Archive for March, 2006

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Getting the iRiver iFP-799 Working Again


2006
03.31

iriver – iFP-700 Series Support. I haven’t use this little guy in a while because I’ve been too lazy to podcast and since this unit doesn’t control volume well, it is useless for that.

But it lets me list to WMA protected files, so it will be useful for listening to books on tape and other music from “KCLS”:http://kcls.org where they have a deal with Overdrive for audio books and music that you can check out.

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Chaintech VNF3-250 and OCZ PC4000 2GB Platinum


2006
03.31

AnandTech – Chaintech VNF3-250 Motherboard Question. Well, I’ve just lost another memory module. Been running 2×512MB PC3700 OCZ Gold Rev 2 for a while now in the Chaintech rig, but I’ve been getting random BSODs. Ran memtest and see intermittent errors on the first stick, so I bought some fancy OCZ PC4000 Platinum’s for the higher end DFI LanParty UT Ultra-D and moved the OCZ PC4000 Gold to this machine.

Essentially, I have to redo the settings of the memory. Running at 2250MHz CPU, 250MHz FSB and the new ram at 1T 2.8V, I only run Prime95 for 3 minutes. This post shows that it can be done, but the timings are different and in fact some report very mild overclocking only to 215MHz at “newegg”:http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16820220040

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Dogster…special interest rule


2006
03.31

!Dog photo web pages. Dog breed pictures and information, dog stories, dog photo galleries, puppy pix, puppy gallery, cute fun puppies! Free dog web pages, bio, stories and news.

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Thick, thin, who cares…


2006
03.31

Thick, thin, who cares…

By: Rich Tong
Category: Opinion > Other
Read the article on Judy’s Book.

Heck, I guess I just appreciate every form of pizza for what it is supposed to be, but your question reminds me that every slice bring back another memory so in reverse order the top 10 best pizzas are so intimately tied to the who, where and when, so here goes in Letterman format, the best pizza in the world are:

10. Dominos Delivers. I didn’t realize you could have so much fat in a pizza, but I can’t look at one without looking down at the 10 pounds of gut I still have from consuming 2 slices a day for 10 years at the big Microsoft for dinner. I still get nausea seeing the ads.

9. ‘Sroom ‘Za from the college pizza delivery agency. I bet that now you just order it online from somewhere real, but there was nothing quite like the disgusting plastic taste plus the fury of finals studying and the starvation of not having time to make it to the Eating Hall for dinner of limp Turkey Divine.

8. Mad Pizza. Anything you can get that’s hot. The cheese tastes like plastic and it is slow, but somehow I’ll always think of this as the place to go after a baseball game with the kids. And then the ice cream next door.

7. San Diego. On the beach in San Diego, after a bike ride on the boardwalk, you walk a block and they serve 36″ pizzas. If you eat one plus 2 things of beer, it is free. Enough said. Best thing there were all the surfing and boarding videos and the ‘tats on the guy making the pizza.

6. Home made. OK, we never really figured this out, but it has not been for want of trying, but its fun to try to peel the burnt edges from the cookie sheet :-)

5. Pagiliacci. OK, this is the closest to authentic in Seattle (barring Tutta Bella and Cafe Lagos which I haven’t tried). But, the best thing about it is the salad that goes with it and the memories. See entry #2.

4. Chicago Stuffed Pizza. OK, this is another variant and you have to *not* think about the calories, but the first time I had it in Chicago, all I remember was the beer. Loads of it plus the smell of all that pepperoni. That plus the Ramones and Rock N Roll High School or watching the Blues Brothers in Chicago. It was a summer full of movies.

3. Beverly Hills. OK, my girlfriend (then fiancee, then wife, now super mom) was dressed in all white as they still do down there. We end up at California Pizza Kitchen and try the Thai chicken for the first time. Thin crust and lots of flavor, but it aint’ real pizza, but it is fun. Still think of it everytime we go to CPKs.

2. Middletown NJ. OK, I date myself, but I still have the burn on my thigh where an incredibly hot mozzarella burned me. This was truest to the thin pizzas. NY Style I guess, but the main thing is that it is burning hot and there is so much grease that you crack the back of the pizza and let it drip out. Delicious. To this day, I try to approximate this by getting a plain cheese pizza from Paggliaci’s and putting in the oven at 450 degrees to get the cheese that warm. No grease though. I’m a purest by the way, just cheese and tomatoes please.

