Facebook Cold Turkey

(Update: Found a way that works! Back on Blogger and Facebook!)

:(

My company has installed extra content filtering on its firewalls, preventing me from using a US proxy to access Facebook and Blogger. Argh!

I'm able to post this via e-mail, but for the next 2 weeks I'm forced to be Facebook-free. Wish me luck.

Fresh, Home Baked Porn Movies

I finally got my own video camera! Say hi ("Hello!") to the Panasonic SDR H-80:

Delicious specs: 60GB space, 70x zoom (you're lucky you're not my neighbour), and optical image stabilizer (its peers only have software stabilizers). Those are the 3 distinguishing features of this new model. Battery life is average, and so is the video quality (low-light sucks) but I'm pretty happy with the sleek black and lightweight body.

Actually this post is not to talk about the camcorder. Being a Mac user, I wanted to try out the iMovie application to edit my *ahem* home videos. I got my iMac late-2006, and it came with iMovie HD 6. I found out pretty soon that my model is not supported! I paid a visit to the friendly DVD pirate and bought myself iLife '09 (the Mac software section is pitiful, but does exist). Sure, I could get it via BitTorrent, but I have no patience to download 4.5GB via a 1Mbps Streamyx line (Streamyx users should empathize).

To my disappointment, iLife '09 only supports Leopard, the latest OS from Apple. I am still using Tiger and was reluctant to upgrade for fear of breaking all my working apps (I have never reformatted my Mac since I bought it - suck it Windows!) but it seems I have no choice now. Worse, my friendly DVD pirate was not as friendly with Mac OS X Leopard - they've stopped selling it because too many people were having problems installing it on their AMD PCs! HELLO!!! There's a reason why Mac OS X is supported on Apple computers only!!

Long story short, I spent the last 21 days downloading a torrent of Mac OS X Leopard. It was a painful experience downloading the 6.7GB disk image with my meagre connection and starved seeders. But, it finally completed this morning, and I'm going to do the jump tonight!

This, along with my new 1TB external hard drive and iMovie '09, is how I will welcome a new age of multimedia computing and, might as well just say it, home made porn.

Lust

*slurp*


So I finally got the charcoal iPod Nano yesterday. When it was first announced I was interested in the Product (RED) version but they don't have it here in Malaysia so I went for the next best thing. I'm actually quite disappointed that the other colours looked really bad. It was all so delicious in the poster but the actual device colours looked either dull or Ah Beng-ish.

Anyway... it only took me an hour to fill up my 8 gigs of space. Should I have gone for the 16gb version?

I would say a minor downside is the slightly curved screen. Screen protectors will never be able to stick properly on it! Ever! Luckily it's made of glass so it won't scratch easily *crosses fingers*

Delicious

The only questions is: which colour? The Product (RED) version is eye-catching and helps a good cause, but the charcoal is sleek and orange is all the rage on the web. The blue and green ain't bad either.

Go read one of the many reviews and hands-on now. It was worth waiting!!

The Search Ends... Introducing the Peanut

Dubbed "the Peanut" by Innocent^^Guy, I finally bought it last night. It wasn't really an impulse buy because the deal was the best I could find. Some shops quoted me RM680 while I got it for RM599 (Mega Sale Carnival price bla bla bla).

I really liked the black front with the orange sides (reminds me of the Walkman phones), but they only had white:

I'll be reviewing the phone as I learn how to use it, but here's what I think so far:

All the reviews I read never failed to mention its great LCD screen and I agree - it's fantastic! It's as sharp and clear as most smartphones that are double its price.

It's not that big. In fact, the photo you see above is probably bigger (depending on your resolution).

The predictive text input system iTap is very good!

Camera, just like most reviews said, is sub-par. Here's an indoor pic at full resolution and quality:

The flash is half-decent. It's not as weak as those useless LEDs ("look! a white spot on your face!") but not as strong as those N95 flashes either. It's actually a coil arranged in a circular manner that lights up when flashed.

Some reviewers complained that the music volume is pretty tame. On the contrary, I find the lowest volume level to be TOO loud (I get earache after 10 minutes). I'm still looking for ways to reduce the volume further.

I'll post more observations as the days go by. I think this phone is a hidden beauty because the OS is pretty usable. And no one ever complains of having a beautiful screen to look at. In fact, the LCD is so nice that the photos you capture look better on its small screen than on the computer.

