On Speaking

Wow. That was a 'profound' title. However, I just got out of speech class so my blood pressure is spiked..or it was about ten minutes ago and it's been slowly decompressing. Today we got in what they call 'impromptu speeches.' Here was the format: Think of a one-sentence topic that matches the following sentence of "If you could ________." Then hand your idea in and then grab a different one from the bag.

That's about as impromptu as I could think of. When I walked in, I thought, "Huh, I'm going to do something like 'If you could do any extreme sport, what would it be,' and my answer would be 'I would go in a hot-air balloon' and then tell them of how I turned my dad down when he offered to get me on the Remax balloon when I was four." But then she said we were going to trade topics so I really stressed out. Turns out my question was "If you could buy anything what would it be?"

Now I don't want to get religious on materialism, but I chose an Alienware computer. Did I mention those here a few years ago? I don't know. Of course, a house would be my FIRST choice, but what's there to talk on on buying a house that will take up three minutes worth of talking? So I talked about the Alienware computer and why I wanted to buy it.

Okay. Rant. I am not one to get up in front of people and talk or to jump up and say, "Now everybody pay attention to me because it's my turn to talk." I hate the spotlight and I'd rather disappear into a corner and enjoy listening to everybody else. So speech class is a big bleh thing. But I have to do it in order to get my piece of paper.

Anyhow...that reminds me. I wanted to research the Alienware and see what was the norm for super-fast computers. I know the standard is probably superfast compared to what I'm working on right now, but I'm sure Alienware is developing way beyond that like they do, so I want to see what that is.

M11x Desktop starting at $1200....ouch. That's a big fat no right off the bat.

But I'll go for the top-end M11x at $4000:
Intel Core I7 960 - 3.2GHz, 8MB Cache - This is the microprocessor....and that is pretty fast.
Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon HD 5870 CrossfireX - Video Card...None of this makes any sense except for the 1GB VRAM. And I'm not sure how much better that is than everything else.
6GB DDR3 1600MHz (3x 2GB) - This is -regular- RAM. 6GB is pretty big. About....12 times bigger than what I'm running.
1.2TB Raid - Hard Drive. Raid is SUPER cool but if you use the Raid technology (with backup), you only actually USE part of what's there, so this would be more like 1TB worth of usable space, which is still really good, especially for a primary hard drive
24X CD/+-DVDRW Burner - Fairly standard..okay.

10-31-09

So I felt like making a comment. I've finally noticed that the rest of the family is getting into this whole 'blagging' thing also. Of course, my dad's had one for years, but he never did anything for it until recently when my sister got one also. Seems they're finally getting out there..finally.

Anyhow, I've nothing new to report except that my phone bugged out a few days ago. If you may remember I have an LG Voyager. And it's from Verizon, so all the software including music and things is all Verizon proprietary. This is NOT a good thing, as people have complained about VZNavigator (Verizon's GPS software). Mostly they'll complain about things like, "They disabled the built-in GPS so you'd be forced to pay for their OWN software which is super-horrible quality compared to EVERYTHING else. Well, true to the facts, I'm here to report that Verizon's music player "VCast" is no better.

Reasons I hate VCast:

1) The so-called 'required' installation of Rhapsody to make it work to full capacity (although I got it to work perfectly with Winamp). I've had almost maulware-like performance from Rhapsody/Real Player in the past and won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

2) Meta tag readability is extremely limited. There is absolutely no way to navigate the main menu where everything is laid out according to artist, album, genre, title and whatever else. Actually, my big hang-up is that they've split out each of these items into subsequent sub-menus. If you want to search on artist, they'll list everything in alphabetical order to artist and split each of those items into album categories. Same with album. If you go into one album, then they'll recategorize/group songs there with the artist. This is especially bad when you have things like compilations such as my music history class 6-cd set where each track is by a different composer in a different time period. Of course, I can't just say "Various artists" in the album artist tag and then expect the player to sort by THAT instead of regular artist. They ONLY scan the track, album, artist, title and genre. That's IT. No album artist (kills the compilation ability) and nothing else.

3) Menus change with EVERY screen. If you go into the album sub-menu of the artist listing, the menu is different than that of the song submenu of the album submenu of the artist listing. Figure.

4) The playlist capability (which seems to be my only real workable solution to the compilation problem) is horrible. To build a playlist in-program, you must first create the playlist and then go into a track listing of ALL songs (unsorted by album) and select each one and then OK out. Or you can go into a track listing and Menu/Add to Playlist/Select Playlist. This is a one-at-a-time deal though.

