Ladies and gentlemen, I'm getting a Mac!

Well, not exactly, but hey, the title sparked your interest, didn't it? Thought so. Anywho's:

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself hating Apple products as I usually do. Hating on Macs, hating on iPods, and hating on two of my friends who have iPhone 3Gs. Every now and then I find myself thinking, wow, I'm probably just jealous that Apple users got money . However, these thoughts vanquish the moment I hear some pompous Apple fanboy saying "You're just hatin' because you can't afford a Mac! Just go away to your sad little PC, ya' looser!" It's people like that that get under my skin, almost causing me to slap 'em in the face. Luckily, I'm a civil person, and I just state the fact that you can get a computer just as decent as a Mac for half the price. But who am I to say this? And what does this say about the operating system itself? In all reality, the only Mac I've ever owned was a screwy PowerPC-based refurb.

So I thought, hey, if I install OS X onto my PC somehow, I'd be able to see how it is to own a Mac, without the fancy $600 aluminum case. If performance is good, I'd prove that PCs are much more cost-efficient, and after using it for a month or so, I'd also be able to determine how good OS X really is. I'll be killing two birds with one stone... sorta.

After a few days [when Apple announced their new MacBooks], I got the initiative to sought for a way to get Leopard on my fairly low-end AMD machine. I found hacked-up operating systems aplenty, and I had no idea what to do. So then I thought there's only one easy solution; just search where you're going to download it from anyway!, so I ventured to everybody's favorite downloading site, the infamous Pie-rating Bay and searched "OS X Leopard" and found iATKOS, and I was happy. Then I did some research, and found that there's an infinite number of OSx86 systems to download. Here's a short list of what I've found:

iATKOS
iDeneb
iPC
Kalyway
Leo4Allv5
JaS
pc_EFI

...the list will go on and on. So I settled on iDeneb. Not sure of the reason, but I did. So far, I'm two days into the download and I've only been able to get through 40% of the full ISO. Slowly but surely, the 4.4 gig file will finish after going through a constant of 15kb/s download.

In the meantime, I've been able to split my hard drive into two partitions, with the Leopard partition [drive X:/] having 20GB of playing room.

Updates on my future Hackintosh coming soon!

Ciao!

The Future: My Take

Every now and then around New Year's, you hear a lot of TV shows talking about what the world will be like in 20, 50, and 100 years from now. However, a great number of them have things that seem way out-of-this world, utilizing technology that is yet to be invented. Luckily, there are people like me that have ideas that make more sense to the common human:

In the more developed areas in the United States of tomorrow [let's just call it the Mañana], suburbanized areas will be efficient in every aspect. Though not very common at the moment, Solar will become one of the most prominent differences. As I type, scientists and universities everywhere are looking for ways to make solar panels, thinner, lighter, cheaper, and more efficient. One company, Nanosolar, has exactly that, making use of a couple of $7M silicon printing machines and a modest workforce. Eventually, we'll have solar panels that cost less than shingles on a roof, and hopefully, they'll look good, too.

Another thing that will be common is energy generators powered by waste. There are already ways developed to do this (and a couple of actual toilets in Japan that does it), but there's yet to be a full line of manufactured Eco-Toilets. Oh, and don't worry about how clean your water is; you'll have your own personal filter that assures you that all you'll drink is pure H2O [check it out for yourself].

Moving onto cars. In the Mañana, combustion engine-based cars will be a minority on the road, with just about every auto maker moving onto Electric vehicles. These cars will probably take advantage of every energy-generating opportunity it can find. Solar roofs, the typical hybrid's brake friction thing, and maybe a little wind power generator under the hood, all going straight to a super-dense battery pack (may be Lithium-Ion, though maybe we'll be using something else by then). Oh, and chances are, you may not even have to use any of those features for everyday driving, with the help of a little power inlet on the side. Gas stations will become power stations with gas on the side and an upper-class cafe a few steps away. By the way, in case you didn't know, General Motors is working toward this vision, and it won't be as far off as you think [check it].

Oh, and Hydrogen/Fuel Cell vehicles will be around, but pure electric will become the preference (frankly, I don't see such a flammable substance to be a viable green solution).

Also in the Mañana, communication will be pinnacle. You'll be in a world where the Internet is free, and all around you (though sadly, it'll be more government controlled, like China). The way this'll be done is through a new technology called WiMAX. It takes a while to explain the system [which is much simpler that it seems], but in a nutshell, it's high-speed WiFi spread over a 30-mile radius per hotspot. An organization called XOHM [composed of Sprint, Nokia, Google, Intel, Motorola, and many more] are working on bringing this technology to every metropolitan area it can get it's hands on [link].

Through this newfound ubiquitous connectivity to the Internet, you'll be able to check up on all of all your friends, send medical data to your doctor (i.e., a medical status update server), and listen to your library through your home-based personal server.

As for nanotechnology, we're yet to see if the world will be ready for it, so I'm not going to really talk about it.

In the future, third wold countries will be living kind of like us Americans are right now. Some areas are nice, some are still dumps, and hey, even the cars will be the same (we'll have no use for gas cars, so they'll all be transported to the slums of Yemen).

