Ask a Geek!

Quick --> Bad idea?

2010-03-10T00:04:00.000-05:00

I simulated our circuit to see if how the circuit will react with multiple PSUs.

We're going put two PSUs in parallel with a diode in between. If you have a good reason why we should not do this, please speak up now. Otherwise, I will let you know if we get the amount of current I need for the project.

Finally repaired my Macbook's LCD

2010-02-24T01:09:00.000-05:00

Needless to say, I finally did it. I finally got my Macbook's inverter working again. I now have millions* of colours! Also, while I had the machine disassembled, I managed to shove my 1 gigabyte memory sticks into its anorexic memory slots. So now I have 2 gigabytes of memory now. I was actually just about to swap the original 60 gig hard drive for a 80 gig but decided not to waste my 80 since it has a legit Windows 7 key on it and the 20 extra gigs are not enough to warrant an upgrade. I might as well port the hard drive to another laptop (ie: upgrade other netbooks).

I did encounter a weird problem. The screen flickers on and off whenever I boot into its original setup. So I deleted the original partition and started with a fresh install of Snow Leopard. It needed an upgrade and I had the Snow Leopard disk since Christmas, I just never got around since the machine was in different stages of working. I'm currently waiting for the install to finish so I check if everything is working.

At the moment, I'm hopeful.

Coding Pet Peeve

2010-02-16T12:11:00.000-05:00

y = (x + 305) / 146097 * 400 + (x + 305) % 146097 / 36524 * 100 + (x + 305) % 146097 % 36524 / 1461 * 4 + (x + 305) % 146097 % 36524 % 1461 / 365;

From Barr Code

The code you see was actually found in a FDA approved medical product. I may not be a good coder or an honour student, but it pisses me off to see people to code like that. I love the usage of those parentheses, because the rest of the equation is easy to read right? I also wonder like Barr, does it even work?

Like I said to my team leader, I prefer to code simply because someone is going to read my code (or myself) and go WTF with certain portions. Often, its just me who goes back and asks what was I thinking with some of my code. Like a small bug in one of my graphing applications that wouldn't run in real time because of some wacky logic I had when I first wrote it. The sad part, when I re-used that code to be the basis of another graphing application... I deleted the error and implemented something better that works in real time.

Bell (internet), you suck.

2010-02-12T12:03:00.002-05:00

There, proof that Bell sucks according to Youtube. I hope Youtube puts up the statistics to compare us to Japan, Korea, and the States. Places where Fiber is king. I bet my friend in Australia can't even see this statistics page knowing that Aussie's have some of the worst Internet ever.

Watch American TV in Canada

2010-02-11T01:51:00.003-05:00

Its sucks to be only 2 hours from the American border and not be allowed to watch American TV online. One show I'm in to is My Life as Liz because
#1. My girlfriend told me I had to watch it
#2. Its about us geeks.
And I can't watch it online because its region locked to Americans. Knowing Canada, we might get this on MTV Canada sometime in the next year. Luckily, someone figured out a simple hack to allow people outside of the USA to watch their online videos. Doesn't work on Hulu but ABC and NBC works fine. I tried to use proxies but they suck for online videos.

Do yourself a favour and watch it in HD and full screen. Information wants to be free... mostly cause we're cheap.

Failed Macbook Repair

2010-02-08T01:14:00.000-05:00

I received a new Macbook inverter today so I immediately replaced the broken one with the new one. At first, I just replaced the inverter itself to check if whether it was the inverter board or the cable. Well, it didn't work after replacing the board, so it must be the cable.

So it was time to take everything apart and get inside the Macbook.

I used iFixit's repair guide to help me out. The problem with their guide is that the one I just linked doesn't explain what to do once you removed the keyboard cover. This guide does tell you what to do but it is excessive in my opinion. They took everything apart which is probably above the level of a novice. I only took the keyboard and the inverter cover off to do this. They took the hard drive, LCD hinges, etc, off.

So once I got the keyboard cover off, I got the happy surprise of a dust covered motherboard! The machine has seen a lot of action over 3 years and this is the first time I took its cover off. I cleaned it with some rubbing alcohol so everything would be nice and clean.

It makes such a difference to have a clean motherboard.

