I need to turn off the WinBar before playing games in full screen mode, like Sims 2 or Need For Speed 2 because WinBar will cause the game the halt in the middle, and it will mess up the accuracy of the mouse pointer.

Speaking of Sims 2, I can play it without a CD on my CDROM. The trick is to have the CD Image loaded by Alochol 120% first, and keep Alcochol 120% running while I am playing the game.

Something strange: when I try to use a DVDRW to burn a Alcohol 120% image, Alcohol refused to burn the DVD! But after the I put in a eBlue DVD Disc, it started burning. So ... what in the hell was wrong with the DVDRW disc.... I guess I may never know the answer :-I ......

I was a bit surprised to hear that Cakewalk dropped VSample 3.x from the Sonar 4 package. Great, now I have to learn how to use another sample in Calkwalk :-S ....

Uploading a bunch of files to a web photo album site is always a clumsy process. I came across a photo album web site which allows me to upload a bunch of files in a single .zip file, which supposed to save a lot of trouble. The downside, however, if that if the upload failed (and in may case in case because of system timeout of long uploading time), then you wasted time and didn't get your stuff uploaded. In fact, that's exactly what I experienced 30 seconds ago.

Nevertheless, uploading a single .zip instead of individual files is actually a pretty nice idea. And here's the site if you are interest in tryout yourself.

http://www.pixnet.net/

I brought another pack of 10 eBlue DVD+R disc a few days ago, and when I used it today, I found that, just like the other eBlue DVDR disc I brought, Nero allowed me to choose 8x. So it seems like the Disc is being recognized as a 8X disc even though it was marked 4x on the package.


After using iRiver iHP-140 for a long while, I finally found some MP3 files that cannot be played (in fact, they hanged my iRiver). I am still investigating what the problem is. Another interesting side note is that those same MP3 files crashed the dbPowerAMP Sound Converter. So something really is fishy here. But then I download and installed dBPower AMP Music Converter release 10, and the application crash went away, so I am not way too concern now.


Found an interesting application that can extract audios from a DVD and encode them in MP3. The applicaiton is called Ace DVD Audio Extractor, and I successfully using it to extract the songs from Anthony Wong Concert 2003 DVD that I brought from mainland China. I glitch was that the "Open DVD" feature didn't work on this DVD. I have to use "Open IFO" and point it to the VTS_01_0.IFO, and then I got a full list of all songs, and I can choose between the Concert sound track and the Karaoke Sound track.


The candles I got from from Vitalias smelled pretty nice. I was using one a few nights ago and was very pleased with it. Hopefully I won't get addicted soon.

I have downloaded and installed NetBeans IDE on the "WindowsXP with SP2 for Screw" VMWare enviornment (in case things got messed up), and found the NetBeans UI kind of simply to use. After I spent some time with VS.Net 2003, I will sure take a look into this NetBeans thing.


WS Security seems to be a hot topic in the Web Service space, and this is probably the best time for me to learn a lot more about this. Since I spent more time on the .Net camp, and since web service is largely about interoperability, I am going to use the MSDN article "WS-Security Interoperability Using WSE 2.0 and Sun JWSDP 1.4" as my first tutorial. Here's the URL:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/building/interop/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/interopsun.asp


For some mysterious reason, VMWare seems to be competiting resources with ABC. I have to quit VMware (XP DEvelopment setting) in order to keep ABC away from hanging mode. Very strange indeed.

Electronic Drumset


I walked into the TomLee Music Instrument store right next to SoGo Department store and Tsim Sha Tsui getting a new set of string for my cheesy guitar, and I didn't realize that there's a percussion section at that store until that. So I walked around and found that there's a new lowend drumset released by Roland Called TD-3. The so-called discount price marked on it was HK $6950 (Regular at HK$8200), which is about the same as the US price: ( http://www.gearblasters.com/directory/drum/Roland_TD_3.html ) Let me say this clear after playing with the drumset: TD-3 SUCKS! It's basically TD-6 without one Tom tom pad and with a much crappier Sound module! And how can you survive a regular drum session without both hi and low tom? I hated it when I heard that TD-6 didn't have rim shot, but this TD-3 is just too much. How can Roland release such a crappy product. It's like selling a lower end Toyota Civic by removing a tire.

