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Windows 7 Impressions

2009-01-25T17:33:00.000-08:00

Image by F687/s via FlickrLike a lot of people, I'm taking the Windows 7 Public Beta for a spin. I downloaded both the 32- and 64-bit versions, but since I have an old Pentium 4 Dell collecting dust, I figured that'd be a good test since everyone says that it works a lot better on older machines than Vista.

The test machine:

Dell Dimension 4500 (circa 2002)
Pentium 4 2.0 GHz
1GB RAM
200GB IDE hard drive
32MB ATI Rage 128 (AGP)
Netgear WG311 v3 802.11g (PCI)
NEC CD+RW & Lite-On DVD+RW drives (IDE)

Yep, ancient. Considering that it's about 5-6 years old, I wouldn't have been surprised if everything didn't work under Win7.

After burning the ISO to DVD, the OS was really easy to install. The first change is that the installation begins from a Windows GUI, not the DOS-like pre-installation environment that Windows installs have always begun with. It took literally less than 10 seconds to choose whether I wanted to upgrade or start fresh, followed by a quick format. All of the confusing crap about partitions and so forth are hidden behind an "Advanced" setting.

The installation as a whole took maybe 22 minutes, including reboots. The end result was an ancient machine starting up from cold boot to a usable desktop in under two minutes. I don't think a clean install of XP Home booted up faster. Conspicuously absent was the many minutes of hard drive grinding during startup. Impressive!

The most major hitch after installation was that it wasn't able to find drivers for the audio chipset and the Ethernet and 802.11g cards. Having no network adapters is a bit of a problem, so I went over to Netgear's site and downloaded the Vista drivers for the wireless card and sneaker-netted them over to the Win7 box via a USB thumb drive. Fortunately, the drivers installed and worked without a hitch. Can't say the same about the Ethernet drivers...none of the ones on the Dell site (nothing post-XP, some even mentioned Window ME!) worked.

I was pleasantly surprised that once the driver was installed, Win7 was able to detect and connect to my WPA2-secured wireless network with only the security key. No fiddling with settings or having to specify the SSID. It literally took a hour for me to get the damn thing working under XP and only after using Netgear's management program--versus less than a minute with the built-in connection wizard in Win7.

After the wireless was up, I was able to activate the beta copy of Windows, download and install the driver for the sound chipset, install AVG Free for anti-virus, Flash, Firefox, OpenOffice, the KMPlayer, Irfanview, and so forth. No issues, other than a possible bug where trying to Win-Tab during the Firefox installation caused the installer to hang.

My six-year old Dell isn't going to win any races with it's lofty 1.0 (on a scale from 1.0-7.9) Windows Experience benchmark--thanks to the obsolete ATI graphics. There are some uncomfortable pauses from time to time too...perhaps disk related or due to unoptimized code. But it does seem much more responsive in handling multiple apps at once.

I'm also happy to report that the beta seems to hibernate/resume and still manage to restore the wireless network connection. That's something that was practically impossible in my experience with a laptop on Vista before tweaking and/or the Service Pack. The copy and strange networking behaviors seem to be less obvious. In other words, we're probably back to where we were with XP SP2.

Overall, Win7 is obviously very much like a refined copy of Vista. I've been running Vista for nearly two years and aside from the performance gap, XP is getting worn around the edges. The Vista/7 UI is much more visually appealing, but it's really the changes under the hood that will make the difference--after all, if you can get the bells & whistles of Vista with the speed of XP, why would you stick with an OS that is going on seven years old? It's really too bad that Microsoft wasn't able to bring this new build as its Vista product, since it seems to address the performance and usability (*cough*UAC*cough) concerns that drove people to stick to XP.

It's such an improvement that I'm going to hold off on buying a new PC until there's a free upgrade offer bundled with Vista (probably later this summer). I don't know whether I'd be willing to pay for an upgrade from Vista to Win7, especially since most of the changes are cosmetic (like the new Taskbar, which I can get used to) or tweaks that should have been there from Day 1. But certainly, based on what I've seen so far in this beta build, it should put the nail in XP's coffin.

I'm back, hopefully

2009-01-25T14:34:00.000-08:00

In the very rare case that anyone found this blog, they'd probably conclude this is yet another one that was started and then abandoned. Actually, I had a long illness in the family, and updating a blog wasn't my top priority. But I'm back now, and we'll see how long I can keep it up!

Upgrading the Lenovo S10 Hard Drive using Clonezilla

2008-10-25T08:04:00.000-07:00

While I love the prospect of using my Lenovo S10 as a portable media player, the 80GB hard drive that it ships is on the small side for a hard-drive based netbook. Not only is the drive small, but the crazy partitioning (basically split into system and data partitions, FAT and NTFS respectively) further limits how you can use the space. So I picked up a 320GB 2.5" hard drive (Hitachi 5K320 320GB 5400RPM) and went about upgrading the drive.

More about my upgrade experience and how to back up the drive image coming up next...

Laptop Magazine has a great, easy to follow feature on how to upgrade the S10's hard drive. However, since Lenovo doesn't ship recovery/reinstallation disks, you'll need to back up the drive yourself. While you might be able to use the bundled OneKey Recovery software to do that, without an external optical drive to boot the recovery CD for the restore, I didn't want to chance that.