I then discovered that the plug for the inverter cable on my Macbook is different from the one that they shipped me. It was my mistake for not taking note that Apple made a revision to the white (non unibody) Macbook's internals. So now I'm stuck with 2 inverters, 1 good cable but for a newer Macbook, and 1 broken useless cable. I'm guessing I'm going have to sell them back on ebay. Looks like the Macbook will have to become a desktop PC now. At least I can start working on iPhone and OSX development now. That will be interesting.

What a disappointment. I thought that I would actually have a proper working laptop today but was thwarted by fate. I really need one to work on my CAPSTONE project. I'm tired of bumming around for PCs in the labs. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to flash a new firmware on my micro controllers all the time. The school doesn't allow for installation of drivers so that creates a problem for me.

What I do at home is plug the board into my PC and then use my brother's netbook to control my desktop. There is no lag since its on a home network and I can work anywhere in the house on my project. Its very convenient. I could do this at school but I risk having the team lose a micro controller on stock. Although, my personal micro controller board has been the brains of our robot for months. I will probably get it back soon. We're moving onto PCB so everything will be on one board rather than several.

Luckily (somewhat), I did repair my frakentop and built a cooling dock for it. The internal temperature still hits a sky high 80+ degrees Celcius and wants to kill itself all the time. So to alleviate the problem some heat issues, I run it without a keyboard. this means that the motherboard sits out in the open for everyone to see. I down clocked it so it runs much slower than when it was bought. The CD-ROM is taken out and kept in storage to keep things simple. I'm wondering whether I should buy some horizontal fans that I found at the electronic store and put it where the CD-Rom use to be.

I fully expect the machine to die often but I'm now very much prepared to deal with it. Heat is the enemy but also the solution. As long as I'm near a hair/hand dryer, I can get the sucker up and running again.

40$ Skullcandy vs Free Sansa OEMs vs Grado SR60

2010-02-06T03:17:00.000-05:00

If its not already obvious, the Grado's win this head to head competition.

I love my Grado's I can't wear my Grado's out in public because they're not closed ended so ambient noise comes in loud and clear. Impossible to use on a bus. Sometimes I feel bad when I do wear them at a lab because they leak out noise just as well as it lets noise in. They're great in a quiet room but not so great for general use. They're cheap (70$) excellent headphones that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys music. If you're not satisfied with Grado's then you should go see an ear doctor. For urban use, I'd prefer the Sennheisers and a girl around school wears a nice set of Shure's. I hate/envy her when she walks around with them on.

My urban set is some OEM Sansa ear buds that came with my Sansa Express. They're not amazing but they work. Which is pretty much all I need until I can save up for some in ear Shure's or a nice set of cans. I didn't know how much I would miss them until they broke.

They broke 2 months ago and it pretty much killed me. I have a 3+ hour daily trip to school which is needless to say... BORING. So the last month was pretty bad. When I get desperate enough, I would pull them out and try to salvage whats left of them.

The problem with them is interesting. The internal wires are pretty beat up (took the head off for a look) and weirdly, they created a nice band gap filter internally. The frequencies they filter out are roughly around the mid to high vocal ranges. So when I put on some music with vocals, they would magically disappear. Its pretty impressive since they do a really good job at filtering out vocals. Some songs would get garbled up completely while most are just plain odd. I miss vocals now.

I figured out how to fix the buds by plugging them in slightly and forcing the buds to go into mono mode. Solved the problem. I thought I would have to dissect it and resolder everything but this is a much easier fix. They're built quite sturdy with the wires nicely mounted to the plug. Unfortunately, the wire broke pass the plug.

I won a 300$ gift card at school so I used some of it to get some ear buds at the school's bookstore (wish my bookstore stocked iPods). My dad obviously doesn't like the idea, said I could buy a pair at any store (although, not with free money) and my girlfriend hates Skullcandy's designs. So I got something cheap and black because everything goes well with black. Plus, white is so pretentious because everyone who owns iPods has them. I would love to get white cables and buds but iPods really ruined it for me. I paid 37$ for it and I figured it should be decent enough for the ride to school and back. I was wrong.

The Skullcandy Smoking' buds... they're bad. Really bad. For nearly 40$, I was expecting buds that will be at least equal to OEM Sansa's. Instead they were no better than the 2 set of buds I bought my brothers last month. I got them some cheap noise canceling Panasonics for roughly 8$ each. They were on sale and I was making the trip to buy some electronic headers anyways.