5) Meta-editing within Winamp is impossible for songs already on the phone.

6) Reset and Rescan will erase playlists.

Solutions to the VCast Problems:

1) Rhapsody is bad - Work with Winamp. I tried iTunes, but I couldn't find the menu item to pull in non-iPod devices. Also iTunes is very processor heavy so I only like using it for podcasts.

2) Menus don't read enough meta-data and are unnavigable - Hope LG releases their app-store and has a better player someday.

3) Menus change with every screen - See #2

4) Playlist creation - Winamp will work just fine. Just use their Media Library Playlist tool. Of course, Winamp for some reason adds a .pl extension to the playlist NAME which will show up in the player, but it's a small price to pay for quick creation of them.

5) The only solution I've found (which still doesn't work) is to delete the selected songs off of the phone, edit the originals in Winamp and re-copy them over. But don't expect it to work. I had three or four songs that were missing information (showed up as 'Unknown Album' and such) and when I tried this, they STILL showed up as Unknown Album. Figure that out.

6) Don't do a reset. Ever.

Okay. I'm done ranting. I think. Besides, there are better things to talk about than Verizon's software problems. It's like getting Linux and Windows together to argue about...stuff. Everything. They'll argue about ANYTHING.

Anything else I need to mention? Nah. We got snowed in for a day which messed up my class schedule, but was really fun because we didn't go out the entire day. And yesterday I finally got to the library to look for Dr. Who videos. Now DON'T get me started on BBC and their regional restrictions. No no no..I won't say how much I hate that, because I complained enough already. Besides, I found a video of the Easter Special 2009 and I'm REALLY excited!! Of course, why would I tell anybody where it is? Since BBC's big on cracking down on non-regional copying (and since some BU citizens are nice enough to post the videos on other sites 'for those living outside the Great Britain area' I won't rat on them. I'm all for them. We have things like Mr. Bean and OLD Dr. Who on Channel 6 (or we did up until the big Digital TV schism), so why not the NEW Dr. Who? It's much cooler anyway.

Speaking of Dr. Who, I did research yesterday and it said that they didn't have an official 2009 season, like they were expecting. Instead they did (or will do) 3 David Tennant specials before 2010 when they'll switch over to the....what was it? Chris Smith? Mike Smith? Whatever his name is. The one new kid - Doctor 11 in 2010. The three specials of 2009 are Easter (already out), Nov 11 and Dec 25. Of course, I did NOT see the Christmas 2008 special, and I was really disappointed. But I saw the first half of the Easter 2009 special and it's not yet November 11, so I'm almost fully up-to-date. And I'm really really excited, because when Gregory Smith or whatever his name is takes over as Doctor 11, I'm planning on bowing out maybe. I can't stand TOO young of a Doctor. Well, except that they have his daughter coming back (the one created by his hand in 2008). And THAT was a really cool idea.

Am I done yet, you're asking. Well, I suppose. Besides, I just heard something about a hair-cut. Oh boy. And I got one like three weeks ago and hardly have any to grow back. Besides, it's winter and the more you have, the warmer your head, right?

So I'm done. Take care!!

Up2Date

Heading down to Mississippi in a day (actually, more like 18 hours) to visit friends. Everyone thinks we're crazy, going at a time like this, when it's all hot and stuff, but we felt we needed to get it in before school started. Actually, it's so close to that deadline that they were planning to start school right in the middle of our trip, before we had planned it of course. Well, they've probably rethought, so we'll have a great time seeing them anyway.

On another note, ever heard of Pivot Stickfigure Animator? Me neither, until last week when I saw a couple Youtube videos showing stickmen running around. Apparently, it's a program entirely dedicated to animating stick-men!! Pretty neat-o. I sure like it. It's a bit tough to get good at though. I've gotten a couple decent videos out of it, as they show silouettes of the previous frame. Anyway, here's the link: http://www.geocities.com/peter_bone_uk/pivot.html. Personally, I'd go for the 1.3 Beta version, as samples you find on the web are not always compatible with the regular one. However, the beta has a stupid warning every time you open the program which is a text file warning you of how this program might not work because it's a beta. Well, I think that right there is a beta bug that can use some fixing. Put a "Don't show this again" checkbox or something.

School

I started my spring 2008 semester today. And I'm position to tackle it.

This semester I'm taking Calculus 3, Physics 2, and Robotics. And after that I'll have just 6 or 7 hours left for my AS degree.