Archive for the 'General' Category

Goodbye, Nokia E6-00

Published 1 month, 3 weeks ago in General. 0 Comments

Replaced (and sold) my Nokia E6-00 with a Galaxy Nexus.

It works fine before the update (Symbian Anna), everything went downhill after the update (Symbian Belle).

There is no way to downgrade, as a last resort, I use the abandoned Sony’s Xperia X8 (of my wife) and installed some modded ROM to see whether Android is a platform that I can use everyday. And I think it still lacks quite a bit from an old time Nokia phone user, but there are a lot of apps to complement the base facilities.

The price of the Galaxy Nexus unexpectedly dropped 30% today,  took the plunge, bought one and traded in my Nokia E6-00.

I really miss the keyboard, though.

PC upgraded, finally

Published 9 months, 2 weeks ago in General. 0 Comments

Core 2 Quad Q6600 -> Core i5 2500, 4G DDR -> 8G DDR3, WD RAID edition HDD -> Intel Series 510 SSD, Lian Li 8 years old chassis -> Cooler Master Silencio 550 chassis.

Cost quite a bit, but the boot time is simply excellent.

EDIT:

Added 2 Zalman ZM-SF3 120mm fans to the chassis to increase ventilation.

The CPU cooler hasn’t been upgraded yet, but the noise level is well below the ambient noise (from the surroundings).

Still researching on quiet and relatively small coolers, targets include Notua NH-C12P SE14 and Coolermaster GeminII S524 (much cheaper).

Tomato USB Victek’s RAF mod

Published 11 months, 1 week ago in General. 0 Comments

Works great on my brand new E3000, flashed directly from the stock firmware and working great !

Thank you Victek and Teddy Bear.

http://victek.is-a-geek.com/tomato.html

The HDD of my TZ31XN/B has died

Published 11 months, 2 weeks ago in General. 0 Comments

A few days to the end of its 2nd year, the 1.8″ HDD died.

Bought a KingSpec 64G SSD, but it is so damn slow (0.5-0.6MB/s for 4K random writes). I would not recommend anyone to go with it. There are be better alternatives at similar price.

ICO/SOTC HD versions on PS3

Published 1 year, 6 months ago in General. 0 Comments

As many of you long time fans of Fumito Ueda’s works might have known, the collection is going to be released in 2011. I expect it is a bit more than the GOW/GOW2 collection and I’ll definitely buy it in a heart beat.

Looking forward to “The Last Guardian” next year.

My other favourites are still not quite there, e.g. the Silent Hill series. The Shadow Hearts series is dead since the team was dissolved and the company is not going to do anything about the series.

USB 3.0 Experiment

Published 1 year, 8 months ago in General. 0 Comments

Had tried a couple of USB 3.0 cards and devices recently, tested with Kingston Value SSD 128GB

Subjects:

1. SYBA USB 3.0 PCI-E 1x adaptor

2. Transcend USB 3.0 PCI-E 1x adaptor

3. UNITEK ExpressCard/34 USB 3.0 adaptor

4. UNITEK 2.5″ SATA to USB 3.0 case

5. SNT 2.5″ SATA to USB 3.0 case

6. Seagate GoFlex SATA USB 3.0 adaptor

Results:

#1 – Power supply to the devices are weak in the first try, exchanged and still suffer from the same weak supply problem (supplier claimed that they have fixed the problem by adjusting the components)

#2 – Works normally, and it is the one inside my PC

#3 – Must use external power supply if the device is not self-powered, similar cases for the other brands, prepare to use power adaptor cables to supply extra juice to the card for ExpressCard/34 USB 3.0 adaptors

#4 – Supplied cable is a bit too long, have to be plugged to the card directly (not working when there was an USB 3.0 extension cable), the craftsmanship of the PCB is not in high quality, it uses USB 3.0 B to A  type USB 3.0 adaptor cable, even with enough power, there are intermittent disconnects and reconnects once in a while

#5 – Similar situation as #4, but it uses A type USB 3.0 port and A to A type USB 3.0 adaptor cable (NOTE: do not plug a USB 2.0 cable to the rear port of the HDD case)

#6 – Works normally with or without an USB 3.0 extension cable, perfectly stable

Transcend USB 3.0 PCI-E 1x adaptor & Seagate GoFlex SATA USB 3.0 adaptor are the only ones working perfectly so far.

Long overdue vacation incoming …

Published 1 year, 9 months ago in General, Life and Travel. 0 Comments

Will be out of town for a week, hopefully all enjoyable moments with my family.

Trying to lose weight lately, have been drinking too much (beer, mostly) and my belly is growing steadily.

Google Chrome, the fastest browser in the world

Published 1 year, 10 months ago in General. 0 Comments

Started using it since it was first released, never disappointed me a bit, blazing fast and performance increases with every update.

FireFox is playing catch up so far, IE, …, forget about it. Safari, more like an alien when not on the Mac, and with Apple’s arrogance and always in denial when there is a problem, who would trust their products.

Apple, again.

Published 1 year, 11 months ago in Devel/Software and General. 0 Comments

Still hate the company so much, even the products are pretty good, until the iPhone 4.

The iPhone 4 is more like usual smartphones, which are medicore at best. I wanted the leak to be wrong, but it was right. Hah ! I have more hope for such an arrogant company but the product is just medicore.

I will always be in a controversy on Apple since I love it as much as my hate on it. It is innovative and it is so arrogant. I checked the MacBook time and time again, but I will not accept such a hardware at such a price, it is so heavy, but people take like it was a fashion.

Microsoft is just a dumb company doing dumb businesses, not much about hate since they are simply too stupid to be hated. I will still use their products since they are a bit more “convenient” (Rest assured, I paid for my license to use them).

Back to head gear, Sennheiser HD 380 Pro

Published 1 year, 11 months ago in General and Music. 0 Comments

It’s been 3 years since I sold my STAX SRS-4040 Signature System and Sennheiser HD600 w/Cardas cable. I’m back again, but am not looking for some fancy sound output, just neutral reproduction is perfectly fine since I had given up fancy audio gears and all my audio gears are Pro gears nowadays.

I am happy with the 380 so far, hopefully it gets even better after running for more hours.

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