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Microsoft DreamSpark

If you’re a student (unfortunately I’m not anymore), Microsoft is giving away free software for developing and designing software: Bill Gates talks about Free Software, Students, and Technology:

How would you like a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008? How about the entire Microsoft Expression Studio? Not enough…… how about Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and more?

For once, something that sounds too good to be true really is this good and really is true. Starting today (or soon in some areas), students worldwide will be able to download our professional development and design tools for free! It’s called DreamSpark and it is upon us.

We got a few minutes with the guy himself, Mr. Bill Gates, to talk about his thoughts on this student opportunity. We also discussed the fast pace of technology and how students can best deal with that. Finally, I gave him a chance to think about what he would do if he were 17 years old again and starting up the next big company. His answer was–are you sitting down because this one was a real shocker–software!

We figured since one 8er already won a PC and another 8er won a Zune, we should hook you guys up with something cool too… I better see some smiles in the comments! šŸ™‚

You can go directly to the downloads page.

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Cute Cat Animation

Was going to post about some cool new tablet applications I found, but that’ll have to wait.

I forget where I got this video from (probably Digg), but Apparently I got this link from Hjo3. I sent it to a few friends earlier and this has been sitting in the queue, waiting to be posted. Since Tekman and Angel-grrl are getting a new cat, I thought it was an appropriate time to post it:

Wake up Cat
Wake up Cat

‘Wake Up Cat’ is by an English animator called Simon Tofield and it is actually called ‘Cat Man Do’. He works for an animation company called Tandem Films.

After you watch this, you’ll realize why cats are evil.

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The Boondocks – Guns and Violence

Thanks to RayAlome for sharing this comic strip with me:

the boondocks - guns and violence Huey – I don’t get this whole thing with video games.
Riley – What, you mean why you keep losing?
Huey – No. Everyone is worried about kids and violence, right? And kids using guns … So why don’t they go after the gun manufacturers and gun dealers instead of people who make video games. It doesn’t make sense.
Riley – Sure it does. Pretend you’re some stupid parent activist person … Who would YOU rather start beef with – some nerd who makes video games or some dude with a warehouse full of AK-47s?
Huey – You know … I’m actually MUCH more impressed by that point than I care to admit.
Riley – Of course. I’m deep. Just don’t tell nobody.

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Credit Karma

Recently I was introduced to Credit Karma (www.creditkarma.com). Credit Karma is a site where they allow you to get daily credit score updates. However, the score is based on some weird TransUnion algorithm which ranges between 150-950. Experian and Equifax typically caps the score at 830-850.

credit karma

I heard of this site first on SlickDeals, but apparently it’s been on FatWallet for some time. With most financial sites, I’m quite weary about giving up information. Even if they’re legit, it’s a honey pot for identity thefts.

I searched around and found these 2 articles:

Online Financial Innovations Announces FinovateStartup, a New Conference Showcasing Dozens of the Most Innovative Financial Technology Startups (Show)

A Start-Up Offering TransUnion Scores (Show)

Anyway, reading into the thread, it appears that your full social security number isn’t actually stored on the site, but I guess you just have to take their word for it. I decided to sign up just to try it out. I already had Wamu’s credit card which provides monthly credit scores, but daily scores sounded interesting. Anyway, my number was rather high compared to the scores I’ve seen before, but as I stated earlier, this is using some weird TransUnion algorithm.

Interestingly enough, to get daily scores, you have to log in daily and enter your social security number (or was it the last 4 digits), meaning it might be true that they don’t store your full SSN on their site.

Update:
If you want to try out this site, use the following invite code: CKFRND

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Aerosmith’s “Dream On” Free for Guitar Hero III

After mentioning that I got Rock Band yesterday, Angel-grrl pointed out to me that for a limited time, I can get Aerosmith’s “Dream On” for free! You can read more details on Xbox.com. Sweet! Given that many of you come here looking for free Xbox Live Arcade Games, I thought I’d shared this with you guys.

Aerosmith always comes ready to rock.

