Page 84 – Krunk4Ever!

March 9, 2007March 8, 2007

Media Control Plugin for Windows Vista Media Center

I was first introduced to this plugin on a MS newsgroup: Media Control Plugin for Windows Vista Media Center. If you have bunch of downloaded or personally encoded videos (dvix, xvid, mkv, ogm, etc), you’ll notice that the FF/RW (fast forward and rewind) buttons on the MCE remote control don’t work. You can use skip forward >| and skip backward |< which is nice and jumps a couple minutes each push, but it’s really not feasible if you want to jump to somewhere deep into the video. If you hold it down, for some reason, it just jumps straight to the end after a few seconds.

Pushing the FF/RW buttons does pop up the seek bar or time line thingy (is there another word for this?), but doesn’t actually fast forward or rewind. A couple people brought this up in the newsgroup and asked for a solution, when someone posted this site: Media Control Plugin for Windows Vista Media Center. This was exactly what I was looking for. It’s features include:

Switching embedded audio and subtitles streams while playing a video: works with AVI, OGM, MKV
Switching between external subtitle files (.SRT, .SUB)
Switching between FFDShow presets (audio & video)
Setting and loading bookmarks inside a video with visualization of the pictures of the saved bookmarks
Real fastforward (and rewind) exactly like in the TV module (with 3 different speeds)
Switching and setting post-processing filters in FFDShow (video filters only)
Separate application to assign keyboard/remote control shortcuts to the commands and the MCML pages of the plugin
Full remote control support (6 buttons are mapped by default, but this can be changed)
Default mapping (works in full screen while watching a video) :
- Fast forward / rewind buttons
- Blue button : loads the startup page of the plugin
- Red button : switches audio stream
- Green button : switches subtitle stream
- Yellow button : switches subtitle file

I had even questioned the newsgroup on how to load subtitles from (.sub or .srt) awhile back and never really got an answer.

This is what you’ll need to install:
FFDShow rev. 935 or higher
Haali Matroska Splitter
Media Control

It notes that you’ll need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package, but my Vista Ultimate machine appears to either have it already or not need it. I could’ve installed it with one of the many software I installed on the machine, but I didn’t really do much, so I doubt I had installed it without my knowledge. It could’ve came down as an Windows Update.

Anyway, do note that the revision of FFDShow matters. I initially had rev. 610 (the latest stable version available) and was wondering why the heck after installing and configuring exactly as specified, that the FF/RW buttons still didn’t work. Turns out it was indeed the version of FFDShow that I had installed that was the culprit.

After you install the software, the somewhat part that you have to pay attention to is the video and audio decoder configuration. Please follow these instructions exactly. He’s provided a screenshot for each change you need to make/confirm.

After this, my MKV files were being detected as media files in MCE, subtitles were loading and overlayed on top of my videos, and best of all, my FF/RW buttons are now working!

Enjoy!

March 8, 2007

Clothes Dryer Warning

I got this form a MS newsgroup and thought it’d be interesting to share:

I had a wonderful morning – the heating unit went out on my dryer! Why does everything seem to fall apart this time of year!??? The guy that fixes things went in to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. We always clean the lint from the filter after every load of clothes. He told us that he wanted to show us something. He took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. Now, the lint filter is made of a mesh material – I’m sure you know what your dryer’s lint filter looks like.

WELL…..the hot water just sat on top of the mesh!!! It didn’t go through it at all!!! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over the mesh, that’s what burns out the heating unit. You can’t SEE the film, but it’s there. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time & to keep your electric bill lower is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water & an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that???!!!! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn’t know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I’d share!

Note: I tested my dryer screen by running water on it. The water ran thru a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water & a nylon brush & I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn’t any puddle of water at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!

Sounds interesting… I for one use fabric softener sheet for every load of clothes I dump into the dryer and this would be helpful to take care of my new dryer.

March 7, 2007January 2, 2008

smartycast

My friend Ryawn imed me today and told me about this new site he’s working on called smartycast. In fact, I’ve actually linked to his site in my friends list for some time, however when I added that link, their site was still just a place holder. He noticed that I had an entry on uTorrent the other day and told me the purpose of his site.

His first tutorial on that site is How To Automatically Download TV Shows. As his disclaimer states: By learning how to download TV shows you’ll also learn a little bit about Bit Torrent in the process. Keep in mind that you may be violating copyright laws and I am not in any way responsible for any trouble that you might get yourself into. With that said, let’s get to work! I also do not endorse any illegal activity that may be “inspired” by my site.

