been a little slow thus far. I am sure the pace will quicken later, though.

I won't go into any specifics about where exactly I am working. What I will say is that the people have been nice, and we get free refreshments! Plus there is another co-op student learning the same things I am. Since her and I are going through all the same stuff we help each other out and keep each other company during any downtime. So far, so good!

New Lappy!

To replace that stupid Acer that doesn't work anymore, I got myself a new IBM Thinkpad T42! Thanks to Prolepsis for the hookup!

Pentium M 1.8
1gb RAM
15" SXGA+ screen (1400x1050)
ATI 9600 64mb
60GB 7200rpm drive
DVD-RW
802.11b/g
Windows XP Pro
Office 2k3 Basic
10/100/1000 ethernet
Fingerprint reader
3 year warranty

Very nice machine. To be honest, it's probably more power than I need right now. But I got a good deal, and it has a 3 year warranty. Plus Ubuntu linux works very well with it "out of the box"!

Never Buy Acer

Many, many years ago, my dad, the bargain hunter, found a sale on some shiny new 15" Acer monitors. After around three years both stopped functioning properly. One of them would suddenly turn all blue, while the other would lose its picture altogether. I should have learned my lesson from that. If I had I wouldn't be making this blog entry today.

Approximately last January I went on the market for a laptop. My criteria were quite strict. It had to have a Pentium M (aka Centrino) CPU, 512 MB of RAM, at least 30 GB of hard drive space, and a Radeon 9000 or higher video chipset with dedicated memory. On Ebay I found a fantastic deal on an Acer Travelmate 800 which met (and exceeded) some of my criteria. Six-to-eight weeks later it arrived and I couldn't have been happier. It was an excellent laptop in all respects. Key word: was.

Today the nice SXGA+ LCD screen decided to pack it in. Now, after just over a year of ownership, I find myself needing to use a bulky, old, CRT monitor in order to use my modestly small laptop. Conveniently, the laptop is no longer under warranty.

It is still a fine machine to use as a desktop replacement for now. But unfortunately, I just can't picture myself carrying a CRT monitor with me into lectures to take notes. I think it is safe to say that I will NEVER, e-e-eeever buy another Acer product again.

Gran Turismo 4

After only about a month and a half with Gran Turismo 3 (and already getting 75%), I began to crave more variety. I ended up breaking down and buying Gran Turismo 4 only hours after my last exam of the semester was over.

Gran Turismo 4 has almost everything from Gran Turismo 3, plus a whole bunch of extra goodies. Plus the cars just seem to feel more realistic when driving them. Crashes seem to have more impact to them (but still no damage model, sadly). The two games might be from the same series, but they play very differently. Gran Turismo 4's driving model makes Gran Turismo 3 seem like Ridge Racer.

Another Linux Post

When Mepis 3.3 was released I was ecstatic. I was waiting for that version to be released so I could use it as my Linux distribution of choice on my Acer Travelmate 800 laptop. It was just too bad the Intel Pro Wireless 2100 drivers included with it were apparently compiled for a different version. As a result the bootup would halt every time it tried to initialize my wireless connection. I went back to the 2004.06 version and all was well, but I could not help but loose faith in the SimplyMepis QA process.

Those who follow Linux will have heard of Ubuntu. Previously I gave Ubuntu 4.10 a bad review, but to be fair I probably did not give it a fair chance. Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog" was released earlier this month so I decided to give it another try.

First impressions are important, and Ubuntu 5.04 gave me a pleasant initial surprise. It is, so far, the only Linux distribution I have tried that has been able to initialize and connect my wireless on initial boot up. In all other distributions the wireless would not connect during boot up and would need to be re-activated manually once in the desktop environment.

While Ubuntu does not give a complete multimedia experience "out-of-the-box" like Mepis does, I found that once the proper packages are installed the video and audio playback surpasses Mepis in every respect. The audio quality is much clearer, the video is smoother, and it even plays videos that would not display under Mepis. I was confused by this because these two distributions are supposed to be using similar Debian repositories to get these packages.

I am starting to wish that I had given Ubunto 4.10 a bit more of a chance back then. I think that one of the reasons I came down so hard on it initially was because I was expecting a KDE-like experience and was unprepared for some of GNOME's interface differences. I also expected apt-get to work properly from the command prompt right away and was unaware that I would have to edit a text file before that would work.