“Dream On” was the first major hit for the rock band Aerosmith, appearing on their debut self-titled album in 1973. And now, avid Guitar Heroā„¢ III: Legends of Rock players will be able to try out their chops on the power ballad, by downloading it free of charge from Xbox LIVEĀ® Marketplace. The song track will be free for a limited time only: Saturday, February 16, 2 A.M. PT (approximately) to Monday, February 18, 2 A.M. PT (approximately).

The song is a free download through the weekend in celebration of the upcoming Guitar HeroĀ®: AerosmithĀ® game. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will be the first music-based game to feature a single band, and gamers will be able to experience Aerosmith’s GRAMMYĀ® winning career, from their first gig to becoming rock royalty.

Update:
How appropriate that today’s Foxtrot comic strip is on Chamber Music Hero.

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Rock Band

It’s been awhile since my last post. Just been busy at work and tired overall. I know I still owe you a File Server post and a Hot Pot post. Those will still come, I promise.

Anyway some weekends ago, Tekman held a gathering at his place and I got to check out a bunch of new board games including Polarity (more info) and Shadows Over Camelot (more info). Wrexen brought over his Rock Band for Xbox 360 and I gave it a whirl and it was a lot of fun. So I decided to get one and began looking for deals.

I had a $50 Circuit City Gift Card (which I had redeemed through MyPoints), but Rock Band was $170 at Circuit City. And the fact I had to pay sales tax made it even worse. The best deal I found was at Buy.com for $150 shipped (after $10 Google Checkout discount). We were looking at $135 @ Circuit City (after GC) or $150 @ Buy.com. Wasting a $50 GC to save $15 sounded quite unreasonable.

So I started researching a bit more into Rock Band and noticed it only came with 1 guitar, 1 microphone, and 1 drum set. The game is a 4-player game and can support up to 2 guitars (1 guitar, 1 bass). So I started researching on how much guitars cost. Apparently Guitar Hero III guitars worked on Rock Band, but not vice versa, which sucked. They also didn’t really sell wireless guitars separately, unless you bought the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle and one of the reason why I’ve delayed purchasing GH3 was the fact that the original set included a wired guitar.

Anyway, I decided I would get GH3 just for the wireless guitar and figure out what to do there. Everywhere I’ve checked, GH3 with the wireless guitar was $100, so even with sales tax, it made the purchase much more swallowable. In Chinese we have a saying: 吞ēš„露 (In Catonese, it’s really keng dat lok, but I’m not really sure how to write keng). Basically it refers to something you can tolerate.

So everything was all set and I made my orders. The total came up to a little over $200, which wasn’t too bad. I got my packages on Tuesday and gave it a whirl. It was indeed true that the GH3 guitar worked on Rock Band, but the Rock Band guitar did not work on GH3. I actually liked using the GH3 wireless guitar more than the Rock Band wired one, and decided some time down the line, I’ll probably sell the wired Rock Band guitar and get another wireless GH3 guitar. I did noticed that the wired guitar had extra buttons closer to the base of the guitar. At first I thought that was just the difference between a bass guitar and a regular guitar, but Desperajo said the lower buttons were more for people who wanted to look like they were riffing.

I invited some friends over tonight and we rocked till almost 3am. I think we started at around 9pm. Since not much of the music has been unlocked, we were playing in band tour mode, and for some reason, after every song, it would need to connect to the server and upload data or something and that took a big chunk of time.

rock bandrock bandrock bandrock bandrock bandrock bandrock bandrock band

Actually, before we started playing, we watched the South Park – Guitar Queer-o (S11E13). A hilarious episode if you haven’t seen it yet. It actually prompted me to get the Kansas – Carry On Wayward Son song.

Throughout the night, people have been complaining about the drum beats weren’t actually matching the music and I recall there was some way to calibrate it. I went into Options > Calibrate System, but after selecting LCD, it didn’t give me any options for calibration. Thinking that there was no actual calibration, we continued playing. The drum beats seem to have come a eighth of a note too early, so often times you had to force yourself to ignore the music and just play by looking at the screen, which then threw off other people. Haha.

Anyway, I was searching for calibration solutions online and found these 2 guides:

Apparently instead of selecting LCD, there was this “manual” option hidden at the bottom. I haven’t followed the exact steps on calibration, but a quick calibration based on the simple on-screen instructions resulted in me being a much better drum player. Haha.