His tutorial shows you step by step on what to download and how to configure the application so downloading TV shows online doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Random Crap:

TMNT Arcade confirmed for release on Xbox Live Arcade (from Digg) – While a release date has not been announced yet (the new movie comes out in March), we do know that Ubisoft is working with Digital Eclipse to port the Heroes in a Half Shell onto XBLA. The finalized title is expected to cost only 400 points, and will include co-op support for up to four players via offline and Xbox Live modes. No word yet if they’re including upgraded support for HD. Sweet! 4 player TMNT here I come!

50 States in 10 Minutes (from Hjo3) – You have 10 Minutes to remember as many of the 50 United States as you can. After 10 Minutes, the correct answers will appear in this space so you can see which ones you’ve missed. I missed 6. (Show). I actually did a lot better than I thought I would.

Biggest Shotgun In The World (from Derek) – This shotgun is so big it takes two men to carry it. I guess its called a punt gun and I cant think of a practical use for it, except to destroy a lot of stuff at once. To me, it’s more like a portable canon. Hehe.

Teenager leaves “deposit” in bank (from Cari) – An 18-year-old man has been detained for repeatedly defecating in front of a cash machine in a bank vestibule in the southern German town of Eggmuehl, police said on Tuesday.

Mario Too – A new Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip that I found rather amusing.

Fat toddlers ‘risk early puberty’ (from Digg) – Girls who are overweight at the age of three risk reaching puberty as early as nine years old, a US study suggests. What about boys?

Great Firewall of China (from NextLust) – Want to see which sites are blocked behind the Great Firewall of China? Just visit this site and pass in your link. Apparently all livejournals are have been block recently. I just tested krunk4ever.com and it appears to be valid within China.

50 Amazing Ads You Haven’t Seen (from Digg) – A set of 50 advertisements that stand out from the rest. Each of these is unique and creative. Collected over a 5 month period. These are rather interesting and funny.

Xbox360 Homebrew in Progress: MAME360, ScummVM (from Digg) – We got this interesting email from a trusted developer that wishes to remain anonymous for now. He has been working on a port of MAME and ScummVM for the Xbox360 for some time now. The development and pictures below are from a devkit, but with the recent Hypervisor Exploit (kernel 4532/4548 only for now) there’s hope you’ll be able to run this on a retail Xbox360 some day. Wow! Speaking of which… maybe I should setup MAME on my Media Center PC, get one of those Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows

I was introduced to Dead Karl on 4chan, but I found a bunch more on this thread: [Animation Gif] Dead Karl. The Chinese name is 史前動物 (史前动物) which translates to Prehistoric Animal. He’s created a bunch of animated gifs which I wanted to share:

Click image to start animation or view it in the gallery.

I do have to warn you, these little animated stories are somewhat gory.

Off-duty Northwest employee charged – An off-duty Northwest Airlines employee was arrested after a woman on a flight from Seattle complained that the man had ejaculated on her.

Dirty car windows become artist’s canvas – Wade, with his scraggly graying hair and a fondness for shirts with wacky prints, doesn’t wash his car when it first develops a fine coating of limestone dust. For the past four years he’s created art on it instead.

The People’s Mario (from Cari) – Based on that silly Rumor saying mario had subliminal communist propaganda. What if Mario was really a Communist? A short flash animation showing you Mario with a hammer killing Goombas and Koopa Troopas backed by Communist music.

First ever HD South Park episode for free on Xbox Live Marketplace (from SD) – This coming Tuesday is a big day for people that are both fans of South Park and Xbox 360 owners. Comedy Central is releasing the first ever high definition episode of South Park on the Xbox Live Marketplace to all members (we’re assuming this means Silver and Gold) for free. That’s right, everyone’s favorite word — free. It will be on Marketplace at that low, low, price of free for two weeks, and will also be available as a free HD-DVD to people buying a new Xbox 360 console or the HD-DVD add-on drive at Best Buy from March 20th through April 3rd.

Discover just updated their list of 5% Cashback Bonus for the months of April through June (from SD) – Lowe’s, Linens ‘n Things, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ace Hardware, Sears, Kohl’s, JCPenney, Dillard’s, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Circuit City, Borders, Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., FTD.COM. Pretty sweet list. Guess if you have house improvements, you should just wait up the next 2 months.

March 5, 2007March 4, 2007

uTorrent

I’ve officially switched from BitComet to uTorrent. The recent versions of BitComet had some really funky behavior changes which I didn’t like. First of all, before I could force start a torrent even though my global max for downloading torrents has been reached. Now pressing start just queues it up and waits. Second, the order in which torrents will start downloading is completely chaotic. Before, the torrents will start base on the order of the list. However now, it was based on when the “start” button was pushed or when the torrent was added. To in order to configure the order and give a particular torrent priority, I had to stop all downloading/queued torrents and start that torrent first before others.

These 2 problems were highly irritating and I had to go back like 10 versions before this behavior was back to what I was used to.

