Manifesto Declaration Number…

Life has been busy… well namely work. As a developer, main job is to create new features and fix bugs. But when things break in the live product, customer expect the problem to be fixed… of course ASAP. We try our best ^_^.
We run a very big operation under startup-like conditions… its fairly interesting. The chaos that ensues when things break is rather nice from the day-in-day-out tasks.

In my spare time, recently I’ve been playing Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten on PS3. This one is pretty awesome and definitely meets my expectations for the series… it trolls me at every turn. If you have played any of the other 3 Disgaea games, you know what I’m talking about. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at this trailer… it speaks for itself…. dood o.0



I’ll admit, the Disgaea genre isn’t for everyone, it is a “tactical RPG”… meaning it is turn-based and you move across grids like in chess (ie. Final Fantasty Tactics). There are a lot of intricacies to the game that makes it difficult to master, but very rewarding. I won’t go into details… but they don’t call a place the “Land of Carnage” for nothing…

I’ve already played through the game once and did most of the post-game tasks. Even in post-game I kept getting trolled… damn you Pringer X!
I’m on my many other storyline playthroughs to get the other endings… must get as many as I can before I start Batman: Arkham City…! I have it pre-ordered, so I’m excited to pick it up 🙂

Also I’m running Ubuntu 11.10: Oneiric Ocelot now on my DV6 Laptop (the one I got a while back). I tried upgrading from Natty, but that didn’t work out that well… So I did a clean install over it. My laptop hasn’t crashed/locked-up or anything yet, so I guess that’s a good thing. Only downside thus far is that there’s still no hybrid graphics support… so my cooling fan is constantly on. And also, still can’t dim brightness… my poor laptop battery life T_T.

I’m waiting for the Galaxy Nexus to be released… I’m thinking about getting a new phone. My current phone is the Nexus One. It has served me well for ~2 years… except I’ve ran out of internal space. Nexus One’s internal capacity is about 300MB… that’s nothing!! I had to cut back on some apps since current apps are just growing in size due to updates. We’ll see if I get the Galaxy Nexus… it feels too soon to get a new phone. We shall see…

Before HP can sell their PC business…

Ironically, I bought a HP laptop days before the announcement that they were planning to spinoff their PC business….

Anyways, new laptop = new shiny 🙂

I customized up from the baseline dv6t Select edition (this link might be broken sometime in the future…)


Here is the hardware spec summary of what I got for $1400ish (including tax):

• 15.6″ Full HD screen (1920 x 1080)
• 2nd gen Intel Dual Core i5 2.3GHz
• 2GB Radeon HD 6770M
• 6GB DDR System Mem
• 802.1 b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth
• Blue-ray player/DVD burner
• Webcam, microphone, Fingerprint reader
• 160GB SSD (1/3 of the price right here!)

Here are some pictures I took:

My impressions:

• Size – not too big that I can’t hold it in one hand… and by no means is it’s too small that it has no presence physical.
• Weight – I bought it with standard battery size, so it’s weight isn’t bad at all. I can carry it around in one hand like school notebook.
• Noise – the SSD makes it nice and quiet (more on the SSD in a later blog).
• Heat – it definitely produces heat… but doesn’t burn my lap.
• Touchpad – very smooth and almost makes it feel like the regular case… but I don’t see a problem with that, I’ve handled worse touchpads. The touchpad also has separate buttons for left/right-click, which is definitely a plus. (I’ve seen laptops which put the touchpad and mouse clicks all together as if it was one button… I definitely didn’t like how those were. I’m glad my laptop’s touchpad isn’t like that)
• Keyboard – it has a full size keyboard, which I find to be a plus. I like having the numpad because sometimes I’m just typing numbers, and this makes it easier to do so
• Ports – notable things: HDMI, 4 USB ports, 2 headphone jacks. I’m definitely not complaining
• Extras – webcam, mic, fingerprint reader… those all seem very standard nowadays 🙂
• Misc. – I like how the screen goes all the way down…. not sure why, but it makes me happy

Overall I like what this machine is giving me… But it makes me sad that HP isn’t planning to continue this part of their business. One thing I noticed since the last time I bought a HP laptop is that the AC connector is a lot fatter now than before… probably because laptops these days use a lot of power.

