Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 was there too. The game is 75% completed and I had chance to test it. Basically, it is almost the same as Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, which I don’t like. The movements of the players are awkward and the game play is not enjoyable as PES 6. Maybe that is what the majority wants. Just a maybe.

The Nintendo DSs were everywhere, so Guitar-Hero-like games e.g. Rock Band etc. I thought I could meet the new Lara Croft, but she was not there.

This convention actually worthed my EUR 8.50. If the trains heading home did not move like roller-coaster, everything would be just fine.

After a few weeks, my friend reintroduces me with Ubuntu. Yeah, I know it. I have it once installed but having no success getting the right driver for Broadcom wireless card to function properly. Hey, but this time the Ubuntu is different. It comes with Compiz Fusion, which has super cool graphic effect. It is way much cooler compared to Vista.

Being amazed with the effect, I installed Ubuntu on the empty partition left by OpenSuse. This time, with a little bit luck, I manage to get the wireless card to work. The learning curve was not too hard. Getting used to Terminal, installing packages, root access and so on was not a big deal.

But then some problems occurred. The first thing which annoys me very much is the video freeze. It freezes every time I watch movie. The video freezes for about 5-8 seconds but the sound is still there. It is okay when I watch English or Malay movies, but when I need to depend 100 percent on the subtitles, such as Japanese dramas, it is awful! I need to rewind back a little bit and for an episode of drama, I need to do that about 5 times. I have looked for solution in forums, but nothing worked. Maybe I just need to wait for the update.

Changing platform is not only change the Operation System; you need to change most everyday software you use. As a photography enthusiast, I do use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom a lot. Unfortunately, there is neither Photoshop nor Lightroom for Linux. Yes, there are some alternatives to such softwares, such as GIMP for Photoshop or Lightzone for Lightroom. But, again I need to learn them. After so much effort learning Photoshop and Lightroom, I should change to new softwares, learn them, and get use to them.

All these make me thinking again, whether I do want to switch to Linux. Do I need to fancy graphic effects? Do I need an almost virus-free Operation System? (There are lots of free antivirus programmes out there. By the way, after about two years using this laptop, it does not suffer any virus attack.) Does Ubuntu 8.04 more stable than Windows XP?

Gosh, I need to get some sleep now. Tomorrow morning I need to catch a train to Games Convention in Leipzig. Good night.

This is just another great alternatives to petrol.

With the insanely oil price increase, this is absolutely good news! A few days back, I’ve seen this car in television. All kinds of water will run this car. The first prototype run at 80 km/h in an hour with about 1 liter water supplied. Currently, the production of this 300 Watt cell costs about USD18000, but in mass production the cost can be sunk to considerable figures. Below is the video about the prototype.

Related link:
Genepax - Conversion of a glass of water into earth saving energy

On the customize window, select the option “view small icons”, which can be found at left bottom of the window. After that, drag the navigation buttons and put them beside the menu bar, then followed by the address bar and search field. Apply the change and return back to Firefox. You will see that there is still an empty bar below the menu bar. To get rid of this, go to View - Toolbars, and untick the Navigation Toolbars.

It is very simple and no plugin required. What make me feel bad about this is, I have found this feature after years of using Firefox. Ok, below is the snapshot of my Firefox.

Have a great weekend!

Like the title said, I am back with Linux. No, I am not boycotting Windows or Microsoft! Microsoft are such a great company, who gives us (most of home computer users) such a great and user-friendly operation systems (hey, it even comes with great IE7! Who needs Firefox?) and they new version looks very great to my eyes. Unfortunately, my old printer does not want to work on Windows Vista. Canon just refused to come up with updated Vista driver for this printer. Yes, I know, it is an old printer, so what? Customers are king, right? Or nowadays not anymore? By the way, it was also my fault of buying an old used printer (Canon MPC190), just to spare some money from buying the ink. I muss keep up with technologies or just borrow my friends’ printers.

Ok, back to Linux. Now I am running openSUSE 10.3 on Compaq Presario V3000. The biggest issue was the wireless network card. Before this, I gave up installing Ubuntu because of the same issue. It is difficult to find solution for your troubles with Linux, if you couldn’t get to internet. I needed to switch to Windows XP to get access to internet looking for solution for this wireless issue. I need to save the whole webpage and restarted the system and opened it back on Linux. Not all the solutions work for me. That means, I need to switch from Linux to Windows quiet a number of times.

This guide from Jabba Rants did work great for me. I still will paste the steps below because many of links pointing to the solution don’t work. The sites are not exist anymore. Sorry Jabba, I don’t intend to steal your content.

