Linux MCE vs Windows MCE
Linux plays a dangerous game by producing such an interesting Media Centre. See this link but be warned- time wasted can never be regained:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/03/21/linux-mce-looks-hot/
I think it is a little dishonest to do that type of comparison and be so smug about it. One product is open ended and the other is not. One is made to be the standard and the other is made to surpass it. My humble Opinion. If everything was as easy as they say Linux is everyone would have switched- but you see, Microsoft makes it simpler.
Panasonic Lumix LZ5
I wanted a good camera for my vacation to Portland. I am tired of my 3mp camera which gives me mainly grainy pictures and has no optical zoom. I am not a professional photographer and try as I might my hand normally shakes when I am about to press the shutter.
Thankfully there is a product just for me- the Panasonic Lumix LZ25. When you are shopping for camera there is a lot of necessary research to go through before you can find your ’soul cam’. Initially I searched for cameras on Crutchfield.com. This site has an interesting feature where you they tell you that you can pay a little more and get a higher version of whatever product you are looking for. This Lumix happened to be at the top of its food chain with 6MP and audio/video recording.
The main sell for the Lumix camera is a feature called Mega O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer). This means that at the point when you are about to press the shutter and you slightly shake the camera while pressing the camera calculates and compensates for the shake to give you a great picture. IT WORKS!! I don’t work for Panasonic so this isn’t that at all. The thing works.
Another sell is the multiplicity of scene modes. It has a scene for almost every occasion. When you select the appropriate scene mode the camera adjusts the white balance and all that drama as necessary (shutter speed, aperture opening size) to take the best picture for those conditions. I no longer have to take a crappy picture of the starry sky because it has a mode called Starry Sky (how did they know I was going on vacation). There is also a mode called Scenery, Party, Portrait, Soft Skin, Baby 1 and 2. The Baby Scene mode even allows you to put the Baby’s age and name in the picture if you want.
The camera uses both MMC and SD (though videos only work on SD they claim) and it uses various forms of 2AA batteries. It has a power optimization mode that allows you to select the type of battery you are using so that it can compensate accordingly. I truly believe that is how a camera is supposed to be.
My problem is that I haven’t quite got used to the camera so I make some strange pictures. I have work by trial and error to figure out what is a good picture and what isn’t. I like this camera though- a new hobby awaits.
Finding Rory
My vacation is coming up shortly. As of Friday evening, March 8 2007 at 5pm I will be on Vacation. I am looking forward to lots of rest and hopefully the chance to get away from my habitat.
One of the things I have realized in this pre-vacation phase is how much I miss my music. I used to be heavily into Rock/Alternative. I love Rock Ballads and hard Rock. I came across My Chemical Romance – Helena. It is such a great song/video. It really returned the memories of jamming to hard rock with my friends or alone in my room.
I think work has drained much of my soul and it is time to fight back. It is great that the Pearl has MP3 playback or else I would be in trouble.
Farewell and Goodbye
The curtains have finally come down on my Creative Zen Vision:m. The Zen suffered a blow to the head and died of interal injuries. The Nokia also suffered similar injuries but was able to recover enough to be sold cheaply.
These two devices have been close companions for a long time- the Zen longer than the Nokia. The phone I have now (The Pearl) is able to replicate the good of both units while adding a minature frame and smooth interface. The two are gone but not soon forgotten.
Its been awhile
Here we are again.
Life has been extremely busy for me for the past couple months. I have moved from upstairs to downstairs- and had to bear all the costs of that migration. Work continues to be extremely hard and all engrossing and I continue to breathe- thankfully.
I now have a vga cable for my Xbox 360. This cable works pretty well. It delivers High Definition quality to my 19″ WXGA. At first I wanted to get a KVM switch but I set things up in a neat way that allows me to swap audio and video pretty quickly without any pain.
TK needs new shocks and new tyres. I am putting that down as an action item for the end of February. After paying off all my debts for the December migration I am just now rebuilding my finances so I am not going to be broke-flat-broke again. Nope, those days are done. Sadly though a new set of shocks will run me between 23k and 48k. Somewhere that claims to sell genuine Mitsubishi shocks (Berts Auto) charges 12k a pop while Universal Shocks sells for 5k-6k for one. Universal Shocks claims there is no ‘Mitsubishi factory made shocks’ and that instead the shocks are made by other companies. Sounds like aftermarket to me. However, who is really going to pay 48k for shocks when I need four new 15″ tyres? This car thing is serious. Atleast my belts are installed properly and I seemingly only have a problem with shocks and tyres and nothing else.
If you backup a lot of media you should know that knowing where to find it is key. For the past four or more months I have had everything on one of three large spindles. I emptied one of the spindles and found 20 blank dvds plus two copies of things I rearchived because I thought I had lost the former archive- and that is one spindle. I have one more major spindle left because the second spindle was mainly blank discs- closer to thirty.
I am selling the Nokia 9300 to my cousin- or atleast I intend to. I want to get the Blackberry Pearl. I have assessed my usage and I don’t use any killer apps on my phone. I use mainly the standard PIM features and especially email. My 9300 can’t deliver that email and I haven’t been able to find any local contacts to upgrade it. I am going to try to not pay for the Blackberry service but I think the Blackberry 8100 is where I should be right now.
I hope to post more regular updates.
Digg
Who knew that Kevin Rose moved on from Attack of the Show since Last YEAR!!? The screen savers used to be my favourite show to watch- after which was Call for Help and then X-Play. G4 has eroded the tech in G4-Tech TV by taking out the more mature presenters. Thankfully these stalwarts have moved onward and upward. I realized that I have been wasting away at work looking for crap to do when I could be getting educated in my favourite past time. Here are a few pages my friend shared with me that have proven to be invaluable.
This week in tech – http://www.thisweekintech.com/
Digg – http://digg.com/
Binary – http://www.binrev.com/
CommandN – http://commandn.typepad.com/
Revision 3 – http://www.revision3.com/
Diggnation – http://revision3.com/diggnation
Hak.5 – http://www.hak5.org/
I think Digg and Revision3 as well as Diggnation will be the ones I most frequently visit. They have a lot of things in Revision3 that I have always wanted to do. Kevin Rose stands out because on The Screen Savers he was the dark tipper.
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I have set up the older PC for my mother and father to use far away from my room. I think she should be fine now- even the printer is down there. My brother used to print random things at 2am until I put a time limiter on the Printer. When he sends his print requests downstairs I no longer have to care. Nobody sleeps downstairs yet so nobody will be waking up. Mom doesn’t have to come in and wake me to use the computer- FREEDOM!!! J/K- it wasn’t that bad.
The only thing missing on that machine is the internet. My wireless has pretty good range but that receiver is crap. Additionally the reception in that part of the house is horrible anyway. I am going to have to run cable to that machine. If I run the cable I would have to setup those ethernet plugs and the switch under the staircase and then another two plugs in my room and my parents room where the router is. Three plugs, one router, 500ft of Cat 5e cable.
My long term goal for my mom’s machine is that it will be a stroage area for all my media. I can’t stream consistently over my existing wireless and ethernet is cheaper to implement.
