August 2005 Archives

IDF Fall 2005 wrap - The Tech Report - Page 1 [T]he biggest news out of IDF, Intel's decision to move to a new CPU microarchitecture common to its mobile, desktop, and server product lines, and we've outlined some of the features of that architecture, including a 14-stage pipeline that's much shorter than the 31-stage monster in current Pentium 4 and Pentium D chips. This new CPU core will be a four-issue design, which means it has more internal parallelism than the three-issue designs in most current x86 processors, including the Pentium M, Pentium 4, and Athlon 64. Done correctly, this new core should achieve higher performance per clock and per watt than Intel's current CPU cores.

And codenames galore... Merom is the code-name for the mobile version of Fred, intended for Socket 479. The desktop part, code-named Conroe, will come in an LGA775 package, and will have two versions that differ in terms of cache size. All of these chips will be dual-core parts manufactured on Intel's 65nm process. On the server front, Fred will have two incarnations at 65nm: a dual-core chip with 4MB of L2 cache known as Woodcrest, and a quad-core processor with 16MB of L2 cache code-named Whitefield.

These parts ship in early 2006.

Napa is the next generation mobile set of chips branded the Centrino. Yonah, the first dual-core version of the Pentium M, that will be part of the Napa platform due in early 2006. Yonah is essentially a waypoint between the current Pentium M architecture and Intel's future, common microarchitecture. There's more to the Napa platform than just Yonah, of course. The core-logic chipset, code-named Calistoga, will be a mobile version of the 945 Express chipset. There's also an Intel wireless networking solution.

Brad asked me about a gaming machine. As usual, there is an incredible range of prices for a gaming machine. I will tell you the new games require an incredible amount of horsepower. The main places not to skimp are in order: a) video card, b) memory, c) processor and d) hard drive.

If you have to buy a machine, then Dell of the default choice, the only issue being reliability and support. Personally I’d spend just a little more and to with a speciality vendor who knows the gamer. Folks would include:

1. Falcon NW

They are are probably the best compromise and they are local. The Talon seems like a good "value" solution. See the component recommendations below, but the good things are a huge 600 watt power supply. You want a big one, stability is the main reason. Also it has large 120mm fans that are quiet. Gaming PCs can be very loud. The system is infinitely configurable, but a decent configuration today would be following the recommendations listed in detail below but with an Athlon 64 3800+ or an Athlon XP 3800+ (dual core) if you are feeling exotic, 1GB memory, Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB drive and nVidia 7800GT would run you about $2,400. You can scale down from there, the first thing to do being take down the hard drive size or drop to the slower 6800GT.

For portability, but less than full gaming, the Fragbox seems like a good bet, but only has an integrated graphics card, so portable but a little slow.

John has both a Falcon and an Alien and likes the Falcon better. They have a premium product so don’t know how much you want to spend. It isn’t Dell, so takes 2-3 weeks to get it.

2. Alienware

This is the vendor that started the whole gamepc craze. They are expensive, but high quality. They have the highest customer satisfaction from a PC Magazine reader survey.

Some models to look at are the Aurora 5500. It is about $2100 with an Athlon 64 3800+, 1GB memory, nVidia 6800 Ultra, 10K rpm 74GB system and 160GB data hard drive, so not a bad deal really. You can downgrade as needed with the disk.

There are also exotic units that have liquid cooling and so forth and the cases are just incredibly cool! Love how they look.

3. Voodoopc

Another speciality PC vendor that I’ve heard of. They are Canadian and they are quite a bit more expensive than Alienware or Falcon, but their machines look good.

F.E.A.R. - First Encounter Assault and Recon. Wow, wow, the demo walkthrough is pretty amazing.

The graphics are outstanding. This thing really requires a fast machine though. My 512MB machine ground to a halt. Really needs 1GB to run.

But, it is so incredibly realistic that it feels like being there. They have a "bullet time mode" where you can hit the CTRL key and for a few seconds slow everything down. That's a great feature.

This game was best of E3 and understand why. Beside being a first person shooter, FEAR is also a horror film where there are ghosts etc. Some great review already on weapons for instance. To release in October they say.

PrintFIX profiling review and observations. OK, if you are really into printing, then the last step is not to use the paper profiles that vendors ship, but to actually print something and then have a custom scanner which then corrects things. A combination of the Spyder2 Pro to adjust the monitor plus PrintFIX to set the printer together is just dynamite.

68lb. UltraPro Gloss - Gloss Inkjet Paper. I've been printing up a storm now that I've gotten our Canon i9900 to work. Started with standard Canon paper, the Plus works really well and I love the status monitor that shows you how much ink there is the printer. But, the quality of the pictures is what is amazing.

In any case, paper is expensive, so I've shopped a little. The standard Canon paper is quite good, but naturally a little expensive. Here are some sample prices:

• 4×6 120 Sheets Paper Plus. This is about $22 for 120 sheets. $18/100 sheets
• 5×7 20 Sheets Paper Plus. This is $7.75 for 20 sheets or $39/100 sheets

They also don't make 8×10 for instance you have to get 8×11 and trim it.