Oh, and you know how people are paranoid about the eventual overcoming of super-intelligent computers? Well don't worry, it won't happen. Seriously, there's always a way to manually shut down a computer, whether it's a button or a giant lever-based plug.

Unfortunately, the society of tomorrow is grim. I don't mean to sound old, but as generations go by, the ethical values of humans decline. To prove my point, look at the 60s. Movies were a place that you can take the entire family, and not have to worry about sexual references or bad language. The most popular song of the decade (and still the best-selling single of all time) was The Twist, and some people found that to be risqué. Today, you see movies like Cloverfield, about a sudden invasion of a giant creature wreaking havoc throughout Manhattan, destroying everything in it's path. The top song this summer was I Kissed A Girl from Katy Perry, and the most popular song in the last few years being Low by Flo Rida and T-Pain. One can only guess how obscure the wold will get.

So there you have it; A porthole into the future. A land where technology is everywhere, and people are ruder and less ethical than ever before. If you have any additional input, leave a comment below.

Ciao!
~uH

Well there you have it. The iPhone has lost its edge.

Today, T-Mobile, Google, and HTC officially announced the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1, a beautiful little device that does everything the iPhone does, but cheaper, and in some cases, much better.

After watching endless videos about it, I can see that a phone like this will be a big competitor in the comming months. Available in white and black, the G1 is run on a revolutionar little operating system called Android, an open source project by Google that'll assure safety, friendliness, and extendability. The phone is made by the High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC), who, for the last year and a half or so has been making touch screen phones for the masses. Lately, their products have been exceeding the iPhone more and more, with the release of the Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, and the Touch HD [all of which, by the way, have greater resolution than a the standard non-HD television, double that of the iPhone].

Getting back on subject (bear with me, I drift away from the subject a lot when mindlessly typing away), the new G1 will be available through T-Mobile for $179 [if you're already a customer] with a contract extension, or for $399 by itself [T-Mobile 3G plans go from $25-35]. One advantage it has over the iPhone is the fact that it has a full, physical QWERTY keyboard. The one problem I have with the G1 is that there's no 3.5mm earphone jack

Personally, the phone and everything will be perfect for me. I'm a T-Mobile customer, I love open source things, I probably have $200 in my pocket right now, and I happen to live in one of the cities you must live within 5 miles from to buy one (Orlando, Florida FTW!)

So stick it to Apple and get an HTC G1!

[by the way, not too keen on the Samsung Instinct; too cheap-looking]

Website spotlight: 1TB of online storage at your disposal with Oosah

A person like me needs space. Mental space, physical space, and especially, virtual space. My pathetially small 75GB hard drive is almost full, with less than 6GB of space left, and that's because I've been insessively deleting items the past months after getting multiple "not enough hard drive space" dialog boxes. So I started uploading a few of my useless things to my 110mb.com account, which provides me with 5GB of space and a 99% uptime. I've never had a problem with them (though a few of my friends have had problems registering and managing thier account), but it's sad to know that it can only take so much information.

But a couple of days ago, I found a nice little website called Oosah.com. This little site provides users with a full terrabyte of server space for the grand ol' price of 0 Rupies (this translates to $0 in the US). Wow, that's like.... 13.6533333 times the ammount of storage my computer can carry [shout-out to Google for doing the calculation]!

However, there are a few drawbacks. At this point in time, you are not allowed to upload executables or documents, and you're only allowed to upload mp3s less than 9MB in size. [UPDATE: Oosah increased the mp3 limit to 50MB per file!]

But here's some good news- You can upload images and video to your heart's content, and even connect to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa to manage files through there.

So go ahead. Go to the site, register, and love it. I double-dog dare you.
Ciao!

~uH

Media exaggeration will kill us all...

...one commercial at a time.

Have you ever noticed that what we know and love is greatly decided by the media?

For example NBC/Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner Brothers control what you listen to for the most part. If one of these companies decide to take some guy off the streets and to a studio on Monday, he'll be sure to hit Billboard by Thursday. Kinda sad, but we're not complaining.

Hey, wait a minute.... Obama's on a trip to a 3rd world country! MSNBC's even showing the speech live! ...Wait a minute, I recall O'Reilly talking about McCain's trip to the same country last week... heh. This is a prime example of media bias. MSNBC's far left while Fox News hangs around as the only large right-wing news source. I'd say that CNN is pretty neutral, though I see a bit more left than right when Glen Beck isn't on. Seriously, if we don't watch the speeches in their entirety, we'll become victim of paraphrased, filtered information. A humerous example of this can be found here.

Oh, here's a prime example of media exaggeration. The iPhone. Apple announces it, the crowd goes wild, they sell millions. Then Apple announces the iPhone 3G. The crowd goes wild. 1 million gets sold in about 2 days [by the way, the sudden boost in sales was because Apple started selling the iPhone 3G in over 20 other countries]. But wait a minute... the Nokia N800 was launched about half a year earlier, and that didn't get on the news. Then Nokia brought out the N810, and still no media coverage. And whatever happened to all of the touch screen phones that HTC has manufactured over the last year or so? Sure, they sell like hotcakes, but it's not like any non-geek recognizes them. Pft, I'd be suprised if you, the reader, knew why the Samsung Omnia and HTC Touch Diamond [as well as the just-released Touch Pro and upcomming Touch HD] beats the iPhone in just about every aspect.

