I haven’t been posting in a while because I am in school and in my free time really enjoying playing Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on my PS3. The blog will probably ramp up in June when summer starts, but don”t expect lots of new posts now.
Modern Warfare 2 is a fun game, you should really try it at a friend’s or watch some videos. Search “Machinima modern warfare 2″ on youtube and there will be lots of great videos.
This is totally true
There is a lot of great freeware out there, and these programs are the ones you should have on every computer you own.
1. Mozilla Firefox
With great add-on capabilities and a good feature set, this browser wins in my opinion. While it may not be the fastest, the add-ons make up for it. You can block ads, change appearances, block flash/javascript, sync bookmarks and history, and even download youtube videos.
2. Paint.net
Fantastic image editor with most of the functions of photoshop elements. Add a bit of awesome sauce and there you go.
3. Audacity
Record a podcast, a song, or whatever you want.Audacity is an opensource audio editor that is very easy to use, although to export MP3s you have to download the LAME MP3 codec (also free). Audacity won’t do m4a or wma formats, only WAV or MP3 which is kind of annoying.
4. VLC Media player
Utilitarian media player. Very small size (17MB). Plays EVERYTHING I have thrown at it so far + CDs/DVDs, Capture cards, and network streams.
5. Open Office
Microsoft office clone that is also opensource. Has all the cool stuff like spreadsheets, word processing, slideshows, databases, math calculations. Large download (around 120MB)
I recently recieved a new XP-8000 in the mail. What is this XP-8000?
It is a less-well-known portable power pack, but it works very well. The package includes 3 cables for different voltage outputs (16-19,9-12, and 5) and a myriad of tips to fit all kinds of electronic crap (like my HP camera that can’t hold a charge for more than 30 seconds). I got it mainly as a backup battery to charge my iPod touch when I was away from a wall, but it also functions as a netbook charger for most of the netbooks out there. I didn’t even need to use a tip for my MSI wind.
The power capacity of the battery is 8000 mAh. This is rather nondescriptive, since they do not include the voltage in the name (you have to find it in the specifications section, it is 5v). 8000 mAh @5v would be equal to 40 Wh.
The battery works well so far. It charges my iPod touch using the included USB cable and iPhone tip, and also with the cable that came with my iPod. Theoretically it should charge my iPod around 14 times, but with power loss from converting voltages and such, it is less. I have yet to test it with repeated discharges/charges.
The battery charges my MSI Wind netbook. Using the 19 Volt cable I can just plug it right in without a tip, and it will start charging. My MSI Wind battery is about 49 Wh so it would theoretically charge it .8 times but in reality it is less.
Also, there is a 9-12 volt output on the battery which has tips that can be used with the 5 volt cable, but not the other way around so you won’t fry your electronics. There is a charge checker/on button on the top of the device, which has 4 LEDs to tell you the current charge state.
On a side note I find it annoying that manufacturers name their products with a large number to make it seem better, even when the large number is leaving something out.
If you enable the guest account on snow leapord and then use it, all of your data will be erased from the main profile. FAIL.
We all know there will be an iPod announcement on September 9th. Here are my predictions for what we will see at the event.
I might be 100% wrong but does it really matter?
This is the email I sent to some guy at site5 about them sucking so bad:
Hello this is @amddude from twitter.
The fail that happened was with a favorite site of mine hosted on site5 that i am involved with got turned off for abuse. There are reasons why this should not happen.
1. The resource usage was the same for may and june. (7500 visits/day with an almost all text page)
2. The owner was not going over her bandwidth limit, or storage limit and Site5’s accusation of “abuse” was false (reason was too much resource use) becuase of the previous reason and that the website was only running a standard wordpress blog.
3. Site5 was wrong to disable the site (with a 403 forbidden error) without at least a few days prior notification to the owner that the site was overusing resources. The site was disabled right then and the email sent after it was disabled. Policy FAILURE.
4. The fact that there was no apology whatsoever about the takedown.
5. the email came from abuse@site5.com and not from customer/billing supportCheck out this article by a friend of mine, steveh, about what has happened
http://blog.steveh.ca/2009/07/site5com-bait-switch.html
Please put anything you think I left out in the comment section below.
I stumbled across bloxes yesterday. They are awesome.
What are bloxes:
Bloxes are essentially giant cardboard legos that you can build stuff with.
What can you build:
Forts, Room dividers, Cubicles, Addons to existing cubicles, chairs, tables, desks, arches, walls, mazes, and anything else you can think of.
What do these so called “bloxes” look like:
How much do they cost:
about 22 USD for a set of 8, 45 USD for a set of 20 (you’ll want to buy a few sets of these 20’s if you want to build something big.)
Users of bloxes:
“This app requires OS 3.0″ WTF. 3.0 is just a big fail with compatibility of applications. The batterylog app now works with 3.0 and it only updates in 5% increments and idiots are complaining that it is doing that when all the other battery apps for 3.0 are doing the same thing. It is a limitation ofthe new software not the application people so just shutup and downgrade to 2.2.1 which has accurate battery life readings to the single percentile and not limited by apple with their lame and restrictive APIs.
Another reason against 3.0 is that cydia sucks and crashes every 5 minutes ( literally) and hangs during install. Taptaprevenge doesn’t transfer the songs you downloaded, and a lot of JB apps don’t work.
3.0 = meh >:|
I have managed to shrink 9 pages of applications into 1 page, with only 20 icons. I could go even smaller and get it down to 1 icon, but that would be pretty annoying ( if not impossible). If I had all the webclips gone I would have only 13 icons onscreen (you can’t categorize webclips, meh…).
Why? You ask, and here is the reason:
I was sitting around on my iPod earlier and was paging through all of my icons and I noticed that I barely used any of the apps I have (like games and media and utility apps). I was getting kidof pissed that I have 9 pages of apps and I use maybe 4 regularly (RSSplayer, BatteryLog, AppGmail, and LaTwit), which was really agitating. I espescially was mad that I probably have spent 70 dollars on apps that I played with for a while (maybe a week or so at best) and then rarely opened up again. Then I think: why the hell do I have all these stupid icons clogging my springboard??So then I took categories and did a MAJOR cleanup. I kindof like the way it looks now.
About not using paid apps, there was a study noted in the Buz Out Loud podcast about how people use apps and the conclusion was people used the app for a while after they installed it and then didn’t touch it. The rates of abandonment were even worse for paid apps, saying that people basically use a paid app and then don’t touch it after that.
Pretty soon I am going to just pirate all my apps becuase none of them are worth buying ( as shown by the study and my behavior, even with the pirated ones they are all use once clutter forever because most of them are just lame!! ) and I also am pretty sure I am fine with what I have at the moment.
Attached photo: my SB after categories