And then i saw Roland TD8KV. That's right, the same old TD-8. But it was selling at $18300 (regular price $22500), which I think was pretty ok since it is selling at US$2695.00 in US.

I don't have money, so I won't buy both. Good. Less distraction :-D.

Downloading software not working

It's not a happy experience when your machine spent so much time downloading something, yet the resultant files are all broken. That's exactly what happened to me in the last two days when I try to download a whole bunch of files from the Discreet site for the demonstration version of 3DStudio Max 7. Maybe it's because I was trying to download too many files at the same time. But heck, it's that the whole reason of using downloading tools?

Anyway, the tool that failed me was FlashGet, and Firefox download was failing at me too. I am now using GetRight and only down one big file at a time. Let me see if things goes better this time around.

- Down loading a single file worked out OK with GetRight. I am now trying downloading 2 files at a time.
- Hey it worked fine too! So I am trying to download multiple files at the same time. I realize that only 2 files are being downloaded at a time. Maybe it's the site restriction. Well works two files is better than failing a bunch of files.



I applied FlashMX 2004 7.2 update and FireWork MX 2004 7.0.2 update . Everything seems to be OK, although I don't see any difference. But I guess that's the beauty part: when everything works properly, you don't see a thing different.


Mozilla Firefox web browser 1.0 final has been released! This is no longer a pre-release product, and what a great browser it is.

After installed ZoneAlarm, I was not able to open a directory on a remote machine (my laptop). That is, though, not a problem as I can resolve the problem by simply adding the local IP address of my laptop to the trust zone of ZoneAlarm (under "Firewall --> Zones" setting)


Man, I was totally scared when I opened my Photo CD catalog in Portfolio 7 format, and found that the "Add" button is disabled! That means I CANNOT add more photos into the catalog. At first I thought it was the Zone Alarm, but turns out it was just a matter of setting th access setting to administartor by setting [Catalog]->[Access Level]. I wasn't sure what made the Catalog got into read only mode, but I am fine as long as I find a solution for my problem.


I heard of the freeware Synergy which allows me the control mutiple machines using one set of keyboard and mouse a while before form the G4TechTV show "Screen Saver". I finally got the chance to try it. It works OK .... except that it's very slow/ Maybe I'll check out how to tune the performance later ...

I really wonder how much memory does AvantGo require in order to complete the web page sync without giving me that ugly "insufficient memory" message. My memory stick has 12Mb of space, and yet I still got the "insufficient memory" message. It was until I deleted the 52Mb movie file that the AvantGo sync finally started to work. Man, this is crazy.


I noticed that the MPEG encoding result of the VGear TV Tuner didn't seen to be too well, and I also remember that I've seen a good TV Tuner MPEG encoding result before. So I sort of draw of conclusion that the way how the VGear plugged to the laptop may affect the graphic quality. So instead of plugging the VGear to a 4 port USB hub, I plugged it directly to the laptop USB port. I'll am doing video recording now, and will check back later to see if the video quality is improved or not.

OK, just checked. There's NO picture improvement at all. My theory is that the RF reception is simply bad, and because There's a lot of noise, the MPEG1 compression process becomes very inefficient, and thus the slugglish result.Damn, what a junky toy.


Darn, after I cleaned up my system, 3D Studio Max 6 stopped working. Turned out it was because along the process, an anti-virus application (forgot which one) identified Ciliia licence server application as a virus and removed it. Sigh. Oh well, this gives me an excuse to install 3D Studio Max 7 anyway.

99% of time when I encountered a technical problem, I always find someone suffering the game pain as me. This time, it's the QuickTime player problem.

Recently every time I started the QuickTime player, I will get an error message with title "QuickTime Player: QuickTimePlayer.exe - No Disk" and content "There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive XXXX". And I cannot get rid of the error message box unless I unplug the USB Flashcard reader from the system.

Someone on the Net experienced the same:
http://www.webdevforums.com/showthread.php?t=5433 . His solution is disabling the USB Flashcard reader. To me, this is unacceptable.