I hereby retract my previous Ubuntu rant and give "Hoary Hedgehog" two thumbs up.

Gran Turismo

I haven't posted in a while and it's all because of Gran Turismo 3. I know the 4th one is out, but I wanted to get the 3rd one first just in case I didn't like it. I have a couple of gripes about the game, however. First, the computer AI is very dumb. They often like to pit right before the final lap. Also, the game does not put enough power restrictions on your car when entering races. When going in you have no idea if you're being overpowered or if you're just going to smoke everyone else. When you start getting race cars the game loses a lot of its challenge. I prefer the early parts of the game where the emphasis is more on actual driving than horsepower.

Linux Laptop Mode!

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsamwel/laptop_mode/tools/index.html

Using the instructions here I was able to easily squeeze some more battery life out of my laptop while running in Linux. If this keeps up I won't have a reason to use Windows anymore, hah!

SimplyMEPIS Day 3

A few days ago the Linux distro I had been most anticipating, SimplyMEPIS 3.3, was released. I downloaded the ISO, checked the md5sum, and immediately burned the CD. The LiveCD bootup went well, with a few minor error messages here and there. But I was not discouraged. Once the LiveCD finished booting I tried to activate my wireless. This caused the Mepis System Center to freeze. I tried again and got the same result. Hoping that once it was installed it would work, I formatted my Linux partitions and let it go. This time things went worse-- on startup it was getting page faults when loading the IPW2100 driver. This never happened in SimplyMEPIS 2004.06.

This is when I decided that I would rather have a stable Linux installation than a "bleeding edge" one with the latest packages. SimplyMEPIS 2004.06 (contrary to what the name suggests, came out in mid-December) installed like a dream and everything worked "out of the box," so to speak. I did an "apt-get update" followed by an "apt-get upgrade" and all was still good. Tuxrucer using 3D acceleration worked without installing additional drivers. GLQuake worked as well.

Since I am running MEPIS on a Centrino laptop I needed to enable CPU speedstepping (i.e. slowing the CPU down when the speed isn't necessary) to save some battery life. After a quick search on the mepislovers.org forums I was ready to go, effectively doubling my expected battery life in Linux. Unfortunately the battery still does not last as long as it does in Windows. Currently I'm getting between 3-3.5 hours in Windows XP Pro and 2 hours in Linux while doing everyday operations such as instant messaging, web browsing, word processing, etc, with my wireless networking enabled.

Using KDE System Guard I've been keeping an eye on the memory usage of Linux and have been comparing it to the numbers in XP's task manager. XP's task manager usually reports about 250 mb of swap being used while just having instant messaging and a web browser (Gaim and Mozilla Firefox) running. Linux reports no swap being used and only about 256 mb of physical memory occupied with the same applications. Wow! And I was worried that my 256 mb swap partition would be too small. Linux seems a bit quicker for this "everyday use" as well.

In the past few days (this being day 3) I have been spending the bulk of my computing time within Linux and I am loving it.

Intec dance mats suck

One of the reasons we got a PS2 was to play Dance Dance Revolution. So, on the same day we got the PS2, we bought an Intec dance mat and DDR Extreme; all was good. Soon afterwards we even bought a second mat. Woohoo! Then things went sour...

The first dance mat suddenly stopped working. Not just a single sensor, but the whole thing stopped working altogether. We took it back to EB and exchanged it for another (which will be referred to as the third mat).

A few days later the second mat began to act up. The "up button" sensor wouldn't always work. This was remedied by putting some cardboard under the said sensor.

One day, out of nowhere (again) the third dance mat stopped working. We went to take it back to EB, but they were out. They assured us that we will get one as soon as they come in. To add insult to injury the second mat decided to quit as well.

Data:
PS2 purchased December 26
Three dead Intec dance mats
Three dance mats in less than two months

Conclusion:
Intec = teh suck

Ubuntu Linux Thoughts

In my never ending quest to find new ways to procrastinate, I decided to give Ubuntu Linux a try. Initially I tried the "Warty" LiveCD version and was disappointed right away by the lack of support for my laptop's wireless. Afterwards I decided to give the stable 4.10 "Warty Warthog" installable release a try.

Initial impressions: Very nice, clean interface. User-friendly menu system. Stable. Good selection of packages.