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Weekly Top Posts (2/3/2008 to 2/9/2008)

Hereā€™s this weekā€™s top post:

  1. Print USPS First Class, Media Mail, Parcel Mail Postage for FREE!
  2. Last Week: #4 How to download HD Trailers from Apple.com
  3. 4 Free Xbox Live Arcade Games
  4. Last Week: #5 Free AutoCheck Report (Similar to Carfax)
  5. Last Week: #6 Windows Update Error: 80070490
  6. Last Week: #7 Haloid
  7. Last Week: #2 Book Rental…
  8. New Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet – Review
  9. LeekSpin
  10. Last Week: #8 Screen Cleaners

Previously…

Looks like the only new comer this week is my Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet Review. Nothing else too interesting.

Was going to post about our Chinese New Year 2008 Hot Pot, but for now, you’ll just have to check out the photo album.

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Damaged Ear Drum?

So a few days ago, I started noticing that when I was listening to music via my Shure E4c earphones, I wasn’t able to hear anything from my left ear (stage right). I was like, “OH *@!#!$@!#*$!” I pull the right earphone out and turns out I was not completely deaf in my right left ear as I could still hear music in my left ear.

Anyway, I was going to attribute this to the fact that 2 weekends ago, I had drop a bag of glass bottles (about 15 bottles worth) at the bottom of my stairs (a small confined space) and it started bouncing on my ceramic floor tiles for ~10 seconds and it was one of the most painful experiences for my ears ever. My ears were ringing for quite some time after that, but eventually went away.

So thinking it might be my computer, I plugged the earphones into another computer, and it was the same results. My left ear was definitely not hearing as much audio. I decided I would need to go see my doctor and ask for a ear specialist referral.

So today when people were talking, I would tilt my head left and right to see if their voice actually got softer if I faced the weak ear toward them. I didn’t really notice much difference, but given that it was in an open environment, it wasn’t really a good test to begin with.

So I decided to try to change the audio left/right balance, but apparently in Vista, the balance thing is no longer in volume control you get when you double click the volume icon in your task bar. Took me a bit to find it, but apparently you have to go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound. You can also go directly to this from the context menu of the sound icon in your task tray. Under Playback, select the speakers and click properties. On the Levels tab, you’ll be able to control the left and right audio balance. After a quick configuration, I can now hear music from my left ear again.

Then it hit me today, I haven’t really tested if it was the earphones. I had just blindly assume it was my ears drums were damaged after a quick test or 2 and the fact these were some expensive earphones. I inserted the right earphone into my left ear and vice versa. It turns out my left ear was NOT damaged, but the left earphone was definitely outputting at a lower volume. I was overjoyed.

Looking at Shure’s website’s How To Use Earphones, I’m hoping it’s just that I need to clear up some earwax. These earphones weren’t cheap to begin with…

NOTE: Nozzles can collect cerumen (earwax), which can clog the earphone and lower the sound quality. If you experience sound loss, check the nozzles for clogging before sending the product in for service. There is a service charge for removing wax.

Update:
Cleaning out the earwax did fix the problem. There were also these earwax guards which didn’t really have much or any earwax, but the left one was in the wrong place, probably the main culprit of all this. For some reason, I think the left ear now is hearing better… I’d take some pictures of the earwax I dug out, but you’d probably be grossed out by it.

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How to disable Screen Saver for Vista in Media Player Classic

Speaking of Media Player Classic, for the longest time (haha, I just realized I just repeated myself), I have also wanted to tell Windows Vista to disable the screensaver. It was annoying that whenever I was using Media Player Classic, it would start the screen saver after 30 minutes into the movie. I would then have to disable the screen saver temporarily and re-enable it afterwards. Similar with turning off the screen and sleep/hibernate options.

Anyway, while I was searching for something recently, I came up on Media Player Classic – Home Cinema. It appears to be a fork off the main Media Player Classic branch and one of the things it supports now is: Kick off Screen Saver from Power Options only while video is playing (Vista). So if youā€™re a fan of Media Center Player and dislike the fact your screen saver goes off when the video is playing, you should check out this Home Cinema version.