Finally, I found one message that indirectly answered my question:
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1048113092

Here's the reason of my problem: Apple QuickTime player remembers what movie it was played before and display the entries under the menu [Open Recent]. Unfortunately, the player checks the existence of all the entries in the [Open Recent] when the player starts. And pervious I played some video directly from some Flashcard on the USB Flashcard drive, so when the QuickTime player sees the drive but not the media (the Flashcard), it complains.

The solution is actually simply: first unplug the USB flashcard reader. Then open QuickTime Player, you will still get a way error messages. Just enduring them and click [Continue] to move on, then go to menu [File]->[Open Recent]->[Clear Menu]. Along the way you will still encounter a few error messages. Just, again, click [Continue] to move on. Once the recent opened file list get cleared, you should have no problem opening the QuickTime player.

This obviously is Apple's fault. Damn you Apple.

After witnessing a browser hijack situation on my IE last night (which some program installed some stupid serachbar on my IE), and then AVG Anti-virus reported a Trojan Horse inside a "System Volume Information" folder which I cannot remove it directly, I started a journey of fighting spyware and Trojan horse since last night. Oh boy was that fun.

First it was the Trojan application. For fix that, I moved all my stuff from that drive to another drive, and then I formatted the hard disk. Hopefully that will have the problem fixed.

The browser hi-jack was a much bigger a problem. I used Adaware and SpyBot Search and Destroy, and they have problem fixing all the problems! Adaware was, among the two, the least powerful in this case as it reported no spyware existed in my system while SpyBot could still allocate some (even though it had problem removing all of them). So I went to a site to get the free and latest spy audit ( http://www.webroot.com/services/spyaudit_03.htm ). Indeed I found the tool identified a few of spyware, including the WEbSerach toolbar crap. I then downloaded the hacked version of Spy Sweeper. It was a very bad heck which doesn't allow any update at all, but still managed to clean all the spyware. I knew it because I then used the legit latest spy audit to verify my system and it reported "Clean".

So I though the problem it over, but it's not.

SpyBot still reported the DSO Exploit problem no matter how many times I checked. Being frustrated, I checked the Net and found the following tips to manually clean up the DSO Exploit items:

(1) Run the "SpyBot - Search and Destroy" as usual.
(2) Once the scanning is done, expand then "DsO Exploit" entry.
(3) With each individual entry, select the item and then right click, select [More Detail]->[Jump to the location]. This will brings you to the system registry entry. Sometime you may need to select [Jump to location] one more time as the first time usually have the Regedit application brought up and but not pointing to the right registry entry.
(4) Do the rest for the other entries.
(5) The next you scan the machine using SpyBot, you will be the nice congratulation message.


Another thing: Don't use MacAfee Virus Scan if your system contains Chinese character filename. The active protection feature will turn off itself after a while and gives you a "NT Access error". Use the freeware AVG Anti-Virus instead. Go to http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 to download the latest version.

Free magazines for software developer

You can call me cheap, but when you don't have a permaneant job, every penny saved is a penny gain. And when it comes developer magazine, since I always got free subscription when I was in US, the concept of BUYING software development magazine is simply too alien to me. Fortunately, in digital age, I can continue enjoy the benefit of those free subscription that I used to had. Here's some examples:

To get a subscrption of free LinuxWorld digital edition , just fill-up the form at
https://www.sys-con.com/linux/subscribefreespecial.cfm?id=0

To get a subscrption of free Java Developer Journal digital edition, just fill-up the form at
http://www.sys-con.com/java/subscribe.cfm

To download the MX Developer Journal, you can hack the following URL:
http://www.sys-con.com/websitepdf.cfm?mxdj=on&issue=532 is the Nov 2003 issue. issue-531 is the Oct 2004 issue. Go figure.

To download WebServices Journal, go to http://www.mxdevelopersjournal.com/magazine/archives.cfm?id=4 , following the links, and
use the password: wsj2004 or xmlj2004

To download .Net System Journal, go to
http://sys-con.com/magazine/archives.cfm?id=9, following the links,
and use the password: dndj2004

Mainconcept PVR 1.1.1 stopped recording after a very short while

I bet that you may draw either of the following conclusion after reading my weblog, that:
- I have a lot of time on hand.
- I really enjoy messing with all sort of consumer electronic and technology.
- I am a real techno-garbage-content-generator.
- I have tons of trouble dealing with whatever tech item I messed with so far.