As an alternative, my buddy Bob told me about Red River. They have high quality paper too and also have color profiles for their papers as well. Costs are much lower and they have those odd standard sizes pictures frames come in. So for their 68lb. UltraPro Gloss, you have some decent savings:

• 11×17 50 Sheets $38
• 8×10 50 Sheets $22
• 4×6 100 Sheets $18.40
• 5×7 100 Sheets $25.75
• 13×19 50 Sheets $49.95

Now these do require shipping, so you have to add $2 for each, so the savings are nominal. Like 10%, but for me having the odd sizes at 8×10 and 11×17 make it a no brainer.

ultra
bright blue-white color

I got a Fizik Aliante seat from you and also an 8mm cradle for my USE Alien. The problem is that the cradle doesn't fit the post. It seems that it is a little too big. My post is from 2000, so I'm wondering if they've changed the post somehow since then.
you: Hi
Josh: Well, I have never heard of that problem before. Please give us a call and talk to our customer service department, specifically Dan. He will be able to get that issue ironed out.
you: OK will do I'll ask for Dan.
Josh: Thank you, take care.

State Department has a bunch of new guidelines on passport photos. In the era of digital, even Kinko's now uses a digital camera to produce passport photos. So save yourself $15 and learn how to do it yourself!

1. Photo Print. Produce a 2" × 2"
2. Photo Composition. Laterally, the head should be in the center and the eyes should be 1 1/8" to 1 3/8" above the bottom. The head itself should be 1" to 1 3/8" high. The background should be white or off white with no shadows. Don't smile, but have a natural neutral expression.

So, how do you actually do this with a vanilla digital camera. It's not easy since the sizes are printed and it isn't so clear how to get it exactly right. Here's how I did it with Photoshop CS (I think Elements is similar) and Calvin's Fuji FinePix F10 6Mp camera:

1. Take a digital photo, try to leave quite a bit of white space. Digital cameras are 4:3 aspect ratio, but they need 2"×2", so you want to make sure the head is pretty small.
2. First, open the digital photo in Photoshop. It is going to be huge because the default is 72 lines per inch on the screen and the photo is 2200×3200 pixels. It is going to be about 30" × 40" in size!
3. View the rulers, so you can see sizes
4. That sizing doesn't matter, the first thing to do is to get the head size to be one inch. So, use the cursor to measure the actual dimensions. For instance, if your head at the top is at 10 inches and the bottom is at 25 inches. That means your head is 15 inches, so you need to shrink
5. Now click on coordinates are right on your nose. That is what they really want.
6. Click on the cropping tool and you want to get it so that the head is in the center line and then you go 15 inches to the left and 15 inches to the right. You essentially want a 30×30" square and press enter to crop.
7. Now you want to resize the image, it turns out that you just look at the width in pixels. Suppose it is 800 pixels because you've cropped, now you divide this by 2" (where you want to end up) and type 400 pixels per inch in the resolution box. This magically gets you to 2×2" without any additional work
8. Now check the dimensions on the picture. The eyes are the main trick. They need to be 1 1/8 to 1 3/8" up, for most folks, that works with your nose in the middle of the picture (which is why you set the crop box around the nose).

There you are a 2×2 passport photo!

China requires a visa for travel. There is a business visa and a family visit/tourist visa. You can get a multiple entry visa if you have a letter saying you have family there or you have a letter from a business there. Get the forms from Chinese Visa, Passport, Notarization & Authentication.

Additional Visa info. You do need a passport photo.

The Chinese consulate requires a photo similar to the one in your passport. They will only accept photos which are head-only, full frontal, with a white background, approximately 1-1/2" by 2". You can obtain this type of photo anywhere that advertises "passport photo" service. Cutouts from personal photographs are not acceptable. There are bunch of services that take care of this.

By the way, US Citizens don't need visas to enter Hong Kong (technically the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) if they are there for less than 90 days.

Besides the ultraportable, other folks have been asking me for the classic desktop replacement. Big and heavy at 6 pounds, but with a huge 15-17" screen. These are great for music and video editing for consumer.

As usual, reliability is the number one criteria, but the other ones are screen size and quality, DVD writeable drive, lots of memory (512MB-1GB), a fast hard drive (7200 rpm is ideal). You are giving up on weight and battery life though, but that's the tradeoff. Pretty much standard these days are Wifi, Ethernet, etc.

Here are some choices:

AnandTech: HP Pavilion DV1000 Entertainment Notebook PC - Multimedia Notebook A Breed Apart. This is a 15" notebook, but Anandtech liked it. I don't know about reliability though.

Hydrogenaudio Forums - encoding the spoken word - settings?. Got a bunch of spoken word, here's how to encode really small with Lame. You only need mono and a low bit rate.

Some recommendations are to use a very low bit rate (-V 7) and also to use mono (-a)

lame -V 7 -a

Another option is the --voice option which gives you mono, 24KHz sample rate, 12 Khz lowpass filter and nets a 56kpbs bit rate.

Another option gives you a 48kbps and a 8KHz lowpass filter:

lame -V3 --vbr-new --lowpass 8

Understanding USM. OK, now that I've colors about right, now its time to futz with the actual images in Photoshop. Some of the things are understandable. Changing the Brightness (e.g., the Black Level), so if a picture is very bright (has a high black level), you turn it down, this means that everything looks darker.

Contrast is the other common setting, this is actually the White Level of the photo, it means that if you turn it down, the difference between the dark and light goes away. Things get murkier.

The strangest thing to do though is Unsharp Mask. What a strange name. What it means is that technically another picture is created (the mask), this mask is then blurred (unsharpened), then the computer compares the original to the blurred to try to find edges. If it finds an edge of an object then it increases contrast. It makes the darker side darker and the light side lighter, so every thing looks better.

