orcs must die cheat

orcs must die cheat

orcs must die cheatengine

orcs must die cheat engine

orcs must die cheat codes

orcs must die trainer

orcs must die steam cheat

orcs must die steam cheatengine

orcs must die steam cheat engine

orcs must die steam cheat codes

orcs must die steam trainer

I finished playing the game Orcs must die, steam version. And I know that my gaming skillz aren't what they used to be. So I needed a little help. I was looking for orcs must die cheats or orcs must die traniers or orcs must die cheat codes in google but the only trainers I could found only worked with old versions, and as you know, steam can autopatch games.


So I decided to use a program called cheatengine. Cheat engine is a game utility that can search for values in ram that are used by the game. These values typically are used by the game to denote player attributes like money or health. Once you find it you can change the value. I'll teach you how to use cheatengine in Orcs must die steam.

1. Run orcs must die and cheat engine (in any order)
2. Start a level in orcs must die
3. Get the numerical value of the thing you wish to change. In this case its "money".
4. ALT-TAB out to cheat engine and click the button in the upper left corner, labeled #1 in the pic above
5. Select the running process which corresponds to the game. Its name will have the words orcs, must and die. And it will be an EXE file
6. Type the value in #2. Leave the Hex check box unchecked
7. Press button #30. The cheat engine will now look at the entire RAM used by the selected process and look for the value typed in #2
8. You will see lots of stuff listed in the space labeled #4
9. Go back to orcs must die and spend something. 
10. Remember the new amount of money that you have.
11. ALT-TAB back to cheat engine
12. Type in the new value in #2
13. press button labeled #5. Cheat engine will now look at all the stuff in window #4 and discard everything except those that have changed their values to tne new amount
14. The list in #4 will be pared down to three entires
15. double click on the 3rd entry
16. It will go to the space labeled #6
17. Change the value of #6. Shortcut is to select it and press ENTER
18. When you go back to orcs must die, your money will change
19. Optional, ALT-TAB out and close cheat engine if you don't need it anymore

Unfortunately, you have to do this again every time you restart a level or you start a new level

the end

Remove Stop censorship black box

Hi, I just changed the template of my blog, and while I was at it I rearranged some of the blog widgets and removed a couple. But actually this rearrangement was brought on by a problem.

You see, I joined the stop censorship campaign. So to join, one way was to add a widget that popped up an announcement. Another was to add a black box linking to the website over the name of my blog.

Simulated picture

Now this was only a temporary measure, even if I still support them. But now I couldnt remove the black box! I emailed them and they said the code to remove the box should be like this:

http://americancensorship.org/images/stop-censorship-small.png);background-position:center
center;background-repeat:no-repeat;"
href="http://americancensorship.org">

But I couldnt find this code anywhere in the blog design template. Honestly, I plain forgot where I pasted the code. Maybe I should have made it its own widget so it would be easy to see and remove. Fortunately, as a workaround, changing the template removed the problem.

the end

steam christmas 2011 sale

 

Today is day 1 of the steam christmas 2011 sale!

.

lenovo ideapad z470 review - part 3: 3D benchmarks

Back to part 2: CPU benchmarks

OK Welcome to part 3 of my informal review., 3D benchmarks. Again, all resolutions will be the native resolution. 1280x1024 for the desktop and 1366x768 for the laptop, unless it is unsupported. In that case I'll go down to 720p or 1280x720.

3dmark 2011, basic edition, "P" presets (1280x720)

desktop: P 1071
laptop: P 3358

Batman arkham asylum, steam. very high detail level, physx normal

desktop :
min = 22, max=  97, ave = 72
laptop run :
min = 22, max = 61, ave = 43

lets lower the phsx from normal to off

desktop: min = 41, max = 231, ave = 127
laptop: min = 21, max = 95, ave = 69

Devil may cry 4 benchmark. Desktop @ 1280x1024, laptop @ 1280x720. All settings at super high, AA off. The scores are FPS for scenes 1 through 4

desktop: 198, 182, 221, 133. Rank S
laptop: 85, 58, 109, 60. Rank A

Jianxia 3 benchmark. MSAA 4x, realtime shadow very high, post effect on. physx on

desktop: ave = 62, min = 6, max = 107
laptop: ave = 27, min = 7, max = 43


JX3 benchmark. physx off

desktop: ave = 36, min = 4, max = 109
laptop: ave = 19, min = 1, max = 39

JX3 benchmark. cuda accelerated animation bench. cuda on

desktop: ave = 32, min = 29, max = 34
laptop: ave = 13, min = 13, max = 16

JX3 benchmark. cuda accelerated animation bench. cuda off

desktop: ave = 12, min = 11, max = 20
laptop: ave = 11, min = 9, max = 17

Cinebench 64 bit 11.5 openGL test
desktop: 31.94fps
laptop: 21.41

Mafia 2, steam. AA off, shadow quality high, ambient occlusion on, anisotropic filtering 1x, geometry detail high, physx medium

desktop: 20.9, rank D
laptop: 20.7, rank D

with phsyx off

desktop: 44.7, rank C
laptop: 30.8, rank D

Just cause 2 steam, dark tower test. texture detail high, shadows high, AA off, anisotropic filtering 16x, water detail very high, objects detail very high, decals on, soft particles on, high res shadows on, SSAO high, point light specular on

desktop: 38.02fps
laptop: 24.28

Unigene heaven basic edition, dx 11. shaders high, tesselation normal, asnisotropy 4, AA off

desktop: 1432
laptop: 375

Lost planet 2 benchmark dx 11 test A. AA none, motion blur on, shadow detail high, texture detail high, rendering level high, DX 11 features high

desktop: 54.7 fps
laptop: 16.7 fps


Lost planet 2 benchmark dx 11 test B. AA none, motion blur on, shadow detail

high, texture detail high, rendering level high, DX 11 features high

desktop: 30.3 fps
laptop: 10.3 fps


So, except for one test, Mafia 2 physx on, the desktop pretty much wins. This is expected as games lean heavily on the GPU, and my desktop has a better GPU which wins over the faster CPU of the laptop. But this is not unexpected as this is not a real hardcore gaming laptop. But its quite capable nonetheless. I've played batman AA on it with physx off and the settings down one click and its very playable.

