deskktop tower defence

http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/

Naming My Devices (2)

As previously posted, I use animal species as name of my hardware. My Nokia N70 is called Phoenix, after replacing mainboard. My virutal XP on Mac is called Kestrel (a type of small falcon). And for virtual Ubuntu, it will be called Shoveler. I might change the name of iMac to Egret (and reserved the name "Heron" for my Mac Book Pro... if I have one).

So, there are falcon, dolphin, penguin, hawk, egret, phoenix, kestrel and shoveler all on my desk.

GParted 0.2.5 - free partition tool

Reading the document from Parallels I found a free partitioning tool: GParted. (click here to download, 27MB). It can create, resize and copy partitions, and it is free of charge. I'm testing it inside the Parallels and see if it is possible to copy the original 8GB HDD to another 10GB HDD. Later on, I will try to boot from the 10GB HDD. If it works, then I can migrate my office PC's 40GB HDD to a 80GB HDD (why should I provide HDD to office computer? Anyway...)

Ubuntu 6.10

After XP, the next OS I would like to install on a PC is Linux. Oh, not NextOS. It's Ubuntu 6.10. And one of the first thing I wish to do inside Ubuntu is... listening to MP3. But listening to mp3 (source from a networked XP) on Ubuntu in Parallels for Mac OS is kinda... waste. But who cares! Nowadays, besides dummies and electricity, one of excessive thing we have is computing power. So, hail to the Mac!

When would the price of 2GB DDR-2 667Mhz RAM drops? Once it reach $1500, I would purchase one.

XP on Parallels (or Mac?)

Installing XP on Parallels.


First time using Windows XP under 1680x1050 resolution, utilized the whole display area of 20" wide screen iMac. But I found that when using Parallels with full-screen, there is some problem when switch back to Mac OS. So, it is better not to do so...


Now, run XP in a lower resolution: 1024x640. Somewhat of a "wide-screen". Installed SDK and tools for Symbian S60 3rd Edition (MR). It seems that emulator and compile time are faster than my T42. May be due to the harddisk? Former one is SATA and latter one is IDE only.

Mac Tools and Tips

Recently I found many tips and tools for Mac. Some learnt from MacWorld and some from friends. I would like to share them here.

Create ISO CD/DVD image (.iso) in Mac OS 10.4
Alternative, you can create DMG image by Disk Utility or ISO by ImageTool that comes with Parallels (recommended).

Fink is a tool (or a collection of tools) from the world of Unix that will runs on Mac. I've downloaded but not yet tried. Only recommended for advance users or die-hard players.

To run commend with root permission, in terminal, type sudo [command]. Tasks such as editing httpd.conf which permission and owner is -rw-r--r-- root.

Apache Web-Serving with Mac OS X: Part 2 - for those who would like to configure their Apache which come with Mac (at least, come with my iMac).

SmartPlaylist.com contains many tips and information using the Smart Playlists in Mac, esp. for iTunes. However, I suggest to learn something about AppleScript, as it would be more powerful than Smart Playlists. Of course, using both would be 'super' powerful, at least that's what I think now.

Moreover, you would like to see this guy's blog for how an end-user play with iTunes.

Eventually, you might want to try something called iTunes Manager.

Rotate it!

On Mac, you may rotate your 2nd monitor to different directions! Something I just found tonight when testing my iMac's video performance (#1).

I ain't sure if this apply to all Mac or only iMac, or work only because of my ViewSonic VP171s which support rotation. Nice thing from Mac. This works easier than that on Windows, and FREE! Program that rotate monitor for Windows, shipped with the monitor, requires update and only free if you purchase monitor within 6 months (of course, everytime we just declare that it is a new monitor). The only difference is, for Mac, rotate a secondary monitor and for Windows, rotate the primary monitor.

Open System preferences > Display, two windows show up nicely, each on each monitor. On the secondary monitor, click Rotate dropbox on lower right to reveal four options: Standard, 90°, 180° and 270°. Choosing any options other than Standard will prompt you to confirm new settings (15s time-out). When changing settings, it is much faster than Windows' Desktop in Control Panel. Simple and fast. No fading or other useless-n-stupid features.