What is wrong with the Skullcandy's?

#1. I can't hear a damn thing. In order to listen to them, I needed to raise the volume to the maximum of my Sansa Express. I never go over 25% for my Grado's or the OEM buds. At that volume, I still can't hear any distinct instruments. That leads to number 2, the quality of the audio.

#2. I put on Tegan and Sara and was immediately appalled by their sonic quality. The guitars were completely destroyed. How would you like it if someone ripped out all the chords except for one. Yea, thats what it sounds like. There was no bass of any sort. I had set my equalizer to maximum bass and zero treble and it barely helped. The highs were muddled with the mids and created the equivalent to listening to ear buds with a lisp.

My Sansa gives Tegan and Sara more respect than the Skullcandy's. It was so bad that my girlfriend even said that it lacking richness. She has a pair of WESC's ( and they're actually pretty good for their price and looks). I can't believe I dropped 40$ on a set of ear buds that I absolutely dread using. As one forum user said, "Whats worst than Skullcandy's? A rock." Although my dad did buy some knock off iPod at the dollar store. Those would definitely rival a rock.

I actually had the Hesh cans in my hands and ready to purchase them but decided not to because I didn't want to get stuck with a bad pair of headphones. I originally figured that getting a decent set of cans would be a better idea than some ear buds. They're usually better sounding. I'm still wondering how they sound in comparison to Grado's and WESC's. I also didn't want to explain why I chose to buy 60$ headphones instead of the cheaper ones to my parents (note, I did get free money but that doesn't stop them). They think I buy expensive gear all the time although I can't barely afford a cheap little tilt sensor my microcontroller. I'd much rather spend the money on some gyros and motors.

The school has a no return policy with electronics so I'm stuck with them forever. So I gave my buds to my brother since hes not as concerned with the issues as much as I am (or maybe he is but doesn't mind since I just bought them 3 pairs of ear buds in under a month). I'm going to stick with my Sansa's until graduate and buy a new set of proper cans.

So what did I learn? That the bookstore sells some crappy stuff. People who own Skullcandy's don't really like music. Your first gut reaction is probably the better judgement.

How to tunnel X11 over SSH to Concordia's ENCS machines

2010-01-26T01:23:00.000-05:00

The deets:

You need Xming and Putty.
Indepth instructions @ http://www.encs.concordia.ca/helpdesk/howto/xserver.html
List of Public ENCS hosts: http://www.encs.concordia.ca/helpdesk/access/encs_host_list.html

The great thing? It works for Solaris machines so you can now do your VHDL/VLSI labs at home. Note that my internet connection sucks horribly so there is a ton of lag when I SSH to school.

DIY Laptop Cooling

2010-01-26T00:49:00.002-05:00

I've always wanted a laptop cooler but couldn't justify a Queen and change for one. Finally got around to build one. I built it using some junk I found around the house. Total cost for me: 0.50$ for the USB cable. Everything else was found around the house.

Its quite simple to build so let me show you.

Ingredients

1 USB Cable (normal type A head)
2 (depending on size) PC case fans
1 2 inch binder. Size may vary depending on fans
1 soldering iron & solder
Sharp Utility knife (X-Acto?)
Electrical tape
Super Glue
Extra wires.

Optional Ingredients for cleaner job

4 (or more) 0.1 inch header pins.
Screws
Multimeter
A laboratory where you can borrow their equipment

Instructions

The Binder

Measure your fan sizes. I have two fans and each are of a different size. I use the fans to create a rough outline on the binder. Note that you need a binder that can fit your fans so you can get away with a 1 inch binder but you need slim fans.

Use the utility knife to cut out your fan holes. Make sure you leave enough room so you can screw your fans into place. If you cut too much, then the fan will just fall through. Just be careful. Don't cut yourself.

Depending on how clean you want the finished product to be, you can either super glue the fans to the binder or use screws to hold them in place. The screws are difficult to place correctly so I opted for super glue. Not good for upgrading but I just need something for now. When I upgrade, I will need a bigger hole anyways.

Thats about it for the binder construction.

The Wiring

Heres the tricky part that non electrical savvy people will not know what to do. The USB cable provides 5 volts and up to 500 milli-Amps to attached devices. Thats the specification maximum and it depends on the manufacturers to meet it. Usually the operating system will give you a warning if you exceed the maximum current. This is not a worry since PC fans will eat up less than 100 milli-Amps while running at their normal 12 volts.

