Apr 01 2009
Last Saturday night, people around the world turned their lights off to conserve energy, in celebration of the Earth Hour 2009. Click to see some amazing city skyline transitions from light to dark.
I did not hear about this event until Sean and Alice brought it up, when I took them sightseeing and they questioned why the office buildings don’t shut their lights off at night. Obviously, you don’t see New York in this series of pictures as an Earth Hour participant.
Jan 26 2009
Okay. Within 7 months, I’ve had two Windows-Update-related computer crashes. Kinda stinks.
The first time it fatally corrupted some important system file in my XP and required a complete (nasty) reinstall of the system, which indirectly sped up my purchase of this new computer and upgrade to Vista.
This time around, I started seeing the first (and many followed) Blue Screen of Death in Vista, soon after a Windows Update. Somehow I had the impression that Vista didn’t have such a thing as BSoD, but where had I been? Registry cleaner as the most suggested solution didn’t seem to fix the system, but I’ll see if the system restore had solved the problem.
As a programmer myself, I don’t expect a system this large and complex to be eternally bug-free… but it just feels contradictory to have Windows Update which supposedly makes your computer better but actually can destroy it.
A search for “Windows Update Crash” yields a whole lot of results on Google. Amusing but those pages from Microsoft all seem to be telling you to go to other tech support sources.
Sep 03 2008
For three years, coworkers have made fun of me for not having a TV… and using that to explain why I (have time to study and) pass my exams like nobody else.
Well, that’s changing as I got myself an HD digital antenna to hook up to the HDTV card in my new computer.
This is awesome. With some minor setup and Windows Media Center, I started tuning into free digital TV! Now I got 3 channels of Republican National Convention and 2 Spanish channels!
Sarah Palin in HD! Wooow! :-p
Where are my cartoons???
Sep 02 2008
Google has released its own Web browser today (at noon PDT), and I installed it on both my work and home computers within 15 minutes. I had not been so eager to try a newly released software since Internet Explorer 4, and I actually didn’t learn about this one until a few hours before its release.
Introducing Google Chrome, the potential next big thing in your life that Google has control over. It looks like a cleaner and sleeker version of FireFox. It’s supposed to be technologically “next generation” compared to all existing browsers with its multi-processor model. And it’s open source (not that it means a lot to a non-programmer like myself). And it’s got a very educational and geeky comic introducing its background and technical structure.
The comic was pretty long, but showed a very refreshing concept for web browser design. I’m not enough of a techie to know if it’s actually as good as it sounds, but it does sound to make a lot of sense. It’s the most unique comic I’ve ever read, and you won’t appreciate it if you’re a non-geek.
From the few forums I visited between 2pm and 3pm today, Google Chrome seems to get a lot of resistence from current FireFox users. FireFox is a great browser, but I never used it much due to Microsoft’s traction (of if you prefer, inertia). Started 11 years ago on IE3, which soon upgraded to IE4, beat down Netscape, and dominated the market. The active desktop and dynamic content stuff was so awesome that no teenage tech-savvy boy could resist. IE continued with the lead through V5, until FireFox came to take back the web. Yet, well, folks like me decided to stick with something from the big monopoly that they could trust (or simply, were more used to).
But somehow when Chrome came about, which was not that many hours ago, I abandoned my old friend Microsoft. Something from Google must be trust worthy, since they’re dominating the Internet just like how Microsoft dominated the PC software market. After all, if I’m gonna spend most of my online experience with Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, etc, might as well use a client-side software that’s guaranteed to be compatible with the system, right? That was totally my reasoning for sticking with IE, too.
Aug 10 2008
Put my computer together and now it’s up and running…
This machine is super quiet… even with more fan than ever before (cpu, psu, video card, and 4 case fans), it’s nearly silent. I could almost not tell that it’s on when my eyes are closed… but yeah, those flashy lights do keep my room bright at night and are harder to ignore.
Installed Vista on this new machine and have so far been pretty happy with it. There are definitely a number of drawbacks, and Aero which is the coolest thing about Vista is actually pretty useless. However, this new operating system looks great and… yeah, looks great!
Aug 01 2008
I got a new computer.
It’s amazing how fast NewEgg sends out its orders. Even with the cheapest shipping method, the stuff arrived at my door after only one full business day. Maybe it helps to live one hour away from their warehouse in Edison, NJ.
So this was the first time in over four years that I played with computer parts. I spent a lot of time doing research before the purchase. It’s amazing how technology changes over time… I’m not only talking about the quadrupled harddrive space or the dual-core processor that doubles in register size, but also the total replacement of most interfaces. Where did IDE and AGP go? Where did PCI Express and SATA come from? This sure was an experience bringing me back to see how fast things are moving. It’s really easy to become ignorant when you no longer hangout with geeks.
The fanciest case I’ve ever had:
The CPU looks so insignificant as usual, but the RAM gets more badass than ever before.
I thought they were joking when I received this CPU fan. It’s freaking 2.5x larger than my current CPU fan! Funny how the chip got smaller but the cooling unit grew to be this enormous. In fact, this heatsink is so ridiculously big that it clashes with the air duct on my case window, so I have to do some mod about it.
Really cheap graphics card and a pretty good TV tuner card.
The shiniest power supply I’ve ever had. Check out the reflections!
I’m still waiting for two little parts to arrive before I’ll put the whole thing together. Expect more pictures in a few days!