#1: Using iTunes as brenchmark (by Macworld Video): play a song in iTunes, press ⌘T to turn on visualization, ⌘F to triggle full screen, T to disable rate capping and F to show frame rate. I got 62-64 for my iMac (20" iMac Core2Duo 2.16G, 2x512MB, with 2nd monitor on DVI-D).

Jobs vs. Gates

Jobs vs. Gates, featuring C64! Not to mention that Apple, Microsoft, Vista, OS X and... Finder! Funny enough.

Nokia N70 returned!

To my surprice, my Nokia N70 was fixed this morning. I got a call from repair center at 11AM, telling me that I can pick up my phone at anytime.

My Nokia N70 was return to me just as if nothing has done. However, the motherboard was replaced (oh, I forgot to reset it before sending to repair, anyway, there should be nothing sensitive or interested to the repair guys). The firmware becomes V 5.0638.3.0.1 18-09-06. The key sound problem still exists (when you have key sound on, at idle screen, press # once only and you will hear a long beep).

Since the motherboard is changed, so does the Bluetooth address. To avoid Bluetooth device list confusion on my computers, I give the "new" device a new bluetooth name. Now, my laptop, my NAS, Nokia E50 and Nokia N70 are named with animal speices name. Only my PS3, PSP and iMac has not using animal species as their names (well, I guess this will be changed soon).

Now, time to restore. With the Nokia PC Suite, it's quite simple and easy to restore. You just connect the phone, press "Restore" and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. Oh! How long does this progress takes? Well, I don't know. Probably over an hour. Anyway, the restore process end with an error. What? It just said only 5% was restored. May be it also include my memory card and I haven't insert my memory card back. But I had deselected "backup memory card" when I was doing my backup couple days ago. Anyway, it's the simplest, free software afterward and almost gurantee (almost?) that it works. I don't know. It's Nokia after all.

So, the phone was all back to last time it was. Honestly, this is quite good, at least I don't have to setup this and that again. Even my customized font is there too. So, time to sleep.

Visit at Nokia Care

As posted in my primiary blog, my Nokia N70 broke down recently. The display is mess up, showing nothing but dizzy, just like a TV with antenna unplugged.

So, first thing first. I backup its data immediately, using PC Suite (free download from www.nokia.com). For such a slow, lengthy yet important task, I use the CA-53 data cable. It should be more reliable, stable and faster than other means (bluetooth, infrared). The backup program will copy most information and allow me to restore to N70 (same model) at a later time. It took me 250 MB harddisk space just to backup the N70 which has only 20 MB of data. And the program cannot backup my Contact. Anyway, my contact are synchronized thur Outlook (may be that's the reason?) and I'm not worrying about that.

Using Phone Browser in File Explorer also allow you to backup/restore contact. Just drag-and-drop.

My phone is covered by the extended warranty now. If not, I would have to pay couple hundreds to a thousands to replace the LCD. To extended the warranty, one must be a member of Club Nokia (HK) and register his phone on the website.

Here is what i found after meeting the customer service:
1. they will give you everything back, except the phone body. any removable things, including the back-cover, will return to you
2. they won't help you do backup.
3. they kept my invoice.
4. they spent 5 minutes to verify my membership and extended warranty.

My membership card is just a print-out of an image on website, with my membership info. Since it's just a piece of paper, I always keep it in wallet.

By the way, they said that replacing the case is HK$380 for N70. May be I can get the whole black color, just like the "Music Edition".

Mac X... XP

I had strengthened my Macintosh recently. After migrating part of songs from old PC to Mac and installing the printer, now I am trying to run Windows inside the Mac. Of course, I do not want to leave the Mac OS X environment nor partition-ing the harddisk into two. So, the only solution is to run a virtual PC inside Mac OS. Since my iMac is Intel-based (Core 2 Duo), it is just perfect to run without a big overhead or much performance trade-off.