If I had to do anything different.. I would buy my own SSD and install it myself instead of customizing the laptop with a SSD.

And I’ll shameless advertise/suggest…: buy a HP machine while you still can!!!

I’ve already formatted the hard drive and installed Ubuntu (11.04)… and am having many adventures along the way.

But that is a tale for another time…

The playing field is in the Cloud

If you haven’t heard HP has decided to spin off their PC business and in process of acquiring a enterprise software company (Autonomy). HP’s official press release can be found here and some Wall Street Journal article here.

Okay, why should we care?

HP has been known for being the world’s largest PC maker…. and now they are calling it quits in the business they are most well-known for. Does HP know something we don’t about the future? Although probably by trying to get into the Tablet War with their “failed” HP TouchPad, most likely caused most of their troubles.

If HP sells their PC business, Dell will become number one in this area… And I deeply despise Dell computers. Their performance seem inadequate for my tastes. HP computers on the other hand, I love them! My first laptop was an HP laptop and I never had problems with it. (Then after 5 years I let my sister borrow it and then it started not working properly…)  I hope HP continues with their Printers business.

Steve Jobs earlier this year in March said we are shifting to a Post-PC era. I’m not sure what this Post-PC era is, but it seems like HP is making a transition into it. I’m pretty sure this new era doesn’t mean there won’t be PCs… I think its more of a shift in focus for the industry and consumer. People no longer need to be stationary, they can be mobile with the rise of Smartphones and Tablets. I believe the Cloud is still in its infancy and still has a ways until adulthood.

On top of the Cloud are Cloud services such as Dropbox, Grooveshark, and Google Docs. Mobile devices are mainly suited for these applications as they currently don’t store a lot of data on themselves locally. There’s definitely a lot of untapped potential for future Cloud Services. Only time will tell what this era will be like… Although with the computing industry, great leaps and bounds happen in very short periods of time.

I think the best thing someone can do to get ahead of the game is to buy some clever/catchy domains names. I’m sure either you can sell them off or use them for yourself at a later date.

The Happenings in Brrr-ruary

The past month has been interesting overall. There were a lot of “mini-episodes” throughout February, so I guess March would be a good time to reflect back on them. Let’s start off with a bit of work-life.

As of last Monday, I’ve been working for 3 months (woohoo!). I feel pretty accomplished… to my knowledge I haven’t gotten anyone mad yet and I’ve been meeting deadlines =). I work at a software company so there’s hardly any customer interactions (at best a phone conference… but even then I’m not usually involved in those). I’ve gotten into the habit of dressing nicely for Monday and Tuesday, then dressing casually for the rest of the week. Although some Tuesdays I find myself dressing casually too….

I think one of the best perks of being a software engineer is the dress code; which is pretty much don’t dress offensively. Of course, what’s offensive is very subjective… but you get the idea, (don’t piss anyone off and you’re good). I’m definitely the most comfortable when I dress casually. Nice clothing is comfortable too but it’s definitely not my choice of wardrobe when I program (nude/in-my-underwear is also not my choice of wardrobe…).

I definitely still don’t completely understand the product we are selling… but I understand that our product is very large so it will take some time to truly understand it completely. So for now I just do what I’m told and ask simple questions along the way. Besides, knowing more just means I’m prone to more work which is definitely a no-no =P.

Let’s see at home I’ve acquired Super Mario Galaxy 2 (SMG2) for the Wii. Overall it’s an enjoyable game. I’ve played the first one and was very happy with that game. And so far with SMG2, I’ve gotten the first 120 Stars and am working on the 2nd play through (this isn’t a spoiler, every Super Mario game you get the first 120 Stars then you can do a “New Game+” type of thing). SMG2 has the same mechanics as SMG1, which is good; why change something that isn’t broken =P. Along with the SMG1 mechanics; Yoshi, Yoshi powerups, and additional Mario powerups have been introduced. Overall the game is solid, definitely worth playing and getting, but I recommend the first one (SMG1) over SMG2.

