(2004-09-25)


I haven't written any new weblog for several days. Reason? Busy on studying and working on the art work for the new ACDPC web site. I have to admit that the web site thing was not going as well as I expected. I got stuck at figuring some issues related to CSS. Time to find a good book about the inside out of CSS I guess.

A man can never have too many gadget, while I am already flooded my bag with Harddisk based MP3 player, digital camera, PDA, Gameboy Advance and so on, I already started looking for a portable video player. Here's my criteria list:

- It has to have great battery life (6 hours or above), so that I can charge it everyday and then use it whenever and wherever I want to use.

- It needs to support multiple format. Divx 5 is the least minimum. Mpeg-4 is expected. The other "Good to have" formats including Quicklime, MPEG 1 and 2 and wmv.

- It should have a nice screen. I stare at it for hours, so it has to be good.

- It has to have at least 20Gb of more disk space.


And surprising, I expected to shell out big bucks for it. I don't even mind paying $6000 or even $7000 for a device if it's great. The closest one I saw so far is DVX-POD 7010 .

http://www.mobinote.com.tw/mainnews_20040609_eng.asp
http://shopping.pchome.com.tw/pnp/detail.php?pid=AHR00005

Looks very promising, but I really need to get more facts about the actual battery life before I commit on it.

Tokyo Game Show 2004 is just started, and IGN.com has some deep coverage. So go and check them out. I am very soon that after 2 to 3 weeks there will be tons of web sites popping showcasing a lot of video and picture from the show anyway.

Remember I had a bad experience with my LiteOn burner copying a DVD-5 disc? Well, yesterday I need to copy like 11 of a DVD-5 discs, and surprise I experienced no major problem. There was a hip-hop but it was mainly my fault, as I was using some application that trigger the file explorer and the system need to rescan all drives and thus hanged the machine a lot. So the lesson: don't use application that cause the system to rescan all the removable media while you are burning DVD. Well, the best solution is actually not mess with your machine while you are burning DVD, but you know me as an insane multitasking guy.

BUt now I have a dilemma as I saw a new firmware release for my drive, yet I am hesitate to update the firmware unless I have major problem burning the DVD disc. So far I found out that as long as I use 2.4X speed and with Sky DVDR disc, I should be OK.

BUt in case you are also using a LiteOn DVD driver and want to upgrade firmware, go to http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=107103 to learn about the latest firmware.

What's with the FreeiPod scan? (http://www.freeipods.com/Default.aspx) Well, I still don't trust it too much, and I don't think I can participate it since I am not physically in America, but ... hell with that. It still sounds like scam to me.


Tweak UI (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) is a great free tool, but it's kind of hard from the Start menu with my tons of application. It's actually under "Powertoys for Windows XP", so check it out.