After playing with this distro for a couple of hours it has become painfully obvious - it just isn't for me. I am not looking for a new primary OS since I still need to run Windows applications to do some school programming assignments. My plan is to have relatively small partitions for my Linux installation while still having the bulk of my documents and media files on my FAT32 partitions so they can be accessed from both OS'. Every distro I have ever used has automatically mounted my FAT32 drives, until Ubuntu. I had to manually edit the /etc/fstab file and create mount points before I could even mount these partitions.

Another feature I am used to being able to use is to copy my fonts over from Windows. Let's face it, Linux fonts are rather lacking. So I copied and pasted all my truetype fonts from my Windows/Fonts "folder" into Ubuntu's font directory. Apparently the files transferred, but they weren't showing up in the file manager, nor were they showing up in OpenOffice. After some Googling I found out that I was supposed to manually edit a text file for the fonts and add an entry for each one. Thanks, but no thanks.

I am not saying that Ubuntu is a bad OS. It seems perfect for someone who is looking for a user-friendly, memory-efficient and secure primary operating system. For transitional Windows/Linux experimenters like myself, however, I'd have to say that Mepis is what the doctor ordered.

More Linux

After the annoying issues I had with Mandrake 10.1 I became bitter enough to uninstall it from my desktop PC (PIII 800 with 384 MB of RAM). I then promptly replaced it with Mepis Linux, which has been an absolute breeze to use. The Mepis LiveCD even runs nicely on my laptop, detecting all my hardware properly. I would install it on my laptop as well, but I am waiting for the new version which is due any day now. I think I will also try Ubunto's LiveCD in the meantime.

EverQuest II - /pizza

Ever get hungry during a long session of gaming, but were too lazy to get up and make yourself something to eat? Sony and Pizza Hut bring you: EverQuest II - /pizza.

Order pizza while you play, yay. Now your lazy MMORPG-playing ass only needs to get up to use the toilet, or answer the door when the delivery man comes. Now THAT's progress!

Naruto CAW's

Lately I have been playing around with the create-a-wrestler (CAW) function in Smackdown vs RAW for PS2. In the picture above are five characters from Naruto: (left to right) Kakashi, Naruto, Rock Lee, Kabuto, and Orochimaru.

Go Firefox!

This image says it all:


Whoo!
If you haven't already done so, Get Firefox-- the best web browser on the planet.

All entries on this blog were posted using Firefox under either Windows XP Pro or Linux.

Naruto Licensed

It is kind of a bittersweet thing when your favorite anime series gets licensed by a North American distributor. On the plus side, more people will be able to enjoy the series, and you will get a chance to own it on DVD. On the other hand, the dubbers tend to take liberties on the translation and rename characters-- not to mention the fact that most websites will no longer post torrent files for licensed series'.

Naruto has been officially licensed. For me this is more of a bad than good thing because:

A) Naruto is the only anime I've really been able to "get into".
B) Cartoon Network isn't available in my area.
C) I have watched every episode to date, and would have to wait approximately 4-5 seasons to wait for the North American release to catch up to where I left-off.

I guess I could always try getting into another series. I am open to suggestions! Leave them in the comments below!

Knoppix Revisited

Mandrake appears to have developed an annoying little quirk where KDE applications (including Konsole) will not launch upon initial login. Logging out and logging in again is a workaround for this, but is extremely annoying.

On the other hand, Knoppix is running perfectly right now. The display is now working properly in 1400x1050 (thanks to some so-called "Cheat Codes") and wireless works. Now I'm thinking of trying Debian, which is the distro that Knoppix is based off of.

EDIT:
I tried Knoppix's "experimental" Linux 2.6 kernel and it won't pickup my Lexar Jumpdrive! It's a shame because that's where I store my persistent /home directory and settings. I have two options: keep using the stable 2.4 kernel (and lose my advanced power-saving controls), or use 2.6 and move my /home onto one of my hard drive partitions. I think I will stick with 2.4 for now since I don't know if 2.6 has additional issues.

Mandrake Linux 10.1

I decided to finally do what I had planned to do a year ago: set up a dual WinXP/Linux dual boot on my Acer Travelmate 800 laptop. I had put it off up until now because of the lack of Intel Pro Wireless 2100 (aka the Centrino wireless) support. When I saw Mandrake 10.1 now had "full support" for Centrino I just had to try it.

Now I'm wondering if false advertising can be charged for something I got for free. Apparently "full support" in the Mandrake world means, "It will detect your wireless, it will identify your wireless, but will not let you set up connections." Perfect! So I ended up having to do what I COULD have done with any non-Centrino supporting distribution: install third-party drivers.

