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Transformers

I watched Transformers today with Stanman. I entered the theater not expecting much, but I did hear some good things from friends and I do like some of Michael Bay films (e.g. Armageddon and The Rock). Speaking of which, Armageddon was actually mentioned inside the movie. Anyway, I was a big fan of transformers as a kid. I remember watching transformers and G.I. Joe back to back.I totally bought into the idea of having transformable cars and machines and play imaginary battles with it. I personally thought the movie was rather fun. Storyline was expected, but not bad. The special effects were awesome. Definitely a watcher if you were ever a fan of transformers as it stayed true to many aspects. They did change a few things around, but you’ve gotta give this guy credit for using the original voice actor for Optimus Prime from the cartoon series.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 8.0/10 (43,361 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: A-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 56% / Average Rating: 5.8/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com Showtimes
MY RATING: 8/10

transformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers postertransformers poster

Spoilers (Show)

It does look like they set up the ending of the movie for a potential sequel. I want to see Dinobots!

There was a trailer showing a farewell party and suddenly a giant explosion in New York City. You could see the head of the Statue of Liberty flying across the street. No one knows for sure what this trailer is about. Rumors is that J. J. Abrams is remaking a popular Japanese movie in English and some people have suggested Godzilla due to the noise it was making. You can watch the trailer on Apple or read more about it on IMDb. The interesting thing about this movie is the date: 1-18-08, which is the day I turn 25. Well, maybe it was only interesting to me.

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Sound Heaven

So a ton of new toys arrived yesterday:

I was even contemplating of working from home on Friday, but I had some work that needed to be completed.

Anyway, my entire body (arm, thighs, back, etc) was really sore today. Almost didn’t want to get up. These boxes were heavy. One thing I found out about living alone is that it sucks to have no one immediately around to help you carry heavy things. I even ended up taking apart the Onkyo box and and bringing it into the house piece by piece.

onkyo ht-sr800 and nexus tv stand boxonkyo ht-sr800 and nexus tv stand boxonkyo ht-sr800 and nexus tv stand boxonkyo ht-sr800 and nexus tv stand boxonkyo ht-sr800 and nexus tv stand boxonkyo ht-sr800 and nexus tv stand boxonkyo ht-sr800 and nexus tv stand boxonkyo ht-sr800 and nexus tv stand box

It was a good thing I purchased the TV stand last week. It’s no longer available at Costco. The cheapest I can find it now is $250 at Target and Stacks and Stacks, and I picked it up at Costco for $190 + tax shipped with lifetime warranty.

First thing I had to do was build the TV stand:
old tv setupnexus tv standnexus tv standnexus tv standnexus tv standnexus tv standnexus tv standnexus tv standnexus tv stand

I actually had trouble moving the TV over onto the new stand. It was really heavy. I even removed the speakers (which I won’t be using anymore) to make it lighter. At first I was thinking of just putting it onto the floor and then hoisting it back up onto the new stand. After trying to lift it up myself, I decided it was a no go. I then parked the 2 TV stands side by side and slowly edged the LCD TV and then in one quick motion, moved the TV onto the new stand because it was shorter in height.

I carried the old stand down to the storage room and there it’ll stay until I find a nice family that’ll take it. It’s actually a sturdy little beast, but unfortunately won’t be able to hold both my Media PC and my receiver. I then pushed the new TV stand to where it’ll probably end up to check out how it’ll look.
nexus tv standnexus tv stand

Next came the interesting part, setting up the Onkyo HT-SR800. There was a giant subwoofer, 3 mid-size front speakers and 4 smaller rear and side speakers. This was a 7.1 setup, one of the features I was looking for. Another feature I needed HDMI. However, do note, I believe this receiver only supports upto HDMI 1.2, which means it doesn’t process audio signals via HDMI (HDMI 1.3). That means if you want audio with HDMI, you have to associate it to either digital optical, digital coaxial, or analog composite.