Here's another mystery to me :-D .
I was glad that Mainconcept PVR 1.1.1 software works with my external USB based TV tuner. The software that came with my TV Tuner was really junky, and I was not using the device for a whiie because of that junky app.

However, for a few times, I found that the TV recording was ended prematurely, so it seems like it always happened when I minimized the TV screen. If I leave it open in normal size with the sound mutted, then it seems to work fine. In fact the recording time can be as long as 6 hours (about 4Gb file size).

The recorded quality is not that good, but it serves the purpose : for me to scan TV with the power to skip all the junk content.




I found something funny with my color scanner CanoScan N670U: the time difference between scanning a document with 400dpi and 300dpi is dramatically big. It seems like 400dpi takes more than twice the amount of time to complete.

Crazy Clie refused to recognize the Memory stick

Something funky happened to my PDA Clie while I was using it on MTR (it's a underground railway, for those who are in living in Hong Kong). The PDA failed to recognize the existence of the memory stick, and gave me a "memory card not exist" icon at the bottom of the screen. No matter how many times I ejected and reinserted the memory stick, the system still didn't see it. By that time I already arrive the dance studio for a dance class, so I left the PDA alone.

And now that I am home now, I take out the PDA and found that the PDA can recognize the Memory stick again! But the strange thing is that the battery indicator shows that there's only half the battery left. This does not making sense since I only used the PDA for less than 15 minutes before my last charge.

So here you go. Another Hi-Tech mystery. Once again proving that technology is like 3 steps forward 2 steps back. Well, at least we move one step forward.

Check it out! It's NOT from HK!! 

Here's the back of the CDs package 

Here's the Windows XP SP2 CDs I received. 

Get Microsoft WinXP Service Pack2 CD for free

In case you don't know, Microsoft gives away Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD for free. They even pay the shipping and have the CD delivered to your home. To sign up for the free CD, just go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/
updates/sp2/cdorder/en_us/default.mspx .

I received mine yesterday, and as you can see from the photos here, I ordered two discs, one for US version of Windows XP and one for the traditional Chinese version (like the HK one) Windows XP. You have to match the language of your OS when you apply the service pack.

One interesting thing: the CDs were NOT delivered from some Hong Kong location. I wonder where they were from ...

w.bloggar doesn't support Chinese well

I don't quite sure whether it's the Chinese input or the Chinese character or Unicode in general, but w.bloggar seems to gave problem while I was trying to type traditional Chinese character in the editor, and even more trouble posting to Blogger site. When I was typing Chinese character, the Chinese input box kept quitting on me, something never happened in other application. And sending the message out with Chinese character gave me back an error message. So at least it's for now: no Chinese when using w.bloggar.

It's an interesting coincidence that about the time TVB (HK) finished its "female evilness triumph" soap ��K���^, another side of the globe started another "evilness triumph". I am talking about the new controversial ABC drama "Desperate Housewives", which did gives me a chill a while ago after I finished the episode 6. Now I understand why the American Family Association was upset with the show (http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/19/news/fortune500/desperate/) . However, I have a feeling that people won't get so upset with the show if it's on HBO, which being controversial is a standard. I probably won't see this show again since I am not interest in watching housewives getting away from their guilty pleasures, but neither do I think that the show is sign of satan. Afterall, I personally think that it's the audiences who keeps coming back who should be blamed. They are the one who keep this show alive, as they probably enjoy seeing the people on the screen acting out what their dirty little mind lack of guts to do.

Confused PowerRun on my Clie

Confused PowerRun on my Clie

For some totally strange reason, the PowerRun 1.2 confused and couldn't see the label "MS128" of the memory stick, and thus couldn't execute the applications on the memory card properly. I figured out that I could solve the problem by the following procedure:

- Select [option] [Delete Card's Shortcut]
- Select [option] [Update Shortcuts]
- and finally, go to Launcher and renew all shortcuts.

I still don't know the reason, but at least I now know how to fix it.