So I then decided to give uTorrent a try as it was recommended by a few other people. It’s exactly what I wished BitComet to be. By shifting the torrent up and down on the list, it automatically sets that as the download order. There’s a force start option, but what’s even more neat is if I don’t use force start and move a particular torrent to the top, the last downloading torrent will automatically drop back down to the queued list.

All in all, I’m really satisfied with my transition to uTorrent. They have a different extension which I had to manually rename some files to get them to resume properly from BitComet to uTorrent (.bc! to .!ut).

Random Crap:

While You’re at It, Why Not Generate A Little Electricity (from Digg) – Like many of these projects, the California Fitness setup isn’t going to light up the Hong Kong skyline or even power the club’s own air conditioning. The gym chain has rigged up 13 machines at one of its clubs here. When all of them are in use, the power generated amounts to about 300 watts, roughly enough to run three 27-inch television sets, five 60-watt light bulbs or several hundred video iPods. If all the exercise machines were in use 10 hours a day for a year, the gym could generate roughly $183 worth of electricity. At that rate, it would take about 82 years to pay off the initial $15,000 investment. I need this hooked up to my TV. ;p

Shelving By Chromatic Spectrum (from Cari) – Look at Flickr user chotda’s bookshelves! A spectrum of beautiful colors arranged across a chromatic spectrum on the shelves. Pretty neat looking.

i’m Home (from Digg) – i’m is a new initiative from Windows Live™ Messenger. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program’s advertising revenue with some of the world’s most effective organizations dedicated to social causes. So any time you have an i’m™ conversation using Windows Live Messenger, you help address the issues you feel most passionate about, including poverty, child protection, disease, and environmental degradation. It’s simple. All you have to do is join and start an instant messaging conversation. We’ll handle the donation. There’s no charge, so join now and put our money where your mouth is. We’ve set no cap on the amount we’ll donate to each organization. The sky’s the limit. Interesting. At first I thought this was a hoax, like one of those forward this email to x number of friends and Bill Gates will give you $y. But this program is rather interesting…

No time like present to remove clocks – The Watson Post Office is one of the nation’s 37,000 post offices in which clocks have been removed from retail areas as part of a “retail standardization program” launched last year. The effort is designed to give the public-service areas a more uniform appearance, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in Thursday editions. “We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock,” said Stephen Seewoester, Dallas spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service. Haha! That’s another way of saying we don’t want people to focus on our slow service. ;p

The Perfect Desktop – Part 3: Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft (from Derek) – I didn’t really read the article, but the pictures were very pretty. Linux sure has a come a long way.

Lightsticks In The Toilet (from Digg) – One last image of the inside of the toilet with red and green cyalume lightsticks poured into it. Someone commented that it looked like galaxies in space. View more pictures from this album.

Graphics Card Rankings (from Digg) – A rather useful video card ranking guide that tells you where each video card stands in today’s chaotic graphics card naming world. Plus the fact it included everything up to Voodoo1 and Riva is rather amazing. It’s really a ranking of graphics card chipsets and not the graphics card themselves, which is enough for me. Like recently I wanted to know if the Radeon X1600Pro was better or if the GeForce 7600GS. What would be nice now would be how they came up with the rankings (based on what benchmark from which source).

ScreenVader (from Digg) – An interesting menu UI. The videos and music were rather interesting too.

March 4, 2007March 4, 2007

Hot Pot

A bunch of my UW friends came over today and we did hot pot. We had a ton of food, which I’d have to say about 1/5 was thrown away at the end. We had enoki mushrooms, regular mushrooms, spinach, bak choi, tang oh, beef slices, squid, fish balls, beef balls, tofu, daikon, taro, shrimp, tripe, mussels, and some other stuff that escapes my brain at the moment.

I had gone to Uwajimaya and picked up a Iwatani butane powered gas stove. I had actually dropped by Costco earlier to see if I could find this: Coleman InstaStart Single Burner Butane Stove, but unfortunately they didn’t carry anything similar in the store. I knew Uwajimaya was going to be expensive, but $50 seem somewhat excessive. I guess that’s what happens when you’re not buying these when they’re on sale. A can of butane gas lasted us about 2hrs and cost $2.75 at Uwajimaya, which I’m guessing would be cheaper elsewhere. Saran also brought his butane powered stove and we had 2 simultaneous hot pots going at the same time.

We had 3 different types of sauces. A special soy sauce combo that Stanman made (soy sauce + cooked oil + sesame oil + green onions + ginger + sugar + serrano chiles (substitute for Korean red chile) + garlic + whatever else he put in there). Then there was the peanut shabu shabu sauce I picked up. Saran also brought his spicy sweet Thai sauce.

