Watching movie while going to work

Watching movie while commuting is such a great experience! I have a movie loaded on the Memory Stick Pro so that I can watch movie on my PDA (Sony Clie NX-70V). It made my commute time shorter than what it actually is. Sometimes I even feel like I want the commute time a bit longer so that I can finish the movie! If I keep watch movie a month or so, then maybe I can a much better excuse to get a hard disk based Portable Movie Player.

Awesome wallpaper site

Here's an awesome wallpaper site worth visiting : http://www.boyis.com/html/index.php

Before shopping computer stuff in Hong Kong, check these forum

Here's two forums which gives you a better idea about what the current Hong Kong computer retail market is like. Do some research here and you will be able to save money and better informed:

- http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/index.php
- Hardware Discussion

Alcohol 120% doesn't like non-English character on file path

I had problem making an ISO image properly loaded by Alcohol 120% (Version 1.9.2, Build 1705). The disc was loaded without error, but it couldn't be mounted properly. Later I realized that the ISO image is inside a directory which the directory was in Chinese character. Moving the file out of the directory solved the problem. So I guess Alcohol 120% doesn't like non-English character on file path.

The two Bittorrent clients I like

I find it necessary to have at least two BitTorrent clients on my machine for a very obvious reason: there are some .torrents that can be handled only by certain BT Clients. I would bet that it's mainly because of the language encoding of the file name or certain information within the file. Nevertheless, having multiple clients is certainly handy. For instance I now have both ABC ( Another BitTorrent Client) and Azuerus. I usually use ABC because of the low system resources consumption. Whenever I encounter files that cannot be handled by ABC, I will use Azuerus. This strategy seems to work fine so far.

Horrible price for Memory Stick Pro (Duo)

I had a slight intention to buy a 512Mb (or even a 1Gb) Memory Stick Pro Duo for my NX70V so that I can use it as a scale downed PVR. But once I realize that a 512Mb SD (HK$330) cost half the price of a Memory Stick Pro Duo card (HK$660), I was totally pissed, and rather save the money to buy something else. Sony, you suck, and you go to hell.

My mini Review on SuperCard (CF to GBA Adapter)

I finally brought a SuperCard (CF to GBA adapter) for HK$330. For the price, this gadget does a pretty nice job on what it was created for, although there are some pitfalls that I need to get around in order to make things work.

The biggest headache was that the latest firmware (1.40) is NOT compatible with the Media Player! If you installed both the latest Media player and firmware 1.40 in your SuperCard, you will get a BLANK screen when you run the media player. You have to use the firmware (1.31). And no, the older firmware like 2.1x doesn't work neither.

The GameBoy (B/W) and PC Engine emulation is done by software, and the speed is far from perfect. It does, though, allow me to play Donkey Kong the GB version, and even support Save and Load game instance.

The video playback is also not too good. In fact, using the highest quality to compress the movie is waste of flash card memory space before the machine cannot keep up the high quality of the video. It makes more sense the compress using Normal quality. Same for the music compression. The bottom line is that the video playback thing is basically just a gimmick. Nevertheless, it's kind of interest to see my GBA SP playing some video on it.

However, I buy this toy mainly for the instant save, and that was very well delivered by the system :-> . Because of the instant save, I successfully passed a spot in Mario and Luggi that I was stuck for a long long time. This is a great feature for lazy bump like me :->

Over all I think this toy worth the price. Oh, and it works for Nintendo DS too (as long as you are willing to cut off a bit of the plastic form the case). Pretty sweet.

Archos AV400 - Nice but not nice enough

I don't like the idea of adjustment your lifestyle to accommodate your gadget. Electronic gadget is supposed to enhance your life, and not forcing you to retrain yourself to adapt to them. The current generation of PVP usually forces you to do a lot of work in order to allow you to watch videos on the road. Unfortunately, even the best of the breed -- Archos AV400 - as the same problem.

Here is a web site about how you can convert your video to work for Archos AV400. To me, it's a bit too much that I have to do so much work after spent HK$4980 on a gadget.

Xvid - Divx to Archos av400 av420 Need Help

No hurry for Nintendo DS

I saw Nintendo DS yesterday. Not exactly the machine in action, but enough to get a little bit hyped. The price is also reasonable: $1250, or $880 if I trade-in my GBA SP. But I decided NOT to jump in now for the following reason:

- Cannot trade in the GBA SP yet
Stupid Nintendo killed off the Ext.1 port that I needed to upload games to my backup card. That means I always have to keep GBA SP around in order to load game to the backup card. One reason for acting now is to take advantage of the trade-in, but if I cannot trade in anyway, why hurry?