Installation Guide

1. Insert CD and boot.
2. When you see the menu to choose which installation type you want to do, choose the regular installation, but before pressing Enter, type: “noapic irqpoll nosmp” without the quotes. Those three words should be at the bottom of the GRUB menu in the Options line. Hit Enter.
3. Go through the graphical installer. It is pretty straight forward and self-explanatory. Go ahead and accept most defaults as they are. I would recommend setting up networking and everything and getting updates with a regular ethernet wired connection during the install process.
4. Once it is finished, go to YaST (Administrator Settings). Go to System and click on “Boot Loader”. Click the first item and click “Edit”. Make sure that you see “noapic irqpoll nosmp” in the Options line. If they are not there, add them.
5. While still in YaST, click on Sofware and then choose “Community Repositories”. Make sure that the main repositories as well as the nVidia and any other ones you think you might want are checked and click Finish. After they are done being set up, click on “Software Repositories” in YaST and make sure that all the repositories you selected are enabled and make sure that the “openSUSE-10.3-OSS-KDE 10.3″, which is the CD or DVD, is disabled.
6. Click on “Software Management” in YaST, and search for “nvidia” and choose “nvidia-gfxG01-kmp-default” and “x11-video-nvidiaG01″ to install. Then search for “ndiswrapper” and choose it to install. Click “Accept” and let it finish the installation.
7. Google for “Dell R151517.EXE” and download that file from Dell’s download site. Open a terminal and navigate to the directory where the file was downloaded. Type: “unzip R151517.EXE”. This will probably spill files all over the place, so you might want to move that file into a directory that you can easily delete later. Once it is done unzipping, type in the following series of commands:

su -

(enter your root password)

cd /home/user/directory/where/you/unzipped/the/file/

cd DRIVER/

ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

ndiswrapper -m

echo blacklist bcm43xx >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules

reboot

Now, if everything went smoothly, when your computer boots back up, you should see the nVidia logo flash across the screen right before you log in. Once you are logged in, you should be able to click on the KNetworkManager icon in the system tray and see your wireless networks. If you didn’t see the nVidia logo before you logged in, edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf as root and find the word ‘nv’ and change it to ‘nvidia’ and restart the X Server or reboot again. Hopefully someone will be helped by this guide and not have to go through the many hours of trial and error to get this notebook working nicely with Linux.

I didn’t use the Dell R151517.EXE file. The contents of the files are just the same like my Broadcom wireless network card driver for my laptop SP36684A.exe. Wireless and Graphic card issues are now settled. Now I am having problem with my sound card.

Ok, till then. Sayonara!

Ok, back to business. Today I want to write something about digital music player. For some reasons, I would like to have an iPod now and the new iPod Touch is very appealing. This thing started as I began to use iTunes as my music player instead of Winamp. For me, iTunes is a very ingenious. The main reason why I like iTunes is that it can manage podcast very well. If I were to have an iPod, the experience with iTunes will be greater because iPod and iTunes seem to have seamless integration.

Now, my digital music player is one of Sony Walkman MP3 player, which I borrow from my friend, as he has already got his iPod, the new iPod Nano 3rd Generation to be exact. And the best part of Sony MP3 player is the attrac file format, which compresses the music better, without compromises the quality of the sound. In other words, the sound is still great to many ears even at low bit rate, compared to mp3. But the best part is also the worst part. Since I do listen to lots of podcasts, it is very annoying to first download the files from website and then convert it to atrrac using SonicStage format to be stored into the player (Sony MP3 Players do not support Drag-and-Drop). If the SonicStage is a great as iTunes, the world will be better, at least for me. Or if SonicStage just supports RSS Download for podcast…

To overcome the route between El Aguila to Platillon Mountain, Pietrosemoli and his team used mainly the standard hardware such as router from Linksys. With that, they succeeded building a video and audio connection.

Besides the motivation to break the world record, the team also wants to show that rural regions can be connected to the Internet per W-LAN.

This is for me a great achievement to break the digital barrier between the cities and rural areas.

via:CHIP Online

In usb.brando.com.hk, you will find this cool USB gadget with 5V power consumption. You can put your 0.33 liter can and the fridge will cool it down to 8.5°C in only 5 minutes. According to the manufacturer, this fridge is only 362 g and 19.4 x 9 x 9 cm in dimension. Therefore, it is very portable and can be put even in your handbag.

This is not only a great gadget for summer, but very suitable for LAN-Party. This will cost you $33.00 excluding shipping fee.

But, when I clicked links from Yahoo! Messenger or Acrobat Reader, the links were opened with Internet Explorer. I do not hate Internet Explorer, but I just want to use one browser and the links should be opened in one window, so that the taskbar is not too crowded.

I thought it was a method from Microsoft so that people will tend to use Internet Explorer, but I was mistaken. The setting of the standard programs can be change. To make your Firefox as fully standard browser for your Windows Vista, just follow these simple steps:

Start button > Control Panel > Programs > Default Programs > Set program access and computer defaults

and this window will appear:

Untick the option “Enable access to this program” and then click OK. After that, the links you click from other program such as Yahoo Instant Messenger or Adobe Reader will be opened via Firefox. But, the links from Windows Live Messenger are still opened in IE7.