In order to fully backup and recover the S10 without needing an external optical drive, you can use the open-source program Clonezilla to do the backup and restore of the original Lenovo image. You'll need:

A 2.5" notebook SATA hard drive, hopefully larger than the one that the S10 ships with :)
A FAT32-formatted USB hard drive or flash thumb drive with around 10GB free
A flash thumb drive that you can erase for the Clonezilla Live boot image. I'm guessing at least 256MB capacity, though you might be able to get away with a 128MB drive. If you have a 16GB flash drive, you probably can store the S10 backup image on it as well.
The zip archive of Clonezilla Live
Live USB Helper (to make the flash drive bootable)
Access to the Clonezilla Live how-to or a printout of those instructions. And these :)

Disclaimer: While I "ate my own dog food" here and was able to successfully upgrade my hard drive using these tools, I make no guarantees that nothing will go wrong with your upgrade. The act of replacing the hard drive might void your warranty, and I don't know how receptive Lenovo would be to reloading your system with the factory image if something should go wrong. Also, Clonezilla isn't the easiest or most-user friendly cloning software out there, but it's free. If you want easy and friendly, you'll have to pay for that.

The upgrade goes something like this:

1.) Insert the USB drive you want to boot Clonezilla off of. Make sure it doesn't contain any data you want to save.
2.) Install Live USB Helper (LUH). There's an option to install the source code, but unless that sort of thing interests you, you can leave it unchecked.
3.) When you run LUH, you'll probably get an error that vb6stkit.dll is missing. Follow the instructions in the Clonezilla Live how-to to get a copy of that DLL. It may require a reboot or manually registering the DLL with Windows (Google if you need help with that).
4.) Once LUH is running, it's fairly self-explanatory how to get your flash drive bootable.
5.) The next step is a bit confusing. To install Clonezilla Live on your newly-bootable flash drive, just unzip the archive onto the root of the drive, preserving the folder structure. So, if the flash drive is G:\, make sure the archive is unzipped into G:\.
6.) Feel free to prepare your system for imaging by deleting non-essential files, installing software or Windows updates. Basically, whatever you do to the system now will be replicated to the new hard drive.
7.) Shut down the S10, leaving the flash drive inserted. Make sure the USB drive where you will save your backup image is NOT inserted.
8.) Boot up the S10 and press F2 at the BIOS screen (best bet is to press F2 several times until you're sure you're entering the BIOS setup. Change the boot order so that your USB flash drive boots before the hard drive. Save and exit.
9.) Your S10 should now boot into Linux and you'll get to a screen similar to step 5 in the Clonezilla how-to. Be sure to select the 800x600 display option or else it will fail (the S10 only has a 600 pixel vertical resolution).
10.) Choose your language. Don't change the keymap. Start Clonezilla.
11.) Select "device-image disk/partition to/from image".
12.) Select "local_dev". If you are not saving the drive image on the same USB flash drive you booted from, insert the USB drive when prompted. Pay attention to the disk name that will scroll on the screen, since that's what you want to select on the next screen.
13.) Once you've selected the disk where you'll save your S10 backup image, select "savedisk". Note: this will replicate the partitions as Lenovo created them (including the strange partitioning and filesystem choices). If you feel especially ambitious and geeky, you can elect to save specific partitions and manually customize the partitioning on the new drive. I took the path of least resistance and just saved the whole thing.
14.) On the advanced extra parameters screen, just leave it at default.
15.) On the next screen, you might want to check "Remove page and hiberation files in Win if exists" to save some space on the image.
16.) Unless you're especially space-challenged on your backup target, keep the default compression option.
17.) If you want to later archive your backup image to CD/DVD, you can play around with the image file size. Just keep it under 4GB (the maximum file size supported by FAT32).
18.) Give the backup image a name, select the source drive, and confirm the backup job.
19.) Go get a cup of coffee. It took about 25 minutes to save backup the image to a 4200RPM USB 2.0 external drive.
20.) Assuming no errors, shut down Clonezilla live and turn off the S10.
21.) Follow the instructions on how to physically upgrade the S10's hard drive. Even though Laptop Mag says that the drive in their unit was a Western Digital Scorpio Blue, mine had a Hitachi 5K320 80GB drive, July 2008 vintage.
22.) Remove the USB drive the backup is stored on (if different from the bootable USB flash drive).
23.) Boot up to Clonezilla live, repeating steps 9-12 above.
24.) Once you've again selected the drive where you saved the S10 image backup to, select "restoredisk".
25.) Leave the advanced extra parameters alone.
26.) Again, if you want to monkey around with the partitions on your new drive, do so at your own risk. Otherwise, use the default "Use the partition table from the image" option.
27.) Select the backup image name, the target (i.e. the newly installed, unformatted drive), and confirm the restore job.
28.) Refill your cup of coffee. It took about 15 minutes to restore the image.
29.) Shutdown Clonezilla Live, remove all USB drives, and reboot the S10.
30.) Windows should boot normally. The only problem you may run into is with installed software who's licensing can detect a change in the hardware fingerprint of the system (i.e. the drive upgrade itself makes the software think it's installed on a different computer). That happened with me and my Avast! anti-virus license.
31.) I would recommend converting the system partition (C:) to NTFS using convert.exe.
32.) Finally, unless you manually tinkered with the partitions, the last step is to create a new partition for the remainder of the upgraded drive. Start > Run (or Win-R) -> diskmgmt.msc. Create a new extended partition on the S10's drive from the unpartitioned space. Format the space (I recommend using NTFS, but if you want FAT32 for whatever reason, go for it).
33.) Enjoy your new cavernous hard drive.

