Curt?

Creation of the Ipad

High Tech

I'm not going to lie, the top two uses I get out of my iPod Touch are listening to podcasts as I bus to work (Hardcore Footy Show of course) and allowing me to use google reader while I'm on the can. Now that, is high tech shitting.

Windows Vista, Go To Hell

There's always something stupid happening with our Windows Vista laptop. Problems that stump not only Heather, but me too. And every time my mind instantly wanders to that fateful decision to rule our a mac because it would be too hard to get accustomed to for Heather. Granted, we typically don't have any issues with our win XP box, so really, Vista is the source of the problem.

Last night, Heather put pictures from our camera onto said Vista laptop. She then created a folder where she wanted to move the pictures to. The folder with pictures and the new folder were both created by Heather. She had full permissions for both folders. She is an administrator on the laptop. But somehow, Vista would not let her move or cut/paste the folder with pictures in it to the new folder. It accused her of needing administrator permissions to move it, which were denied.

I was finally able to move the folder with pics in it by copying it and pasting in the desired folder. I then had the same problem deleting the original folder with pics in it due to administrator permissions. And so, here is the genius of Vista. I could delete all the photos in the original folder and then delete the folder itself, without any complaint. But before, I couldn't just delete (or move) the folder with pictures in it.

Genius! Way to go Microsoft. Good luck convincing anyone to get Windows 7 and abandon XP. Better yet, good luck avoiding the masses converting to Apple fanboys.

Kiss My Asus!

UPDATE: Asus is in the red for the first time

Coincidence? I think not!

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So the RMA request for the Asus Eee PC mini-laptop that I bought for our Australia/NZ trip has been replied to by Asus Customer "Care." If you'll notice in the picture below (which Asus attached to the email), there is damage to the LCD screen rendering the machine useless. What happened to it? I'll never know because I was sleeping as Heather used it during our last night in Auckland and then charged it overnight. The next morning this is what I woke up to:

There was no dropping or smashing or ramming or slamming, so I've been told. So I figured I would try getting it back into Asus' hands and maybe, just maybe, they would be like "our bad, we'll fix it for you." No, instead, they replied going "pay for this." Though this was kind of an expected scenario, given I was told in Melbourne what their policy is on LCD screens (namely: "you fucked up, pay us"), I was kind of hoping they would at least be courteous enough to tell me their policy and why I was being charged for it. Even an attempt at pretend sympathy would have been appreciated.

So the bottom line is, I have to spend another 23% on top of the price I paid for the machine to make it usable again. After I used it for a whole 10 days. After it decided to shit the bed on itself. And I don't even merit an explanation as to why.

Conclusion: I won't be buying from Asus anymore. They were my preferred motherboard manufacturer, but not anymore. I will likely, but very begrudgingly, pay them 115$ dollars (which they didn't mark as being in Canadian or US dollars) and hope to get more use out of this laptop to make it a worthwhile purchase and repair. But this has soured me so much that I recommend to spend your dollars or pounds or euros or rupees or mana elsewhere and declare that ASUS, YOU ARE OFFICIALLY ON NOTICE!

CFL ref unextraordinaire Jake Ireland comes off the board. But the reprieve will likely only last for the offseason before he starts to stick stuff in my craw again.

Mixed Bag

This website provides some insights on "Annoying Body Glitches," including hiccups. I was keen to see if my sure-fire cure was present. It is not. Which is kind of satisfying knowing that I am member of an elite, select few knowledge carriers. It's kind of a cult-ish feeling. A secret society whose sole rite is the vanquishing of hiccups with our mystical elixir. And though that might be overstating it a little, Peanut Butter is the true cure. As Stephen Colbert would say: Peanut Butter is the proven scientific cure for hiccups, one can assume. But it seems that this solution is not commonplace and I've rarely if ever found anyone with this knowledge. Props to Dylan and his family for discovering or sharing this with me, back in the proverbial "day."

As a side not, the one about random jerking (not that kind Kevin) before falling asleep has always been a source of amusement for me being that Heather falls asleep before I do. What I laugh at when she's sleeping can't hurt her.

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I've been torrenting lately, and though I admit I have yet to perfect the art, Sasktel's high speed classic has been punishing me. Actually, it feels like Sasktel has been punishing me. Though they won't say that they have anything against torrenting, I suspect they are complacent with certain hardware deficiencies which help to make it difficult.