So to get power from the USB cable, you need to cut it in half. I got an extra USB cable with a type A to type B. The type A end is the one we want and its the one that connects to a PC's normal USB port. So cut it in half and keep that end.

Strip the RED and BLACK cables so the copper is exposed. The RED and BLACK wires are the one for power, the other two are for data. The data cables are ignored in this project but you can reuse them for other things. I'm thinking of putting them back to the other half of the cable so I can use them for my Arduino project. You can cover them with electrical tape or leave them unstripped. Look at circle B of my picture.

I bought some pin headers for myself so they fit nicely into standard 2-3 pin fan plugs. I have 2 fan so I soldered the pin headers to some extra wires lying around the lab. Without them, you will have to cut the PC fan wires and then solder them to the USB's wires. My PC fans use the same color convention as the USB cable's so you can solder RED to RED, BLACK TO BLACK. You can find these pin headers on old circuit boards or motherboards. I got mine at electronics store because I had to get some for my group project anyways.

Then I soldered 2 pin wires to the RED wire. This wire is the 5 volt line and is live. WE DO NOT WANT THIS ONE TO SHORT. Quick tip, don't solder the pins when they're connected to their friends. Break the header into single pieces to make soldering the pins easier. Also, the headers don't like heat and will melt if you play with it too much.

Then I soldered 2 pin wires to black wire. This is the ground wire.

I had access to a multi-meter with the ability to test for shorts. I used that to verify my work to make sure the wires were soldered correctly. You can probably buy one of these at Canadian Tire. It beeps to tell you the wires are soldered correctly. I also made sure there wasn't a short between the RED and BLACK wires.

Now wrap everything in electrical tape. This keeps your work tidy and prevents possible shorts.

Since I use some nice pin headers, the fans plug right in nicely. Plug the USB cable into your USB slot and the fans should start spinning. The fans will pin at a lower speed than normal since we're only using 5 volts instead of their normal 12 volts. Look at circle A to how it well it fits.

Thats it. Its actually really simple and you can often find these parts around the house or at the office's PC garbage.

Oh, does it help? I used it the entire time I was installing Ubuntu and everything was fine. When I finished, I unplugged it so I can plug in my mouse so I can setup the machine. It died a few minutes later from over heating. So yes, it does help quite a bit.

Removed the Macbook LCD pics

2010-01-11T12:14:00.000-05:00

I had some free time so I took my girlfriend's Macbook screen off. The back light isn't working properly so I took it out to check if its a loose cable. I remove everything and I believe the inverter is finished. I put a voltmeter into its terminals and didn't get any voltage out of it. Otherwise, the Macbook works fine and the LCD is still displaying an image. I wish I had a spare inverter lying around (who doesn't) to make sure its not he LCD's back light. I also have a suspicion that the other inverter cable is broken but I have to take much more apart to replace it. Anyways, here are some pictures.

Site Renovations

2009-12-31T01:14:00.001-05:00

Will be taking the site down for an undisclosed amount of time (hopefully a week) while I move everything to my personal server. I don't have an exact date when I will start the renos since I don't have full access to a PC this holiday. Emails may not reach me during the process unfortunately. Hopefully, everything will work out and I will be back soon. Thank you for your understanding.

update: I forgot my password to godaddy, haha. I got spooked recently because a PC (ironically, its at school) I use was compromised so I changed a lot of my passwords. So renos won't be happening for a while actually since I can't move the domain to my other server. Oh boy. Viruses suck! I will still update the content when I get the chance.

Wonder if I should capitalize on this?

2009-12-14T16:33:00.000-05:00

[Read this article]
Google and Facebook are getting into the short URL game.

I'm guessing URL shortners are getting popular now.
I wrote one a few months ago just to see how difficult it was.
Any VC want to buy it from me? jks ;)

How to make the bullet points larger in Word 2007

2009-12-11T20:31:00.003-05:00

The first of many video tutorials.

Downtime

2009-12-11T17:09:00.003-05:00

Blog is under some technical difficulties. Be fixed by tonight.

Ironically.
You can't see the page at the moment:p

Update: We're back. Sorry about the downtime, I'm trying to figure out the whole DNS thing.

Update 2: Went down again. Turns out I was only looking at my PC's cache. Fixed, everything should be working for everyone now.