Even preserving Lenovo's partitioning, my new 320GB drive now has about a 220GB partition for media. Total cost for the upgrade: about $90.

Seiko Wrist Computer

2008-10-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

Having been bit by the computer bug early, I was interested in tech gadgets all the way back in elementary school. I admit that I had one of those über-geeky Casio calculator/databank watches. But the ultimate object of affection was the Seiko Wrist Information System UC-2000. Dot matix heaven on a wriststrap!

Seeing it featured on the SportsCounters.com blog brought a lot of memories back, even if I never did get it from Santa.

Review: Lenovo IdeaPad S10 Netbook

2008-10-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

So after an almost two-month wait, I finally got my $439-list ruby red Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook. After taking some obligatory unboxing photos, backing up the factory image, getting rid of the bloatware, and installing my normal software load, I've had a few days to get a good feel for it.

My review and a video of the S10 cold booting to a usable Windows desktop are after the jump.

First off, I'll save you from the customary review trappings like a spec sheet, detailed physical descriptions, comparisons between this and competitive netbooks, and an explanation of what a netbook is. I trust that you can get all that from doing a web search and by reading the trickle of professional reviews that will soon be a flood. Instead, I'll focus on my reactions as someone who bought this mini laptop over all of the others out there.

Initial Reactions

First reaction: As I unboxed it, I realized that pictures don't do justice to the design, build-quality, and aesthetics of the S10. It feels solid, with no thin, flexing plastic panels. The hinge feels as solid as a ThinkPad. There are rubber feet on the bottom that give it stability and bumpers on the inside of the lid that make the lid feel closed and solid without needing a latch.

I got the red version, and it's not a bright, Communist red like I was expecting, but a rich, ruby color with an automotive-like metallic paint feel. In fact, the lowercase lenovo logo is chromed and inlaid into the lid, not just glued or silkscreened on. I was also afraid that the white battery, power cords, and interior would look odd with the dominant red exterior, but it looks classy.

Second reaction: It's tiny. When you put your hand up against it, you realize that it's smaller (and although it's a bit heavier than I'd like, lighter) than a hardcover novel. This is something that you can take with you without having to even think about it. Of course, the small form factor translates into a microscopic keyboard, which seems even smaller than the 85% normal size that Lenovo claims. Maybe the alphanumeric keys are 85%, but keys like shift and tab are significantly smaller and placed awkwardly. Sadly some of the mainstay keys like Home and End are now Fn-combos. Thus, while it's not bad for occasional use, you'd be crazy to use this as a replacement for any laptop.

I'm really disappointed that Lenovo, who inherited TrackPoint technology from IBM, didn't use that here. I really prefer to use a pointing stick rather than a touchpad because it's much more comfortable (and less obvious that you're using the mouse to others since your hands never leave the home row of the keyboard. So we're left with a tiny touchpad with annoy mouse buttons that require a lot of pressure to click and make a loud clicking noise to boot.

So then I'm thinking how nice a travel mouse would be for extended use. Oh, but wait, no Bluetooth is included in the initial models. And only two USB 2.0 ports, so it's not even that practical to get a wireless mouse with a USB dongle. Bummer.

Cold Boot Video

One question I had was whether Windows (XP Home SP3, BTW) on a weak-spec'ed platform was functional compared to the solid-state disk-equipped, Linux based netbooks. Fortunately, the answer seems to be "yes." As you can see in the video below, my S10 booted from cold-off to a functional Windows desktop in about a minute (another 15 seconds or so for the disk activity to completely die down to idle), and that's with the default 512MB RAM. Using standby and hibernation closes the "instant on" gap between this machine and those using Linux-based netbooks.

From there, it's a mostly positive user experience. Unlike many notebooks I've used, the hard drive rarely runs, probably thanks to tweaking down the bloatware and unneeded services. For example, I went to turn off the Indexing Service and discovered that it wasn't installed. Very cool. Once I figured out that setting Lenovo's Energy Management utility to "Super Energy Saver" mode disables the wireless and wired network adapters, it was easy to get wireless working. I love that I can suspend or hibernate, or toggle the WiFi enable/disable button and wireless reconnects without a problem.

Given the weak integrated video chipset and the cramped 1024 x 600 screen resolution, you're not going to be playing any 3D games on it, but it did handle smooth playback of 720p-encoded WMV-HD and Divx video.

On the negative side, the S10 doesn't come with reinstallation discs but rather Lenovo's OneKey Recovery utility (apparently OEM'ed from CyberLink). Unfortunately, the printed documentation suggests that you can recover to the factory image via OneKey and a hidden partition, I couldn't figure out how to do that in OneKey. The only visible options are to backup the system partition to an image file and to create bootable recovery discs from the backup image. But there's no default image, so you have to create one before you do anything that you might want to recover from and then you have to burn it to...hmmm, no built-in or included CD/DVD burner. That's kind of messed up!

