Jason Della Rocca recommended the book Work to Live ![[0399528504]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
as required reading for everyone in the game industry. As frequent particpants in ritual crunch modes [crunchmodelifestats, crunchmode3], Work to Live isn't an eye-opening forehead-slapping revolution. Rather, it is a nice reminder that there is indeed life outside of the cube walls, and we shouldn't forget to take advantage of it.
I'd write a longer review, but its a beautiful sunny day outside and I'm going out for a jog. 
I've tuned the service menu and user menu settings for my Samsung HL-R4667W [samsung1080i, samsunghlr4667wservicemenu, samsunghlr4667w, samsungpronto, samsunghlr4667wsettings, exchangesamsung] a hundred times, and changed nearly every value. At the end of the day, however, I only needed to make a few adjustments to get a great picture.
Service Menu Settings:
GAMMA: 0
Sub Contrast: 80
(CCA) D-White-X: 313
(CCA) D-White-Y: 329
User Menu Settings:
Picture Mode: Standard (Movie is also good, but seems to boost black levels a bit, revealing slightly more DLP dithering)
Sharpness: 0
Color Temperature: Warm1
Digital NR: On for Component Inputs, Off for OTA and HDMI
I'll keep this entry up-to-date if (when!) I make future changes.
I replaced a failing hard drive in Sony Vaio Z1VA . In retrospect, it was pretty straightforward, but here are some tips that tripped me up:
boot.ini file to tell WinXP to boot from the first partition. Looks like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home"
/fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
I was excited to see the launch of http://www.MusicGiants.com. MusicGiants claims to be the first online music store that sells music in a lossless compression format, which preserves the original sound quality of the CD. That's exactly the online music store I'd like to use. Unfortunately, I won't be purchasing any music from MusicGiants. Here's why:
I searched MusicGiants for Van Halen's 5150 album. They have it available. Cool. Here's what you get:
, meaning the files can only be played on the computer that downloaded the music, or on a Microsoft Plays For Sure compatible deviceFor comparison, I looked for the same album on Amazon.com :
Clearly, the price and DRM restrictions make music from MusicGiants a total ripoff. I can't imagine paying a 50% premium for the "convenience" of downloading restricted music. When are the labels going to realize that online music has less value to consumers than music on a CD?
I think I just found StickyC's dream gadget bag: The Tumi T3 Ducati Map Bag. In function, it seems nearly identical to my Tumi gadget bag, except that the Ducati one looks much much cooler.
Check out the rest of the Tumi Ducati luggage line: http://www.tumi.com/tumi_collections/t3_ducati/category_search/index.cfm?Ne=600&N=4005+600140
As a follow-up to their iPod Volume Limiter patch, Apple has also posted a page on their web site explaining how sound works, and the dangers of loud noises. Pretty basic stuff, but commendable nonetheless.
(Perhaps the company has realized that deaf people don't buy music on iTunes.)
Although Opera [operaubuntufonts, opera, opera9, operastaticbin, opera-idstring, operamini41, linkstashbuttonsforoperawin764bit, badoperasites, operaminiusage, operamini4] is my primary browser, I've found some sites that don't work well with it. I'll keep a running list here:
UPDATE: See comments…
To my surprise, the DVD player in the Xbox 360 [xbox360firstplay, xbox360dvdplayer, xbox360ad] is pretty impressive. Compared to my Panasonic XP50, the Xbox 360 DVD player shows a noticeably sharper picture with stronger color when connected to my Samsung HL-R4667 [samsung1080i, samsunghlr4667wservicemenu, samsunghlr4667w, samsungpronto, samsunghlr4667wsettings, exchangesamsung] via component cables. The technical review at Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity also concludes that the 360 is indeed a very good DVD player. They mention that it only outputs 480p (720×480 according to the Samsung's Info button), but the resolution sure looks upconverted.
The 360's UI is amazingly fast, including chapter skips, fast-forward, and the front-end. Layer-changes are simply unnoticeable. Frame-rendered is also fast. Comparing panning scenes between the XP50 and the 360, the 360 seems smoother, with fewer dropped frames.
The 360's DVD player software does have a couple of minor flaws, including high black levels which require adjustment to the calibrated levels on your TV, and a "phantom" line of color about a pixel or two below the magenta and red color bars on the THX color test. I'm seeing some pink-ish pixeling in the blue skies of Tattoine on the SW:EP2 DVD, and I wonder if this is related.
Hopefully Microsoft will patch the flaws sooner or later, as there is no reason that a 3.2GHz triple core machine shouldn't be the most powerful DVD player ever made. Maybe they'll consider adding 1080i upconversion, as well as make an HDMI cable available.
Compared to the Samsung HD950 and Panasonic S97 upconverting DVD players I've "borrowed" from Best Buy, the Xbox 360 is right up there with the best DVD players I've used.
Sadly, however, the quality of the player emphasizes a critical flaw with the Xbox 360: it is an extremely loud machine, well beyond the noise levels you would expect from a device that belongs in a music room or living room. What was Microsoft thinking when they made this thing that loud?