Review of Game Access

2009-12-10T23:22:00.002-05:00

Introduction

Well, today is December 10^th and it has been exactly one month since I first signed up with Game Access. They are a company in Montreal that offers game rentals to Canada with no time limits. Naturally being patriotic, I really wanted to try them out and blog about it. So I came up with an experiment to see how many games I could get within 1 month. In total, I have received 11 games over the course of the 30 days.

First off, I would like to thank Game Access since they were confident that their service would live up to my expectations and gave me a free account for the month. Game Access gave me a Platinum account with 2 outgoing games and their Fast Return service (24.95$ + 3.99$ for Fast Returns). This meant that I can rent out 2 games at a time, for an unlimited amount of time. I can play each game to the end. Fast Return allows me to request Game Access to ship 1 game as soon as I drop one of my games in the mail box. This means that while my returning game is traveling to them, my next game is on route to me at the same time. This cuts the waiting time down. The only oddity is that they only offer Fast Return on 1 game at a time even though I get 2 games at a time. Apparently it was abused so they put a limit on it now. This service was invaluable for this experiment.

Let me summarize what I wanted to achieve when I first started this endeavour. I was hoping to receive at least 30 games within 30 days but I now realize that was a foolish dream. I was hoping the postal service would deliver things at least every 2^nd day but that unfortunately didn’t happen. Still, the point was to see how efficient their service was and whether it was worth the money. I would check the mailbox everyday for a new game and then send it back out the same day. The only exceptions were weekends since Canada Post doesn’t deliver on weekends.

How long did I wait for my games?

I received 11 games within 30 days. That means each game came every 2.73 days according to my algebra. In reality, the games took about 3-5 days to come depending on the postal service. I was able to track the status of each game so I knew when it arrived because they would immediately send me a new one. When I used their Fast Return service at night, they would ship the game the next morning. That really helped lower my wait time. Its a shame Canada Post isn’t faster with the deliveries otherwise I would have received more games.

Is it worth the money?

In short, yes, yes it was. The account Game Access gave me costs 24.95$ + 3.99$ for the Fast Return service. I got 11 games for 28.94$ which is amazing.

For casual gamers, this is a better deal than buying games outright. At the worst case scenario, you buy 1 game a month because it takes about a month to beat each game. That means you will be paying 600$ a year to own these games (at 50$ a game). If you are like me, once you beat it, you probably won’t pick it up again for months so its just dead weight. Now with Game Access, it will only cost you 299.40$ a year at 24.95$ a month and that is for the account with the 2 games rental. The single game rental costs 17.95$ a month. That means it costs 215.40$ a year to rent 1 game a month with Game Access. That is nearly a third of the price of buying 12 games.

If you can beat games quickly, then it means you can play more games. Lets say you rent 2 games a month. That means you will get to play and complete 24 games a year for about 300$ with the 2 games rental account. 24 games at 50$ each will cost you 1200$. That is a considerable savings and what I believe a pretty reasonable estimate. The only way this service can cost more is if you only rent 6 or less games a year with them (300$/50$ = 6 games).

For most games, such as COD: Modern Warefare 2, I would rather rent and play to completion than own. Games such as Rock Band (for the obvious reasons), NHL 10, and Gran Turismo, I would rather own than rent. Game Access does rent out Rock Band and Guitar Hero which is good if you have the set already. Its great if you want to try out the latest version for a party. So its the best of both worlds, I can play the latest and greatest games and with the money save, invest in the games I would keep forever.

Customer Service [new addition]
I forgot to mention that I emailed them about the oddity with the Fast Returns. They emailed me back within 25 minutes of my email and gave me a clear and concise answer. Good customer service means a lot for me since I hate talking to robots or call centers.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the month I had with the service. Every time I see a new game being shipped, it was like a mini gift being sent to my mail box. I just wish I had more time to play with all the games which is why I’m keeping my account.

Online radio for studying

2009-12-09T16:25:00.000-05:00

Just putting out what I listen to during exam periods.

The Sixty One - Can also download free songs.
CBC Radio 3 - Support our Canadian music industry. I love the R3-30 podcast especially. Use to be able to download songs, looks like they remove the feature.
Stereogum - Gets some awesome new music before CD release. Free downloads available too.

If you've notice a pattern of indie music radio stations, then you're right. Something about (good) indie music goes well with studying.