After everyone was stuffed, it was time for dessert. Saran and Desperajo busted out the cupcakes from Cupcake Royale. These cupcakes were awesomely delicious. Interesting… “awesomely” is a word! Or maybe Firefox spell check is broken. Anyway, the flavors are unique and interesting. We got to try: Red Velvet, The Classic, The Coconut Bunny, MoFro, The Lemon Drop, and The Orange You Glad.

I was just thinking, tripe is called tripe because if it was called cow inner stomach lining, no one here would ever buy it or order it in a restaurant. ;p

After dessert, we sat down and played around of Fuzion Frenzy 2. The mini games were pretty fun and Stanman pretty much dominated, though near the end, it got pretty close.

We played Settlers of Catan afterwards and once again I got shafted. Last week, I had a high 70% chance of winning because I was next and I had a soldier card which would give me the largest army. However, 2 other people were also close to winning and if he rolled 1 of 3 #s, one of them would win. However, the Settlers god was not on my side that day and awarded the win to Stanman. Today, I had 3 ways of winning and was already at 9 points. I had 3 roads in my hand (3x brick and 3x wood), I had a “Year of Plenty” which awarded me 2 cards of any choice. I also had a “Road Building” card. I was 6 behind the longest road, but if I wanted to, I could try and get it. However, I had a 3 to 1 port and could get 4 cards of anything (2 from trading and 2 from the “Year of Plenty”), but that wasn’t enough to build a city. I could also on the other hand trade in for 2 development cards and hope that one is a victory point. After conversing with the other people, I decided to take the safe route and hope I hit an ore. In fact, Saran immediately after me gave me an ore, so I was pretty much set to win (everyone else had 8 pts or below), but I had to wait for the “special building phase”. I thought I had won. However, he was at 8 points and was able to upgrade one of his settlements to a city pushing him to 9. He then just barely had enough cards to get a development card which gave him the last victory point. There you have it, the Settler gods are out there against me. The only time I wont Settlers with this group was when I partnered with someone else and made him do all the dice rolling and I did the strategic thinking as he was new to the game.

All in all, it was a fun day.

March 3, 2007March 3, 2007

Exercise Bike

So FedEx came yesterday to deliver my exercise bike (Everlast E260 Upright Exercise Bike) I had purchased from Costco, but unfortunately they needed my signature, which I provided today on the little slip they left me. I came home today and there’s this giant box sitting in front of my door. I did get home after 11pm today, but after dinner, I started building it. Meanwhile, Stranger Than Fiction was being played. I had started watching the movie during dinner. The movie ended and I started Employee of the Month. Funny thing was this movie was filmed inside a Costco (or a look-alike) which they renamed to Super Club. I finished building the bike halfway through this movie, despite having to take it apart multiple times because as a guy I made assumptions about the instructions and when I had multiple parts left over, I had to consult the manual.

Here’s the finished product:

Interestingly enough, the front leg of this bike has wheels, so I just lift the behind and push it to the center of the living room (in front of the couch) and exercise as I watched the remainder of the movie. Initially I had the arms more upright, but it was blocking a chunk of the movie, so I decided to lower it. Since I no longer have the Pro Club membership, I get an extra $2xx per year, so this bike’s mostly paid for by the extra cash, so I don’t really have any qualms.

Speaking of Costco, I was looking at my latest American Express bill and noticed a $25 charge at Issaquah Costco on the exact same day of my TV purchase where the total came up to be $18xx. I was like, I couldn’t have gone back to Costco and made another purchase. That was the day I had to call up Derek to come help me with loading the TV in my car. I was thinking… did I get Costco gasoline that day. Could’ve been it, but somewhere down the bill, I noticed that the merchant for Costco gas is different from the Costco store. I start digging for my TV bill and was wondering maybe they made 2 separate charges. Found the bill, but the amount matches the $18xx amount on my credit card bill.

I’m scratching my head and thinking what could it have been. I decided to print my credit card bill and go to Costco and ask them what the $25 charge was for when I remember… That was for my membership upgrade from Gold to Executive. That’s right, I wanted to take advantage of the extra 2% I get back, which I completely made back already with this purchase (the 2 extra % will bump me to $36 extra in rebates). That got me thinking, the difference between the Gold and Executive membership is $50. How did they decide on the $25 charge. I got my membership sometime in August, so it’s little over half the year already, so that would most likely be the reason for only charging half the membership fee.

March 2, 2007March 2, 2007

Calculator Hot Keys

So Xyon and I were playing with the Windows calculator the other day and I brought up the fact that in scientific mode, there wasn’t a square root button, while on the other hand in standard mode, there was. The only way to do square root in scientific mode is to hit the x^y button and then punch in .5.