There are three parameters:

1. Amount. This just means the amount by which you make the darker side darker and the lighter side lighter. I think of this as the "contrast" setting for the edges.
2. Radius. This sets how much blurring is done, that is how unsharp the mask is. The higher the radius in pixels, the larger the area that is sharpened. That is, it makes the edges huge if you set it high, like a big crayola marker in your photo at high values.
3. Threshold. This tells says how much of a difference between the blurred and the original copy are needed before you detect an edge. A higher number means, it has to be a very obvious edge. A low number means that it finds edges in just about everything.

Unsharp Mask Settings. Well, that's great, but what are some parameters to use for typical pictures. There is lots of folklore, but scantips.com has some good rules of thumb:

1. Radius controls how wide the edge rims become, and Radius = 1.0 is about the right ballpark, with 0.6 to 2.0 often being useful. Higher Radius values can cause halos at the edges, a detectable faint light rim around objects. Radius units are not the same as pixels, the units step in tenths, but the Radius width is usually at least 4 pixels overall, you will see various effects. Radius is a very important parameter, and the easiest way to ruin a good scan is with too much Radius. Inanimate objects can use the most radius, human faces can tolerate the least, and landscapes fall in between. But it really depends on the size of the details. Fine detail needs a smaller Radius, or else you may obliterate tiny detail of the same size as the Radius width. Large images have larger detail (more pixels involved) and can use more Radius, so therefore printing at higher resolution can support the larger radius. Radius and Amount interact, reducing one allows more of the other.
2. Threshold specifies how far apart adjacent tonal values have to be (values of 0..255) before the filter does anything to the edges, before it is judged to be an edge at all. This lack of action is important to prevent smooth areas from becoming speckled. Low values should sharpen more because fewer areas are excluded. Higher threshold values exclude areas of lower contrast. Human faces want values greater than 1 or 2, like perhaps 5 or more. For inanimate objects, perhaps 0 or 1 is useful. General work, try 3 or 4. This control has little effect at high values, but has more effect changing between low values of 0 to 5. This Threshold is not to be confused with Line art Threshold.
3. Amount is like a volume control, exaggerating the edge differences (how much darker and how much lighter the edge borders become). Amount interacts with Radius as to degree of sharpening, but it does not affect the width of the edge rims. Amount has a large effect, and values of 80 to 120 are normally usable if the Radius isn't too large.

Aaraich.com on what to do if you don't know. A basic, simple procedure to use, when you want to apply sharpening with the Unsharp Mask, but don’t know what settings to use, is:

1. Set the Amount slider to the maximum 500 %.
2. Increase the Threshold slider until sharpening in unwanted areas such as skin, and shadows has disappeared.
3. Increase the Radius setting as much as you can without obliterating needed details. This can vary quite a lot from image to image.
4. Go back to the Amount slider, and set it for as much or as little as you like, which will most frequently be somewhere between 100 and 200 %.
5. If you have problems with color halos appearing on your sharpened edges, a commonly used technique is to choose Filter > Fade immediately after applying the sharpening. In the Fade dialog box that appears, change the blend mode to Luminosity, and possibly lower the Opacity setting. For Photoshop v. 6.0 users, the Fade command is under Edit > Fade
6. As a last note, don't sharpen too much, it makes everything look like an alien planet if you are not careful.

Earthboundlight. has another suggestion for how to use this...

1. View. Set it to 100% view so you can really see what is happening to the image.
2. Radius. An image with fine detail will need a lower Radius setting while one with less inherent detail can utilize a larger Radius. Start with a Radius between about 1.0 and 1.5 and go from there, lowering the setting perhaps to 0.5 or even lower for images that start with fine details, or raising it to perhaps 2.0 to 4.0 for images with lower levels of inherent detail.
3. Amount. If you have selected a small Radius setting, the halos will be narrow, so you will need a high Amount setting for them to have much effect. Conversely, if you are using a high Radius value, the halos will be wide and you will need a low Amount setting to avoid them being obvious. Once you understand what the controls actually do, you should be able to tweak things visually using the 100% view. Play with a few of your own images until you get the hang of things.
4. Threshold. After settling on ranges for Radius and Amount, increase the Threshold value until unwanted noise or other artifacts start appearing where you don't think edges should be, then lower it slightly.

Finally, About has collected a bunch of tutorials that all contradict each other, so go figure ;0)

Well, now that I've got our Canon SD500 working and also calibrated all our monitors with the Spyder2 Pro, things are looking way better on the various monitors around here. The photos are way more natural and I for one can now really tell the difference between my LCDs. The el cheapo Optivision 15, the very nice NEC and of course the trusty old CRT, an old Mitsubishi monitor. I have to say I like the saturation of the CRT right now, but it is hard to tell what's real.

In any case, the next problem is getting the colors to print out well on our Canon i9900, this is a confusing mess of ICC profiles, etc. At least, with the monitor software that Colorvision Spyder2 provides, the monitors look more or less the same, but in the default mode, it doesn't print out quite right. Here's why, lots of putzing with setting in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 as noted here:

Canon Digital Photography Forums - Canon ICC Profile Guide - Something New for Canon Printers

The Canon ICC profile guide is intended for Canon printers that come with print media ICC profiles, which are specific to Canon papers and printer driver settings. Canon is super unclear about what these profiles are and what they do, so its nice to have a translation.

