Digital Rants

Happy 2009. May this year be a better year than last for you guys.

May the southern hemisphere summer end.. It's hot hot hot!!

No, this is not a advertorial about LG products. I hate this brand because their support has absolutely no clue on the very products they sell.

Sure I have a huge mortgage. But chances are I'd be dead before I pay it off, so why worry about it? In the meantime every thing else is good, and I have never been better off. Things this rosy wouldn't last forever, but whatever happens I have at least 6 months of buffer.

I have every materialistic item that I need, and things I don't really need too. Everyone around me is healthy (AFAIK, touch wood). Maybe it's the relaxing Australian life style, but it's good to sit down and just ponder: "Man, life's good!". I hope this last.

Now, all I need is fish tank. I always want a indoor tank and outdoor pool. But tanks are kind of expensive in Perth and 2nd hand ones are hard to find and difficult to transport. For now this is a pipe dream. But until last month a big TV was a pipe dream also. Just need to be patient and keep a eye out, opportunities are out there for me to find and strike.

2008 is ending, 2009 will be upon us soon. 2008 is a good year (for me at least), and I hope everybody else is happy with the year as well!

Esperance has the best looking beaches in WA if not the world. Blue water and white sands, and the sharks! if you ever come to WA, you need to give yourself a break and drive down there, it's life changing, .

Will post pics soon, man there seems to be a red hot pixel, not sure how/when/why that develops. ;(

Photo processing will take some time - over 900 photos and 11.2GB... I really need a computer with faster I/O and beefier CPU. Maybe next year?
On the topic of equipment, using my mobile phone and a GPS dongle is such a nightmare as there are memory and battery issues. The time of the phone also is not synced with the time on the camera, and western daylight savings isn't making things any easier for me.

But lesson learnt, difficulties arise when you always want to do things on the cheap. On the bright side, I will have a joy untangling all the geo data mess.

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90+ of traffic to my sites are still about vmware 2.0 problems. All it takes is for VMWare to release a quick release update to fix two small and glaring problems. Pretty sure the solutions are already in their community forums, support pages. But goolging is still a good lazyman's way.

A big part of me want VMWare to stay as it is, if not I will get virtually no hits from the Internet at all.

Note to self, I need to keep my horizontals straight whilst taking pictures. 99% of the pictures I took are off axis, and it really destroys the pictures.

Need to constantly remind myself (will probably use the 3 mid focus points as my leveler. Need to constantly remind myself of the horizontal everytime I think a picture.

Until Wikipedia I have no idea what a Boxing Day is.

But the day is here, it's a public holiday so it's worth all the celebrations we can give. Enjoy!

I was so sceptical with BD and I apologise for it.. Watched Casino Royal (just a DD TrueHD track) and it's so amazing!

Don't really know which is my favourite yet - TDK or CR, but at least CR is pure fun and not as disturbing.

Sure my setup is not the greatest, and I have no desire to upgrade it, but man if this sounds good on what I have, it will simply be amazing when played back on a dedicated setup!!

One scene that is rather funny is when Bond breaks into M's apartment and waits for her. You can clearly hear a tick-tocking sound in the background of what appears to be a grand father clock. 2/3 into the sequence and you still can hear it clearly (did it ever go out of sync?). Then in the last 1/3 of the scene, the tick-tocks disappeared. Not sure if it's gone or my audio system is not good enough to pick it up. I cannot hear the sounds of firewood in that scene either (but come to think of it, I'm not sure if there ever was a real fireplace).

The clarity provides by BD is welcoming (DVD although acceptable tends to be a bit soft and lacks the details). Although to be honest I don't think I enjoy seeing Bond's wrinkles or Vesper dotted forehead (will DNR reduce these I wonder). But there may be tons of PQ artefacts, I don't have the skills to nit pick. I simply love the PQ.

It took me 12 titles to like BD (thanks to a free gift voucher), so it's a hit rate of 1/6. Not that fantastic, but I hope future releases will be better.

Edit: Just found out about the DRC bug, maybe that's the reason why I don't like it. Need to rewatch all the movies again...

Merry Christmas, everybody!

The Rudd handout is actually working?

...
The economic downturn has not dented pre-Christmas sales with consumers across Australia spending a record $38 billion.

The peak industry body said on Wednesday that sales were up on last year's record by four per cent.

NSW consumers were the biggest spenders, splurging around $12 billion, followed by Victorians at $9 billion and Queenslanders at $8 billion.
...

The boffins are right and I am just an armchair critic that knows nothing. With spending this fantastic, who cares about any potential hangover next year? Great stuff.

"I can say the hottest items on Christmas lists for kids this year have been Wii Consoles, Nintendo DS, Elmo Live, Pirates of the Caribbean merchandise, Transformers and Baby Born," said Mr Driscoll.

Wii still as popular as ever ...