Balitaan

Windows Vista for $3

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:49:10 +0800

That's right. Microsoft will sell a stripped down version of Windows for only $3. But only in Brazil. According to Red Herring, Brazillians love open source everything and IBM Linux already has a presence there. Microsoft hopes to turn the tide by offering Windows for cheap.

Safari 3 now on Windows

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:22:25 +0800

Now on public beta, pc users can now use Apple Safari. This latest move by Apple has come as a surprise even to die-hard Safari users. There's still no word from Jobs why. Is it to help promote the upcoming iPhone as some analysts say or to simply win over more converts? I'm actually more interested on whether Safari will eat into Firefox's browser share. Firefox is becoming more bloated with each new release. Job's timing is right on the money.

Hardly Wait

Tue, 5 Jun 2007 13:11:17 +0800

(found my old Portishead and PJ Harvey CDs) Listening to PJ Harvey made me realized that I'm still missing in my collection the very song that introduced me to her in the first place. "Hardly Wait" is from her demo track that Juliet Lewis covered in the 1995 flick, "Strange Days." I remember waiting for the credits to roll to find out who wrote it. And since iTunes sucks, I once again turned to Amazon.com.

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I can hardly wait
I can hardly wait....
I can hardly wait
I can hardly wait
It's been so long i've lost my taste
Say angel come, say lick my face
Let fall your dress
I'll play the part
I'll open this mouth wide, eat your heart

I can hardly wait...
Lips cracked dry
Tongue blue burst
Say angel come, said lick my thirst
It's been so long i've lost my taste
Here romeo, make my world as great

In my glass coffin i'm waiting
In my glass coffin i'm waiting
In my glass coffin i'm waiting...

"If you live a narrow-scoped lifestyle, this cd isn't for you."

1. Selling Jesus - Shunk Anansie
2. The Real Thing - Lords Of Acid
3. Overcome - Tricky
4. Coral Lounge - Deep Forest
5. No White Clouds - Strange Fruit
6. Hardly Wait - Juliette Lewis
7. Here We Come - ME PHI ME/Jeriko One
8. Feed - Shunk Anansie
9. Strange Days - Prong/Ray Manzarek
10. Walk In Freedom - Satchel
11. Dance Me To The End Of Love - Hate Gibson
12. Fall In The Light - Lori Carson/Graeme Revell
13. While The Earth Sleeps - Peter Gabriel/Deep Forest

Thinkpad T21 Overhaul

Sun, 3 Jun 2007 13:14:07 +0800

My 7 year old T21 needed some repair. It has a cracked palm rest, scratches and dings on the cover, and a dimmed out lcd. eBay has all the parts that I needed, but it took time to get everything at the price I wanted. Keyboard ($10.58 normally $30+ ), Lcd Lid ($12.99), Screws ($8.00), Palm Rest ($22.90)

Old T21 800MHZ / 256MB /40GB

And as you can see, it's in a pretty bad shape.

The new parts

Cleaning the keyboard from ebay

Disassembling the laptop (top broke from handling the laptop the wrong way)

Cleaning heatsink assembly

Applying heat compound

Removal of lcd bezel, brackets, locks for transfer to new cover

..thought the problem was the inverter but it was the worn out flat lcd cables. Parts were scavenged from an old lcd.

...lcd now working

It took me a while to figure out where this tiny part go (circled)

Spray painted bottom network card and ram cover

T21 now looking new after 3 hours

With the rest:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v686/kutsokutso/7a6a52fe.jpg

Weigh anchor all hands and set sail. Aaargh!!

Fri, 1 Jun 2007 03:22:00 +0800

skysail

Putting a new twist on an old technology, Hamburg based SkySails has produced (patent pending) a towing kite wind propulsion system for superyatchs and cargo vessels. A containership equipped with Skysails' humongous kite and navigation system can add an additional 4,000 horse power and slash fuel cost by to up 30 percent.