Their 2wire modem will grind to a halt because it's session tables / RAM get completely full due to too many established connections. I have already had them come in to add a new modem because the last one had other somewhat related issues. The new one hasn't solved anything wrt torrents though. Of course, Sasktel claims this is a hardware issue and there is nothing they can do about it. Oh, and despite one of their techs telling me that I can correct the modem from being brought to it's knees by power cycling it, I was told today that this won't really work. Thanks. So even if I remove power to my modem, it can somehow maintain knowledge of prior connections. I'd love to know how/why it does that. They recommended changing my torrent client's settings to restrict the number of connections. I'll see later today if this worked.

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re: Million Video Games Sellers Worldwide

As I have started up playing Duke Nukem 3d again with the new High Resolution texture package(AWESOME), I have pondered it's place in history. According to VGChartz.com, it didn't even sell a million units. This strikes me, no simile required. This is one of my favorite games of all time and a legendary PC game. Clearly PC games don't rate as well, which makes sense, but look at the other crap on there.

Nintendogs?!!! Number 7 selling video game of all time??!! What has this world come to. And there is 6 or 7 huge selling Pokemon games. I don't know anything about them, but I'm betting all they did was change the colour of the characters in the games and the title. "Pokemon Yellow, where do we go from here? Wait, I've got it! Pokemon Red/Mango Tree Fuchsia!" Oh, spoiled children and your fickle parents.

My niece received Nintendogs as a gift and she sat there playing with virtual dogs. Granted kids are hard to figure out and there are plenty of stupid video games, it's hard to not to stare with a blank look at a child telling her Nintendo DS to "sit!" Having said that, I give this to my children any day of the week before a real dog. Real dogs poop. I'm not making this up.

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In an act of self-punishment, I eagerly await Future Shop's availability of the ipod touch I'm looking for. Of course they are sold out and will be forever and I hate the place, but I have a 100$ gift card and it needs to get used. Damn it! Give me my toy!

Awesome

It is awesome that AVG, my antivirus software for the laptop, decided not to load when I booted the computer today. I can't stress how impressed I am with it.

At least Vista noticed and properly warned me of this. Yes, Vista can do something right once in a while.

Annoy Me

Before settling on a HP dv9640 laptop, I went through the big Mac vs. Microsoft debate. I asked some Mac users to give me reasons to change over. One of the things that stood out in my head was that ease of use was a big feature, or to quote Porter: "everything just works."

Ultimately, price and Heather's benefit won out and I sit here with my Vista laptop. But I think I'm starting to understand the headaches I was being warned about with Microsoft. This hasn't been a consideration for quite a while, since all I've used is Vista on a desktop and everything is configured the way I like it (aka, working for the most part).

So here's my initial setup troubles:
-Microsoft Outlook from Office XP would not authenticate sending mail. Even Sasktel tech support couldn't help me out. But switch over to Vista's email client and presto, no issues. What a piss off.
-After initializing a home network from my XP desktop for the first time, it said that in order for the network to work correctly for file/printer sharing, I would have to install XP network drivers from the XP cd on my Vista laptop. Is there no suck thing as backwards compatibility?
-I don't know if Microsoft is completely at fault for this, but the windows media plugin for firefox had to be installed manually. Shouldn't this shit come bundled or Firefox be able to install on it's own? I just installed it for hell's sakes.

And just because it knew I was going to bitch about it, I think the laptop stalled on reboot and I sat at a black screen for about three minutes after I logged in. This seems kind of excessive for OS loading time. And can I have something other than blackness please? A flapping Windows flag? Anything?

These Windows boxes had better network easily, otherwise laptop frisbee will become a sport.

Baconated

Well, another year, another disappointment.

Wendy's has once again not chosen me to kick for a million dollars. Why? I'm not sure. I faithfully played the game and ate a baconator. What do I have to do? Eat baconators and drink Gibson's every day? Because I'll do it.

Anyway, I'm going to drown my sorrows on October 12th and watch the game in sorrow and disgust. Please join me and lament my bad luck. At least this year I can do it while watching 46inches of manhood at my house. That's right, HD was hooked up last night. Which brings me to another point.

Does anyone else have problems with Sasktel Max's digital optical audio out? I get a ~1/4 second audio drop where it just goes silent about every 20-40 seconds. It is extremely annoying and I noticed it this weekend at Jay's watching the (cough) Rider game. Google will lead the way. Otherwise, tech support is going to get it.

RFC (request for comments)

Hey everyone.

I'm just going to put this on here. It's just the TV I've had in mind for the last long while. I'm putting it up here since there is a good deal on it along with a Pioneer home theater in a box (home theater in a box, girrrrrl) and futureshop has a big home theater sale on now. I'm in no way putting this up here because Heather requested this blog's URL because she was bored at work today and I'm trying to imply anything to her....