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Hooking up the wires was fun, though I found out later that the included “speaker terminal tool” was really a tool to help me twist the speaker screws. Oh well, it wasn’t too bad with just the finders. The included speaker cables were 10-11ft for the front ones, and 30ft for the side and rear ones. Since I didn’t want speaker wires crawling across the floor, I had to wrap it around my sofa. Here’s the current layout:
living room setup layout

The layout is actually drawn to scale where 2 pixels = 1″. The little black dots represent speakers. I didn’t include the center speaker, but it’s located immediately underneath the TV. 30ft of speaker was barely enough to reach the side right speaker and has to run across the bottom of my fireplace. Also, the side and rear speakers are on the floor and the couch blocks a lot of the sound coming out.

That’s why I decided to pick up some speaker stands, speaker cable, and some other stuff (optical toslink cable and component cables) to complete the setup. Of course whenever cables are concerned, MonoPrice is my preferred store. I can’t believe how inexpensive their speaker stands are. $12 for a pair: Speaker Stand – Silver (SS-01) – Set of 2. There aren’t that many reviews on the silver one, but you can check out the reviews on the black version.

I only had 1 optical toslink cable which I had used before to connect my Xbox 360 to my computer. However, since my LCD TV didn’t have optical in, I haven’t bother setting it up. Now that my receiver has 2 optical toslink inputs, I can connect both my computer and Xbox 360 to the optical toslink port. As you can see, the 1st thing I tested was my Media PC:
testing media pc through new receiver

Unfortunately I ran into problems. First of all, I hadn’t figure out how to configure the which audio input to use at this point. After reading the manual a bit, I figured out how to set up that association. I had a video playing in the background in the meantime. However, there was still no audio. I thought maybe I needed to enable digital output as in XP, but I was unfamiliar with Vista’s new audio setup and it took me awhile to find it. Well, I actually found the option in the Realtek HD Audio Manager software that came with my motherboard. However, even after setting the digital output as the default audio device, the movie that was still playing still didn’t output sound.

I then tried connecting the Xbox 360 to the optical port and sound immediately came out, so that ruled out any potential problems with the receiver or the cable. I looked at the optical out on the PC and there was red light coming out and if I connected the optical cable to it, you could see the other end light up.

I’m not exactly sure what popped into my head, but I thought about restarting the video and suddenly it worked and sound was coming out! It must’ve been because the video player started playing when the it was still associated to the analog output and set that as the device to output audio to. The application needed to be restarted to switch to the new audio output device.

The rest of the setup was just putting all the equipment onto the TV stand, putting the TV into the perfect angle for viewing, and making the cables look nice.

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Cleaning up was mostly moving the big pieces of boxes down to storage or throwing them away. All the little styrofoam bits was picked up by my Roomba after I told it to start vacuuming.

This setup even included a mic which helps calibrate the receiver. That part was cool and it actually looks like it’s doing some heavy calculation as this setup portion takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. It would make beeping sounds from all the speakers one at a time and you have to repeat this process from 3 different locations. I’ll have to recalculate it when my speaker stands arrive, but it’ll do for now. It’s nice to be in sound heaven.

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Night Watch / Day Watch

So a few weeks ago, Stanman and friends and I got together to watch Night Watch.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 6.4/10 (12,939 votes)
Yahoo! Movies:The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 58% / Average Rating: 5.9/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
MY RATING: 6/10

night watch posternight watch posternight watch poster

For those that don’t know, Night Watch is a high budget Russian movie. It originally was a novel written by Sergei Lukyanenko. The story is actually comprised of 4 books:

Day Watch has already been released as a movie (was also recently played throughout the film festivals). Stanman and friend and I watched it 2 days after Night Watch.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 7.1/10 (3,325 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 65% / Average Rating 6/10
Apple Trailer
MY RATING: 7/10

day watch poster

Twilight Watch (the movie) is already in production and plans to be released later this year to complete the trilogy. I’m not sure how correct this is, but I’ve heard that the 3rd movie, Twilight Watch will end the series (film wise) and there won’t be a 4th film to compliment the 4th book.