PR1 = Photo Paper Pro (print quality level 1)
PR2 = Photo Paper Pro (quality level 2)
SP1 = Photo Paper Plus Glossy (quality level 1)
MP1 = Matte Photo Paper (quality level 1)

There is apparently a hard to find Canon ICC Profiles Guide that Renard is nice enough to cache for everyone. It says in short, then if you are using Canon media listed above or you buy paper from folks like Kodak or Red River who supply ICCs for each kind of paper. By the way, this is a big incentive to buy paper from big brands like this, they do the hard work of figuring out standard ICCs for every paper into every major model of printer. Alternatively, you have to buy the PrintCal from Colorvision and do the work yourself. This is a dedicated scanner where you print something and like Spyder2, it creates an ICC.

For sRGB photos, these are the majority of all cameras. sRGB is a color space that is older and less than Adobe RGB, so you lose some colors. Most cameras use it except for high end digital SLRs like the Canon EOS-20D. So if you have a sRGB camera and you are using Canon paper, then you should:

1. Set Source space: sRGB in the Print Preview dialog box.
2. Print space: Select Printer Color Management
3. Printer Driver: Select correct media, check auto color adjustment.

This works because the Canon printer driver expects colors in sRGB color space. The Select Printer Color Management tells Adobe just to set the sRGB raw and thus defeating color management. The Printer Driver setting says to switch to different profiles automatically depending on if you set Pro, Plus Glossy, etc.

Armed with this ICC, here is what you do in the Photoshop Print Preview menu when using a dedicated media-specific profile according to the manual. I tried this and this didn't work. At least for sRGB 8-bit photos taken with a Canon SD500. You can actually use Print preview and see the images before they get to the printer are too red.

1. Set Source space: Adobe RGB (or sRGB)
2. Print space: Select the media-specific ICC profile from the lists above
3. Printer Driver: Select correct media, check manual color adjustment, select "Set...", and select "None" for "Print Type". Do not enable ICM.

The reason you don't enable ICM in the printer driver is that Photoshop does the color matching, otherwise Photoshop does it and the Printer driver does it again. Of course, the problem is the default in the printer driver and Photoshop are to both do ICM, so the normal thing that happens is yucky pictures. Go figure.

Hydrogenaudio Forums -V n (in Lame 3.95.1). They keep changing the switches in Lame. First in the early versions, you used -r3mix and got the best.

Then it was to use --alt-preset standard and then --alt-preset extreme

Then it was just --preset standard and --preset extreme.

Now they have converted this to the -V option where you put a number after -V 0 means very little compression, -V 9 means a ton. Here is what these options mean:

Here are my two notebook recommendations. One ultraportable and one multimedia/Desktop replacement notebook armbreaker (in the next post)

Sony VAIO T-350. I seemed to get asked this all the time now. Asa and Chere for instance both asked about an ultraportable notebook. The best buy I think is the Sony VAIO T-Series. I've been using one for a while and the latest version, the VGN-T350 and T370s are nice updates. They are inexpensive at about $1500-$2000. The main differences are the EDGE notebook which for $80/month gives you 100Kbps all around the US. That is very cool but does cost you an extra $100 for the machine and then $80/month. Personally, I'd get it though because connectivity is just so important with laptops on the go like this one.

The models are a little confusing, but notebookreview.com really simplifies it. From the TR to the T150, they took away the webcam and added Bluetooth. From the T150, to the T250, they added a DVD-RW drive and then from the T250 to the T350, they added in EDGE wireless capabilities. The models vary plus a little based on features, so the T370 for instance has a bigger hard drive and more memory. A close study of Sony Style shows you the differences.

The best place to buy these is by surfing Pricegrabber for the current models. At this exact moment, the value leaders look like:

• Sony VAIO VGN-T350. This is 1.2GHZ Pentium 753, 60GB hard drive, DVD+/-RW DL (so more DVD than you'll ever need) and 512MB of memory. This is their best seller, but personally, I doubt that many folks will really be creating DVDs with this kind of ultraportable, but its just $50 more. $1800 street
• Sony VAIO VGN-T240P/L. If you don't need that EDGE modem and just want a basic model, then this $1750 street.

Cruise Gifts - Holland America Line Inc.. These guys at Holland America are smart. They even let you buy gifts for passenger son board.

NTFS Resize Frequently Asked Questions. I installed my dad's computer incorrectly. Got the system drive too big and then threw Windows on the wrong partitiion.

To fix, I need to resize partitions. There's now a freeware program that does this. You boot from a CD version of Linux and then run NTFSProgs. Wish me luck!

I'm getting back to flight simulators after a long hiatus. Here's a list of things to try:

• FlightGear Flight Simulator. This is an open source project with realistic flight models and an open way to get everything. It doesn't have the latest graphics, but is supposed to be very accurate.
• Falcon 4.0: Allied Force. Finally there is an update the venerable Falcon. YOu can buy it now rather than finding on ebay an old copy of Falcon and then running various mods.

Jan 25 -
New Boeing 314, Concorde v2.0, B-52F Update.

Turtle Beach - Riviera 5.1 Sound Card. This is a $30 card that has a digital S/PDIF output perfect for plugging into a home theater.

Ironically, the new Creative X-Fi won't work but the older Audigy2 ZS does because it has an SPDIF output in the rear. It lists for $100 and is probably a better choice for compatibility with games. I've used lots of cards and the problem is that Creative Labs really has the most volume so most folks support it the best.