Then there's the funky drive partitioning. 80GB isn't a huge hard drive, but I was counting on XP being a fairly light install (and it is--like 7 GB or so). Unfortunately, Lenovo divided the drive into 3 partions: a small, hidden parition of a few GB (perhaps for the recovery feature that I can't access), a system partion of 30GB, and parition of 40GB that only has a directory of Lenovo drivers and installation software. But what takes the cake is that the system parition that Windows is installed on is formatted as FAT32 and the Lenovo partition is NTFS! Truly, WTF? If I wasn't afraid that I might have to re-install Windows and be unable to, I would try to dynamically resize the partitions and convert to NTFS.

And then there's the crappy selection of pre-installed software. While thankfully they didn't throw in a ton of useless, bloatware like most PC manufacturers do, they did include Norton Internet Security...on a 90-day trial. And seriously, who uses marketing literature to tout that they include Adobe Reader, a power management utility, and Windows Live Toolbar? Add OneKey and that's all that's included. Weak.

But overall, its performance seems pretty snappy, well-suited for basic web tasks and as a personal media player (though not by the built-in speakers--they're loud but they sound like the $10 radio I have on my desk at work).

That's about all of my initial reactions...here's my list of pros and cons in a less TL;DR format:

Likes

Solid construction
One of the best looking netbooks out there
Quick bootup
Long, long power cord (around 10' total)
Decent price considering what you get (though specs do seem anemic compared to competitors)
Fairly light considering its solid construction (2 lbs., 5 ozs. without battery; 3-cell battery adds another 6 ozs.)
Good system responsiveness despite Windows, traditional hard disk, and Atom CPU
Easy to upgrade the memory
No trouble handling 720p-bitrate video
Bright, crisp display
Loud speakers
ExpressCard slot for future 3G (or hopefully WiMAX) expansion
Good WiFi signal strength
Built-in SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro card reader
WiFi toggle via a solid button rather than a sliding switch

Dislikes

Tiny keyboard with oddly-placed keys
Tiny trackpad with loud mouse buttons
No TrackPoint (aka mouse pointer stick embedded in the keyboard)
No volume mute button or key sequence
Small hard drive, partitioned into two usable partitions (one FAT, one NTFS--why?!?)
Lack of OEM or third-party accessories at launch
Low-runtime battery (28 watt-hour, 3 cell battery)
Cheap, cellphone-quality webcam
Crappy crapware selection included
No apparent way to do a factory restore & no included re-installation discs
No cable management for power cord
Multimedia cards stick out of reader (can't insert flush)
Gets warm (though not as hot as some full-fledged notebooks I've used)
Only two USB ports
No Bluetooth included (yet)
Clock-radio quality sound from speakers
Scant screen real estate (obviously)

Verdict

Despite the long list of negatives to the S10, if you keep in mind the reason why you'd buy a netbook in the first place, this Lenovo is definitely a solid choice. While built-in WWAN and a more capacious battery would definitely help improve its coffeehouse usability, for a cheap travel companion it's a great choice. With its built-in card reader, light weight, and sturdy construction, I can see taking the S10 with me on vacation instead of a heavier, more delicate, and more expensive notebook. Although the initial config is light on hard drive capacity, it can serve as a good portable media player. And while I'd still cry if it was lost, damaged, or stolen, I'd rather lose a $400 netbook than the $1000+ ones that I normally travel with.

I can also see that it might be a decent choice as a laptop for a kid or teen, especially since the keyboard is too cramped for lengthy typing by adult hands. Searching eBay, I see plenty of sticker skins to personalize the S10 already, so it could be a good holiday gift for them.

As for me, understanding that this isn't going to be as good as an expensive ultraportable notebook, I'm happy with my decision to go with the Lenovo instead of an Eee or Wind. While some other models may offer more for the dollar, the attractiveness and build quality of the S10 is definitely on par with the well-designed shells from Dell and HP. Sure, there's no SSD or 6-cell battery, but considering it runs Windows XP decently, I'll take the bigger storage and more versatile OS of the S10 over the other Linux netbooks out there.

Questions? Leave a comment!

My Second Economic Stimulus Package

2008-10-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the return of the Microsoft Live Cashback/eBay promotion, I pulled the trigger on a few pricey tech gadgets:

A Samsung SyncMaster 22" monitor for Mrs. Turtle
Also for the Mrs., a Dell Inspiron 530s slim desktop PC
Two Western Digital WD10EACS 1TB hard drives (for my Drobo)

As an aside, I'm going to pick up my Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (from my first stimulus) tonight from UPS will-call. Can't wait!

Fragile DRM

2008-10-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

I'm sick and tired of DRM.

Now, while some might be opposed to digital rights management under any circumstances, I'm willing to put up with reasonable controls...but only if they work.

Case in point: Netflix's Watch Instantly feature. It's one of the most attractive features of the service, and when coupled with something like the Roku Netflix Player, it's hard to see why this isn't the future of media delivery. One thing though: it uses Microsoft's DRM, and in practice, that's fragile at best.

I used to be able to Watch Instantly on my PC and our home theater PC, both running Vista. Aside from the annoyance of having DRM software updates every couple of months, it was a pain-free experience. Until we upgraded to Vista Service Pack 1--which promptly broke Watch Instantly. Following the Netflix and Microsoft instructions to reset the DRM (essentially creating new keys and throwing out the old ones...you didn't need those old keys for other, um, protected content, right?), nothing worked. Some even said that Netflix was telling people to downgrade from SP1!

I finally reloaded Vista on my PC, and lo and behold, Watch Instantly started working again even with SP1. But to this day, it doesn't work on our HTPC. And now, the self-service instructions that Netflix used to offer have been replaced by instructions to call their technical support to resolve the problem.