Sony Clie ImageConverter 1.5 experience : Long Run Video too tiny to watch

So far, my experience with the ImageConverter 1.5 is very positve, and I enjoy watching videos while I was on the road. However, I need to keep myself from using the Long Play conversion since video quality of the coverted video is really bad, but the biggest problem is the size which render into 120x180 even AFTER resize!! That is too tiny to watch espeically when I was riding on a minibus (very shaky and bumpy). This also means that I need to turn on the option in ImageConverter 1.5 in order to chop a piece longer than 30 minutes into 30 minutes a piece.




GBA ROM Site Alive and Kicking again!

I haven't checked with a mainland China based GBA ROM site for a long while, and when I checked it out today, I found tons of ROMs that I've never seen before! Pretty cool stuff. Here' the link:
http://www.gbgba.com/down/index.html



Strange Mouse Problem

Somehow my optical mouse has problem operating properly on my wooden desk surface. The cursor movement got really jumpy. I have to put a rough brown paper on the desktop and have to optical mouse operate on the top of it. Since then my mouse worked smooth and sliky.



Resisting temptation of most gadgets

The new portable video gaming device is coming this Christamas, and that means I am going to have big troible since I am such a fan of portable gaming device! And both of those device of very reasonably priced: US$199 or lower. As I already have tons of gears in my backpack, and that I already have tons of learning and entertainment to conduct while I am on the road, more of the gadgets mean more maintainance and less time to do productive stuff. So ... must resist ..... but .... Nintendo DS .... PSP ..... so cute ..... so cool .......



Persario turned off itself!

Stupid Persario is acting up again. I was just starting to start a video conversion using Clie Image Converter 1.5, and suddenly the darn laptop just shutted down for no obvious reason. notice that I don't have battery in the machine; I was totally rely on the AC to keep the machine from running. I don't if that matters or contribute to the problem ...........

freaky machine just shutted down itself again!

Let me stuff in the battery this time.

OK Tried. Battery in the machine. Still freaking rebooting! What the hell? OK, scan disk on the damn D Drive I guess ....

Sigh .... no more HP/Compaq notebook for me FOREVER. (Really to remind myself this)

OK, done Scandisk for D drive ... see how it goes ...

OK, conversion going on. So far so good. I better check back an hour later (1:00 pm)

OK, the system is still running stable. So next time when my machine does something funky, just rescan all the harddisk. Does it mean it's time for me to replace another harddisk? .... I don't know, hate to waste money on the Compaq again.



My laptop and USB

And speaking of the funkiness of my laptop, there's something funky about the laptop and it's USB 1.1 ports. For most other computers, USB devices work better if you directly plug it in the USB port directly on the computer (without going thru any USB hubs). Not so with the funky Compaq Persario 1720US. IN fact, there are more than one device which failed to operate if I directly plug it into the laptop's USB port, but works if I plug it indirectly thru a USB Hub. One prime example is my Canon CanoScan N670U. What a damn crazy machine.



Suitcase 9.2 and Chinese fonts

Suitcase 9.2 cannot read the Chinese fonts from my system, even when I already have those fonts installed in the Font folder of the machine, and other applications like Firework has no problem recognizing the font. I tried reinstaling Suitcase and changing file extension of those Chinese fonts, still no luck. Sigh. Maybe Suitcase only work with English fonts?



Movie Coversion Setting problem

Shoot, the temporary file settings things in IMage Converter 1.5 does not work properly, even after I set it in a way that the program supposed to divide the movie into multuiple segment for everything 30 miuntes, it still gives me a great big 120Mb file. Stupid converter.

Man, more and more reason to leave IE behind.

OK Found the result of the VirusScan NT Access challenge. The system still FAILED to restart the McSheild service. Sigh. That means I cannot use VirusScan if the system has any Chinese filename. That blows.

Here's something that I need to keep in mind when I try to sync AvantGo to my Palm. Make sure I restart the Clie before sync. That way, I wouldn't get those Memory Insufficent error.

Sigh, if only I have more main memory of my Palm, my PDA user experience will be much much better.

Just found out a Firefox plug-in that makes FlashGet right-click working on FireFox! It's called FlashGot and you can find it under http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=220 (FlashGet sold saperately :-p). Man, more and more reason to leave IE behind.