X-bit labs on the G.Skill F1-4800DSU2-1GBFR. Well, time to think about the next power machine. With the Athlon X2 and the new dual core Pentium's out, time to think about another fast machine. Not to mention the ultrafast nVidia 7800s.

A good example of the path of progress are these DDR600 memory modules. Compared with generic DDR400 that run at 5.9GBps, you can push these to close to 9GBps. That's amazingly fast.

Tom's Hardware Guide Peripherals & Consumer Electronics: Creative X-Fi: A New World of Sound - Introduction Now that I've got Zoom Player working, things are pretty good with my home theater PC. Just two problems remain. First is getting digital audio out. The onboard audio gives me five channels out, but they are five separate jacks and I really need a digital audio output. Also, I do get some noise from the el cheapo Realtek AC 97 onboard. So, there's the Creative Labs X-Fi that might work. Main issue is that the digital audio output requires a 5 1/4" bay and I don't have one on this HTPC case. Still, its a good card if you have one and want digital audio.

The other problem is the keyboard and mouse, the el cheapo Logitech mouse and keyboard use IR, so it is not a great connection from 15 feet away and also the IR commands don't work against my Pronto Pro which is really what I want, so the search goes on for both a good digital audio output solution and also for the right input that can ideally be programmed.

We had just an awesome time visiting Paris. Was a little scary with the kids, but Connie figured it out. Some recommendations:

Paris Apartment Rental - PARIS PERFECT. Looked long and hard for a place to stay. With kids, it makes much more sense to rent an apartment. We stayed with the folks at Paris Perfect. They really doa great job with apartments. The Bergerac for instance is a block from the Eiffel Tower. More important is that each apartment has an awesome guide for things to do in the neighborhood. So you don't have to constantly get on the Metro and take time.

Rick Steve on Rue Cler. Every arrondissement (district) in Paris has a wonderful market. In the Septieme, it is Rue Cler. We just loved going there. For the kids, Parisian Bistrot food was a little rich and definitely too slow. So for dinners, it was great to boogie to this market and get something for the apartment. Some great spots you have to try are:

1. Halles Bosquet: Fruit and vegetable stand. One of 4 or 5 greengrocers on rue Cler. The competition among the fruit and vegetable merchants means prices are competitive. Always shop for their specials out front.
2. Davoli - La Maison du Jambon: This is an Italian Deli. I know, I know, we were in Paris, but it really was wonderful. Terrific Bologanese sauce and Lasagna. And the meats are really awesome. We didn't try it but it has the the best Choucroute in Paris.
3. Lenotre: Way too expensive, but probably the best desserts I've ever had. Nothing like eating a US$8 pastry and thinking it is wonderful./
4. Café du Marche: A simple bistro here. The food is classic French bistro. The kids thought the canard (duck) was good, but ultimately, it was a little slow for them. Great people watching
5. Berthillon Ice Cream. The main shop is Ile Ste. Louis, but a shop just down the road from Cafe du Marche sells it by the pint. It is awesome. Really the best ice cream in Paris.
6. Fromagerie: An amazing shop. It is really great. Goat cheeses are really good. You do have to tell them when you are eating it makes a difference apparently.
7. Boulangerie Patisserie: This boulangere is on the corner; note the beautiful windows and original features. Good bread, including the flute and grain breads.
8. Le Mère de Famille Gourmand Chocolats Confiseries. A great chocolate store. Less expensive than Le Notre, but really great hand dipped.

Home Theater PC News - Your Source for Everything HTPC Related. I've been struggling to get my home theater PC really working correctly. Both Windows Media Player and BSPlayer have trouble working correctly. When I go full screen, they always go to the PC Monitor rather than to the big HDTV display.

Also, ATI Catalyst is really buggy with my Radeon 9800 Pro and an HDTV display. I tried to use the HDTV as the only display and the driver hard crashed a couple of times. Other problem is that there is overscan on the HDTV monitor and it took a while to figure out how to use the ATI Catalyst tool to reduce it. There is a way (which I'll document soon) so it thinks a 1920×1080 display is really 1776×980 for me.

The big news is that the InMatrix's Zoom Player is the answer for doing this play on the big screen. Even the free one works well. The UI is buried, but you basically tell it which monitor to use for full screen and the user interface lets you use keys rather than mouse clicks to make it go slow and fast which is what you want in a dark room.

If you want to do DVD playback then you have to get Zoom Player Professional for $30 and have a set of DVD decoders. You can get that for $15 from Sonic. These are the decoders that are part of Cinepak.

Finally you need FFDShow to handle just about every other format including xVid which is widely used for movies on the Internet.

So get Zoomplayer and read the FAQ to find out how to install and then click on the Configuration Icon and select Advanced Mode. Look for the Values and Tools and you should see an entry that says, Monitor to select for full screen. You need to know the monitor number from the ATI Catalyst entry. Normally your main monitor is #1 and your HDTV screen would be #2, so you'd select 2.

Airline lie-flat seat guide and reviews. The ultimate in nerdiness, an entire site devoted to just really great seats on international flights. Having been on a bunch, its pretty useful to know which ones are really flat etc.

This is for the true nerd. For instance, there is a great discussion about true flat bed and lie flat which are just angled. Having been on an incredibly expensive British Airways flight, I can tell you their business class costs as much as most first classes and it is amazing in terms of how flat the seats are. Really, the equivalent to business class on BA is their Economy Plus.