And I haven't even hit the other frequent problems of the hardware fingerprint changing (such as changing a hard drive or motherboard) or running out of unique machines that Watch Instantly can be used on before having to call Netflix to increase the count.

Firefox? Opera? Mac? Linux? None of them work because Microsoft's scheme uses Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer (maybe Mac support by year's end, but you get the point).

"Handle with care" is all I have to say...

Creative Movie Posters

2008-09-28T22:16:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I wanted to start collecting movie posters once I had a house. Although that hasn't come to pass (the collecting part, not the house), every once in a while, I see some posters that really make me want to start plastering my walls with them. A few years ago, it was the promo poster for HBO's Carnivale. Today, I ran across this blog post with a few good designs (and admittedly, some not so good ones--the posters and the movies).

My favorites are two from The Dark Knight (Joker/Batman/Dent and one with Joker), Lord of War, Max Payne, and, marginally, Cloverfield (which in itself, could have been so, so much better than it turned out to be).

Humble Beginnings

2008-09-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

The National Science Foundation has some interesting historical maps of the Internet in PDF format. I was in college in 1995, so it's cool to see what the backbone looked like then. Today, the company I work for has more bandwidth to some of our medium-sized locations than a backbone connection did back when I was in school.

This Changes Everything, Part II

2008-09-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

While I was previously blown away by the RED One digital cinema camera and looking forward to the prospect of a DSLR version, it looks like the RED team is gearing up for something even better. In an epic thread, Jim Jannard announced that they had taken the Scarlet back to the drawing board to introduce something even more game changing for delivery in 2009.

Given that Canon's new EOS 5D MkII DSLR appears to shoot amazing 1080p video, it looks like the possibility of a converged still/digital video camera is going to be the next rage.

Check out the high-resolution version (and that's only at 1/4 size!).

Seeing that $600 is the most I've ever paid for a camera, the $2500-4000 price bracket is on the pricey side, but seeing the results possible from such professional-quality cameras may make me take up photography as a serious hobby.

[EDIT: changed link to movie and removed the YouTube version which has been taken down]

Finally, a decent built-in Windows calculator!

2008-09-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

While you've been able to download better calculators--even from Microsoft--than the simple one that's been included with Windows, it's nice to see that the next version of Windows will have a more advanced one. I still haven't ditched my trusty desk calculator (nor have I gotten used to using Google for calculations), so the Windows 7 calculator looks promising.

[ThinkNext.net via Gizmodo]

Bright Blinds for the cube dweller

2008-09-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

I work in an office with no windows, and while it has crossed my mind to get our facilities group to break out the outside wall to get some natural light, this concept looks like a more-feasible option.

[via The Hottest Gadgets]

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

2008-09-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

The very first computer game I played was Zork I on the Apple II. While the era of text-based adventure games is over, the art of interactive fiction is still holds a magical appeal despite the billions of polygons and realistic physics of today's games.

Once the family got a PC clone, I played almost all of the text-based Zork series, as well as other Infocom gems like Planetfall, Spellbreaker, and A Mind Forever Voyaging.

So it brought a smile to my face to see the Zork 404 page. I know it's not new, but it's the first time I've run across it in my many years surfing the web practically every day.

To Serve Man

2008-09-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

Seeing the footage of the remake of TDtESS today got me thinking of classic sci-fi from 50's through the 70's.

There's certainly some good candidates: movies such as Westworld, The Black Hole, and 2001: A Space Odyssey and shows like Star Trek, and Dr. Who, Plus there's also the non-traditional ones like The Prisoner (which will one day warrant an entry of its own) and even The Wild Wild West.

For me, I think The Twilight Zone takes the prize as the best traditional sci-fi. Incredibly smart writing, a who's who of acting talent, and some definitely mind-warping plots. I remember watching re-runs at my grandparent's house when I was a kid, and the theme music would send shivers down my spine.

Some of my favorite episodes (warning, links have spoilers): "People Are Alike All Over," "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," "The Invaders," and, of course, "To Serve Man."

Too bad they don't make TV like that anymore...

Netflix Origami

2008-09-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

Diversion of the day: I normally shred the disc mailer covers from Netflix, but there's a far more entertaining use for them--Netflix origami!

My first attempt looked somewhat like the polo shirt origami, though probably an irregular, big & tall version on the clearance rack.

Miracle Fruit Tablets - Unboxing Photos

2008-09-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

Well, Christmas came early this year: One of the things on my wish list was the Miracle Fruit Tablets that I blogged about last month. My wife read the entry and promptly scoured the internet for them. She was so excited that she couldn't save them for a stocking stuffer and gave them to me straight away.

I haven't tried them yet (need to stock up on sour stuff), but I'm very much looking forward to this product from SEN YUH FARM SCIENCE CO., LTD. (SAINT-FRUIT FARM) and TAIWAN PANBIOTIC LABORATORIES CO., LTD. If you're interested in getting some Miracle Fruit Tablets of your own, you can pick them up at ThinkGeek or on eBay.