To put in simple words, the Watch series is a Russian take on or super humans, known as the Others. The following paragraph from Wikipedia gives a good background of the story:

The division of Light and Dark had always existed between the Others. Those of the Light believed it was their duty to help the weak and the helpless. Those of the Dark shunned all obligations. They did what they wanted, regardless of morals and consequences. For many millennia, the two sides fought a vicious battle. Both were willing to use any means necessary to achieve victory. Eventually they realized that if they continued their battle, neither side would survive. The leaders of both sides forged the Grand Treaty—a set of laws to govern the way the Others used their powers. The Light Others created the Night Watch, the Dark Others the Day Watch, to ensure that neither side would violate the Treaty. The Inquisition, a group composed of both Dark and Light Others, was created to ensure that neither side became too powerful.

The first movie was called Night Watch because during the night, the Light Others who form the Night Watch are responsible in making sure the Dark Others don’t break any rules. The second movie was called Day Watch because during the day, the Dark Others who form the Day Watch are responsible in making sure the Light Others don’t break any rules.

Spoilers: (Show)

One of the interesting aspect are the vampires in this movie. Not all Dark Others are vampires, but Dark Other when given the license to, can create vampires from regular humans. I have no idea if this closely resembles the Russian culture of vampires or not, but nonetheless, it was an interesting contrast. They do feed on blood like regular western vampires, but there are some major differences that Stanman pointed out. First of all, when Anton was fighting the vampires, they would disappear and the only way to see them was by looking through a mirror. In western culture, when you look at a mirror, you don’t see the vampire. Another interesting thing was Anton had to drink blood (pig’s blood since it closely resembles human blood) to get a feeling of where the vampires are. To protect oneself from vampires, they wore a chain mail / barbed wire like thing around their neck. We thought that was ingenious. Vampires typically suck blood from your neck, so what the heck is with silver bullets and garlic and crosses. You want to protect your neck!

This entry is already very long, but if you’ve watched the movies, you must be super confused by now. Night Watch was very dark and horrible at explaining what the heck was going on. Day Watch on the other hand was somewhat light and it was easy to grasp. Then again, Stanman filled us in on some key details he read off Wikipedia. Here are some excellent readings on Wikipedia:

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Umbrella

Album Cover
rihanna - umbrella album cover
Album available at Amazon.com

There’s a new song by Rihanna that I like called Umbrella. You can watch the music video: Rihanna – Umbrella. I thought the tune was rather catchy and the beat was nice, though I didn’t particularly like the intro, as I’m not a big fan of rap. The ella, ella, eh, eh is especially catchy.

Here are the lyrics (from metrolyrics) (Show):

Anyway, the radio stations around here has been playing a remix of the song Umbrella and has inserted a guy singing You can be my Cinderella. I thought the newly added lyrics fitted well with the original song, though I think they still had some cutting/editing problems as the song had some parts that didn’t flow too smoothly. You can listen to the music in this video: Rihanna ft. Chris Brown- Umbrella/Cinderella (with lyrics). The video is just a collage of images.

Here are the lyrics (from metrolyrics) (Show):

When I first showed this song to RayAlome, he was commenting on how slow the song was. Apparently he has been listening to the Lindbergh Palace Remix, which is like twice or thrice the speed of the original. Not a bad remix either, as the beats are nice. When the song first started playing, the first few words of ella, ella, eh, eh, eh was really fast and having been told by RayAlome that he was accustomed to listening to the song a 3x the speed, I was totally expecting chipmunks. However, the voice sounded normal through the song. I was wondering if they had Rihanna sing fast for the remix and RayAlome said she must’ve. Cause when you increase speed, the pitch gets all messed up. There was also the Seamus Haji & Paul Emanuel Radio Edit which is also beaty. Not sure if I like that one yet. Both songs are available on her Umbrella CD.