4 Star Airlines in the Skytrax Airline Star Ranking Programme. While I knew a bunch of these airlines, there are definitely some surprises.

The usual suspects are the 5-star airlines. The ones that no business traveler (I know) which are:

• Cathay Pacific Airways
• Malaysia Airlines
• Qatar Airways
• Singapore Airlines

Then there is a big list of four star airlines. There are some surprises here. Some airlines that are rated well and reasonably inexpensive including:

• All Nippon Airways
• Asiana Airlines
• China Airlines
• Dragonair
• EVA Airways
• Korean Air

These Asian ones particular ones like China Airlines and Korean Air a decade ago were just horrible. Good to remember if you are ever travelling east.

Not surprising most of the big US carriers are 3-star or average.

Changing Drive Letters. This one thing has always driven me crazy. I like to have C as the system drive, D as the CD-ROM or DVD and E as the data drive, but sometimes, I get it wrong when I install. Here's how to fix it.

To change the default letter assignment for drives:

1. Right click [My Computer]
2. Click [Manage] to open the Computer Management Console
3. Click on Storage and then click on Disk Management in the left pane
4. In the top or lower right pane, right click the disk you want to change.
   Fixed drives appear in the top and bottom pane. Removable drives appear in the bottom pane unless they have media inserted in which case they appear in both the upper and lower pane.
   Select [Change Drive Letter and Path]
   Click [Change]
   Select the new letter from the drop down list box and click [OK]

If you want to create your own geocaches from home without fancy GPS software how can you do it with Google Maps. Here's how:

• Latitude and Longitude Search. This is an amazing site that when given a feature on a map tells you the latitude and longitude.
• Google Maps. If you feed google maps the decimal latitude and longitude, you can see where that spot is.
• Gmap Extras! at GoogleMaps. This is a wiki that tells you how to putz with Google Maps. There is a script here that tells you the latitude and longtitude in Google Maps. It does require Greasemonkey installed into Firefox.
• Directions. You need this little tool to convert between coordinates that are given in minutes and seconds, minutes and decimal seconds and decimal degrees.

So to create what you need here is what you do once the above is installed:

1. Google Maps. Go to Google maps and type in the address where you are caching
2. The toolbar will show you the actual decimal latitude and longitude where the cache is. You can save it right there or write it down and enter into your GPS. You can also save it as a Firefox bookmark for later use in a blog entry or whatever.

Travelersnet.com has a list of all toll free numbers. It is amazing how hard these are to find on each airline's site now. They don't want you to call. It is expensive. Some ones I use:

Air Canada 888-247-2262
Alaska Airlines 800-425-0333
American Airlines 800-433-7300
Continental 800-525-0290
Delta Air Lines 800-221-1212
United Airlines 800-241-6522

I don't know where Air Canada is in quality. They are three star. Air Canada Star Ranking

Normally, I find the results between a travel agent, Expedia, Orbitz or any other discounter to be about the same in the US. But, I'm finding that for travel to China, there are vast differences. Also when we went to Europe, I tried to book via Expedia, Orbitz etc and the airfares were on the order of $6,000 per person, but when our wonderful travel agent did it, she got it for $2,200 per person. So beware, this is one area where an agent can do a better job:

• Navigent Corporate travel. We use a corporate travel group at Navigent. They seem to provide fares that are reasonably close to Expedia.
• Expedia. In doing a search for an open jaw leg from Seattle to Beijing and then back from Hong Kong, Expedia found a bunch of flights on United and the like via Narita, San Francisco and Los Angeles
• Orbitz. The same query on Orbitz, generated many more fares at about half the price. It found Air Canada to do the same trip via Vancouver. So Orbitz seems to find more interesting fares. Particularly for Business Class, the differences are enormous. Just going to Orbitz lowered the price of the fare from $6K on Expedia to $3K on Orbitz in one example I tried.
• Discount air tickets; cheap airfare, discount airfare, International airfares. This looks like some sort of discounter.
• Vacation Travel specialist. They almost always seem to do the best job. There are so many tricks in international travel that you almost have to use one. We've used a variety of folks. The main issue here is that you have to have a good working relationship with the particular person rather than than the agency. For instance on one European trip, I priced it with Expedia at $6K per person within Europe and our specialist friend did it for $2K per person.

The other thing to do is to try different dates, while Expedia and Orbitz does this automatically for

Default Router Usernames and Passwords. Handy guide to default passwords for various routers. In case I forget mine...

It's tricky to figure out all the ways to get to China. Here are some notes:

• United Airlines - Promotions: Air. United is constantly running promotions, but you have to register for them. For instance for fall travel, if you register your Mileage Plus number, you get an additional 5,000 miles for travel booked now and done through the end of the year
• United, ADRIA Airways, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, ANA, Asiana, Austrian Airlines Group, BLUE1 Air Botnia, bmi, CROATIA Airlines, LOT, Lufthansa, SAS, Singapore Airlines, Spanair, TAP Portgual, THAI, US Airways and Varig. Now the flight miles you earn on all paid, qualifying Star Alliance member-operated flights count toward your Mileage Plus® Premier, Premier Executive® or 1K® membership status.
• United Platinum Plus. Too late for me to take advantage of, but United has a really confusing array of credit card programs. They now have a free card that lets you earn United miles. A good deal really. They also have a $140 a year card that gives you a companion ticket, 5,000 Elite Qualifying Miles (that is towards the 25K to become Premier and the 50K to become Premier Executive). This Premier Executive is mainly a big deal because it gets you a go through the line hall pass in Seattle's security lines.