Enjoy these unboxing photos:

Reasons why I probably will never buy an iPod

2008-09-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

[planned obsolescence] Having better models come out 6-12 months like clockwork after the previous generation is disheartening. It's not like iPods are $50, so you'd think that you'd at least get some mileage out of them before they're worthless.
[sticker shock] They're expensive. Sure, they're great pieces of technology, but again, since they're obsolete so quickly, it's hard to justify shelling out for these essentially disposable gadgets.
[iTunes] Aside from Songbird being my player of choice, iTunes is bloatware. Boo to being held hostage by hefty, proprietary software.
[format support] Why should I have to convert or re-encode files to either preserve storage space or to play them at all?
[Sarbanes-Oxley] Ah, I long for the days of free software upgrades, not having to make micro payments every time a new feature comes out.
[Jack FM] Since the Jack format covers a good chunk of my music library, there's less of a need to carry around an MP3 player.

A low tech wish

2008-09-07T23:28:00.000-07:00

Ran across this "digital message tape" and it's another thing to add to my wishlist. Reminds me of those convenience store signs that work on the same principle.

Sure, I could use a magic marker and write on the side of a box---that would be faster and cheaper. Or use the Brother P-Touch labeler I've used for years. But what's the fun in that?

How hard is it to send an e-mail?

2008-09-06T23:46:00.000-07:00

A big pet peeve of mine is when internet stores cancel orders without sending you an e-mail. There are few things more frustrating than expecting to get something in the mail, wondering why it still hasn't come, and then checking the order status and seeing "Cancelled." It shouldn't be difficult to trigger a "we're sorry, but your order has be cancelled" message, should it?

That happened to me a few days ago, for the Seagate portable drive I bought from their online store on closeout. It was a fantastic price...obviously too fantastic or too much demand. After seeing that it was cancelled, I thought, "oh, well." That is, until I got an e-mail from Seagate with the subject "Seagate Followup Offer" that began with, "As a follow up to the original communication regarding your canceled order at Seagate.com and as a valued customer, we are offering you the following special program on one of our most attractive new products."

While it's nice they were willing to send what amounts to a 20% discount on a product I'm not interested in, I'm somwhat annoyed that they said that they told me my earlier order was cancelled. I even went through my spam folder to see if it had gotten tagged as spam. Nothing from Seagate.

It just seems like good customer service to drop a line, even in the case of a price mistake or out of stock situation. At least I wouldn't have to wonder whether the order was coming or not.

I'm still a button masher

2008-09-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to playing the PS3 demo of NHL '09, and it reminded me why I don't buy sports games. Sure, it's gorgeous and has great commentary by Gary Thorne and Bill Clement. But despite missing plenty of classes in college playing NHL '94 on the SNES, now, as then, I'm a button masher. That means I often get owned by the CPU because I can't master the finer mechanics of the game, and that makes it not-so-fun.

Looking at some videos of NHL '94 vs. '09, it's amazing how far the graphics, artwork, and animation have come. In some respects, it's getting almost photorealistic, but every few seconds, wooden animations and bad texture mapping jarred me back to reality. As far as the demo, I didn't manage a win in several attempts to play through the demo's final period of a Penguins/Red Wings game, so no chance of me picking up this title.

Unfortunately, besides confirming that my mashing skills are intact, I've got the song from the demo, "Warriors of Time" by Black Tide, firmly stuck in my head. Woah, woah, woah...

Google Chrome: No Thanks

2008-09-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

I remember reading about Google about a decade ago, when it was still an obscure search engine. Today, my life revolves around it. Google Maps. Gmail. GOOG-411. And, now Blogger.

While I'm somewhat put-off by the rather bland styling of Google properties and privacy concerns, I'm still captivated by their products. For example, I'm looking forward to the Android phones to see how they'll stack up to the Apple and Microsoft offerings. Captivated, that is, until Chrome.

In a surprise about as big as Sarah Palin, out of the blue Google released the beta of Chrome this week, and while there's plenty of coverage on it, I'm not biting. Architectural improvements aside, it exists only to ensure targeted advertising reaches us. And one day, I'm sure that Chrome will be mandatory to use Google services and applications.

Google should get revenue for providing useful services, but I'm not sure a Google sandbox browser is the answer. Viva la Firefox!

Chronicles of the Fast and the Babylon A.D.

2008-09-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

We caught Babylon A.D. over Labor Day weekend because my wife and sister both like Vin Diesel--alot. Don't get me wrong, I like him too, ever since Pitch Black, but B.A.D. (hmmm) is a collection of his typecast roles, from The Fast and The Furious to Chronicles of Riddick to xXx. A Children of Men clone (which I liked enough to buy on DVD but I was't as impressed by that movie as some), B.A.D. fails to capture even a tenth of the plot development of CoM.

The movie had promise, especially the first couple of acts as "Toorop" (whaaa?) and his package escape from Russia to Canada on their way to New York. I loved the dystopian future combined with the glimpses of future technology (interactive e-ink map, omnipresent Google, and the ginormous TV wall). I was hoping for more, but alas, it didn't even approach the futuregeekness of, say, Minority Report.

However, the movie ultimately falls apart because it doesn't give the audience a compelling reason to root for the characters, unlike CoM, which the very future of humanity was at stake. And don't get me started on the ending...I won't spoil it, but it was either the most blatant sequel setup ever or they ran out of ideas or money or both since there's seemingly no final act. I think the "WTF?!? C'mon!" reactions from the crowd as the director credit appeared sums Babylon A.D. up best.

With that behind us, bring on the next Fast and Furious. My sis and wife need a better Vin fix!

