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8.27.2005

Strange Problem: Mac OSX work at VMWare 5 at home but

I found, downloaded and ran a MacOS X VMWare 5 virtual machine disk set at home, and it worked perfectly. But when I bring the same VMWare machine to the office, I got error from VMWare 5 saying that the virtual disk is not vaild. Man, I was really puzzled.

BTW, even though the MacOSX runs fine under VMWare 5, it's just too slow to be really enjoyable. It's fun to see Mac OSX running on a PC, but other than the thrill factor, I don't see any usage for it.

8.23.2005

Give on playing MAME on PocketPC

I am pretty much giving up running MAME emulator on my PocketPC. The MameCE is suppose to be the best Pocket PC emulator, but I tired and tried and still didn't get the MegaCE3v9.5.exe working. Besides, the direction pad and button on my x50V is definitely bad for playing most arcade game anyway.

8.22.2005

Awesome Apple ][e emulator for Pocket PC

Pocket][e seem to be ancient emulator due to the fact that it was not being updated since 2002, but it still works great on my DELL Axim x50v. I loaded a few of my great old ancient games and most of them works great. The keyboard covers tiny little bottom part of the screen, but I can deal with this tiny imperfectness.

Another important thing is that most of the game save the save game back to the original disk. So be sure to back up those disk images when you backup your Pocket PC.

8.21.2005

Strange TCPMP sound slience problem

I accidentially found something strange about playing AutoGK converted (50% quality) per chapter based DVD video. I have to player to play repeatively automatically. I played one of those video on my craddle, and found that after the video played twice, the sound was automatically muted on the third time and so on. Stop and the video and play it again, and you got the sound back. Very strange.

More on converting Xvid video for x50v

I figured out by accident that, when using AutoGK, I cannot set the video quality too high, or otherwise the converted video will play very badly on my PocketPC (play a little, and then the video simply stop, and then continue play a little, and then stop, while the audio continue playing).

And after a lot of trial and error. I found out that for individual file, it's better to set the quality as 50%. For a 2:24 long video, the file size is 30Mb, which I would say pretty OK.

And make sure that you set all the setting (particularlly the file size and video quality) before adding to the batch. Once in the batch, the setting cannot be changed (well, at least based on my observation).

Also, despite the high quality video it cranked out, AutoAG is slow. Like, really really slow. It's OK if I leave the machine up and have it convert video for me at night, but if I am waiting for it finish, then damn it's freaky slow.

Mystery solved - How to split DVD video file by Chapter

Yeah! I finally solved something that puzzled me for a while: finding a way to split DVD video as .VOB file by chapter so that AutoGK can convert each chapter as a single .avi file. The solution lies on the DVD Decrypter.

Here the steps:
- Set the [Mode] to IFO. That makes it easier to select individual chapter if you need to.
- Go to [Tools][Setting], click IFO Mode. BY default it's 1Gb. You need to set it to "By Chapter".
- Basically tha's it. Now select the destination folder, and hit the [DVD to HD] button to get the video.
- Then fire up AutoGK, select each .vob file and add it to the batch. Don't forget to restrict the file size to somthing smaller, say 200Mb or even lower.

I also find that the DVD mode on AutoGK actually work if, instead of selecting the root of the DVD, I select the VideoVS folder. But I still find it better to add individual .vob file to my batch.

Interesting Sound behavior on MorphGear

I found that Morph Gear seems to NOT take the sound setting until after I quit the application and reload it again. That's OK as long as I find this consistant pattern to make it work. It's much more fun to play PC Engine and Super Nintendo with sound :-D .

Dell Axim x50v recognize Compact Flash card file change in funny way

I recently brought a 2Gb Compact Flash card, and start to put piles of junk in the card (hey, that's the whole reason for buying the card in the first place :-> ). I realize that somehow after I add files in the CD card and insert into the card, all problems failed to recognize the changes. That is until I open any file in the CF card using any application, then the PPC recognize the changes. I can force the PPC to recognize the changes by soft reset, but that's what something I don't want to do.

DVD to Divx (for betaPlayer on PocketPC) still not perfect

I spent some time to reserach on a way to convert DVD video to Xvid or Divx so that I can watch DVD video on my Pocket PC. So far I settled with AutoGK 1.96 (Link). I used it to convert episodes of The Office (a BBC Comedy) and it worked out fine. However:

- I have to set, on Step 3, the Custom size to a lower value, say 200Mb, so that AutoGK will try to lower the filesize.
- I cannot get DVD input to work. I have to setting with File input, which convert a VOB file into xvid. This is not good when many cases one VOB file contains multiple video segment, and I only want one of the segment.

I still have hope on AutoGK, though, and maybe I'll find the soultion for the DVD input thing later.

8.20.2005

Skype on PocketPC - Cool and Powerful

I just played with Skype on Pocket PC with my friend, and found the result amazingly good. In fact, I found using my DELL x50v microphone much better than using a PC microphone. I put the PPC on my cradle, plug in a headphone, and then continue the conversation with my friend, and the performance was very nice.

Skype install, but no one to call :-<

Well, I have Skype installed on my Pocket PC. Seems to work fine since I logged into my account, but I have no one to call. Lonely. Lonely......

Agile Messenger - Great Universal IM for PocketPC

I have the thank my colleague Griffin for introducing me to this amazing communication application for Pocket PC. It's called Agile Messenger and it works as universal Instant Messenger client for MSN, AOL, ICQ and Yahoo. So now I can IM whenever I have WiFi access. One trick on adding MSN IM account though: you need to add "@hotmail.com" at the end of IM account name. So if your hotmail account is deecaywonderland, then you need to add the user "deecaywonderland@hotmail.com" as the username. Guess that's because MSN IM also support MSN.com user. For Yahoo and ICQ, you just need to enter the user name, and no @yahoo.com is needed.

Lousy Motorola HS801 Bluetooth wireless headset

I spent some time today trying to see if the Motorola HS801 Bluetooth Wireless headset can pair with my DELL x50v to do something interesting. Result? Totally disappointing. It does not work with x50v at all. After a successful pairful, x50v reported that there's no usable profile for x50v to use the HS801. Man, now I am very ready to sell this headset away.