Flights

It takes a while to figure things out, but basically, if you go from Seattle to Beijing, there are just a few airline choices:

• San Francisco as a point. This is what United does. Also, you can sometimes get a lower fare on the United by booking through Air China International. Don't get mileage points, but they code share the United flight.
• Narita. Both ANA and Northwest go via Narita. This can save you some time, but the risk of course is that if you get stuck, you aren't in San Francisco with a zillion flights, but in Japan where the delay can be 10 hours.
• Seoul. Korean Airlines goes via here.

For Seattle to Hong Kong, there are more choices

• San Francisco. That's the obvious one.
• Narita. This is actually shorter by a few hours, but again there is the delay risk.
• Vancouver. There is a nonstop all the way there and it is a short hop to Seattle on Air Canada. A good option because the delays are shorter.

Single Slot Multi-Card Reader USB Flash Drive (Lexar-RW023001) - PriceGrabber.com. With all these different formats around, how do you read them all. This is a handy $20 device that takes all those tiny cards from SD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, MMC and xD Picture cards and converts them into a USB 2.0 interface.

Very handy for taking anything and plugging it into a computer.

Whether it is an Olympus 1GB xD Picture Card for a Fuji F10 or a 1GB SD card from our Canon SD500 or a 1GB MMC card from my Nokia 6620. Wow, now that you mention it, that is a lot of different formats.

You can also use this thingy as a flash drive in a pinch to bucket brigade data from one PC to another.

Tom's Hardware Guide Mass Storage: Two Fast and Functional USB Flash Drives - Power Meets Intelligence: Who Wins? and the more recent Tomss Hardware high speed review

A much later review that the Xbitlab's 2003 review I used to get an Apacer USB Flash Drive, so since I lost my Apacer, here's an update on what to get that shows the "Transcend JetFlash 110" is incredibly fast nearly 26MBps read/23MBps write for a 1GB drive. Pretty amazing.

The other drives were pretty fast as well in order, the really fast drives use a different flash technology called single cell and interestingly it doesn't have much of a price premium and in fact is at at discount right now to other brand name flash drives.

There are so many useful tools for post image besides Photoshop of course. Here are some I've seen as I've gone through reviews that I need to try:

• Noise Ninja: The gold standard for image noise reduction. A Photoshop Plugin, Noise Ninja is the most effective and productive solution for removing noise and grain from digital photographs and scanned film images. It is a must-have tool for anyone shooting in low-light or fast-action situations.
• DxO Labs. I blogged this before, but this Photoshop plugin corrects lense distortion for known lenses, so you have no errors at all. Amazing!
• Photo Rescue so you can get those corrupted memory cards to cough up your photos for you.

With film and developing at about $8-10 a pop for 36 exposures, it doesn't take long to realize it makes more sense to get a $200-300 digital camera instead of a $100 film camera if you little guy is really into taking pictures and won't lose the darn thing. Pays back after about 10 rolls.

Besides price, having had our kids use these things there are a couple of other criteria, first some basics. I used DPReview and Digical Camera Info, and to a lesser extent the less technical reviews at Imaging Resource" DCresource, stevesdigicam.com and Megapixel. Most print publications don't cover these lower end cameras, so use these. Here are some criteria:

• Resolution. Right now, I don't think you really want anything less than 5 megapixels. This lets you blow up a shot to say 8×10 with little trouble. 4 megapixel camera are much cheaper still and are a pretty good budget model if you can find them.
• Picture Quality. Ok, if you are going to spend the money it would be nice to know that the pictures won't come out "red" all the time. So some basic level of quality here.
• Memory Card Costs. Kids take pictures at an amazing rate. They love to snap whatever they see, so investing in a pretty big card ironically makes more sense with kids if you really want to see things the way they do. I'd say 256MB at least and probably 512MB is in the sweetspot pricing wise right now. Don't skimp.
• Size. Kids don't need big bulky cameras. There are two size levels, ultracompact that are a little bit bigger than a credit card. And, compact which are about 3.5"-4" long and about 2" thick. These latter sort use AA batteries so are cheaper.
• Optical Viewfinder. It may be just me, but I find them useful maybe I'm old fashioned, but mainly because in bright light, the screens don't work well (certainly true for our SD500). Also with a low battery its a probably. On the other hand, most viewfinders in these compacts don't work well. They show only 75% of the image so you don't compose too well. Most cameras seem to be stamping viewfinders out as the screens on the back get bigger.

The some common features that are even more important for kids:

• Shutter Lag. This really drives the young photographer crazy. So it probably limits you to the later models since shutter lag has really only gotten to be acceptable in the last 12 months or so.
• Durability. Is this thing going to fall apart after being dropped a few times or being spashed on. Made me want to look at models like the Pentax Optio WP because they are waterproof to 5 feet under. Too bad that particular model has such poor color quality.
• Anti-shake. This is really only in high end models now which is a little ironic since the folks who need it most are the newbie photographers. Certainly, its the number one reason why our kids shots don't come out. Only the high end cameras like the Casio Exlim EX-Z750 have it it appears though.
• Screen size. This matters quite a bit for these little guys. They just love to show off the picture when they've just taken it. 1.5" is just too small, so 2" is ideal, but expensive.