This Changes Everything

2008-08-31T22:52:00.001-07:00

Wired has a great article this month about the RED digital movie camera designed by a team assembled by Jim Jannard, the founder of Oakley. It's insanely affordable ($17.5K for a professional movie camera), comes very close to film quality, and outputs in an easy-to-edit digital format. Moreover, it even handles focus similarly to film, allowing striking photography. Check out this sample:

BIKER teaser from Macgregor on Vimeo.

But what I'm even more excited about is a DSLR version that is supposedly in the works. It bodes well for our future if one day consumers can own a camera such as this. It could make our digicam shots today look like Polaroids by comparison. Given that RED is releasing a $3000 camcorder version of the RED One next year, maybe that day will be here sooner.

Sorry, we're out of Beverly

2008-08-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

Here's news about the upcoming 100-flavor soda stations (which will make ordering a Coke in the South even more interesting since all soda is known as Coke). Brings back two fond memories: first, mixing Suicides at 7-Eleven: combining all flavors of fountain drinks (or Slurpees or both) in the same cup. Second: taking relatives and guests to The World of Coca-Cola and innocently getting them to try a healthy sample of Beverly from in the sampling room.

Sail-van Concept

2008-08-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

Normally, I usually say, "WTF were they thinking?" when I see concept cars at auto shows. But in the case of the VW Caddy Topos Sail, I'm in love. The wood deck may not be practical (like having to recline on a grimy, bird- and bug-stained roof or keeping the neighborhood kids and my co-workers off of it), but it's strangely enticing. Must...have...impractical, gimmicky Eurovan...just for the teak deck with railing.

(Bleep)ing Stripped PS3 Screws!

2008-08-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

Armed with a new 320GB Hitachi drive, a small Phillips screwdriver, and a great step-by-step guide, I went about upgrading the 60GB Seagate Momentus 5400.2 hard drive in my Playstation 3. What should have been a 4-minute hardware swap ended up being more like 20 minutes thanks to a stripped screw on the drive carrier.

Yes, the guide warned that the screws are easy to strip, but I think these screws were easier to strip than 20-year old paint (or use your imagination). As careful as I was, one of them stripped with only slight pressure. I ended up using a pair of pliers to grip the sides of the screwhead to loosen it. If that didn't work, I would have had to break out the rotary tool to cut the damn thing off.

Aside from the screw, the upgrade was fast and easy, including the backup, restore, and formatting. My PS3 now has a ton of space and an empty partition for Yellow Dog Linux (grumble about the 10GB fixed partition size limitation--gotta either pick 10GB for one OS and the other gets the rest of the drive).

Anyway, given the tons of money in components that the PS3 has, you'd think Sony would have spent, oh, a few more cents on some hardier screws on the only user replaceable part in the unit.

Let's See How Far We've Come

2008-08-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

It's been about 15 years since I started working with laptops, and I started thinking about how far technology as come since ThinkPads I was setting up and servicing back in the early 90's and it's descendant, low-end, netbook of today:

	IBM ThinkPad 700 (1992)	Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (2008)	Percent Change
Processor	25MHz IBM 486 SLC	1.6GHz Intel Atom	+6,400%
Std. Memory	4MB	512MB	+1,280%
Hard Disk	80MB	80GB	+1,000%
Screen	9.5" monochrome, 640x480	10.2" color, 1024x600	infinite ;-)
Weight	7.5 lbs.	2.4 lbs.	-68%
List Price	$4,000	$429	-89%

Stats from Ken Polsson's Chronology of IBM Personal Computers and from Lenovo's S10 press release

Amazing stuff!

Vancouver or London?

2008-08-24T22:10:00.000-07:00

As I watch the Olympic Closing Ceremony--incidentally, not nearly as amazing as the Opening one despite Beckham and Jackie Chan--I think my wife and I have decided to try to make it to one of the upcoming Olympics. So that's either the Winter Games in 2010 or the Summer Games in 2012. It will probably be Vancouver, since we're closer and it holds more appeal to us than London.

Some of my fondest memories are from attending the '96 games in Atlanta, where I saw the torch relay, watched USA baseball and basketball, and hung out in the Centennial Olympic Park and traded pins. So I really hope it will work out that we can get there.

PixelJunk Eden

2008-08-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

Not that the PS3 needs more eye candy, but a title that has that and more is PixelJunk Eden. A download title from the PlayStation Store, it's a gorgeous puzzle platformer with a great techno/chillout soundtrack. It's kind of hard to describe but IGN and 1Up have done a good job explaining the premise of the game.

I've downloaded the demo, and as soon as I get my PS3's hard drive upgraded, it will be the first downloadable title that I'll buy. Even the wife was fascinated by Eden, and she's not really into console or action games. Check out a video of the action to get an idea why it is such a unique title--and a bargain at $10.

My Economic Stimulus

2008-08-23T23:31:00.001-07:00

It's been an expensive week for me, but happily, on discretionary purchases. Among them:

~~Seagate 120GB Freeagent Go (2.5" USB 2.0 external drive)~~ [EDIT: Seagate cancelled the order--must have been a price mistake or out of clearance stock]
Hitachi TravelStar 2.5" 320GB SATA internal drive (to upgrade my PS3's hard drive)
Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook, in red
A few A/V cables from my trusty cable source, Monoprice
Some overpriced photos from my cousin's wedding ($6 for a 4x6!)