Anyway, I’d imagine that to do x^y (or x to the power of y), you would hit x followed by “^” followed by y followed by enter. However, Xyon tells me that “^” really means XOR in calculator. I’m like there must be some shortcut key (or hot key) to activate the power. Turns out, for the 1st time in history, when you right clicked something and clicked “What’s this?”, something useful actually got displayed.

We right clicked the x^y button and clicked “What’s this?” and it showed:

Computes x raised to the yth power. Use this button as a binary operator. For example, to find 2 raised to the 4th power, click 2 x^y 4 =, which equals 16.

To calculate the yth root of x use Inv+x^y.

Keyboard equivalent = Y

So according to this tooltip, to do square root of 49, I could hit 49 -> y -> .5 -> enter OR 49 -> i -> y -> 2 -> enter, which both will yield 7.

Here is the full list of keyboard shortcuts (from the help file):

Button: Key
%: %
(: (
): )
*: *
+: +
+/-: F9
–: –
.: . or ,
/: /
0-9: 0-9
1/x: r
=: ENTER
A-F: A-F
And: &
Ave: CTRL+A [average]
Backspace: BACKSPACE
Bin: F8 [binary]
Byte: F4
C: ESC
CE: DEL
cos: o [cosine]
Dat: INS [
Dec: F6 [decimal]
Degrees: F2
dms: m [degree-minute-second]
Dword: F2
Exp: x [exponent/scientific notation]
F-E: v [scientific notation toggle]
Grads: F4
Hex: F5 [hexadecimal]
Hyp: h [hyperbolic]
Int: ; [integer]
Inv: i [inverse]
ln: n [natural logarithm]
log: l [logarithm]
Lsh: < [left shift]
M+: CTRL+P
MC: CTRL+L
Mod: %
MR: CTRL+R
MS: CTRL+M
n!: ! [factorial]
Not: ~
Oct: F7 [octal]
Or: |(pipe)
pi: p
Qword: F12
Radians: F3
s: CTRL+D [standard deviation]
sin: s [sine]
sqrt: @ [square root]
Sta: CTRL+S [statistics]
Sum: CTRL+T
tan: t [tangent]
Word: F3
Xor: ^
x^2: @ [squared]
x^3: # [cubed]
x^y: y [raised to the power of]

Most are pretty intuitive. Others are somewhat obscure. One thing I did noticed was that @ was reused. In standard mode, it means square root. In scientific mode, it means squared. VERY BIG DIFFERENCE.

Random Crap:

Super Mario Snow Art (from Digg) – Some bored New Jersey college kids turned a snowy night into a kick ass piece of art. – Nic, Daniel, Garrett Ian, Daniel , Justin and Craig are engineering and computer science students at New Jersey Institute of Technology, so when they saw that mother nature was dropping some white stuff on the ground outside, they decided to construct a wonderfully nerdy shrine to their favorite Italian plumber. Apparently, they used a string grid to get it, right. We’re not quite sure what that means, but the result sure is cool.

Steampunk Keyboard Mod (from Digg) – My goal with this project was to build a retro keyboard that was fully functional and of a sufficient quality that it could be used everyday by a touch typist. In order to achieve this I chose a high quality (though widely available) keyboard as my starting point. This is an IBM Model M “Clicky” keyboard. They were made starting in the mid 1980’s and a version is still manufactured today. This particular keyboard was made in 1989 and shipped with and IBM PowerStation 530, a UNIX box the size of a kegerator.

Kanon – Shiori Cosplay (from 4chan) – thought it was really well done and she’s really cute. The 2nd image is the actual scene from the anime.

WoW: Best birthday cake evar (243KB of visual awesome inline) (from Digg) – My good friend makes kick-ass cakes as a hobby. Last year she started dating my old roomate who plays World of Warcraft a fair amount around his job; for christmas she aquired a “WoW stole my boyfriend” t-shirt. She is good-natured about his love of Warcraft, however, as shown by the birthday cake she made him three weeks ago. The birthday cake actually looks really neat.

Newspaper says it fell for fake Gucci ad – Some people will do anything to appear in the papers. But few have the audacity of a man in Switzerland, who conned one of the country’s biggest media companies into publishing a two-page ad he created of himself posing semi-naked beside a bottle of Gucci perfume. You can view the actual ad at adfreak.

Jealous husbands may face trial in court – Mexican men who display extreme jealousy or avoid sex with their wives could be tried in court and punished under a new law, the special prosecutor for crimes against women told a local newspaper on Friday. … Those who stop talking to their wives, avoid sex or try to convince suspicious spouses they are “crazy” even if they are caught red-handed having an affair, are guilty of indifference, she said. Men found guilty of jealousy or indifference could face up to five years in prison, the newspaper said. Mexico’s individual states will determine the punishments, it said. I wonder if there’s a similar law for women, where if they avoid having sex with their husband, to be tried and punished ;p

March 1, 2007February 28, 2007

My New HTPC

I finally got my hard drive replacement yesterday and reinstalled Vista and now my living room setup is semi-complete. I’m still missing a few key items which I’ll be getting along the way which include a small coffee table, a better TV stand, a HDTV tuner card, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse set, and a surround sound system.