My closing statement is this: Read up before you speak up. Check the specs, the Wiki articles, and the C-SPAN press releases.

Why the Corvette ZHZ is the perfect car...for posers!

Aaaahhhh, what is up with some people. Anyways people, I was at church with my girl and then I stopped, when out of my eye I spotted a brand new 2008 Corvette. (I know I know, big deal, but you have to realize that people at this church aren't that well off). Going on with the story, it seemed like the whole neighborhood turned out to see the ZHZ edition of the Corvette. Did I forget to mention that the whole church turned ghetto in a hot minute!! Everybody was riding the Corvette and it was kinda cool at first but then I knew that the girl who had the Corvette was just putting on a show. Admittedley, I was kind of jealous, but still you shouldn't be flashing at church. So I went to the Internet just to find out how much one of these babies cost. Price tag : 200 something dollars a day at Hertz. Oh, and heres the kicker! The car is only made for Hertz! She lied and told everybody that it was hers and that she was raking in the dough. Ha!

Hertz currently rents this car for the perfect getaway, but I guess people have other uses in mind. I don't blame them. The Corvette ZHZ is beautiful and it has a horsepower of 436, but it's just wrong to show it off at the house of the Lord. Can I get an Amen.

On a totally different note I really like Lollipop... the remix. The original is cool but adding Kanye just killed the verse. Next iPod commercial anyone? Doubt it, since iPod seems to focus on bands such as U2 and Coldplay. Curse you, Steve Jobs!!!

This entry was brought to you by Guest Blogger iPapi

What I desire in a portable media player [PMP]

As you can see in my blog posts, I have a pretty decent number of gripes about media players like the iPod touch, SanDisk Sansa, and Creative ZEN. They all have their strengths, but the weaknesses are massive to me. So in case there's a product researcher, Zune designer, or just a curious mind out there looking for what a computer hacking graphic designer sees to be the perfect PMP, I'm making this blog post just for you.

Let's start with the ideal size. Some are as small as Hillary's chances of getting elected [@] while others are as big as the wallpapers I make [@]. I think the perfect PMP should be in the cutting edge of mediocrity [for the record, I got that phrase from The King of Queens]. My recomended size would be somewhere in between this sizeasy comparison. But keeping in mind that compact PMPs are also a necessity to human survival, here's my idea of what a small PMP should look like: [@]

Everybody loves having lots of space on their media player! Personally, I don't settle for a capacity that I can get with a $25 USB drive, such as my 4GB flash drive. And as of late, I've been seeing 8GBs going for $30, so I've been raising standards. I'd go for something around 16GB if it's going to be on the smaller, more portable size, and at least 30-40GB if it's going to be a full-sized PMP such as the iPod touch and Zune 30. To clarify, large/full-sized PMPs should use hard disk storage instead of flash. Hard disk is faster with a higher capacity, as well as being very cost effective. Sure, flash memory is much safer and more durrable, but I'm not going to be dropping my PMP from a 2 story building. Hey, even if I do, chances are that the screen is going to break over the drive being ruined (and supposing that the drive does die, I still make monthly backups of my portable sorage devices).

Moving on, let's talk about the screen. To me, the screen's size doesn't matter nearly as much as the resolution. The higher the pixel density, the better. So without stating any screen size, I'll go on and state that a small media player should have a QVGA screen (240x320 pixels). For large PMPs, QVGA also works fine, though I'll much prefer an WVGA-loaded (600x420) PMP if available.

As for other "bonus" features, I guess I wouldn't mind a touch screen (still not a big fan of them, though). Radio would be nice if I can't find anything good in my playlist. Mass storage would be awesome. WiFi would be equally awesome. Having an SD or CF slot would be one of the most important features in any media player to me. I hate being limmited to manufacturers specs (which is the root of my hate for Apple), which also brings me to the desire for a skinnable interface, or at least a customizable background image.

Supposing that someone actually made a full-sized media player to the specs I want, it would cost about $300-350, though I find the ideal price for a large PMP is from $100-300. As for small PMPs, I'll go wtih $75-150; anything more is outrageous.

The closest thing to the ideal large PMP to me would be the Zune 80. The size is decent, it has 80GB space, a QVGA screen (though it should be WVGA for the screen dimensions), radio, WiFi, decent UI, among other features like free etching, all for $250 direct from manufacturer [$240 at Newegg; $200 at craigslist], . Unfortunately, the Zune 80 lacks the expansion slot (among a few minor features) to be perfect. The iPod touch has most of this, though only holds a max 32GB for $430 [the lowest price I found on the Interwebs] and is just as closed up as the Zune.

As for small PMPs, I can't bring you a verdict. I'm yet to see a defiatively great one, though I wouldn't mind if Apple took a gander at this iPod mini concept ;D