I'll probably have buyer's remorse once I get my credit card statement, but I'm a sucker for a good deal, wedding photos not withstanding. And there's still one more day left in the week, and it comes with newspaper ad circulars...stay tuned.

Lightning at Sunset

2008-08-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

I have a new desktop wallpaper: Lightning at Sunset by Sam Javanrouh. Aside from being a great photo technically, the detail, colors, and the lightning make it a fantastic wallpaper. As a completely amateur photographer, this falls into the "I hope I can take a photo like this before I die" category.

Thanks to Sam for making a high-res, widescreen version available on his Flickr collection, and for Lifehacker and Kaelri for featuring it.

Songbird hits Beta

2008-08-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

My favorite music player, Songbird, has just hit beta after being available as developer and preview releases. It's a free, open-source, cross-platform player built on Mozilla code. As a result, it's really customizable (with add-ons and skins--called feathers) like Firefox.

After being a long term Winamp user (dabbling in WMP and iTunes, trying out Foobar2000 and Media Monkey), I've settled in on Songbird primarily because of its open-source nature and add-on system. Need a CoverFlow-like interface? Check (MediaFlow). Need to retrieve album art? Check (Album Art Manager). SHOUTcast streaming? Check (SHOUTcast Radio). Say What? (Lyrics plugin). And so on.

It's also tightly integrated with the Web, with tabbed browsing, searching, downloading from the web to your song library, and more.

My hat's off to PotI and the Songbird development community!

Battle of the Cola Points Programs

2008-08-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

As a graduating senior in college, I loaded up on "easy A" classes, and one of them was a marketing course taught by a former Coca-Cola executive. Aside from being an easy A, it was pretty interesting to see the psychology of advertising and how much it drives our lives.

I mean, look at rewards/points programs. Ever since we were seven years old and figured out that it cost our folks 50 times more to pay for those skee-ball tickets than it would have been to buy those stuffed animals and plastic spider rings, we knew that they're a way to get our compulsive sides to make other people lots of money.

But knowing that, I still collect the codes for the Coke and Pepsi rewards points--to the point that I'll dig through the recycling bin if my wife doesn't save them. And although you have to drink a hell of a lot of soda (or collect the codes from someone who does), I have gotten a couple of decent things from the Coke program: free product coupons and a nice NCAA basketball.

I'm relatively new to collecting the Pepsi points, but since the Mrs. prefers the anti-Coke, I'm stuck.

The biggest thing that annoys me with the Coke program is that it's built on Flash. Not only is the site always slow, it's a 10-min. affair to enter codes when I'm on a terminal connection. Plus, it sucks being bombarded with product, sweepstakes, and survey pop-ups. The designers there should be fired.

I like how the Pepsi Stuff program partnered with Amazon. Not only does it use a common sign-on with Amazon, but it's painless and quick to enter codes. I can actually use a Flash blocker and still enter them. Kudos for the DRM-free MP3's and DVD movie rewards. Yet, if I stop to think about it, I have flashbacks to the Chuck E. Cheese prize counter, considering the sheer volume of Pepsi I'd have to buy to get just one.

Got to go...it's time to dig through the recycling bin...and my neighbors...

New TSA Laptop Bag Rules

2008-08-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

The TSA just implemented new rules on laptop bags that can be sent through the X-ray machines without removing the laptop from the bag. As someone who's been used to taking out--and occasionally powering on--my laptop for more than 10 years when traveling, I wonder how much of a time-saver this is actually going to be.

I mean, depending on the mood of the screeners that day, you have to remove your shoes, outer clothing, belts, glasses, wallet, keys, change, liquids, and other items, so it's really not that big of a deal to me to grab your laptop, dump it into a tub, and then reassemble everything at the other end--usually in an awkward bundle with the hope of finding a chair to sit down to repack everything.

It's the hassle of travel, isn't it? Is there really a need to buy another ~~$100+ laptop bag~~ $220 laptop bag to save maybe a minute or two per trip?

Miracle fruit?

2008-08-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

I recently came across Miracle Berry Fruit Tablets at one of my favorite shopping sites, ThinkGeek. They are supposed to make bitter and sour foods taste sweet.

I'm sure we all remember experiments in elementary school science class where you map the different regions of the tongue to sensations of taste. So while the name "Miracle Berry" is a bit too hokey for me, the science behind it makes sense.

I'd love to give these tablets a try sometime, but at $1/dose, I think I can imagine the magical sweetness and put it to better pharmacological use, such as Zyrtec, which also costs a buck a day but when your allergies are out of control, it's priceless.

Ode to Firefox

2008-08-16T17:54:00.000-07:00

Only a few years late to the party, I jumped ship from IE to Firefox when 3.0 was released, and now I'm willing to name my first-born Mozilla (Moe for short).

Having been using browsers for over 15 years now (back to Netscape Navigator on X-Windows), Firefox wasn't unknown to me. But as a religious user of IE7 and Opera as my alternative browser, Firefox 1.x didn't call to me. Then I heard about memory leakage problems with Firefox 2, so it wasn't until the latest generation that I decided to make the leap.

Boy, what I was missing! The killer feature for me is the add-on system, and I've racked up a healthy number of them, which I'll share here over time. Aside from the occasional compatiblity problems, it's my main brower now since Firefox combines the performance of Opera with the mainstream appeal of a browser like IE.

If it gets any better, I might just have to really write some poetry about it. :)