Sony MDR-Z700

Thu, 31 May 2007 03:25:52 +0800

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I needed new headphones for my laptop so I got me the Sony MDR-Z700 from eBay. The seller was based in Beijing so shipment took 2 weeks. Buying eBay items from Beijing or Hong Kong based sellers can save you lots of money. The MDR-Z700 cost $90 but I got mine for only $50. You just have to wait a little longer for your goodies to arrive. A DJ based in Iloilo (Flow) cautioned me about fake items from China. He said he's seen a fake Sony MDR-Z700. Yikes!

I'm currently eyeing the Stanton Pro 2000 that Tiesto use. For $50, they're much cheaper than the Pioneer or Tehnics headphones.

Silversun Pickups

Wed, 30 May 2007 13:32:27 +0800

If they don't get addicted to crack or herion, they will soon become one of the biggest bands. My Silversun Pickups cd from Towerrecords.com finally came. It took almost 2 weeks --ebay or amazon items come in faster.
Silversun Pickups is based in L.A. and their drummer is Pinoy.

Lazy Eye

Check out the next vid

Well Thought out Twinkies:

Kissing Families:

Windows Vista

Wed, 30 May 2007 04:07:53 +0800

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So I bought a copy of Home Premium from eBay for $80. I know it ain't cool to buy MS products and I know I'll lose friends and relatives after this, but Bill is controlling me through my keyboard. I swear. The overwhelming negative criticism of Vista got me curious as well (really?). And why would Dell, Compaq, Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba put their business on the line by shipping their machines with the worst OS in history? Why not stick with XP? What a bunch of idiots, right?

Vista was tested on my Thinkpad X60s with 1.8Ghz, 64MB / 224MB shared video chipset, 1GB Ram, and 100GB 5400RPM hard drive.

And what a surprise! Vista installed without a glitch and with aero running. Even the gods at Wired.com have posted that vista is impossible to install error free and they showed screenshots of the dreaded blue screen when they tried to install Vista and XP.

I like maxing out my specs, so I purchased additional hardwares: 2GB stick and an 80gb Seagate 2.5 inch, 7200RPM SATA.

After installing the 2GB stick, there was no noticeable change in Vista's performance. Vista performed just as fast on 1GB of ram. So 3GB is probably an overkill if you don't run that many apps. With the vibrating 7200RPM drive, however, Vista can haul ass.

So now I'm confused. Vista is supposed to be the worst OS in history and yet, I managed to install Vista on my own.

The "best" operating system besides OSX is Ubuntu. However, I can't even connect to my wireless router on Ubuntu without a good amount of hacking (I still can't make it work).

With the upgraded version of Home Premium, I didn't need to have a previous copy of Windows installed. So I did some searching and found an article that said that Vista updgrades can be installed without a previous copy of Windows. "It's an MS loophole!"

"That information isn�t illegal per se: it comes from the documentation provided by Microsoft in regards to how to perform a �clean install� using an upgrade version."

I've read many complaints about the confirmation pop up. I guess not a lot of people know that it can be turned off. It doesn't bother me, so I leave it on. I'm heavy Paypal and Ebay user as well, so I leave phishing on too. The IE address bar lights up green to tell you that the site is legit. Anyone like me who's had their CC info and money stolen will appreciate this security feature.

The only thing I hate so far is the minimalist defrag utility. They got rid of the graphics showing the progress of the defrag. I hope they fix this in SP1 coming out later this year.

The X60s battery on XP can last 8 - 11 hours on xp and depending on your settings. I think Vista cuts it down to 6 - 7 but I still need to look into this.

Finally, Vista takes up 400Mb of my Ram on idle, however, that includes the graphic chipset leeching ram for more space. But even with a mere 1gb of system ram, I can open other apps no problemo.

Giving Nucleus a shot

Mon, 28 May 2007 13:05:14 +0800

So far so good. This is the 4th blogging software I've installed. I've given up on Wordpress, Expression Engine and Life Type. Drupal is powerful and the easiest to customize, but it's simply not a blogging tool. Also I can't code jack, so hopefully, Nucleus is easy enough to use and customize.