• First and foremost Rosalina > Lubba. That fat purple Luma that I have to see everytime I want to go into a level… ….many Lumas have suffered a painful end during my first play through.
• Secondly the bosses in SMG2 are weaksauce and bring nothing new. The only fight I thought was interesting was World 5’s Castle boss fight (I won’t spoil it).
• Thirdly/Lastly traversing the Overworld was too linearly. Okay, in SMG1 traversing the Overworld took a good amount of time and sometimes got tediious. I feel in SMG2 they over-simplified it… maybe I’m being too critical here but at least in Super Mario World for SNES there were secret warp pipes and lots of hidden levels that could merit a second play through.

The Wii I’m playing it on started crapping out randomly while I was on my second play through, hopefully it’ll fix itself so I can finish that task (probably take me a good 5-6 nights to finish).

Also I’m considering getting Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga for PC (my Desktop is much more reliable than the Wii at this point). I played it on Wii a few spring breaks ago, only got through Episode 1 and 2, and recall enjoying it. I know it’s an old game and targeted towards a younger audience but who can say no to Legos?

So I have a Nexus One (the original Google phone), and recently I got the OTA from Froyo (Android 2.2) to Gingerbread (Android 2.3) update. Most noticeable difference: color scheme. To sum it up, everything is smaller and on a black background. My co-worker (who has a Nexus S) says the black background is because lighting up a black pixel the least energy intensive. This is probably true for the Nexus S… but I’m not sure for other phones.

Also there are lots of UI tweaks making things more refined and sharper, so it’s a lot prettier to look at. I can’t comment on the Android Keyboard change because I use the Swype Keyboard. And I don’t play games on my phone (because why do that when I can do that on a desktop/laptop), so I can’t comment on the improved game engine. I can’t comment on any speed improvement because with Froyo I already got a “400%” speed increase on my 1GHz processor phone (aka my phone was already lightning fast). Almost sounds like I’m not suited to make any comments on Gingerbread xD.

Although, the update has re-sparked my interest in mobile programming… notably for my Live Wallpaper app for Android 2.1 (Eclair). Last spring (Spring 2010) I developed a Live Wallpaper for my Nexus One which I called StarryNight. Here are some screenshots of my Live Wallpaper from my phone (with glimpses of Gingerbread):

Essentially stars will appear randomly in the background and comets will fly-by when you tap on the screen. Was a fun project but I was using the Canvas library for drawing… so shitty 2D images =/. I hope in my next revision I can use the OpenGL ES 2.0 library to make it prettier and more memory efficient (right now when there’s too many comets the background starts lagging). Of course (if I read correctly) using OpenGL ES 2.0 means my Live Wallpaper will only be suited for Android 2.2+.

This app was just a fun side project so I haven’t added it to the Android Market (yet). If you’re interested in installing my Live Wallpaper, I’d be happy to pass along the .apk file. There are some errors that appear when I debug on my Nexus One… but no force closes that I can find (most likely memory leaks I failed to clean up, but hopefully I’ll fix that in this revision). Again, this is for Android 2.1+ that can use Live Wallpapers. I plan on releasing my second revision (with OpenGL ES 2.0) to the Android Market one day.

Hopefully I’ll have a nice personal Live Wallpaper that I can install on my Honeycomb tablet (once I get one…)

Colors of the Web: Chrome OS

My last post, I talked about the physical aspects of the Cr-48 at a first glance. Now that I’ve spent about a day with it, I have a lot to say. Let’s start with the first boot of Chrome OS.

Turning on the Cr-48	Connects to the internet via Wireless and/or 3G	Chrome's Terms of Service agreement
Getting the latest Chrome files	Sign in with a Google Account or as a Guest	Say "cheese"!
First time using Chrome screen	Pilot Program message	Let the games begin!

…

Well after playing around with it I can safely say it is basically a laptop with the only application being the Goole Chrome Browser. Although there are some differences between Chrome OS and Chrome Browser:

• There are Chrome OS specific apps – so far the only ones I’ve found are Scratchpad and Google Talk.
• The current Flash player on Chrome OS pretty much sucks – it works but the performance of the OS slows down easily and quickly as more Flash applications are running simultaneously. (ie. Pandora, Youtube, some Flash game, etc.)
• Screenshots goto your download folder-probably the only thing stored locally/temporarily on Chrome OS, screenshots.