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Push Ups

Since my fall back in January or February, I’ve basically completely stopped doing push ups. Then again, back then I was doing push ups, sit ups, and DDR as my daily workout. After my fall, I would try to do a push up every other day and wasn’t able to last even one, which was what actually prompted me to go see the doctor and hand specialist which told me I damaged my tendon. Anyway, I’m not sure what fixed it, either the exercises I was told told to do, the splint which kept my thumb from moving, or the special Chinese ointment my mom help rub on my hand for a few days, the pain eventually disappear.

Anyway, during our rafting trip last week, I noticed how much weaker my upper body was. It could be the fact that everyone’s upper body gets really sore from rafting, but I felt it was weaker than normal. I mean that could be case given the fact my exercise bike doesn’t really exercise my upper body, so I decided to put push ups back into my daily workout. Boy was I weak. After only 40 push ups, my arms were literally shaking. I remember doing that with ease just 6 months ago. I felt the pain in my triceps pretty much immediately, which is a good sign I guess that I’m actually working them out. My triceps remained sore throughout the next day too (shows you how weak I’ve gotten) and I almost wasn’t able to do push ups the following day.

What this is going to lead into is how to properly do push ups. You’ve seen people bend their knees and back and I’ve even seen someone that looked like they were humping the floor. We would always laugh during P.E. But what I’m referring to is the arm distance and the legs and so on. I mean some people put their arms really far apart, while others put their hands together and form a triangle with their thumbs and pointer finger. Then there’s the proper leg formation. Are the suppose to be together or separate and how far apart?

I’ve always done the hands at elbow length apart and the feet together and lowering myself till I hit a right angle with my elbows, but I think I might actually be doing it incorrectly and might end up hurting myself. And push ups definitely put a lot of stress and pressure on my wrist and I don’t want to end up damaging it again.

A search revealed a couple sites telling you how to do a proper push up:

The last 2 links were interesting as it revealed to me that the push up variation I was doing is called the wide push ups where your hands are 4 feet apart, however the consensus for most is that your hands are shoulder width or a little more apart and feet together. Lower your body until your chest touches the floor. I always wonder how people can make their chest touch the floor, but it makes sense since my arms are farther apart, it becomes difficult to make an acute angle with my elbows to lower my body even further. If my hands were say closer together, an acute angle is very possible. With the many different variations of push ups displayed in the last 2 links, I’m not actually quite sure which ones are safe to do. There were quite a few I think can easily hurt yourself with.

Anyway, another variation of push ups I do, but I can only do about 5 before I have to give up, is the knuckle push up. A knuckle push up is where you form fists with your hands and push yourself up with fists instead of your hands being flat. It actually requires a lot more strength than a regular flat palm push up and is quite a workout. I used to end my push up workouts with 1 knuckle push up.

One thing that I see very common is that some people do push ups with the legs spread apart. There’s many pictures showing this, but the instructions do say to keep the feet together or parallel. I then found this link: Air Force Technical School Physical Fitness Requirements which says legs should be together or upto 12″ apart. I’m guessing if your feet are apart, it gives better balance and makes it a bit easier. One of the videos above had the guy do a 1 hand push up, and that was the only push up that he had his legs spread apart in.

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Fans and Air Purifiers

So I recently purchased a tower fan from Costco. It does get hot here in the peak of summer and thought I’d prepare myself this time. Plus the fact that it was on sale at Costco prompted me to pick one up. The one I got is the Seville UltraSlimline Fan Combo Pack. It was only $49.99 in-store and also comes with a tiny fan which I had yet decided where to put.

seville ultraslimline tower fan, staples shredder, honeywell 18155 air purifier

Anyway, it dawn upon me today that I never really figured out how tower fans worked. With the regular circular fans with the 3 rotating blades, those are usually the fans I’ve been accustomed to. My initial guess was that maybe there’s a small rotating blade on the bottom (or top) pushing air upwards (or downwards) and the innards of the fan just angles it so it blows out equally in the front. So I shined a flashlight into this tower fan and noticed a cylindrical object with many many slits in it spinning. It works similarly like a cyclone CPU fan where the spinning cylindrical object as able to move air in the mass. It’s actually quite genius because not only do you move a lot of air, it’s also very quiet. I wonder if we’ll start seeing these for computers.

