Currently viewing the tag: "Techy"

The Dell XPS

By On · 622 Comments · In Uncategorized
People say hello to my new at latest TOY!!!

Dell XPS

After all the mucking about with the HP Pavillion which i had originally wanted really badly. I ended up buying the Dell XPS…I know one friend of mine who used to work in Dell under sales is gonna smack me (pls don’t smack me :P ) I personally love the cool packaging.

Dell XPS box

Oh and cool part was they did a tie up with Creative and I got free Creative earphones which sounds great :) . Oh and Dell went the extra mile by giving a CD cover for all your Dell and other laptop drivers. And yeah… they needed to make their own XPS cloth for cleaning the monitor.. I’m grateful :)

Creative Ear Plugs

So why did i finally pick the DELL XPS?

Dell

For starters, it has much better specs than the HP Pavillion D6715tx plus it is cheaper, by a good 1000+. The HP dv6715 was around RM5999 in comparison with the DELL XPS M1530 which is only at RM4600. I was with my brother at the time and he had tried his utmost to convince me to not get the HP. Btw he’s a young kid, that wanted the XPS quite badly for reasons that I think didn’t really justify why he needed it when he had a desktop – which granted is spoilt at the moment. Anyway, I had weighed the thoughts of getting the Dell Monster and the Prettiness of the HP Pavillion. I mean really the HP Pavillion is a gorgeous looking laptop as some of you would remember in my previous post. But he and Mister G had a point I’d save at least a good RM1000 over by buying the Dell. Cheaper and specs like so:
  • Intel Core 2 Duo Centrino T7500 2.2 GHz
  • Windows Vista Home Permium
  • Nvedia GEForce 8600 GS 256 Dedicated graphics
  • 2gb of DDR2 Ram
  • 250gb HDD
  • 15.4 inch screen
  • A slid in DVD reader and burner
  • 3 usb ports, HDMI port, SD/MMC/MS/PRO card reader, SIM card reader at the back for 3G surfing.
  • Webcam and Mic Integrated into the laptop
  • Fingerprint reader (although i think a bit redundant)
  • Bluetooth and WIFI built in
  • Touch pad Media controls
  • 2.6 kg (pretty light)

Media Tabs

XPS side view

Dell Fingerprint

I’m pretty happy with it overall :) Very happy at the performance and the keyboard is great, it has this really soft touch in comparison with the HP which is tad stiff for me, which i had denied because i still wanted to get it before. The aluminum finish for the palm rest is excellent too. Doesn’t make the laptop as hot as it would be because heat is dispelled more due to the material. Cons though First I’m not crazy about the slide in cd slot. Because it’s slide, i can’t pop in a mini disc anymore. I know not everyone uses it but some of my applications do. So a bit annoying. Plus i don’t really like how the XPS touchpad mouse on the laptop is nearly the same level as the keyboard and palm rest. Because of the level, my finger tends to keep brushing against it, causing me to make even more mistakes then I already do. Unlike the HP, which has a button for you to turn off you touch mouse pad and is slightly more dented than the palm rest. But i will commend in with the Dell application for the touchpad that allows the touchpad to be disabled the minute a usb mouse is plugged in. So good cover. Yeap, i don’t regret buying it… and Thank God they had installment plan… pheww

Installing WordPress Locally On Your Desktop

By On · 266 Comments · In Uncategorized
Ok… whenever I need to test out something, the best way I would do it is to try and install it on my desktop. Meaning I get to see who my whole blog, site, cms works without being online. Good thing.. but sometimes i forget how to set it up. So here what I have decided to share, is how to install it directly on to your desktop. I got this article from a blog called GeeksAreSexy. They did a marvelous job of explaining how to set it up locally on your computer. So first before going there.. go get XAMPP (auto installation) or XAMMPLite (manual installation) which helps you installing apache and mysql on your comp. Download the latest WordPress here. And get ready for the process. Here’s the actual link to geeks are sexy installation guide.
In the past few weeks, I’ve tested a few blogging platforms for the upcoming launch of Geeksaresexy.net, and right now, I hesitate between 2 alternatives: WordPress and Textpattern. I’ll be fooling around with both in coming weeks to familiarize myself with them. I have now been running WordPress for a week or so, and I must say that I am quite impressed by its ease of installation. Running a local version of your blog Here’s a little guide that will help you install and run WordPress locally on your XP box in less then 10 minutes: 1- Get XAMPP lite for Windows. Choose the exe version, and install it at the root of your C drive. is very useful because it lets you fool around with themes and plugins to your heart’s desire without having to risk breaking your live blog.

2- Browse to C:\xampplite and double click setup_xampp.bat

3- Once that is done, double click xampp-control.exe and start the Apache and Mysql services.

4- Open your browser and go to this address: http://localhost/. 5- Now that the interface displays a language that you can understand, click on phpMyAdmin (on the left column once again) 6- Enter “wordpress” (without quotes) in the “Create New Database” Field, and select utf8_unicode_ci in the drop down box in the next field (as shown in the picture below). Click on Create. The Xampp setup is now complete. From the menu on the left column, choose your preferred language.