If I find any more key differences I’ll be sure to update this list… Overall the Chrome OS experience is good and what I expected. The boot time is quick (5 seconds at most?), waking up from sleep is pretty instanetous as well, and I can connect to the web anywhere (it has the ability to connect to a 3G connection). Currently the 3G is only with Verizon, which will definitely change over time.

About that 3G connection…

Google has “thrown in” a free 100MB/month data plan for 2 years. You just have to signup for it (put credit card and billing information) and then you’re good to go. “How nice of them!” some would say, but if you are like me you spend a lot of you time on the internet reading articles, watching videos, IMing, and video chatting. All of that requires a lot of data so this 100MB/month plan won’t be enough. Click here to use Verizon’s Data Usage calculator. Of course you can upgrade this plan for a fee(1 day unlimited data for $10, 1 month 1GB data for $20, 1 month 3GB data for $35, 1 month 5GB data fo $50). …Or you can just use whatever free Wireless connection you can find ^_^.

Being an OS designed for the web, say ‘goodbye’ to your Desktop applications, they don’t work in Chrome OS. But not all is lost; nowadays services are being replicated/moved onto the Web anyways. So you just need to find the Web app version of your favorite Desktop app.

An important function of Chrome OS to know is the Chrome Web Store, where you can get Themes, Extensions, and Apps. These add-ons are available to both the Chrome Browser and Chrome OS. Although some will only work in one and not the other. (Themes and Extension work the same way as they do in Firefox.)

Themes will change the general look of Chrome. Extensions are plugins that enhance your Chrome experience (Ad-blockers, screenshot croppers, etc.).

Apps are a little different. The Apps you’ve “installed” will be displayed on a New Tab window.

Initially you may think that they separate applications that will run on their own… but this is Chrome OS, everything is on the web. In my findings, 99% of these apps are just links to websites that use Flash (web apps). So “installing” an App is basically creating pinned Bookmark on the New Tab screen. I feel these super-inflated Bookmarks defeat the purpose of regular Bookmarks. The only exception I’ve found to Apps are Scratchpad and Google Talk. These two Apps are small popup windows that appear at the bottom right of your screen.

Hopefully Apps will change from being links to websites and become more like Scratchpad and Google Talk.

Another important function of Chrome OS are the keyboard shortcuts. With limited keys on your keyboard and only 1 USB port, knowing the keyboard shortcuts will be most helpful.

Keyboard shortcuts help window toggled on with Ctrl+Alt+?	Holding down Ctrl will display all shortcuts with Ctrl	Holding down Alt will display all shortcuts with Alt
Holding down Shift will display all shortcuts with Shift	Holding down Ctrl+Alt will display all shortcuts with Ctrl+Alt	Holding down Ctrl+Shift will display all shortcuts with Ctrl+Shift

Holding down Alt+Shift will display all shortcuts with Alt+Shift

Holding down Ctrl+Alt+Shift will display all shortcuts with Ctrl+Alt+Shift

My only complaint is that the keys aren’t rebindable. Of course this is all a work in progress so hopefully that will change. Also if you’ve heard, the Caps Lock button has been replaced with a Search button. The Search button pretty much opens a New Tab window, pretty handy instead of using the Ctrl+T shortcut in my opinion. You can change the Search button to behave as Caps Lock through settings. (Why change it to Caps Lock when you can hold down Shift?)

After taking a good run with the software, here are my thoughts of the hardware:

