Fiona's Ramblings

Blogging on my new toy - the HP 2133 Mini-Note

fiona@tkarena.com — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:07:18 GMT

I am pretty happy with myself today. I am lucky enough to be sitting back on my chaise lounge at home, writing this blog on a HP 2133 Mini-Note PC. It's a miniature notebook - 8.9" screen. The keyboard is also small but it's spaced just like a regular keyboard and I am finding no difficulty at all in typing at my usual speed on it. The mouse pad at the bottom also works really well. I am really very impressed with it so far. I haven't even got that much to complain about with the Windows Vista Business it came installed with! Anyway, I must get the kids off to bed. I'll blog about the HP 2133 Mini-Note in better detail over the next couple of days.

Still Getting Used to Life with an LCD HDTV

fiona@tkarena.com — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:29:09 GMT

A new HDTV takes a bit of getting used to, so it turns out. Several things really stand out to me.

First, TV shows that I thought were really top quality look a little amateurish. And hot male characters’ worry lines no longer look rugged and full of character, just plain old. The detail of HDTV is so crisp that flaws and faults are no longer hidden.

I watched one show the other night that I’ve been watching for about seven years, set in a hospital emergency department (All Saints, for you Aussie readers). When I used to watch it, I was never really aware that the ER was just a set, but the fake walls and doors were plain to see in HD.

Non-HDTV is also like a good make-up artist for actors, or a soft focus lens or bad lighting. In HD, somehow the whole thing looks more amateurish, because it’s more true to life.

CG and blue-screen work also stands out more. With a non-LCD HDTV, a back drop done with blue screen sort of blends in and allows you to be comfortable with the illusion. But with our new LCD HDTV, it stands out like a B-grade movie. My daughter was watching an episode of Charmed last night where some characters were standing on the top of the San Francisco Bridge. I remember watching the scene about a year ago on our old TV and I didn’t think anything of it. Watching that same scene last night, it was like watching something a high school movie class put together!

The other huge difference is the color. If there is a show you know well, when you first get your HDTV, watch some of the show you’ve seen before. Clothing and scenery you know well just seems vibrant, with more shades and hues of the colors than before.

My precious ... new HDTV

fiona@tkarena.com — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:55:54 GMT

Something very exciting happened on the weekend. We finally upgraded our TV from a 103cm (40 inch) rear projection TV to a 116cm (46 inch) LCD 1080p HDTV. The difference is just remarkable. It would be easy to understate the difference.

Just last month we published an article here about choosing a HDTV. We’ve had our rear project TV for almost seven years and really there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a good size and it’s working just as well as it did the day be bought it. That was a big upgrade as well. The TV we had before it was an old hand-me-down from my parents and it was literally older than I am. We were secretly very glad when it’s blinked out of working order one night. That unit even had that awful plastic fake wood look on it.

Anyway, since we’re building a HTPC and since John’s finally going to be spoiled with a Playstation 3 for a present for his upcoming birthday in early July, we decided that a 1080p capable screen was a must. Since we live in Australia, there are hardly any plasma units for sale since the bulk of them don’t meet the energy efficiency ratings needed to be aloud to be sold in this country – so LCD was really the only choice.

Size – we didn’t really want to have something so huge that it dominated the lounge room entirely, so we decided to go for something around the same size as what we already had – just a little larger to take into account that it will be widescreen.

So, all that was left to decide was the brand. In the store where we purchased the unit, they had an entire wall decked out with large LCDs. Even though we didn’t want one that big, it was extremely useful to be able to look at all of the brand side by side playing the same Blu-ray disc. The difference in quality was really quite amazing. While some units were an average price, they came with built-in hard drives and recording capabilities – but then the picture quality was a bit jittery and the colors not as vivid. That was LG. And the Sony Bravias had the jitters as well. Phillips had a really great side light technology where a light source was built into the back sides of the screen and it would adjust to the picture on the screen. Apparently it eliminates the need for extra lighting in the room and prevents eye fatigue. But when it came to the Samsung, there was a very noticeable difference – the Samsung could display black and proper deep dark black, where as on every other model on the wall displayed varying degrees of grey. It made the picture noticeably stunning. Real black absolutely transforms the whole picture. So our choice was pretty clear cut once we noticed that difference.

Defecting Confessions

fiona@tkarena.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:00:34 GMT

Mmm … well … I have been thinking this morning as Monday drags on that I should pump out a blog. What techie thing am I thinking about at the moment? Before I even finish asking myself the question I cringe at the answer and wonder whether I should keep my blogging fingers still or come out and confess. I feel like a Jedi being lured to the Dark Side, or a Catholic feeling the appeal of the padded seats at the Protestants! Is the grass really greener on the other side? OK, I’m making no sense so I’ll just come out and say it … I’ve been thinking about Macs.