And if you look to the right of my tower fan (no, not the shredder), you’ll see my air purifier. I purchased this at Costco over a year ago, probably more like like 1.5 years since I got it awhile before moving into my new home (which is almost a year now). The one I got is the Honeywell SilentComfort™ True HEPA Air Purifier with Germ Reducing Permanent Filter, model 18155 (a bit cheaper on Amazon.com). I have this guy pretty much on 24/7, and I can only assume it’s doing its job.

For the longest time, there’s these 2 lights that are on all the time: HEPA Filter and Prefilter. They both have a button next to them. I always just thought it meant if those lights were on, the filters were working. However, I noticed pushing those buttons don’t exactly turn it off, so that got me curious to exactly what those buttons did and what those lights did. I couldn’t find the manual in the box, so I ended up searching online and found the manual.

It turns out, if those lights are on, it means to go check the filters. I can’t remember the last time those lights weren’t on. I’ve checked the top filter every once in awhile, and it always appears to be clean (not a good sign I guess), but I totally forgot there was also a filter on the bottom. When I opened the bottom today, there was literally a centimeter of dust on what they call the prefilter. Ungsunghero says prefilter is just Honeywell’s fancy way of calling their carbon filters, which apparently is the case:

Honeywell® Universal Pre-filter – The Honeywell Universal Carbon Pre-filter helps capture large airborne particles before passing through the HEPA filter, therefore maximizing the HEPA filter life. The activated carbon per-filter also helps reduce common household odors.

After you check the filters and they’re okay, you’re suppose to hold down the associated button for 10 seconds and it’ll turn the light off and probably come back on 3 months later.

Anyway, the manual recommends changing the prefilters ever 1-3 months, and it’s been about 18 already. No wonder a thick layer of dust is there. Since I didn’t have any replacement prefilters at the moment, I took a vacuum and sucked out most of the dust and will be using that in the meantime until I find some replacement prefilters. I started searching online and found the cheapest to be at Amazon.com: Honeywell 38002 Enviracare Universal Replacement Pre-Filter for $10.73. Unfortunately my Prime membership had expired earlier this month and I didn’t renew it. So I’m contemplating, should I buy 3 prefilters, find some other filler, or pay $79 for another year of Prime membership. I decided to go the Prime membership route after finding an accomplice to join in the fun.

It also turns out my HEPA filter (the big giant roll) is a permanent filter and doesn’t need to be replaced. It does recommend that I vacuum it once in awhile to remove dust and dirt.

With that done, I was looking around at other fans and stuff and noticed some fans came with HEPA filters while others came with an ionizer. They were marketing the ionizer feature as an air purifier and that got me thinking how exactly ionizers work. According to Wikipedia: Ionic air purifiers use an electrically charged plate to produce negative gas ions that particulate matter sticks to (in an effect similar to static electricity). Many ionisers are sold as air purifiers, but in this regard they are very inefficient. They will clean the air to a small degree, by charging dust and smoke particles which will then be attracted to a neutral or positively charged surface. Heavier combined particles may precipitate (fall) out of the air should two smaller particles of different charge clump together.

And that ends my fun filled weekend. Sigh… I’ve spent so much money this weekend. With the Onkyo home theater system ($350 + tax), TV stand ($190 + tax), Maxtor 160GB SATA hard drive ($75 + tax – $50 rebate), Prime membership ($79, most likely /2), and Honeywell prefilters ($11), I’m looking at about an $800 initial bleed. Fortunately, many of these are one time purchases.

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Ultra-Pasteurized Milk

A long while back, I was at Safeway looking at the different brands of milk they carried and most of them had an expiration date of a week or 2, but there was this one brand, Darigold that had an expiration date of at least a month and a half away. I asked an attendant walking by if he knew why this particular milk lasted so much longer and if there was any preservatives in it. He shrugged and said he wasn’t sure.

darigold reduced fat milk

I mean, to have milk last that long, one must’ve added a whole bunch of preservatives in it.