Anyways, let’s talk about my HTPC. It’s made up of the following components:

Motherboard: Abit IL9 Pro Motherboard – $85
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 CPU – $204
Case: Lian Li PC-C30A Case – $130
Graphics Card: Asus EAX1600PRO SILENT Radeon X1600PRO 256MB – $93
Memory: 2x Kingston 1GB DDR2 DDR2 667 RAM – $136
Hard Drive: Western Digital 500GB SATA – $140
Optical Drive: NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD Burner – $29*
Power Supply: Ultra V Series 500W – $0
Input Devices: Remote Control and Receiver for Media Center – $25; Remote Keyboard for Media Center – $45
Cables: HDMI DVI Cable – 10ft – $5.74; 3.5mm Stereo Plug/2 RCA Plug cable – 6ft – $1.25
UPS: APC BX 1500 Battery Back-UPS – $100

The final total comes up to be $994. Most of these items were purchased out of state (via Newegg), so there wasn’t any sales tax and most of them had free shipping.

I originally had purchased a Seagate 7200.10 500GB SATA hard drive with perpendicular recording, but the drive was rather noisy, especially when writing, so I swapped it out and replaced it with the Western Digital 500GB SATA drive which people have commented on to be quiet, and indeed is.

*I also swapped DVD burners between my main machine which had the NEC ND-3550A (or 3540A) which is very quiet, but no longer carried by Newegg. I had gotten the NEC 7170A-0B 18X DVD Burner, hoping that since it’s still NEC, it’d be nice and quiet like their previous models, but boy was I wrong. Apparently this drive is actually manufactured by Optiarc, a joint company formed by Sony and NEC. I’ve tried tools like CD Bremse and Nero CD-DVD Speed as recommended by those at CDFreaks.com, but neither worked. Someone also suggested AnyDVD, but I have yet to try it. What these tools are suppose to do is set the drive to run at a slower speed, so it can never goes into high speed mode (i.e. 18X), because who really needs 18X when watching a DVD. I’ve tried flashing the drive, but the tools don’t seem to be able to control it. On the contrary, both were able to control my ancient NEC ND-3550A.

Here are some pictures of while I was building the HTPC:

Installing Vista was a breeze, a lot easier than I had expected after hearing “horror” stories. Though then again, I was installing it on a clean machine and had been warned what hardware was compatible and what were causing problems (apparently nVidia Vista drivers are still iffy). After updating drivers and running the performance test, I hit 4.3 and the limiting factor was my graphics card. 4.3’s already an really good score, so I wasn’t too worried.

My next problem as I realized was there wasn’t a easy way for me to connect my HTPC to the existing network and internet. Derek and I had spent something walking up and down my stairs trying to figure out the best way. At first I thought I would just get a wireless bridge and use 802.11g to talk wirelessly. However, with all the HD content that I’ll soon be accumulating, having gigabit would be nice. So I ended up pulling a long cable from my switch to my new HTPC. I purchased a bunch of these cable hooks from Lowes and hammered them around my stair frame. I also didn’t have a ladder, so I used my plastic table as a platform to stand on.

I’ve also rearranged the couches so that I have more living room space to actually put something in between the couch and the TV. The main reason being that I was setting up StepMania with my USB dance pads and they didn’t really fit in the old configuration. Now that I pushed the sofas back, I have a lot more space and can actually fit a coffee table or maybe even an exercise bike. What’s neat is also there’s 2 front USB ports on my Lian Li case and that’s perfect for 2 DDR dance mats.

Our company store today just announced that the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 was available. Derek and I have been looking at the Logitech diNovo Edge. However, I wonder when the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 will be released.

Here’s some pictures of my semi-final TV setup with my so pretty Vizio 47″ 1080p LCD HDTV:

Remember, each picture also has a FULL SIZE.

February 28, 2007February 28, 2007

Random Crap

Rapidshare Search Engine (from Angelus) – An interesting tool I didn’t know existed.

Tesco Cans Refunds Policy After 360 Pricing Mishap (from Tera) – A pricing error in January meant that XBox 360 games consoles were advertised in the store for £297.81. When the machines’ bar codes were scanned at the till, customers were asked to pay £299.97 — £2.16 more. Under the policy, Tesco allowed the shoppers to take the consoles for free. Ouch. Great news for crafty British shoppers, but for Tesco, not so much. They’ve now, rather wisely, ditched the offer, replacing it with a deal where “customers will get back double the amount they were overcharged”. Guess that’s what happens when you abuse a good policy.