On the weekend, my father in law rang to get some advice. He was trying to network a printer. It keeps asking for an IP address he said. Mmm … there is an easier way than that I said. What are you using, XP? No Vista, he answered. Oh, well, good luck I said. It took a lot of mucking around to get the two Vista PCs we have here to play nice on the network. And John doesn’t bother sharing his Vista laptop on the network when he’s home because it’s too much of a hassle to turn it off again when he travels. It’s too intuitive – it keeps popping up and asking security questions about the network. Put simply, it’s one big headache.

Then this morning, John turned the Blu-ray media centre PC on that we’ve been testing. Actually it hadn’t been turned on since before John went to Taipei for Computex. That meant that John couldn’t go ahead and use it properly straight away. Vista had a lot of updating and caching to do. John mildly swore at the thing. It’s bloody ridiculous I said. Oh whatever, replied John – he takes criticism of Vista rather personally! It’s inconvenient and badly designed that a PC should be slow as a dog just because you haven’t used it for 10 days, I argued.

Yesterday we went to an Uncle’s 60^th birthday party in the home of another uncle who is an absolute Macophile – every member of the family has a Mac. Actually I think they all have desktops and notebooks. And sweet little sexy wireless white keyboards. I like the white design. Always have. There was one machine that had the “PC” built into the back of the monitor, sitting like an ornament on a display cabinet showing off family snaps of the birthday boy. So neat. Actually this uncle who loves Macs is so neat it’s incredible. Everything in the house has a place – just like the inside of a Mac which he showed me. It’s so neat, my daughter exclaimed. Sure is. No matter how handy you are with a cable tie, you can’t get a PC to look like sexy on the inside unless you solder custom compartments for your hardware. But just as his house is like Queer Eye for the Straight guy after-party, mine is a constant work in progress, organized chaos and unintentional clutter. Maybe I just don’t suite a Mac anyway?

I’m not saying I’d ready to defect just yet. I guess I’m just acknowledging that I’m let down by Vista, which makes the lure of Apple’s undeniably neat and tidy and sexy, great looking Macs much more of an option than it ever has been before.

John’s Back – the Last of the Computex Videos

fiona@tkarena.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:12:46 GMT

John arrived back from Computex yesterday. Having flown all night be wasn’t much company until after a nap. It’s a good to have him back. Today our four year old claimed that she had a sore stomach but as the morning wore on it was clear that all she really needed was some quality time with Daddy. So after editing the final videos from Computex, John has knocked off a little early to build a car race track with her at home – leaving me to “announce” his final footage from the trip!

First off we have Thermaltake – a well known quality supplier of cases, cooling and power solutions. Everything they showed John was not released yet. Some of it wasn’t due for release until much later in the year. They showed him a cooling system that uses frion, the gas used in refrigerators. Apparently it’s far less maintenance than water cooling. There were also a couple of very high end cases, with very well thought out features. Plus a “green” power supply, which I found a little perplexing since it was covered in flashing LEDs … mmm … excess lighting doesn’t really scream environmentally friendly to me!!

Secondly, Gainward. Another quality manufacturer, showing John all of the features they add to their graphics cards, over and above the NVIDIA reference design.

Finally AMD, perhaps the most interesting video from the show for me, since they demonstrate a new platform they will be releasing next month, designed specifically to provide a turn-key solution for building a Blu-ray media center PC. As we’ve mentioned in out vlogs, we have been filming a video series about building a Blu-ray media center PC. Things might have been simpler if we had access to AMD’s new solution!

The Non-Tech Silence

fiona@tkarena.com — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:51:38 GMT

Today it’s the Queen’s Birthday holiday here in Melbourne Australia. Personally I think it’s about time we become a republic, but I’m quite happy to accept the free holiday regardless!

I read an interesting article recently that featured in the “Green Guide” a weekly supplemental paper that is distributed with The Age newspaper, which features the week’s TV guide and an IT section. The article was about tech and gadget happy people who make a deliberate effort, at least a weekly commitment, to have some non-tech silent time.

It brought to mind something that I have always believed in but have never really articulated properly, even though it’s so simple … the importance of leaving time to just think, to have moments of random melancholy and dreams. It’s often in the quiet times that you come up with a fabulous idea or develop a muse. Creativity can be found in the silence and without it, if every waking moment is filled with emails and text messages and music on the iPod – and just constant feeding of something right at you – when do you find time for your own thoughts as opposed to reacting to stimuli around you?

So it was with these types of thoughts in mind that I left my cluttered inbox for the Queen’s Birthday holiday. It will still be there tomorrow, but for today, I have enjoyed some silence … or as much as the kids allowed me anyway.

What is Computex?

fiona@tkarena.com — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:33:42 GMT

Since this week our website is going to be dominated by news, blogs and videos about Computex, I thought I should just write a little bit about what it is, in case you don’t know.

Computex is Taiwan’s largest annual trade show for PC/IT products. Just about all of the major motherboard manufacturers are based in Taiwan, not to mention a slew of other manufacturing and design houses in the industry. But they’re not the only ones who display their wares at the event, US companies like Intel and AMD also spend a good deal of cash lighting up their booths and wining and dining the media that flock from all over the world.