Another reason to use Firefox

I just found another reason to use Firefox, but that maybe because I saved a lot of web pages using FireFox. I couldn't help but doing so with FireFox because tapbrowsing makes it so much easier to download whole bunch of web pages.

Here's what happened. I went to a mainland China web site and found a lot of good web page about dance. So I downloaded a lot of them using Firefox and save the files with Traditional Chinese character as the file name (so that I can search the content as ease). To make sure that I can archive these files, I burned them on a CDRW disc, copy them on another machine, and reopen these web pages. I have no problem opening those files back using FireFox on another machine as long as I have the "Language for non-Unicode programs" set to any Traditional Chinese, but IE have them web page opened without all the embedded image.

Strange.


I converted more videos to watch on the road using the new Clie video converter, and found a funky audio behavior. The 2 episodes of Ghost in the machine I converted my desktop does not have any audio at all. Later I found out that it's just that some AV codec on my desktop was messed up, as the same conversion went fine on my laptop. So next time before I convert a video, I should watch a little bit of it to make sure that the audio and video were being played properly because I start the conversion, for the conversion will fail if the video file cannot play properly on the computer in the first place.



Some of you may know that Mcafee VirusScan has problem with system that used non-Unicode double byte characters in filename. McSheild will failed, throw a NT Access error. To counter this problem, I just set my laptop so that whenever McShield service encounters problem it will restart itself. Let me check back later to see if this can work around the problem.

More on Sony Clie Movie Converter 1.5

The new Sony Clie Movie Converter 1.5 seems to be able to handle whatever I throw at it. I was yet to find a movie file that the converter couldn't be converted. Sure I had some issue on some video files on my desktop, but that's because the video codec of my machine is pretty messed up. My laptop (Compaq Presario 1720US) has on the other hand a much cleaner environment which most codec are handled by the codec package X Codec Pack, and I guess may be I should do that for my desktop reinstallation in the future.

Some comment on w.Bloggar

So far I like W.Bloggar. I just hope that the application can automatically create a backup of the blog that it posted to a folder. Now I have to explicitly save a version of the file because posting.

Starting to use WBloggar

I am trying out a PC Desktop tool called w.bloggar, which allows me to create a blog without logging on Blogger web site, Seems to be very cool, but I better try it thru because heavily using it.

Stupid Internet connection failed again

It was not happening for a long while that Internet connection failed. Shoot, just when I need to talk to Alice about where to find some of my legal documents for job hunting. Sigh.

Weblog 2004-11-01

It��s always exciting when an old electronic device got a new life my simply installing some software update. Today my Palm (Sony Clie NX-70V) becomes a better portable video player by having a new video converter application.

NX-70V supported MPEG4 video playback from the very beginning, but the bigger problem is on the converter running on the PC. The Clie relies on the converter to convert the right format of video to play back on the NX-70V, but unfortunately, the Image Converter 1.0 which came with the device was very primitive on the user image, the video format that it supports and the speed of conversion. The latest Image Converter 1.5 changed all that.

The latest Image Converter 1.5 can be downloaded at:

http://ciscdb.sel.sony.com/perl/swu-list.pl?template=EN&mdl=PEGNX70V

The one you needed is called ��Sony? Image Converter Update 10/29/2004��. Make sure you also download and install ��Movie Player System Software Update Program��, or otherwise the video you converter won��t got playback (and even hang your machine) on your Palm. I know this because I was tearing my hair off (trust me I don't have much) to figure out why the videos converted by the new converter hanged my machine. (To be fair, part was my problem was that I was using the Japanese version of the converter application.

However, I am still struggling to figure out why the crazy QuickTime didn't function properly after I installed the converter. It keeps requiring me to put in the memory stick in the card reader. But then, once I physically unplug the reader, the QuickTime player will continue playing properly. Go figure. Well, at least I figured the pattern.

I also suspect that the ��Memory Stick Pro Update�� resolves my video play back problem when playing video on the Compact Flash card, because after I installed it, instead of hanging forever, the player actually comes back when I fast skip to the later part of the movie. I��ll do more experiment on this.

OK, just tried, doesn��t seem to have the problem resolved, Sigh.