Chocolate Wii Controller (from Digg) – Wondering what to do with the packaging that your wiimote and nunchuck controller came in? Why not fill them with chocolate! We did. They’re both stuffed with sponge fingers to fill them out a little, otherwise we’d have used a lot more chocolate. Not a bad thing in itself, but we didn’t have that much chocolate. I would’ve thought the hot chocolate would’ve melted the plastic.

There’s a common saying in Cantonese during the new year: 恭喜發財, 利是逗來 (gong hey fat choy, lai see dao lar), which literally translates to wish you good fortune, hand over the red envelope (money pouch). I didn’t know how to write the character for dao, so I was searching online for this phrase. I landed on this page: 舒展超之大玩派 (they’re using Chinese Traditional Big 5 encoding if you’re seeing random characters). Anyway, there was this post that I found hilarious:

農曆新年期間，例牌在手機上收到相當多的賀年短訊（SMS）。當中有的頗為「行貨」，求其整兩句「恭喜發財，萬事如意」便算；有的則明顯是對方收到後，再順手轉寄的，否則怎會整篇都是簡體字？

但無論「行貨」也好「借花」也好，心意是一定有的。這種短訊祝福雖然很數碼化，但也一樣可以見字如見其人吧！

說到「如見其人」，不得不提我收到的一個賀年MMS；這MMS與SMS的不同之處，就在個M字，代表Multi-Media（多媒體）也！而拜3G手機所賜，這個M字也可以說是Movie吧！

話說年初一那天，手機「嘟嘟」響起，收到短訊；打開一看，卻是一則多媒體短訊（MMS），由朋友P君寄來的。當中包含了一段短片，須先下載才能觀看，我就不由分說同意下載了。

不消一會，下載完畢，影片播出。只見一個歲零兩歲的細路，一副拜年的裝束，向我邊抱拳邊牙牙學語；背景有一男聲，明顯是其父親P君，在指導（指使）他說：「恭喜發財，利是逗來。」細路就照樣學道：「公器罰財，你屎倒來。」

我看了之後，哭笑不得！忽生一計：既然你用MMS拜年，我就用MMS派Cyber利是！於是用手機自拍一段派利是的短片，回了過去！夠絕！

The overall post talks about a guy receiving Chinese new year greetings over MMS and SMS. One of them included a video clip of a very young kid learning from his father how to say, “Gong Hey Fat Choy. Lai See Dao Lar.” Chinese has a bunch of characters that sound the same and in Cantonese. To complicate that even further, there’s like 6 or 7 tones for each sound, making it even easier to screw up. In Mandarin, there’s only 4 default tones, with a soft 5th tone. So the kid basically says most of the sounds correctly, but in the incorrect tone, making a completely new sentence saying “public machine fines wealth, your poop has arrived.” It’s a common tradition when a kid wishes you good fortune to give them a red envelope (usually filled with some cash). However, since this person used a MMS to greet him, he decided to reply with a cyber red envelope, instead of a real one with cash.

I was telling this story to Cari and she tells me a story in return:

haha my mom’s god son.. he says fat choi like the vegetable.. the black hair like things we eat. so his sister made fun of him and said.. why is he congratulating a vegetable?

How To Give A Great Man To Man Hug (from SueOn) – Pretty funny to tutorial.

clocky (from Digg) – The alarm clock that runs away and hides when you don’t wake up. Clocky gives you one chance to get up. But if you snooze, Clocky will jump off of your nightstand and wheel around your room looking for a place to hide. Clocky is kind of like a misbehaving pet, only he will get up at the right time. Haha! Perfect gift for your kid going to college. They’ll need it.

Photosynth Technology Preview (from Digg) – Welcome to Photosynth, a new technology from Microsoft Live Labs that takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space. Pretty neat and it utilizes Windows Presentation Foundation for the neat UI graphics.

What your Sleeping position says about you (from Digg) – Scientists believe the position in which a person goes to sleep provides an important clue about the kind of person they are. The names they gave to the sleeping positions are rather funny: Foetus, Log, Yearner, Soldier, Freefall, and Starfish. I definitely swap between the Foetus and Soldier positions.

Beer launching fridge (from Digg) – Wow. Now this is an idea that could pick-up: a mini fridge with a catapult on top and an automatic beer launcher. The cool part is that it’s very small and incredibly accurate. Seriously, it’s a gadget that I would buy! I really like the little contraption on how they pull the can out from the fridge.

Stand-in Chinese mistress sought to take wife’s abuse – A Chinese businessman has advertised on the Internet for a stand-in mistress to be beaten up by his wife to vent her anger and to protect his real mistress, Chinese media reported on Monday.