Oh, but the fun didn't end there. After the drivers were installed properly and a connection was established I thought everything was okie-dokie. WRONG! For some reason the wireless connection will not initialize properly at boot-up, so I have to go in as root and reconfigure the connection EVERY TIME I BOOT UP LINUX. Bravo!

To its credit, Mandrake seemed to detect and properly configure everything else on my Acer Travelmate 800. Even the ATI display worked nicely right away even at 1400x1050 resolution.

Before trying Mandrake 10.1 I tried the latest version of Knoppix, which is a Linux distribution that runs off of a bootable CD. I found it was a lot less painful to set up than Mandrake. Wireless worked right away, as promised. The frustrating thing was that my display would not work at anything higher than 1024x768! You would think with all thise open-source stuff these programmers would be collaborating to get things working consistently across distributions. Now it looks like I have to choose a distro based on which of the two I value most: proper display or wireless, which is pretty sad since my hardware for both is extremely common.

I'm not giving up on Linux completely, however. When I get the time I will probably fiddle around with it some more. But right now, at least in my view, it is not ready for prime time. Until the next time I get desperately bored, I'll see you in Windows XP Pro.

EDIT (1:02 PM):
I think I am going to give Knoppix another try. I found some tweaks that MIGHT get the display to work properly. Wish me luck!

Gmail Invite, anyone?

Gmail has exploded with invites recently. I currently have 50 to give out. Want one? Just email me and it's yours.

For the uninformed, Gmail is Google's free email service. 1 GB mailbox, quickly and effectively search through your emails without ever deleting anything, yadda yadda yadda. I have been using it as my primary personal address for a while now and I am loving it.

Quote of the Day

"Ah, lamentably no. My gastronomic rapacity knows no satieties."
- Homer Simpson, when Marge asks if the subliminal weight-loss tape is working.

This quote has been stuck in my head for the past 15 hours or so, and I have no idea why.

Low carb cereal tastes like...

... nothing. Seriously. This cereal tastes like nothing.

In an effort to keep my ninja reflexes at their peek (for faster button pressing and double-clicking) I tried Kellogg's Special K Carb-Fit cereal. Although people on the Lowcarber.org forums seem to like it, I don't care for it much myself. Give me a big ol' bowl of Cheerios or even Frosted Flakes instead any day. I don't need to be a carb-counter.

Enterprise Cancelled

I know this is old news but felt I should say something.

It figures that UPN would cancel the only show I watch on their network-- Star Trek: Enterprise. If they were going to cancel this show they really should have done it during either the first or second season, where the majority of the episodes were pointless. I thoroughly enjoyed the third season, and the fourth season has been even better. Unlike previous seasons, the fourth has been tying up loose ends and integrating it self rather well with Star Trek canon (at least from my view, but more zealous Trekkies may disagree). I know I'm going to keep watching until the final episode on May 13.

With Enterprises', as well as UPN's, ratings being lower than expectations I guess something had to give. There are also rumours that certain actor(s) on the show were not happy with their character(s), and the show overall. It looks like the Star Trek franchise's future is quite grim-- with the disappointing box office from the last movie, Nemesis, and now this.

Click here for the official announcement.

Happy (Lunar) New Year!

Year of the cock!

Not a natural writer

I admit that I have not done a very good job of making regular entries in my Blogs. Usually being the quiet person in the room, I don't feel the need to express myself as often as most people do. But tonight, while I should be sleeping, I feel I need to at least post SOMETHING. If there's any reason for it, it's practice.

This semester at Simon Fraser University is going to be a bit different for me. For the first time I'm taking more than one course at a time where a decent amount of writing needs to be done. Being a computing science major I'm not used to typing up large quantities of wordage all at one time. As a result I find myself staring at a blank OpenOffice text document struggling to find the words to express my response to a given assignment. Whether its relating the film Koyaanisqatsi to some other works, or writing my views on autonomy, the opinion is there yet I keep drawing blanks.

Now this problem also manifests itself while applying for co-operative education job positions. No matter how much advice I get or how many guides I read, I have a very difficult time finding the write words to "sell myself" to a potential employer. The cover letters are especially difficult for me.

Until next time: practice makes perfect (I hope).

Happy New Year!

Obligatory "Happy New Year" blog entry. The end.