• low Youtube quality- max quality is 480p, no HD quality available. I’m pretty sure the Cr-48 can handle HD quality so this will probably change in the future.
• no Ethernet port – if you aren’t paying for a data plan and don’t have wireless access, you are pretty screwed. Sure you can do some offline note-jotting with Scratchpad, but really you can’t do anything.
• tough to use Touchpad – I think people would call this a “clickpad”. In short, the touchpad is oversensitive (even when adjusting it in sensitivity to the lowest). Also it’s a little too wide, as wide as the Spacebar button. I rest my hands on my laptop so my hands cover the edges of the touchpad most of the time. For instances, sometimes when I’m typing, it detects the touch of my hands as a click and moves my cursor elsewhere.
• limited Keyboard buttons – you got to know your keyboard shortcuts. some keys are no longer present (Home, End, Insert, Delete, etc.) the keyboard shortcuts are the ABCs of using Chrome OS like a pro
• no easy way to adjust power settings – I want to listen to music but close my Cr-48… but it auto-sleeps whenever I close it. I haven’t found an easy way to adjust this yet.
• no Spinning disk – “it’s quiet… too quiet “. I’ve heard that there’s a SSD inside that houses the OS, which would explain the lack of sound/a spinning disk. Makes sense to use a SSD for Chrome OS as changes to OS files occur only from time-to-time.
• one small fan – I’m sure there’s a fan inside otherwise the Cr-48 would overheat (like all machines). Plus there are air output from the bottom and leftside of the Cr-48. I can’t hear the fan so the only thing I hear is my typing.

Overall I’m quite impressed with this netbook-like laptop. As far as a proof of concept goes, the Cr-48 with Chrome OS passes. In my opinion, this machine is definitely usable for casual internet usage. There’s definitely a more that needs to be done before people will return to buying a machine like this. I feel Chrome OS is designed as a netbook OS, which is fine. But to sum up my thoughts of current netbooks (and I’m sure others can agree) is that netbooks fail (based on things like performance, usability). Maybe Chrome OS will change the netbook paradigm for the better… or maybe it will change the standard laptop market.

I look forward to the future developments of Chrome OS. Until then, I’ll play around in Developer Mode…

Code Name: Cr-48

Yesterday I came home to another mysterious package. I haven’t ordered anything online recently, so I was very confused. To my amusement I found a box in a box. (The box below was inside another box that was less interesting.)

. Vermin powered Dual-Booster rocket inside?

Looks important

I still don’t know what this is until I open the box…

And behind Door#1 is....

… A Google Chrome OS laptop?! So it all comes together now. On Wednesday I got an email saying I’m eligible to receive a free Chrome notebook.

I applied online months ago to receive updates on Chrome OS.

The link took me to their Chrome OS Pilot Program signup. So I filled it out on the same day I got the email and thought nothing of it. I didn’t realize they were already ready to send me one.

If you don’t know what this is all about, in a nutshell Google has been in the works of developing an operating system called Chrome OS. What makes this different to other OS’s is that it is designed to get you on the Web faster. Here is a video of how Google explains it:

So this pilot program is so people can test the OS and give feedback. They created this extremely lightweight laptop called the Cr-48 that is designed for Chrome OS.

Anyways, by now I bet plenty of people have posted their own unpackaging of the Cr-48… So I’ll just post pictures and my thoughts below. (All pictures are subject to poor room lightning since it was in the evening.)

NOTE This will just be my first impressions of the Cr-48’s physical hardware. I’ll do a followup post on my impressions of Chrome OS and Chrome OS+Cr-48.

Intel is challenging me to take the Cr-48 apart	Diagram of the Cr-48	A quick getting started guide
The items in the box	AC Adapter and Plug	Thin but big... and called Mario
Interesting paper material	A closer look... this looks very entertaining	This might be the first safety notice sheet I've read
What does it say on the back?	And there's more...!	Now I wish I had the FCC Rules
It's has a grippy feel	Battery takes up half the underside space	(Had to put my camera's flash on)
Looks like a Macbook keyboard...	Macbook-like touchpad	More Macbook-like features
Screen is about 10.5in wide...	... and 6.5in high.	Opens up to about a 135 degree angle
(Left to right) VGA port, fan opening(?), left speaker	(Left to right) right speaker, SD slot, headphone jack, USB port, AC plug	They are so thin o.0

0.5in for the bottom, 0.25in for the screen, 0.75in total thick

The light is orange when charging

Here are my first impressions of the physical aspects on the Cr-48:

• Reminds me of a Macbook – for better or worse. The Macbook’s physical design is very slick and simple compared to your conventional Windows laptop. The Cr-48 is very light (~4lb with the battery in), making it a very portable device.
• External ports and no CD drive – there’s not many external ports. Not having lots of external ports and lack of an optical drive is alien to me just because I’m so use to it. Although considering the design of Chrome OS, it makes sense that there is so little on the Cr-48.
• Mario battery – the battery is thin and covers lots of surface area. It doesn’t stick out which keeps the laptop thin. My only worry is that the battery’s capacity isn’t large enough. I’ll have to do some tests on that before coming to a firm conclusion. UPDATE: Through my usage I estimate 7-8hrs of battery life (I was testing just listening to music from Pandora.com)
• AC Adapter – the part that plugs into the Cr-48 is heavy-duty. When plugged in, it doesn’t feel secure. I doubt it’ll fall out
• No Ethernet port – only wireless?! Makes sense for the design of Chrome OS. Hopefully the wireless doesn’t fail.

Overall the Cr-48 is pretty much a netbook. So I think its a good fit for what Chrome OS is designed for. I must admit the Safety Notice was a good read, definitely worth reading. In my next post I’ll focus on Chrome OS, which will also include my thoughts of Chrome OS running on the Cr-48. Click here to learn more about Google Chrome OS. Stay tuned!

Go Go Gadget GoFlex HD

I started work this week so things have been pretty busy (and somewhat tiring). As the end of the week and beginning of the month came around, I stumbled upon a lovely Amazon.com box at my front door. Lo and behold my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB HD came today!

So why did I buy this interesting piece of hardware? Well, my (now) old external HD is just not compatible with Windows 7. Plus I was running low on space on it (it’s a SimpleTech 320GB HD). So this year’s Black Friday, I splurged and bought the GoFlex.

Anyways as any happy geek would do, I proceeded to unwrap my new “toy”:
(Sorry for the terrible room lighting, I got home late so I had to turn on the lights)

Majority of the box has a grippy-feel to it. It is smooth where it shows the GoFlex.

6.5in (h) x 5in x 2.1in (d)

Again smooth on pictures of the GoFlex, grippy everywhere else.

Simple packaging	User Guide and Warranty Info
Shiny HD is shiny	Ah, there's the cable (and adapter)!

Cable and adapter connected	Cable and adapter detached	Front view
Top view	Side view	Bottom view

Putting it all together...	...and a little more...
Cable is 16.5in long. Adapter is 0.5in (h) x 0.45in x 0.4in (d)	When plugged in, the adapter's white lights turn on.

My first impressions after opening are:

• It is USB powered – no extra external plug needed. More cables can cause lots of troubles (tangled up cables, misplacing cables, replacing cables, etc.)
• Small size – fits in my hand. Doesn’t take up a lot of physical space. Very portable as advertised.
• 1TB – which is a good upgrade from anything below 500GB.
• Windows 7 compatible – its annoying when your HD goes dsyfunctional when plugging into a computer with a new OS.
• Separate Adapter for USB 2.0, USB 3.0, eSATA, FireWire – definitely a double-edged sword. On the plus side, Seagate just needs to make a new adapter whenever a new serial bus interface rolls around. On the other hand, you need to buy a new adapter for every cable type you want to use.
• I haven’t found any real negatives to this HD yet… so I guess thats another point for the GoFlex?

When you first plug it in (after your computer recognizes it), you will notice that it comes with a Registration and Backup program. I did the Registration (very straight-forward) and promptly ignored the Backup program. After that I reformatted it to regain 200MBs.

Right now I’m currently copying all my files from my old SimpleTech to my new GoFlex. This is about 300GBs from external->computer->external… So I’m not  expecting this copy to be done anytime soon (I’ll update when its done…*update below!*). I’ll probably convert my SimpleTech into another drive for my desktop… although, I’m not sure what to do with it after that…

As of now, I’m satisfied with my purchase. It was in the $110-$120 price range when I bought it from Amazon.com, although I’m sure it’ll go down since the holiday season is approaching rapidly. To learn more about Seagate’s GoFlex click here.

 

UPDATE: So my transfer between my old external->computer->new external completed. Started it at like 10pm on 12/2 and finished at 7pm on 12/5. That’s about 3 days…. 100GBs each day. I hope to never do that again…