Paranoia: Fist Pound the H1N1

2009-12-09T12:31:00.000-05:00

I just remembered an old article on how to avoid spreading the flu by replacing a hand shake with the fist pound Good read for those who either
1. Didn't get the free H1N1 (or any flu) shot in Quebec
2. Paranoid about germs in general
3. Are awesome cool.

Sony's ebook Reader

2009-12-08T01:03:00.000-05:00

I was walking by the Sony store when I noticed they had their eBook reader out on a stand. What surprised me was that no one was using it. The stand made the Reader look like a cheap plastic display model and even my girlfriend didn't know what it was. I made a bee line to it so I could use it. I have no idea why Sony isn't hyping this thing like crazy.

Heres some quick facts.

It looks like paper which is why it looks like a cheap plastic model.
Its got a touch screen with annotation. This is the only time touch screen is needed. I swiped to change pages and to make visual notes on the pages. Its a bit laggy but the Readers are only in their 2nd/3rd generation. They still have a long way to go in terms of usability.
It can play music (although not easily - you have to quit your book to access the menu). I love the music player because its the only application I found that did animation. It was wonderful to see the ink move, even though it was just a tiny progress bar.
You can zoom in and out. Theres also a landscape mode too.
It feels solid. Its got the weight of a hard cover but with a smaller footprint.
The screen isn't big but the text was very clear. It is faux paper, not LCD.
You need to shine light on it. Since its not a LCD, it doesn't produce light so it needs an external light source. Just like a real book. Not sure why this model didn't come with a built in lamp, I think their old models had it. A few LEDs can't be that expensive, right?

I would love to get my hands on any eBook reader at this point.

PC Desktop Recording: CamStudio

2009-12-07T13:48:00.000-05:00

For a group project this year, we had to design an airline reservation system written for a CLI (Command Line Interface and what was formerly known as DOS) using C++. One of the new requirements (wasn't in the original) was that we needed to provide documentation on how to use the application.

Our group spent a lot of time making sure the application was easy to use since the application and source code was to be given to another team. We originally thought it was simple enough so we didn't have to do an instructional guide. Instead, we focused on fine tuning our group's requirements and assumptions (to cover our butts if something was not implemented the way the tutor wanted). Plus, we provided extra documentation in how we wrote the application to help them debug our code. We expected the same favour but of course, we don't live in a perfect world.

So instead of spending hours of screen shotting and writing boring instructions such as:

"To create a new passenger and booking information, please enter the following combination if you are the main menu: 1-1-1-1"

Fun. So instead, I suggested we make instructional videos since I knew about this free tool I've used way back when. It was such a good idea, and made our life easier. We only spent 30minutes making the videos and went right back to our other work (life is never dull as an engineer).

The tool we used is called Cam Studio and its FREE (AND OPEN SOURCE). The tool allows you to make video and annotate them visually with shapes and text. It also records audio so you can talk or record what your speakers are outputting.

The only issue I encountered was with the encoders that are supported. Apparently, the settings need to be tweaked a bit to work. They won't work right off the bat. Only the Microsoft Video encoder works from a fresh install. It works but the file sizes are ridiculously large. Thankfully, we were using the school's internet so we had over 10 mpbs to use so we uploaded hundreds of megabytes in a few minutes.

But at home, we don't have that luxury (well I don't at least - 1 mbps up for me). The forums has a guide to get the DivX working.

The instructions (taken from the forum)

[MAIN TAB]

1080HD Profile

Encoding Preset = 1

1-pass - 6000kbps

Everything else as default.

[VIDEO OPTIONS IN CAMSTUDIO]

Quality = 85

Keyframes = Every 120 frames

Capture Frames Every = 33 frames

Playback rate = 30 frames per second

Auto Adjust = unchecked

If you want to see the video of our work, we have it on youtube.

Technology and Me: VoIP / Skype

2009-12-06T20:34:00.001-05:00

My girlfriend is out of town and got her shiny new MacBook (super jealous. I have a Dell desktop :| ) but she had trouble installing stuff on it. She figured out how to get Parallels on and to install Windows 7 (I made her a DVD so it would be easier, legit copies of course!) but she couldn't install an image file or get the internet working in the virtual machine.