Let me step back and give a little explanation of why I was looking into this. This milk isn’t cheaper, but if I recalled correctly, it cost about $0.10 to $0.20 more. But I hardly eat at home, and I never eat breakfast. Work has milk if I really wanted milk and the only time I’d ever get to drink milk at home would be on the weekends. So assuming I do eat cereal every weekend, that’s only 2x per week. A regular half gallon of milk would most likely be only utilized about 50% before I pour it down the drain. Therefore, I was very interested in this Darigold milk that lasts 1.5 months.

Anyway, Xyon, Aurash, and I were talking about milk awhile back. I hope I spelled Aurash’s name correctly. Anyway, Xyon hates milk with a passion. Well, more like he doesn’t like the taste. Aurash actually likes milk and would like to drink or use it more, but he is lactose-intolerant (sorta like my father), which is a condition where his stomach lacks an enzyme to break down lactose in milk, which ends up causing upset stomachs. I mentioned to him about Lactaid which actually makes milk products for lactose-intolerant people or he could opt for pills which do the same thing.

Anyway, back to the story, we got to the point of pasteurization and Xyon was telling us how the pasteurization process was initially developed to kill bacteria in beer from causing it to taste bad. The pasteurization process actually involves heating a liquid to a certain temperature where all the bacteria die. However, this process also ends up breaking down a bunch of organic material which causes milk to expire really fast. The process is no longer used for beer since as you can see, beer can last for months. However, they adapted this process to milk to kill off most bacteria.

I brought up the ultra-pasteurization milk that I had seen and purchased and he also didn’t know much about it, but if it was ultra-pasteurized, the name itself seems to imply strong pasteurization which should lead to shorter shelf life.

I went home and searched for pasteurization on Wikipedia. This is what I found out:

Pasteurization typically uses temperatures below boiling since at temperatures above the boiling point for milk casein micelles will irreversibly aggregate (or “curdle”). There are two types of pasteurization used today: high temperature/short time (HTST) and ultra-high temperature (UHT). There are two methods for HTST pasteurization: batch and continuous flow. In the batch process, a large quantity of milk is held in a heated vat at 63 °C (145 °F) for 30 minutes, followed by quick cooling to about 4 °C (39 °F). In the continuous flow process, milk is forced between metal plates or through pipes heated on the outside by hot water. UHT processing holds the milk at a temperature of 138 °C (250 °F) for a fraction of a second. Milk simply labeled “pasteurized” is usually treated with the HTST method, whereas milk labeled “ultra-pasteurized” or simply “UHT” must be treated with the UHT method.

…

Pasteurization is typically associated with milk, first suggested by Franz von Soxhlet in 1886. HTST pasteurized milk typically has a refrigerated shelf life of two to three weeks, whereas ultra pasteurized milk can last much longer when refrigerated, sometimes two to three months. When UHT pasteurization is combined with sterile handling and container technology, it can even be stored unrefrigerated for long periods of time.

Very interesting. Looks like from now on I’ll be picking up more Darigold Ultra-Pasteurized milk. The image of my milk above has an expiration date of July 27 2007 and was actually purchased 2 weeks ago. Usually, 2 weeks after I purchase a carton of milk, I’ll need to pour it down the drain already. This one has almost an entire month left!

What I really want to know is, how long does unpasteurized milk last. I found this site: A Campaign for Real (Raw) Milk!, which is a group trying to bring back unpasteurized milk because it’s “natural”. I’ve read it a bit, but not really for or against it. It’s interesting though that the pasteurization not only destroys bad bacteria, but also good bacteria along with helpful enzymes and vitamins. However, they didn’t mention anything about expiration dates or shelf life.