And speaking of mysterious video playback problem, the Winamp was not running probably lately, and I am not sure if it has anything to do with the installation of the X Code Pack or the Real Alternative player. One thing for sure is that I miss the forward by keyboard capability. Gotta find someway to get that feature back!

Well, just tested it on my Compaq laptop, and found that it seems to be indeed the Real Alterative (or maybe just the Windows Media Player classic that comes with the package) that caused the problem on WinAmp. Uninstalled RealAlternative and things worked fine. Strange.

Remember my Compaq laptop crashes every so often when playing videos? After running the system on another partition, the Compaq seems to be pretty stable these days. I will have to continue observing it, though.

Quest the find an ultimate search tool on my Palm seems to be going nowhere. Sigh.

SecondCopy is my very favorite backup application. It��s small, simple to use, and does the job great. I use it to backup my Flash memory cards.

Finding video file that works with the new Clie Image Converter is such a trial and error task. I got ��Father of the Pride episode 6 & 7�� and an anime converted fine. However, all the ��G4TechTV Screen Saver�� and ��Call For Help�� episodes failed to be converted. Very puzzling indeed.

Because of this, I need to find a tool that can simply convert all video to MPEG1 so that I can safely using the Clie Image Converter to convert video for viewing on my Palm. EOVideo is the tool. I do remember that I previous slammed on this tool because I don��t understand certain part of the UI. But after the learning curve, I actually found that EOVideo is pretty powerful and user friendly.

Weblog 2004-10-31

I finally got a chance to briefly try out two tablet PCs, and the experience was not that good. In fact comparing with my experience with my clie, the Tablet PC Experience was much inferior.

I tried out two tablet PC, one from Toshiba and one from Fujitsu.

- Prot?g? (not M200, but the one I tried is the PIII model and weight even lighter (1.8Kg) than M200, 2kg)

- Fujitsu ST4110, $13980.

My first impression when I picked them up was that they are both heavy. No way can I single hand holding the machine and then the other hand sketch draw or write with it. Even as a portable media player, they are simply way too heavy. In fact, I got tired just 3 minutes after I left them up. In contrast, I have not problem holding my Palm up and spent hours to write notes.

My complain is the tiny space the stylus and the screen. On both tablet PC, I realized a tiny space between the tablet screen and the stylus which makes it hard to draw at the exact spot. This creates a big problem when I try to select item on the screen, something that I do almost half of the time when using A PC.

There's also some delay between each stroke when I used Paintbrush. May be the application is not optimized for Tablet PC' but I doubt that there may not be too many apps that I constantly used being updated or optimized for Tablet PC.,

The heat is also a problem. And once again, comparing with Clie, Tablet PC is like a mobile egg frier.

The Toshiba one costed HK$14000, while the Fujitsu one costed HK$15000. I am not going to spent $14000 or about and still needs to spend hours or even months to adjust myself for the tool. The fact that Tablet PC requires a special pen is also a blow.

I finally understand why Tablet PC didn't take off in HK.

I also found that those so called ultra lightweight notebook is still a burden on my bag. Even a 1Kg one can be too heavy to hold by one hand and being used as a portable media player. I think I really should wait for the maturity of those portable media player.

I said ��wait�� because I also spent some time today to check out two media players:

- MPM-201/202 (http://www.nhhongkong.com/), HK$3999.

- Creative Lab Zen Portable Media Center, HK$3998

I don��t like MPM-201 because it only supports MPEG4, but even bigger problem is that it has only 3 hours of battery life when watching video.

But the truth is that I don��t like both because of the weight. They weight twice as heavy as my IRiver IHP-140, and I consider that weight standard for any portable device that I can tolerant.

I spent $80 on a new screen protector for my Clie, and I found one very positive effect: I can write faster as the screen is free of scratch at the writing area and thus make each drawing strokes much smoother. On the other hand, I did something sort of stupid: I tried to remove this protector and stick it on again so that I can get rid of some tiny hair underneath the protector, which I consider an inferior job done. Now I actually got slightly more hair and then one or two tiny bubbles underneath the protector. They were, though, not very annoying, but so does the screen before I created these mess to myself.