This is strange since Parallels brags about being Windows 7 compatible so not having working internet is a big problem. Turns out Parallels didn't install the drivers automatically. So I had to do that (which is strange since I believe the old version did it automatically).

The DVD image file had problems because she didn't know how to change the DVD settings and I had to get in there and fix that.

I wasn't physically there but we used Skype so I can see exactly what shes seeing. So I directed her to press this and that which made things go fast. Usually, its a frustrating infinite loop of
"Do you see this window?"
"No."
"Thats weird, whats the title of the window?"
"There are a lot of windows open."
"Uhhh... all I guess."
*none of which are the ones I'm looking for.

I thank Skype so much for integrating that feature. It saved my girlfriend a headache and I got to fix her PC much faster than usual (over phone).

In other news, I so want a Mac.

SitRep: God of War pack

2009-12-05T22:39:00.000-05:00

Projects!!!!! AAHHH!!!!

I received the game and just put it back into the mail since I really don't have time to play the games. CRY!

I'm receiving two more games soon and I think I will have a total of 9 games. That a pretty impressive amount of games I didn't buy for this month.

Site problems?

2009-12-04T15:32:00.002-05:00

Is anyone else noticing that the blog's template is missing? Also, it seems my www.jaimeyu.com is down as well?

Looks like I will have to fix these issues soon but probably after exams:(

Audio from Guy Kawasaki's Presentation

2009-12-03T17:40:00.000-05:00

As I have previously mentioned, I attended the Challenge your World event where Guy Kawasaki did a presentation on entrepreneurship. I had recorded the audio of the presentation so my brother can hear it since he had to study for an exam that night. Graciously, I received Guy Kawasaki's permission to share the audio recordings on my blog.

I uploaded the 3 parts in AMR and MP3 format. The recording was done in AMR originally and the file size is pretty small ( 6megs for 1 hour). The MP3 format on the other hand is over a 100 megs. For now, I will share the original AMR versions with you since the file size is smaller than the MP3 conversions I made. I will make the MP3 formats available once I get the file size down and stitch them up into one file. I know AMR is an awkward file format since it was originally designed for cell phones so I used a converter to get it to MP3. To do your own conversion, you can use the MMC tool at Miksoft. Thats what I used but the file size is out of hand for online distribution.

Remember, you cannot repost, sell, and distribute the audio files without my or Guy's permission.

First Part [AMR]
Second Part [AMR]
Third Part [AMR]

Be sure to visit http://alltop.com/all, a site co-founded by Guy Kawasaki. Its a neat site that tags the latest news and stories and shares the link with you. A good example is Guy's own alltop page with sites that he thinks we should visit.

H1N1 Flu shot

2009-11-30T23:27:00.000-05:00

So I got the flu shot for the H1N1.

First off, the shot is FREE in Quebec. So if you live here, get it! I like to think of it like this, if it does turn into an epidemic, lines and prices will shoot up. Don't want to have to beat some kid up to get my shot.

Side effects? One brother got the fever (mind you, he gets sick at the slightest of breezes), the other was strong like ox (no side effects of any sort), and I got a massive headache for 2 days. I have a lot of papers to write so I don't think the shot was reason for it (if anything, it was the catalyst). Oh, and my arm is sore but thats pretty much par for the course. Last time, the doctor put two shots into my writing arm and that was stiff for days. Thank god, they did it on my left arm but it didn't matter. Its not stiff anymore.

SitRep: Borderlands and Rock Band Beetles

2009-11-30T23:03:00.000-05:00

Unbelievably, I received Borderlands and Rock Band Beetles but had to immediately send them back home. Unfortunately, I have exams and papers to write so I can't pop the disks into the PS3. Its like a drug, once you get a taste, its 3AM and your paper still isn't done.

My brother has Borderlands on his PC and it looks fun. I'm actually quite happy I can't play the games because my grades would immediately drop a grade level (or 2). Anyways, I couldn't play Rock Band since its the Xbox version and apparently the set I had access to (Concordia's Engineering Lounge) doesn't work. It gets heavy use and breaks often:(

So far, I've received 7 games this month which is impressive since the only thing slowing down the rate of games is Canada Post. Still, with Fast Return, it is possible to play one game a week, unless its one of those epic 72+ hours RPGs. I actually can't wait till my experiment is done so I can actually sit down and play the games properly. I really think I can go through them at a rate of one a week, especially when weekends are factored in.