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Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 Review

So with Microsoft’s fiscal year ending, I decided to check out the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000. It was a $100 investment (not a cheap keyboard/mouse combo), but I thought worse case scenario, I’ll just give this to my parents back home, since their media center wireless mouse and keyboard are rather short ranged.

microsoft wireless entertainment desktop 7000microsoft wireless entertainment desktop 7000microsoft wireless entertainment desktop 7000microsoft wireless entertainment desktop 7000

The regular wireless mouse and keyboards (using wifi/radio frequencies) have about a 6ft range. Infrared (the media center remote and keyboard) has a longer ranger, but are less sensitive and requires a direct line of sight. So I decided to that my next media center keyboard would have to be a bluetooth device.

Derek and I’ve been checking out different keyboards. The ones that we’ve been looking at include:

The diNovo Edge was sort of pricey, but the others weren’t cheap themselves. However, being a Microsoft employee, we get discounts on most hardware. Since the 8000 hasn’t been released yet, I decided to get the 7000 and check it out.

I’m going to be focusing mostly on the keyboard since for the media center, I don’t really find the mouse that useful. Plus the fact that the keyboard comes with a navigational pad (think touch pad), it makes the mouse even more useless in my case.

Although the keyboard isn’t split for ergonomics, the curved keyboard isn’t that bad. I still position my hands as if it was a split keyboard. The keyboard is super light and easy to carry around. Unfortunately, the keyboard itself isn’t rechargeable. It uses 4 AA batteries (included) and I don’t really have any idea how long it’ll last. There’s an on off switch on the back of the keyboard and I usually turn it off when I’m not using it, so I’m guessing the batteries would last for years, since I don’t really use the media center PC as my main computer.

The mouse itself uses 1 AA battery. A rechargeable NiMH battery is included. The mouse charge is a bulky, but I’m hiding it behind the TV.

On the bottom of both the keyboard and the mouse, there’s a bluetooth sync button and getting the devices to sync with the included bluetooth adapter was pretty simple.

Distance wise, I sit about 9ft from the bluetooth adapter behind my PC which is enclosed inside the TV stand. I get perfect reception on my comfy couch. At about 20ft, the farthest distance I can stand while still being able to see my TV, the reception started waning off. There were some dropped keys and so on. However, as I said, the bluetooth adapter is sitting on the back of my PC and is really blocked by wood on all sides, with the exception of the computer side which is aluminum. I think if I stuck the bluetooth adapter to the front USB ports or get an USB extension cord, reception should definitely be better.

On the upper right hand side, there’s this navigational pad, which is similar to a touch pad. It actually works fairly well. I would’ve preferred it to be in between my 2 thumbs, making mouse control easier, but the location up there isn’t too bad. However the surface area is a bit tiny and takes about 3 left to right scans to get across the entire screen. I guess having my resolution at 1920×1080 doesn’t help.

The F1-F12 keys are actually not regular keys, but touch sensitive keys, which are a bit funny to use at first, but nothing too bad about them.

There is no numpad, but not really something I care about on a media center PC. Not having the arrow keys island and the insert/delete island is a bummer though. I never really used the media keys and if I could redesign the keyboard, I would replace those with the islands.

The worse thing about this keyboard and I truly mean the worse is the Windows key. I’m not sure how often you use the Windows key (the key stuck between Alt and Ctrl), but I use it all the time. To bring up explorer (Win+E), to bring up the run prompt (Win+R), to lock my computer (Win+L), to show my desktop (Win+D), etc. They’ve moved the Windows key to underneath the space bar and it’s one of those hard to press keys (which actually requires a little muscle), like they don’t want you to hit it by accident. This got REALLY ANNOYING REALLY FAST.

The Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 hasn’t been released yet. According to the website, it looks like the release date is in September 2007. I hadn’t know about this release date before I got the 7000. The 8000 does have some better features over the 7000 including a rechargeable keyboard, backlit keys, and USB ports. The USB ports are actually part of the charging station. At first I thought it’d be neat and be like wireless USB if the ports were on the keyboard. A bit too early for that dream I suppose. However, it looks like they still have the same stupid Windows key problem.

