Favorite Files

1. TMPGEnc

Recent Posts

1. 
   Review - LEGO Digital Designer for Windows

   2.1 (Jun 11, 2007)

   Works good. Cheaper than autocad!

2. 
   Review - Wine

   0.9.33 (Mar 18, 2007)

   3D support has gotten massively better in the last few releases; this version worked "out of the box" for world of warcraft.

3. 
   Review - Ubuntu

   6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) Flight 7 (May 8, 2006)

   This distrobution is possibly the easiest "free" linux I've ever seen. The desktop is clean and easy to navigate. I really like the choice of gnome for the desktop. It doesn't feel bloated like other distrobutions.
   
   While setting up proprietary components after installing is a pain on most distrobutions, setting up these components on Dapper Drake was a piece of cake. Setting up my wireless adapter was a breeze with ndiswrapper(included on the cd). The nvidia driver simply had to be loaded from the respository(it's the latest version too!). Installing the codecs, java, and flash player was a breeze thanks to a script I found in their forums called "bumps".
   
   This is the perfect distro for trying out XGL/compiz. I use those tools for showing off the OS to friends. Very fun(if not very productive) tools to have.
   
   What ultimately makes me rate this as a high quality distrobution is the community behind it. The forums as so much more responsive and friendlier than forums for other distrobutions. This is what ultimately made troubleshooting and installing proprietary software easy.
   
   I hardly ever run windows anymore.

4. 
   Review - Mpeg Video Joiner

   1.0 Beta 6 (Jan 20, 2005)

   Does what it says it does. I've had numerous problems with video encoders that seem to find errors in perfectly joinable video. Worthy of paying money for, but I think it's a little expensive for just joining video, but I'd rather see more features for the price, than a lower price.

5. Comment - Coalition seeks to replace all of Google's closed source Android components

   1.0 Beta 6 (Sep 29, 2009 - 1:26 PM)

   What a bunch of babies. Although if they wanna make open source replacements, more power to them. Google created android as open source to be used however you want, including putting closed source apps on it.When other people do that, its all fine and good, but when google does it people are "outraged".

6. Comment - Can Mozilla escape a premature endgame for Firefox?

   1.0 Beta 6 (Mar 20, 2009 - 9:48 PM)

   I still cannot see where this article is coming from. If you were to download a new copy of firefox and install it - it would be heavily unbloated in all senses of the word. Bookmark bar, address bar, status bar, navigation buttons, menubar and search bar.
   
   Firefox is lean enough. The extra features, like spell checking, better bookmarking with tagging, etc are all relatively hidden joys to discover - but require no extra learning on the part of the consumer that interferes with the functionality of the browser as it stuck to the basic paradigm for how a browser should look.
   
   The only thing firefox has gotten behind was the speed reviews, and in my opinion we are rapidly approaching the law of diminishing returns, where javascript engine performance is becoming well enough in all the browsers that any improvements to it do not significantly improve(in any meaningful way by themselves) the browsing experience as a whole, at least in comparison to other factors.
   
   What firefox has going for it, that no other browser has, is flexibility AND community. If I want to bloat my firefox with all the features I want I CAN. If I want to keep it lean I CAN. Does Chrome have flashblock? No. Does Safari display how many unread google reader news articles in a statusbar? How about the weather, complete with a doppler map when clicked on? Can either use stumbleupon's toolbar? Browsing flickr and youtube videos in 3D with cooliris? Hate all that junk? Don't install the addons for it.
   
   I can go on, but the selling point of firefox is its flexibility to be molded into whatever the user desires. Even if other browsers enabled this kind of flexibility, they would have to gather the kind of addon development community that firefox enjoys. I am skeptical google can compete with it - but even if google dropped firefox on its butt, there's lots of other hands at play who'd pay money to put their search as the default in FF(yahoo?).

7. Comment - Can Mozilla escape a premature endgame for Firefox?

   1.0 Beta 6 (Mar 20, 2009 - 9:21 PM)

8. Comment - Future of Android 'Cupcake' update uncertain

   1.0 Beta 6 (Jan 22, 2009 - 5:21 PM)

   This isn't really a reason for alarm. It's just a development build for adding numerous technologies. For all we know, only the mature technologies created in cupcake might be released in a future update, like perhaps just the virtual keyboard, or just the bluetooth stereo, etc. There really isn't a lot of cause for concern...
   
   Cupcake could be a ground for building new technologies and not a release in and of itself.

9. Comment - The Palm Pre: Final thoughts (for now)

   1.0 Beta 6 (Jan 13, 2009 - 9:01 AM)

   I'm skeptical of a price of $200(although I hope that it is). Since Palm's existence very strongly depends upon this device, and since they spent a fortune(and had to close stores) developing it, I'm thinking they're going to have to sell for $250 with a 2 year contract, at least to start(remember, the iphone started at $400?). Palm has very meager income from other sources. However, at the same time, it was shown that the Pre has a much more advanced processor and other high capabilities, such as turn by turn GPS, so I'm thinking they could argue the value exists for the higher price point. For the record, I hope I'm wrong.