What do you think?


... backstage at the CMA's, it's a home theater in a box.

Force Feedback Mouse

from Gizmodo...

it is aware of the user's mouse gestures and can either do nothing, attract the mouse to a new position, or it push away from its current position.

I can think of some AWESOME ideas for a force feedback mouse. How (not?) cool would it be when you are playing a first person shooter to have your mouse shake when you are getting tagged. It would make it harder for the guy getting shot to respond with return fire, which I imagine it would be in real life when you are getting shot in your person.

The Apple Monopoly

I was curious to know what the hell this thing was all about, because it's huge tech geek news, but to the average tech geek like me (coupled with the fact that sales probably won't hit Canada for a while) I know relatively little about this thing. So I looked it up. Turns out, this thing is a set top box that you park in your entertainment system. You then download digital content that you have on your computer (no streaming viewing). The only place you can legally purchase content is through the Itunes store.

So here is where the monopoly aspect comes into my mind. If you buy one of these boxes, not only are you restricted to the limited lineup of TV and movies on Itunes, but you can ONLY play TV and moves from Itunes. From Gizmodo...

Having played with Apple TV, it's easy enough to agree with what Mossy and Pogue have already told you: This device works very well if you don't mind that your entire digital media experience has to remain inside Apple's walled garden.

To discourage from being able to play content from the rest of your digital movie library, they have made it difficult to watch other video that doesn't come directly from Itunes, because you need to convert to the .m4v format first. Nothing like transcoding a movie before watching.

I've also heard that the loading times are painfully slow when it boots up. You can only connect to a widescreen TV. Itunes needs to be running on your computer. You can't purchase titles from Apple TV, you have to do it from your computer. There are no cables included. You can't choose which files to add and delete on the Apple TV, you would need to make changes in Itunes on your computer and the transfer EVERYTHING back over to the Apple TV ("synching").

And what if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3? Well these already have the same kind of functionality as the Apple TV, plus extras like being able to play youtube and google video.

I'll stick to my Buffalo LinkTheater, thank you very much, because despite this inaccurate statement below, it seems to stream video across my network just fine. From BusinessWeek:

Earlier efforts to bring online video to television sets have failed because streaming live video over a network doesn't work very well; even the fastest networks suffer glitches that spoil viewing. Apple solves the problem by storing content on the Apple TV box. And while that box syncs with only one iTunes computer, Apple permits you to stream content stored on other computers in your home—with the quality lapses that entails.

My LinkTheateralso displays pictures and plays audio. Most of these types of boxes can stream wirelessly as well, though I'm not sure how well it works. I have a suspended ceiling, so it's no big deal for me to run wires and I feel more comfortable that way.

Most importantly, I don't have to wait to transfer files from my PC to the LinkTheater, I can play them on the fly. And it supports a wide range of video file types and formats. And it has a DVD player.

Know your Plasma

You should probably try this at home.

HD movie in the hizzy

Considering a HD DVD system? Here is a VERY amateur comparison of HD-DVD, Blu-ray, and regular DVD. It is not a true comparison by any means, but interesting and easy because its mostly pictures.

click here

Faucets for Dummies

From Gizmodo...

This could quite possibly be the world’s first color changing faucet — built-in LEDs change colors based on the water temperature. There is also “precise control” for baths, sinks, and showers.

Now if they could only do that to my urine!

Think of how much better Aragorn will look, Heather

For those of you who don't know, Heather has a thing for Aragorn. I'm referring to the LOTR character, not the whats-his-face actor who plays him in the movie. It wouldn't have mattered if Tom Cruise had played Aragorn, she still would have found him hot. And believe me, Heather does not find Tom Cruise hot. That was an awkward threesome.

Anyway, this is proof in non-pudding form that the HD experience should be... experienced. Being that I am in the process of getting marital consent for the necessary purchases, the sexiness of the Lord of the Rings quality / Aragorn hotness in the link below should be more ammunition for me.

http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html

DisPixelation

from geekologie...

They took a 13 megapixel photo, down rezzed it twice to 8 and 5 megapixels, and then blew them all up to 16x24 prints. They then took the three prints to the streets of New York and had passersby see if they could tell the difference. Turns out only one person correctly put them in order of megapixels - a photography professor - and 95% couldn't even tell the difference. So even though more megapixels sounds better in theory, 5 is pretty much good enough for whatever needs you might have.