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Human Resources

human resources I was watching this music video: Human Resources (*WARNING* VIDEO IS NOT WORK SAFE!)

I thought the tune was rather catchy and it was actually a somewhat cool music video, stitched together with a bunch of clips from 80’s movies and TV shows.

I don’t know who the artist is and no one seems to have posted the lyrics yet, but I’ve ripped the song from the video to an mp3 and uploaded to my site: Listen / Download

Update:Thanks to softskilled for notifying me the artist/band is actually called Countdown. You should check out their album: Scratch & Sniff.

Here are the lyrics:

What’s your name and number and where do you sleep?
What is the color of your hair? We’ll be discrete.
And what’s your sexual preference or religious ties?
Do you have any diseases or political ties?
And we will need to know exactly the color of your eyes.
And have you ever done drugs or have you ever lied?
And need a fingerprint please. And what’s your mother’s maiden name?
And have any family members ever gone insane?

We’re the human resources.
We need to know what your every choice is.
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.
We are the human resources.

Where do you buy your clothes and do you rent or own?
Have you ever been arrested? Do you have a cell phone?
Do you find that people always like you right away?
Have you ever stolen something? Just forgotten to pay?
Do you have any children, or dogs, or cats?
And do you buy your cigarettes in cartons or packs?
Do you prefer to be on top? Do you like coffee or tea?
We just need a little more information please.

We’re the human resources.
We need to know what your every choice is.
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.
We are the human resources.

And we will need to know exactly the color of your eyes.
And have you ever done drugs or have you ever lied?
And we’ll then need a fingerprint. And what’s your mother’s maiden name?
And have any family members ever gone insane?

We’re the human resources.
We need to know what your every choice is.
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.
We are the human resources.

We’re the human resources.
We need to know what your every choice is.
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.
We are the human resources.

We are the human resources.

Hello.

There is one line that I’m not sure if it’s correct:
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.

It just doesn’t seem to sound right… If you can actually hear what they’re saying, please do tell me.

Posted on

HD-Trailers.net

Here’s my latest project: HD-Trailers.net

Screenshot:
screenshot of hd-trailers.net

First, I attempted to do this with a blog: HD Trailers, however I thought it would be much cooler if I could represent in a much easier to use interface. So I started playing around ideas. The 1st part was coming out with a data structure that would be easily extensible. I thought about XML at first, but I’m not that familiar with PHP and their XML encoding/decoding. I ended up taking the easy way out and am using the included serializer for PHP, which turned out quite useful.

This started as a pet project because I enjoy checking out movie trailers and I definitely enjoy watching stuff in high definition (especially 1080p). However, neither Apple and Yahoo make it easy to download these trailers and I don’t particularly like being forced to watch it in Quicktime, since the free version Quicktime doesn’t allow full screen and is actually quite a poorly written video player. I’d much prefer to watch it in Media Player Classic or VLC.

I’ve figured the trick to download Apple HD trailers awhile back, and recently started collecting trailers from Yahoo! Movies. I do have to say that trailers at Yahoo! Movies are typically sub par when compared to their Apple counterpart, but they also have some non-overlapping HD trailers (like Transformer and Golden Compass).

The parsing of Yahoo’s HD trailers page was actually a bit more difficult than Apple’s. I actually had to download a qtl which redirects me to makeplaylist.dll and includes the SID to the trailer file. It took me awhile to figure out that in order to download the correct qtl file, the referrer has to be within Yahoo’s domain, which was easy to set up with PHP’s curl.

Halfway through my project, Apple decided to change their trailers page completely and I thought I was screwed. However, Apple switched to JSON (Javascript Object Notation) and in the latest PHP, they support JSON decoding, so that made my life even simpler and also gives me additional data which I wasn’t collecting before.

I just finished the caching system, where instead of parsing in the data table and creating the entire page for every load, it’ll be loading from a static class unless something triggers it to to delete the cache. The data is automatically updated every 24 hours and is smart in the fact that the cache will only be deleted if changes have been made. Individual movie pages also have a similar caching system.