1. Amalfi Pizza. Ah, Amalfi, its 102 degrees and blazingly hot, we have a nice dinner, but our guide says, the crew is having the best pizza in the world. It sure is, we get a slice or two and devour it. The crust is light and thin, but the main thing is that the tomatoes are like eating candy. I haven’t had a chance to try Tutta Bella, but I can’t imagine it can be better than that. Heck, let’s charter a plane and get our butts to the marina at Amalfi right now. We can be there by dinner time!

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Best Cingular Phones


2006
03.30

HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource – Cingular Phones. As I said, Howard has the best phone data, but they are amazingly good for Cingular which is where they started.

Their current recommendation is to get an unlocked Motorola V3i on eBay since that costs $300 as “mpire”:http://researcher.mpire.com/research/progress.page?action=call&formName=search&searchType=form&query=v3i+&search=Search&excludeWords=slvr+pebl+mpx220+l7 +z510 shows and you can get it now and it is unlocked, whereas the expected Cingular release is May and it will cost the same since the V3 is so popular they don’t have to subsidize it. Hattip to “Howard”:http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=767791&page=43&pp=15

The real story here is that Cingular has high speed UMTS, so lots of interest there. The hot phone seems to be the “LG CU320″:http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=773808 and the upcoming Nokia. These are both sliders. It’s $250 right now.

The upcoming Nokia 6282 is also a slider and looks nice and should be out in a few “weeks”:http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=801011&page=16&pp=15 with an estimated price of $350-400.

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Best T-mobile phones


2006
03.30

HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource – Best Looking Thin T-Mobile phone?. Darn it, I was just going to get the new Samsung t809 from T-mobile, but Howard Forums, really the best resource I’ve found for phone shopping says:

bq. the t809 is horrible… Don’t buy it! Dust gets under the screen cover, the battery life sucks, and your callers will complain of a buzzing sound whenever you are near a wi-fi network, which is much more often than you might think.

They recommend getting an unlocked Motorola V3i with an SD memory card and just putting on T-mobile or wait for the V3x which has a 2mp camera although some folks “think”:http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=879935 the new V3x is bigger because of the larger screen and the camera is now very sharp.

The best phone in the T-mobile lines look to me to be the V3 or the Blackberry 8700t shipping in mid “April”:http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=864267&page=6&pp=15

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Motorola H5 Miniblue Uhuru here we come


2006
03.30

!>http://www.motorola.com/mot/image/13/13668_MotImage.jpg! Motorola Motorola H5 MINIBLUE. This may be the ultimate headset. It is incredibly small because the microphone actually picks up your voice through bone conductance. So, it just slips inside your ear and there is no microphone externally at all. It is just 33mm x 41mm and has a little chargine station.

The other thing is that since it listen *inside* your ear, it is very noise resistent. Sign me up, ships sometime in 1H2006. “Engadget”:http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/motorola-h5-headset-reviewed-verdict-super-tiny-152553.php points us to Bengalboy who says it finally make it look like a fashion thing rather than a geek thing. It actually has a carrying case that has a battery inside it, so when you put it away, it actually recharges the tiny thing but that case is pretty big. For me this is a good ting since I always lose these little guys.. Very clever.

These are the size of the NextLink earpieces I had, but broke because they were so delicate, so these will hopefully be more durable. But the wya, the NextLink 5G is probably the smallest little thing I’ve ever seen. The main issue he found was that the volume is pretty low and also compared with the “NextLink AX2″:http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/07/nextlink-bluespoon-ax2-reviewed-4-5-stars/ (which I found fine), this one is uncomforable because it completely seals the ear. That’s how it works. For me, that’s not that big an issue, I love my Etymotics that do the same thing. As an aside, the new “AX2″:http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=reviews&id=705&p=1 got a nice review from PocketNow, maybe it is more reliable and maybe Calvin won’t step on it again :_)

This could be the perfect, take a ride on your bike and do a conference call since the noise cancelling and sealing really works.

It is going to cost $200, so cool costs.

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2006
03.29

Lewis and Clark . Interactive Trail Map | PBS same site new things!

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2006
03.29

Lewis and Clark . Interactive Trail Map | PBS same site new things!

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iPod stuck at the Apple logo


2006
03.29

iPod only shows an Apple logo and doesn’t start up. This means that the firmware in the iPod won’t start up. It is the equivalent of hanging at the Windows logo screen on your PC.

You have a just one depressing option. You reset your iPod by:

# Pressing the three fingered: a) turn the hold on and off, b) press together Menu and Select and then finallly while it is starting press Menu and Play
# This gets you into a low level disk mode which should hopefully boot the iPod, you then connect to your PC and run iPod Updater. Hopefully you can just Update (get a fresh copy of firmware) rather than Restore (wipe the whole thing including all your music).
# If it won’t even come up in Disk Mode, off to the Apple store you go.