- Enough games on GBA SP to get me very excited
A lot of game I didn't get a chance to fully enough on the GBA SP yet. If I get DS, I know won't touch those GBA SP games. And the enjoyment from a SP game is probably the same as a good DS game. So why not wait until I complete all the fun on SP first. Again, no particular disadvantage for waiting on this issue.

- More toy, more trouble
I definitely will buy the SuperCard (see my previous blog), and MAYBE even a Memory Stick Pro Duo. Usually more gadget means more time being wasted on getting those gadgets right, and I need time to prepare for the beginning of my new job coming next week or so. So I really don't have time for DS.

- Less incentive to create Flash game for NX70V
One big incentive (and still is) for me to create tiny app for NX70V on Flash format is to mimic the fun of DS. If I ALREADY has Flash, then natural instinct will drive me to spend more time on playing DS instead of writing Flash game on NX70V because, dude, I am a lazy ass and I always go for the instant reward route. Thus I need to do things to PROHIBIT me from wasting time.

- No backup card and no emulator for DS yet
Yeah, I know..... But I always buy stuff before trying it first. But ... yeah this really is not an excuse, as I know rule of buying games for GameBoy devices: ONLY BUY the Nintendo made games:-D


Great, there's enough reason to not getting Nintendo DS now. But damn that toy is cool. I will get it one day, just like.... hmmm.... I will get a Nintendo GameCube one day :-P (Heck, by that time there may be an emulator on PC for GameCube already!)

CF to GBA Converter: my dream come true?

I went to Golden Shopping Center thinking of seeing Nintendo DS in action. Instead I saw a very cool gadget for GBA: CF to GBA Converter (SuperCard). I am not going to waste my time here to explain what CF to GBA is because the following sites does a much better job:

- http://www.gamefreax.com
- http://www.supercard.cn/
- Movie playing on CF to GBA Converter (The CF to GBA Converter use the Movie Player's player to play movie, so this FAQ is also vaild for info about playing movie)

I am super excited about his thing because:

- It allows me to test and play more games on GBA SP
Even though I already have a Flash2Advance 256 Mb cards, the process of putting the game in the card is troublesome. I have to spend a lot of time to reorganize the save game, and I have to change everything from the card in one batch. This SuperCard thing allows me to incrementally install games on the card. Add and move one game away from the card doesn't affect the others! And with my 256Mb and the compression technology, I can put a lot more games in the card to play on the road!!

- It has INSTANT SAVE!
Dude this is awesome. I was frustrated by Mario and Lugui RPG that I cannot pass a certain spot. Now may be I can finally beat it and move on!!! Kick sweet ass!

- Easy to back up save game
The upload and download of files are done thru the Compact Flash card. Makes it NOT GBA SP hardware dependent. This is extremely important for my future Nintendo DS update (see info here)

- Better compatibility with Nintendo DS!
Again, read here . Supercard works pretty much the same as GBA Movie Player, thus its better companion for DS!

So..... I have a feeling that I will buy it within the coming 24 hours ... excited:-E .......

More on PVP: Epson

Epson P2000 is something that caught my eye and I almost feel into it. It has a high screen solution, seems to support Divx and Xvid, and a serves-me-well 40Gb harddisk. All seemed to serve me well until I saw the battery life: 2.5 hours. DAMN!! It's even worse than my NX70V. Screw it no way.

So, once again, my search continues ....

Some very nice PVP information site, to keep up on the ever changing news on PVP:
www.ehomeupgrade.com
http://www.pvp4u.com/
SBD's PVP Survey

Memory Stick Pro for my NX70V

It's been a while since I checked the memory stick pro price, and it was dropped since then. Right now a 512Mb stick will cost me HK$690, which is not way too bad. The CompactFlash card solution was proven to be very troublesome to me so far, and so the Memory Stick Pro solution may be my temporary answer for getting a reasonable PVP. To be fair though, there is a new set a FAQ about how to make CompactFlash working on my NX70V, and it is possible that it may solve part of the problem. Here's the link:

Step by step instruction how to install NX70V CompactFlash support:
http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65488

Back to the Memory Stick Pro issue. Should I getting Memory Stick Pro for my NX70V, I definitely should get the Memory Stick Pro Duo, the smaller form factor version of Memory Stick Pro. The reason is simple: for Playstation Portable compatibility!!! PSP can only support the Duo, not the full size version. And everyone knows that PSP will be a hit, and it's just a matter of time for me to get a PSP.

In addition, I definitely need to buy a memory stick card reader that support both the Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Pro Duo form factor as my current reader only support the regular memory stick. Gee another can of worth of research that I need to work on to buy the best Memory Stick card reader.....

Usually after as much of work involved, I will eventually drop the whole thing off in order to save me from headache and spending. We'll see how this time goes :-P

Plus, I am no hurry on this. And the advantage is on my side: the longer I wait, the lower the price.