Computex is a place where IT media strike advertising deals and sales people from small system integrators right up to large OEMs, meet face to face with their account reps to cement relationships and find out what their business partners have planned for the rest of the year. Much of the business is done in the surrounding bars and restaurants of the Taiwan Trade Centre.

This year, for the first time, the show has been split in two. It has gotten to tbe too big for the trade halls at the Taiwan International Commerce Centre (TICC), so a new venue was purpose built some 30-45 minutes away by shuttle in Nangang province.

At Computex you can find displays by major manufacturers as well as a sea of peripherals like mice and a seemingly never-ending array of flash drives. We’ll try to keep our coverage to the big boys in the industry!

Analogue and Digital Photography

fiona@tkarena.com — Thu, 22 May 2008 05:13:54 GMT

When it comes to getting a present for my mum for mother’s day, that old conundrum of - what do you get someone who has everything - comes to mind. So for a few years now I’ve been booking a day or a meal with her instead – a little mother/daughter excursion. This year we went to the Art Gallery of Victoria (Australia) for a bit of a browse and a gourmet lunch. One of the exhibitions at the gallery was a collection of contemporary Chinese photography.

I am of the vintage that I remember old fashioned film cameras. I even remember developing photos in art class in high school! I still have a handful of friends who use small digital cameras for the convenience, but claim that they have taken the art out of photography. Composition doesn’t matter anymore, they argue, since you can just point and shoot and crop it down later. No one spends time capturing a shot anymore or setting a scene.

The photographic artwork I saw on the weekend; however, really drove it home to me that criticizing digital photography in order to try and trump old school ways is arrogant and misinformed.

In one piece, that stretched about a dozen metres long, a naked figure ran and stumbled alongside the Red Wall in Beijing. He passes all sorts of characters, from poorly clothed merchants selling items from a bench, to a pair of drag queens, reflecting the broad cross section of people to be found in modern day Beijing. The image has been digitally mastered to look like one long seamless photograph but it is of course a series of photographs of the running nude man, joined together to create an illusion of perpetual motion. The naked figure’s white skin contracts against the striking crimson of the pretty yet looming wall behind him, drawing your eye to the action of the piece, while the other characters fade into the wall. It’s not until you look up close at the photograph that you see the crisp detail of all of those extra characters and their reaction to the man.

Another piece of artwork, my favourite in the collection, depicted eight scenes from the site of a mammoth hydro-electric building scheme which has displaced millions of people and destroyed a large area of natural habitat. The title of the piece is the Three Gorges by Chen Nong, shot in 2005-6. A group of the displaced locals are pictured in the photographs in paper uniforms that resemble those of the Terracotta Army from a distance, but when you look at one of the images at close range you can see that they are paper thin. The photographs are printed using the gelatin silver technique and then watercolour is used in a dull grey/blue color which gives the scene an eerie feel. Vast mountains of hi-rise buildings create a hazy wall in the background, with the displaced villagers starring at the audience from atop the rubble of the construction work. These prints might have been shot using analogue film or they might have been shot using digital photography. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. It’s stunning artwork either way.

It may be true that digital cameras can make people’s photography habits lazy, but surly those people would never have been interested to put the time in with the older type of camera anyway? These fights between old and new school photographers do the whole art form a disservice. Is it invalid to use water color on top of a print to enhance the photograph? It’s just as valid as using the post-shot options available for manipulation of digital files.

Life of a Server Admin

fiona@tkarena.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:53:46 GMT

I just had to wake up our webmaster. The site had been down for fifty minutes and that was enough downtime. He had said to call, what ever time of day it is, if the site was ever down, so even though I felt bad for waking him in the wee hours of the morning, I made the call. Sorry to anyone who tried to visit when it was down. I don’t know what Stuart has done but just minutes after speaking to him, it’s back up and working again. :/

The life of a server admin must be a drag at times. It is a 24 hour job. Huge hosting companies must have several employees on 24 hour call. Maybe they even have people who work a night shift in case of hardware failure? It probably doesn’t have quite the allure of a surgeon – no hot doctors or nurses, and it’s not exactly life or death - but someone’s got to do it. I probably watch too much Grey’s Anatomy!

Virus Logic

fiona@tkarena.com — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:33:26 GMT

A friend of mine was using USB flash drives to cart her homework to and from college. One day there was a problem. She wasn’t sure what was going on but she did the smart thing and stopped what she was doing to run her virus protection software, in her case, AVG.

When it completed the scan she found that sure enough, it had found something – delete, quarantine or ignore it asked? She did what would seem to be the most logical thing to do – she chose delete. Problem is that it was a worm virus that attached itself to a dll file for Windows Explorer, so by choosing delete, she could no longer navigate through her files. Opening My Computer and then double clicking on one of her hard drives now just comes up with an error – how would you like to open this file? Windows will have to be reinstalled.

This has got me thinking – how was she to know? Of course deleting a virus is a good idea – right? Was it because the free AVG virus anti-software she was using was not advanced enough to tell her it was part of a critical file? Or at times, is there just no way to beat a clever virus?