Net, net, the choices are getting a low cost but high quality Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ2 for $220, main drawbacks are relatively noisy, so use at ISO 100 and no optical viewfinder, Pentax Optio S5Z because its small even though images aren't too great for $255 or to splurge get the Fujifilm Fuji F-10 for $270 ($30 rebate from $300 street) with fantastic image quality rivaling digital SLRs, but its a bit out of the price range.

So with that being said, in ultracompacts, it is hard to get the 5Mp camera and be an ultracompact for $200 or so, but here are some choices:

• Canon SD400. This is the baby brother of the SD500. $330 street for 5 megapixels, so a little on the high side. 2" screen, 0.4 second full press, ISO 100 quality, shutter lag. Low distortion lense. Buy it if you can afford it.
• Canon SD300. 4Mp, 2" screen, 1200 lines resolution/inch (so very good for 4Mp). Very good color. $280 street so still on the high side.
• Pentax Optio S5Z. This is just an update to the S5i and Imaging Resource with a 2.5" screen. It is $255 street. It has decent picture quality (1200 lines) and is tiny. Its main drawback is that it doesn't have an optical viewfinder.
• Kodak EasyShare V550. Kodak's first ultracompact. Decent and new, 1200 line resolution for 5Mp so a little low and decent color. ISO 200 maximum. It's a little too highly saturated, so targeted more towards average users. And too expensive at $350.
• Pentax Optio WP if the picture quality wasn't so poor because it is waterproof. The real show stopper is that the color reproduction is way off and although it says it is 5MP camera, it effectively is just 3MP because of inferior lense etc. Also its auto ISO feature doesn't work well, you should just set to ISO 100 and shutter lag is about 0.46 seconds so pretty high. The optics really do matter on these cameras, so you pay more to get higher quality optics so you can actually use all those pixels. It's also a little expensive at about $270-300.

Compact size so somewhat bigger, but lower cost, so it is quite possible to get a $200-250 5 Mp camera:

• Fuji F10, DP Review, DC Resource, Digital Camera Info and Megapixel Probably too expensive at $270 street for this 6Mp ultracompact, but it rivals a 8Mp Digital SLR. Resolution of 1400 lines vs. 1250 typical for 5Mp cameras. Using a slightly different test, DP Review shows 1650 lph vs. 1550 for the SD500 and 1500 for the Nikon 7900. And DCCameraInfo with yet another test found it used 5.47Mp vs. 5.28 Mp for the SD500. Very good color balance although DCCameraInfo found it just average with the typical red shift. Very low noise up to ISO 400 which is amazing for a small camera but you have to use manual ISO not full auto mode to get this. It uses a 6MP imager. It's an update to the bulkier E550 below. Very little lense distortion. Its 3.6" × 2.3" × 1.1" so not a true ultracompact, but very small as a compact. 7.1 ounces. Aperture and shutter priority as well. $304 street, so buy it if you can afford it for probably one of the best compacts around right now. Fast at 0.5 second full shutter lag. In fact, it beats the SD500 in head to head tests. Main drawbacks confusing menus, no optical viewfinder and has a big ugly dongle to charge and connect to the computer. The optical viewfinder is probably the biggest of all the issues and the price too. The high ISO by the way acts as a kind of blur control since a given image can be taken at a higher shutter speed.
• Panasonic DMC-LZ2 Imaging Resource and Megapixel. This is another 5MP camera at $230 street. It is quite a bit bigger than the SD400 at 4"×2.5"×1.3" but it uses standard AA batteries (or a lithium CRV-2 or a rechargeable NiMH) which is great for kids. Pretty good color accuracy and average resolution (1350 lines). It is 6x zoom as well that's low distortion too. Does have 0.8 second shutter lag which is quite a lot because autofocus takes a while. Far bit of noise even at ISO 100. Soft corners at its very high 6x telephoto end. Most important, it has image stabilization that seems to work well. The main drawback is that it also lacks an optical viewfinder.
• Fuji E550. This is a 6MP camera for just $270 street. Very high color accuracy and good real resolution at about 5MP effective. It's auto ISO doesn't work well, so use manual ISO 100. It is also very fast. It has both shutter and aperature priority as well.
• Nikon 5900. 5MP compact camera $260 list so a little high uses 2 AA batteries. Default is a little over saturated, but you can adjust this and OK resolution (1200 lpi)
• Canon A95, DP Review and Imaging Resource. $270 street, but good, but not superb image quality (1350 lines) and good color. Big and heavy at 12 ounces since it has four AA batteries an uses the older CF. 5Mp overall with great quality. Also has shutter and aperature priority.
• Fujifilm E510. It is just $200 street and has aperature and shutter priority so has more controls than a high end SD500 for example. Like the DMC-LZ2, it lacks AF illuminator so is poor at low light according to DC Resource. Not as nice as the Canon A520 for instance, but inexpensive. Image quality though is below average, soft and there is purple fringing.
• Optio S55 and Digital Camera Info. LIke the S5Z, it doesn't have a manual viewfinder though. $220 street so the right price. It is a little sluggish though at 0.8 full shutter lag. It also is quite inaccurate color-wise, the Olympus D-425 another $200 camera is much better. It is low resolution with 2.78Mp effective so 8×10s are a push.