TMNT Arcade ‘Level 1’ gameplay (from MS newsgroup) – I remember spending countless quarters playing this game (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) at the arcades. If this game supports multiplayer (all 4 controllers), it’d be super neat!

Guess what’s in my pants (from Angelus) – Jimmy Kimmel from The Man Show sticks something inside his pant pocket and asks random women on the street to feel it and guess what it is. Rather hilarious. One woman actually starts biting it.

Russian Tunnel Video (from Tera) – This 3150 m long tunnel in Russia is the longest in-city tunnel of Europe. There is a river running over it and water leaks at some points. When the temperature reaches -38 degrees like it did this winter, the road freezes and the result is the attached video taken during a single day with the tunnel camera. And the answer to the most popular question: the name of the song on the video is “Avalon” performed by an artist who goes simply by the name “Juliet”. The album is “The Best of NYC Afterhours – Volume 3”. You’d think they’d put up big red flashing signs warning people to drive slower…

Beatboxing flute inspector gadget remix (from Hjo3) – Beatboxing Flute player Greg Pattillo inspector gadget with a twist like nothing you’ve heard (unless you’ve been wandering through washington square park and heard him there) The 2nd song he’s playing is actually Axel F (from Axel Foley) and isn’t really related to Inspector Gadget.

The Really Big Guide To Secret Menu Items – More secret menu items at Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Chipotle, Subway, Jamba Juice, In-N-Out Burger, Starbucks, Dairy Queen, Chili’s, Blimpie, Burger King, Popeye’s, TGIFriday’s, Denny’s, and Arby’s.

Costco’s Electronics Return Policy (from The Consumerist) – Due to abuse, Costco is once again updating their return policy. The following items now have a 90-day return window: Televisions, Computers, Cameras, Camcorders, iPod/MP3 players, and Cellular phones. However, it does come with 2 year warranty from the date of purchase, which is rather neat. This only applies to purchases after this policy goes into effect which is being slowly pushed into all stores. Good thing I bought my TV before then 😉 There is something new where Costco is offering in-home TV setup. I wonder if that means they’ll deliver the TV too, which was one of the main reasons I didn’t get a TV till recently.

Parents raise copycat risk from TV’s revhead tot (from /.) – AN award-winning TV commercial showing a toddler driving a four-wheel-drive has been pulled off the air. The Advertising Standards Board said it had banned the ad for Hyundai’s Sante Fe 4WD after more than 80 viewer complaints. You can watch the ad here: Hyundai Santa Fe. I thought the ad was rather cute.

Toilet Paper Folder & Dispenser Prototype (from Digg) – This is a project that me and my friends built for school (UC Berkeley). Its made of lego mindstorms, scissors, and some scrap metal. With all things considered, I think it turned out alright. Not only does it fold your paper for you, it also cuts it. It would be the perfect accessory for a fancy, high-tech, Japanese bathroom! This video shows two test runs; the first run works well, while the second one could have gone a little smoother… Haha! I need one of these!

Wahaha Calcium Milk blatantly copies the Mario/Yoshi combo (from Digg)

February 28, 2007

How to speed up AIM 6.0

One of the things I’ve hated about AIM 6.0 is the fact it’s very sluggish and I think I’ve found the cause of that problem. By default, if you enable logging, AIM will display your previous chats inside that window. Although they don’t show you the entire log, they do show you a good week’s worth. I mean when I hit CTRL+A, CTRL+C (select all and copy), it froze my IM windows for about 10 seconds, trying to copy the chat into my clipboard. Of course this was with someone I’ve chatted with quite often.

So the 1st problem lies in the fact there’s 1+ week worth of logs being displayed into your AIM window, but the bigger problem lies in the fact each buddy has only one log file. Right now my log file with RayAlome is at 677KB and that’s logging from Jan. 4th, 2007 (when I installed AIM 6.0 on this machine). Each time I double click RayAlome’s screenname on my AIM buddy list, it opens that file and tries to parse out 1+ weeks worth, causing a major delay in trying to chat with him. Since this log is loaded into memory, subsequent visits to this IM window has to bring all that back up. What’s worse is if I close the window, opening another chat session with him again will result in reparsing the log file.

Imagine this log file continue to grow. In a year, I’d have 4meg log file loaded and parsed every time I try to chat with RayAlome.

The trick is then to disable the loading of the log when you want to chat with someone. If you really want to see what you guys last chatted about, you can always click People > Show Logs or just right click their screenname and click Show Logs. To disable the loading of the log file when you open a chat window, hit F7 for settings (or Edit > Settings…). Inside the General IM section, uncheck the box that says: Keep IM conversation text after IM is closed.

That’s it. My AIM window now loads up immediately when I double click someone’s nick. Hope this helps!