7- Download WordPress and unzip it under c:\xampplite\htdocs. 8- You should now have a wordpress folder under c:\xampplite\htdocs. Browse to the folder, and you will see a file named wp-config-sample.php. Open it in your favourite text editor // ** MySQL settings ** // define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’); // The name of the database define(‘DB_USER’, ‘root’); // Your MySQL username define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ”); // …and password (needs to be empty, just for local install) define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value and replace the default values by the ones you see under this paragraph. Save the file as wp-config.php (under the same folder). 9- Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php , follow the instructions, and voila, you are done. That was easy wasn’t it?
Well have fun ^_^

N82

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The phone that I have been waiting for in the market for a long while now. That I went to even the extent of asking Nokia’s Vice President Tapio Hedman, his thoughts on it…. which in a way I am embarrassed.. lol… but I was curious. The N82, is a candy bar version of my N95 and after much tying to sell the phone and no buyers. I ended up using the phone and I absolutely think its a very handy phone to have. Dang it… thats a phone!!

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/images/news/N82/01_n82_lowres.jpg

 

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/images/news/N82/04_n82_lowres.jpg

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/images/news/N82/07_n82_lowres.jpg

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/images/news/N82/09_n82_lowres.jpg

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/images/news/N82/02_n82_lowres.jpg

Specs are:
  • Symbian S60 OS
  • 5 megapixel cam, carl zeiss lense
  • Wi-Fi
  • GPS system
  • Supports N-Gage when it relaunches next month.
Sigh… what more can I ask for. Here’s T3s video on it. That said though. I hope the battery is gonna last longer and also I hope that the camera has better quality now. I have no complaints on the music quality. The down side of the phone by the looks of it though are the keypads.. my gosh they are small!! They look just about the size of the tip of my nail. It’s already bad enough with the n95 that i feel stunted when trying to send an sms. Also looking at it sideways.. it looks a tad thick….then again it can’t be any thicker than the N95. What I do love about this phone are the S60 applications. There are some really handy stuff and best of all NOT i repeat not as irritating as a PDA! I absolutely can’t stand the PDAs.. which reminds me, that’ll be another entry… PDA vs Symbian phone…

My Comp Died

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Not too long ago, my comp died! I was so entirely ticked… I was playing Guild Wars for a while and next I know… my screen turns all static and then it goes black. It happened once and i dismissed it while praying it won’t happen again. Next day… it went to all static again… in a span of 5 times in one hour and shutting down after each black out!…. Here’s a glimpse of what it looked like before I called over my friend to help me reformat it. 29102007968_resize.jpg See my pain and horror! I would’ve gladly done it myself but there was an issue. He had combined to physical harddisk into one.. SO meaning my pc read the two hard disk – one 80gb and another 120 gb – as 160gb. Cause of that reformatting it becomes very complicated. Thank God for the company’s laptop. Sigh… ok considering that my comp is sorta old now.. it’s three years now I think.. plus with me leaving it on like forever I can see why it died so fast. I over worked my comp :( I feel bad for doing it and wasting all the energy too. Sigh but downloading… downloading… it’s like a must man. But now I only do it when I need to. The good part about it, is at least parents are gonna help me upgrade it…. It’s time…. I did op for a laptop at one point but currently since we have one in the house it’s alright. The HP Pavillion laptop is doing very well… minus the fact that it is Vista. It’s nice but it has a lot of security issues that is a real annoyance.

Photoshop World Asia Pacific 2007

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Today was Photoshop World Asia Pacific 2007. Held at Mandarin Oriental, KL at an unforsaken 8.45am in the morning, of course that was just registration and you know what? For the first time ever in the history of me being Malaysian…the event started on the DOT! We were actually on time for once! Hahaha.. Anyway the day was more of presentation of what Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended could do for you. And I tell you… the way how Adobe has grown and grown over the years to becoming a fascinating tool… not to mention a tool that is so widely used it practically dominates the creative market. Having said that the event was presented by three speakers: Marion Young, Michael and Christine Serks, who all know their stuff with Photoshop…. don’t “pray pray” with em’. I won’t go through a long article on what are the latest cool things on Adobe Photoshop CS3 and the Extended version (what is this a movie?). But briefly I shall say that it has made being a graphic designer a lot easier. Even in terms for people who use it for web designing, video editing and would you believe it these people use photoshop too: doctors, sonographers, engineers and interior designers (which is what the Photoshop CS3 EXTENDED, is for) How so? Firstly one it has an option for creating 3d images out of static flat 2d images. Secondly, you know how for some scientists they have to count every single cell underneath a microscope and they could lose count? Under the ruler option, there’s a new feature called the count tool. Which helps you to number the amount of items you wish to count on your image. Also the ruler allows u to measure just about anything even accurate measurements for the human anatomy.

2D and 3D measurement tools

The best part about Photoshop fans, is that it can even allow you to create simple video animations. Like so. And it’s sooo cool.. you can WARP a video!!!! WARP!! and ADD normal blending effects to the video like any other layer on Photoshp. At the end of the day, Adobe was giving away 1 Photoshop cs3 and 2 Photoshop cs3 Extended. The crowd went nuts! Since it was a lucky draw, everytime someone’s name was called and no one answered, the crowd immediately screamed….”TAK DAAAA” or “NOT HEREEEE” or “GONE HOME”. Sad to say I didn’t get one :( Ah but having said that.. it still support Adobe… They ROCK!