Third party application is needed to install a virtual PC. There is no free lunch (Boot Camp? No way). Besides the outdated Virtual PC by Microsoft (they haven't support the Intel-Mac yet, AFAIK), other choices would be Parallels and Q(emu). I've installed both applications. On Parallels, I created a 8GB harddisk with 256 MB ram. I installed a full version Windows XP Pro (no SP) on it. On Q(emu), I created a 4GB harddisk with 256 MB ram. For this one, I tried the mini-XP ISO version. Install using ISO file is a lot faster than using the CD (and less noisy). Since the two installations are too much different, I cannot compare them yet. So far, base on my observation on the Windows, I found that Parallels are stronger than Q(emu). Of course, they also differ in the price - Parallels costs HK$630 while Q costs nothing.

Epson EPL-5900L on iMac

After researching HDMI-to-DVI-D cable online for an hour last night, I suddenly wanted to connect my Epson EPL-5900L printer to the Mac. Dann, it spent me over 2 hours without success. I tried the default drivers as well as the Power PC version from official Epson HK website. The printer just sits there and doing nothing, no response, total silent.

This is just impossible/unbelieveable that this simple laser printer cannot work with the latest Mac OS. Therefore, I keep searching again this morning. Finally, I were here, at the Epson UK website. I found the drivers for Power PC (again). But this time I also found a link: "Epson and Mac Intel". Bingo! Here is the page with the correct driver. This one, compare with the Power PC 34MB, is 86MB. Well, it is quite a large driver compare with those Windows versions. Anyway, who cares now? To use a Mac, you won't care about thing like this anymore. You just have to keep devoting money to Apple for the rest of your life.

Anyway, now I can print stuff using EPL-5900L on my Macintosh. Oh, the Epson monitor also works too, telling me that it is time to replace the cartridge (toner). Oh well, I've a spare one since day-1 already. The current one is 3000-page and the spare one is 6000-page. Probably can last for 10 years.

Sync a PC with Mac

Time to get more and more a "Mac guy" now. Tonight, I watched the Keynote which Steve Jobs demostrating the "whole new", "5 years ahead" iPhone. Well, I think he is more like an actor on the stage than just to introduce a cool, new, ahead-of-the-age product.

Thou not too late, I'm also connecting my old iPod (20 GB second generation iPod) and synchronizing it with the iTunes, which I has transferred around 50% of my library from PC to it. So, music can be sync with iPod and Mac. What about contact and calendar? How can I sync my PC laptop with the Mac desktop? How to sync them while they are at separate locations and might not be turn on both at the same time? First of all, let's sync everything on the PC inside the M$ Outlook first. Connect Pocket PC (or Windows Mobile), Nokia phones (you know I've two) and any others(?) and have them all sync-ed first. Bring one of the phone supported by iSync, which is my Nokia N70 and sync it with Mac. Eventually, "Boom!", my iPod would also get sync-ed via Address Book and iCalendar.

What a "great technology"!

My First PPC App

Due to a project requirement, one of our teammate is working on Windows Mobile application. He borrowed some reference books from the Library. So I just take this chance to learn the eMbedded Visual C++, which I tried many years ago without success.

Following the example, I wrote half of a dummy calculator which does nothing more but inputing number and allow overflow to happens. It can run on my Asus A600 (Pocket PC 2002) and Acer n300 (Windows Mobile 5) with different screen resolution. However, the example didn't mention how to finish it, nor I've the mood to write up the remains code myself. So the dummy calculator is really... dumb.

Anyway. I also pick up a piece of useful information from the book: set the low battery alert from Settings page. By modifying the Default value of "\HKCU\ControlPanel\Notifications\{A877D663-239C-47a7-9304-0D347F580408}", set Default = "Low battery alert", one can access the settings under "Sounds & Notification".

Speed on Bluetooth

A mini-stat I found recently, the lower bound of Bluetooth is 24KBps, and its upper bound is 78KBps. Can it be anything faster?