As an interesting aside, all the settings that include a range (volume, brightness, etc.) only have a value between 0 and 7. Kinda weird for non-tech users, but we geeks know better - this way, Motorola only needs a 3 bit register for each setting. Why the frugality though, I'll never know.

The Search Continues

My colleague Kelly saw my previous post and referred me to her brother who is the typical teenager who loves following phone trends. I was never such a teenager, hence I consider myself atypical :P

Anyway, I consulted with him and we both agreed the Motorola SLVR L6 is out of the question. But just when I thought that the K510i is the clear winner, he came up with another alternative that is sounding more and more tantalizing.... the Motorola ROKR E2:
It's about RM50 more expensive than the K510i, but it has SD card slot, proper music player functionality, camera 'flash' (if you can call it that), and great display.

Sigh... it's always tempting to keep moving up the price ladder, but I think I have to stop at RM600.

Here's another question: Have any of you found Bluetooth headsets truly useful?

The Search Begins... Vote for Your Favourite!

Blame it on greed. Blame it on having expendable income. Most of all, blame it on yourself, dear reader. Coz it's your incessant wailing that finally forced me to get a camera phone.

"yada yada yada why so many words wan?"
"your blog looks so dull and boring"
"why so complicated words wan? Can't I just skim through the pics?"

The question is, which phone?

I've been a Nokia user for as long as I've had mobiles, but I realize the Nokia brand comes with a small premium. So I'm willing to take a chance on other makers. Being the cheapskate that I am (that's one thing that didn't change after 6 months), I went to the shop and asked "Which is the cheapest phone with Bluetooth and camera?"

And the guy showed me the Motoslvr L6:
It certainly looks sleek, though its slightly longer and wider than most candybar phones. And at a price of RM368, nothing much to complain. But a few days ago my friend recommended his phone, the Sony Ericsson K510i:
It's slightly over RM500, but it has 1.3mp camera and 18mb more onboard memory. Neither one has a memory slot.

At this moment I'm leaning towards Sony Ericsson, but I'm very fickle so I tend to believe whatever the last commenter says. The RM500 price tag is the only bother I have, but comparatively, it's worth it to pay RM150 more for a better camera and memory (both things that cannot be upgraded).

Please leave a comment, for the make benefit glorious blog of SexyGeek!

System Restore Saved My Life

I can't believe I'm saying this, but System Restore saved my life, or at the very least, my sanity. When it first launched with Windows XP, I hated it's limited usefulness. One, you needed to actually start XP to access the feature. Not having any boot disk option is very limiting, because let's face it, we've all encountered the Boot Up Blue Screen of Death.

Next, it never really makes clear what it restores and what it leaves. Does it only affect programs and drivers? Or are files part of it's purview? Speaking of files, there doesn't seem to be a way to just restore an old version of one file, instead of rewinding the whole system.

So I have to be forgiven for not liking System Restore. A few years back there's a wonderful software by the name of Roxio GoBack. It's like System Restore on Steroids! You can create virtual drives of previous HDD backups, restore particular files, and invoke it at boot up. Unfortunately, Symantec acquired it, renamed it Norton GoBack, and it lost its appeal overnight. In a sense, GoBack became System Restore on Sleepy Flu Medicine. It messed with my Master Boot Record a few times, and recovery error rates got too high for my liking. So I bid it adieu and went back to more defensive computing.

Fast forward to the present. I was running out of disk space on my Windows partition on the iMac (hur hur hur, running Windoze on iMac. Laugh it out.) so I decided to uninstall Silent Hill 2. I only played like 5 minutes of it because the PC port is too laggy. But somehow, uninstalling that game affected Silent Hill 3, which I was playing through halfway. As I didn't have the game DVD *cough*cough*torrents*cough* I started panicking. Silent Hill 3 was such an engrossing game I couldn't let a bad uninstall stand between me and the ending!

As a last resort, I tried System Restore, and surprisingly, it restored both Silent Hill 2 and it's much better sequel. I guess I owe the System Restore team an apology on this. But, it can definitely be improved.

Sidenote: Silent Hill 3, IMHO, is the best Silent Hill in the series with a decent PC port too. If you haven't got the chance to play it, scare yourself silly with an original copy! Or scare yourself just as silly with a pirated one. Up to you. I'm too morally deficient to advise on life's matters.