UPDATE: I had one of the "Cinema Modes" enabled on my XP50. After disabling it, the picture is now almost as clear as the Xbox 360.
So many hi-tech product reviews on the net today are completely useless. Take iPod reviews, for example. If you search for reviews of the iPod, about 90% of the ones you'll find will conclude that the iPod "sounds great!" However, almost no review will have any measured data to quantify their opinion, except for reviewers like Bill Machrone [machroneblog, ipodnanomachrone], who shows via actual measurement that most iPods are unable to reproduce low bass frequencies.
Case in point for this DVD Player review on the popular HD Beat blog. The reviewer somehow decided that the Helios HVD2085 is a "very good DVD player," partially justified by his "true scientific" single blind test with an SVGA (read: NON-HD!) plasma screen at his local electronics super store. He even lets it slip that his main TV at home is an old 36" Sony that doesn't even support progressive scan input. Great "review", pal.
In the mean time, the crew at Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity reviewed this same DVD player in their long-running DVD Shootout performance test. Their conclusion, backed up by actual performance test data? This DVD Player is a complete turd.
The real bummer with the number of lame reviews is that they clutter Google search results with useless info. I wish there was a Google button called "Cull the Crap."
After Firefox again failed to build on my Linux box, I thought I'd never find a stable, compatible, full-featured web browser for Linux. Mozilla had the feature set covered, and the truetype Xft patch made it look nice, but performance was unusably slow. Konqueror is always interesting, but like the curse of Windows Explorer, it loads up all kinds of KDE stuff that I don't want. And as much as I enjoy the tiny and efficient Dillo browser, it isn't practical enough for daily use.
Since I've recently become hooked on the Opera [operaubuntufonts, opera, opera9, operastaticbin, opera-idstring, operamini41, linkstashbuttonsforoperawin764bit, badoperasites, operaminiusage, operamini4] browser under Windows, I thought I'd take a peek at the Linux version. Lo and behold, they wisely provide a static binary download that removes the hassle of Linux dependency hell. I untarred it, ran it in place, and it just worked. Fast. And identical to the Windows version. Wow.
Tip: For Linux, skip Opera's web download page, and just head to ftp://ftp.opera.com to get the right version.
I used the MSN Desktop Search for several months on my work machine. I've found that a desktop search app is an invaluable resource in this day and age of gigabytes of data. I can't live without search now.
MSN Desktop Search has a lot of great features, but also several annoyances. For me, I found that it seemed to run somewhat aggressively in the background with several processes, and I couldn't stand that it wouldn't remember its window position from a previous search. The UI a little clumsy all around, and the preview window is quite slow. All in all, it is a very nice app, but not nearly as elegant as Copernic Desktop Search.
Copernic is known for their nice search engine aggregator, but blog posts from Microserfs Omar and Steve turned me on to Copernic's awesome desktop search app.
Copernic Desktop Search is what a Windows app should be. Compact, single process, unobtrusive, and highly useful. The search results from Copernic are as fast and accurate as MSN, but they are much easier to digest with a clean presentation and UI. The auto-preview window is also fast and accurate. And as a nice touch, I can run it on my laptop as it has a setting to pause indexing when running on battery power.
Did mention that Copernic is free?
Just got an Xbox 360 set up with the rest of my consoles. Some quick first impression notes:
Apple just released an iPod firmware update that allows users to personally set the iPod's maximum volume output. Incredibly, many tech blogs and news sites are actually criticizing Apple for "caving in" to people who are "too dumb to turn it down." Well, have you ever accidentally bumped the volume controls, only to find out after the song starts and you've been blasted three feet into the air? Of course, we all have. At the iPod max volume output of 120db, that accident can cause permanent hearing damage. The new iPod firmware can completely prevent those incidents of irreversible hearing loss.
Oh, and which people are "too dumb to turn it down?" Pretty much everyone under 18 years old. I know I was.
In his PC Magazine column, John Dvorak mentioned how the Opera web browser [operaubuntufonts, opera, opera9, operastaticbin, opera-idstring, operamini41, linkstashbuttonsforoperawin764bit, badoperasites, operaminiusage, operamini4] sends a fake browser ID to web sites. Rather than identifying itself as Opera, it pretends to be Internet Explorer 6. The reason is because of poor (and on one occasion, apparently malicious) web site authoring. Some site authors are unaware of Opera, and assume that if the browser isn't Internet Explorer or Netscape, then the web page won't render correctly. This is obviously quite untrue, but the real bummer here is that no one really knows how many people are using the Opera browser, as it rarely appears in web server logs as itself.
Although this is the default setting, Opera users can choose to set the ID back to Opera, or even choose to impersonate Mozilla. I set it back to Opera, and noticed something: some web sites looked better. In particular Yahoo Groups had some funky font faces and sizes when Opera spoofs IE, but looks excellent when it IDs itself as Opera.
I'll be leaving the browser ID setting as Opera itself.