OK thats part 3. Next is part 4, hard drive benchmarks

the end

photobucket email fail

 

A fail email from photobucket to my hotmail account. They included a picture in their email hosted on their site and its down.


I submitted this to fail blog.

the end

smart bro power plugit types

Smart bro power plugit guide.

You've probably heard of smart bro's power plugit.

 Well, did you know there are at least 2 kinds of power plugit? The 2 modems are almost indistinguishable but the box has some changes. For simplicity's sake, I'll call them "new" and "old". Here's a picture of the new one.

And here's a pic of the old one.

From the front the distinguishing feature of the box is the sticker in the middle. In the old one, its square and white. And it says Php 1245 and 120 hours valid for 5 days. The new one has a round blue and yellow sticker that says Php 1245 and 240 hours valid for 10 days.

So now you know one advantage of the new one, you get more free surfing hours when you buy the new one.

Now lets look at the top of the box. Unfortunately, I dont have a shot of the old box.

With the old box you would have had a big green holographic sticker sealing the top flap of the box. Here you only have a small clear sticker sealing the box. It covers the right half of the right sticker, above the text November 2012. The sticker on the left is the important one. It gives the manufacturer or brand of the modem, ZTE. IT also gives the model, MF 190.

Here's a shot of the back of the new modem. Again you see the ZTE and MF 190 text. Again, the new and old modem are very similar visually so you would need to look for the model number. The old modem is model MF 180.

The software dashboard of both new and old are almost identical and to most users both are pretty much identical. However, there is one important difference.

ZTE MF180 USB Modem Details:

Transmission Rate: 3.6 Mbps
Color: White/Black
3G Frequency Band: HSDPA/UMTS 2100MHz
2G Frequency Band: GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900MHz

ZTE MF190 USB Modem Details:

UMTS/HSDPA/WCDMA 2100MHz
GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900MHz
Support HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps, HSUPA up to 2Mbps

The 190 is theoretically faster. However, actual speeds are still governed by the speed of your internet plan and by the congestion of your local smart bro network. So It might not matter. But still, one can hope that smart will upgrade its network so one could fully utilize the new modem's higher speed.

Aside from that, AFAIK there are no other significant differences between the new and old modem.

the end

lenovo ideapad z470 review - part 2: CPU benchmarks

OK welcome to part 2 of my review. I'll do several synthetic and real world benchmarks comparing my new laptop to my 2 year old desktop pc.

My new laptop's specs are listed in part 1 of the review.

I will have nvidia optimus on, using the NVIDIA GPU for 3d and cuda. At all times I will be using the laptop's own monitor at its native resolution, 1366 x 768. The laptop will be connected by wifi to the router and the desktop will use the LAN and the DSL modem will be on but no programs will be downloading. The laptop will first use balanced and high performance power settings. If no difference is found, I'll use balanced.

Both laptop and desktop will use the usual startup programs that I commonly use. Athough they dont use the same startup programs, I wanted this test to be like the way I use a PC, so I will accept the slight loss in accuracy due to not being able to control this factor. Plus the effect should be small anyway.

Oh and I updated my geforce drivers from 267.x to 285.x

My old desktop's specs are as follows:

• win 7 64 bit
• 1280x1024 LCD monitor
• Intel c2d e8200 @ 2.66 mhz
• inno 3d geforce 560ti
• 4 gigs ddr2 ram
• 1 terabyte WDC black hard drive

Lets start with pcmark 7 v104 trial, all default settings. Since this is a trial version, you really cant change many settings. I'll try both high performance and balanced settings.

• laptop balanced : 1157 pcmarks
• laptop high performance : 1770 pcmarks
• desktop : 2215 pcmarks

Ok thats significant. Lets go ahead to the 3d benchmarks and try a 3d benchmark first. unigene heaven 2.1 dx11 all default settings to see  if we need to change the laptop's power profile.

• desktop : ave FPS = 54.9, score = 1383
• laptop high performance : ave FPS = 13.8, score = 399
• laptop balanced :  ave FPS = 13.8 , score = 349

Hmm. I guess that the GPU is bottlenecking the test so even if the balanced plan lowers the CPU speed a bit, it wont matter. OK, so from now on we stay with the high performance plan.

Lets try more CPU benchies

winrar 64bit v 3.93 trial

• laptop: 1885 KB/s
• desktop: 1289 KB/s

Passmark performance test 7 build 1025

• desktop: 1262.8, cpumark = 2203.7, 3d = 2469.6, disk = 735.6
• laptop : 1152.7, cpumark = 2943.2, 3d = 555.2, disk = 623.5

Cinebench 64 bit 11.5 CPU test

• desktop: 1.37
• laptop: 2.03

coresmark 2010

• desktop: 567.15447 secs, worldwide rank #3425
• laptop: 251.67977 secs, worldwide rank #2705

Quite a big difference. This is a multi core benchmark so I expect the hyperthreading in the core i3 to make itself known


So in summary, the core i3 is the faster CPU. Lets try video transcoding. All tests will be converting a 128 mb 640x480 mpeg-2 movie to iphone format, H 2.64

Badaboom TRIAL v2.0.0.128

• desktop: 245 fps, 0:32
• desktop no CUDA: 96 fps, 1:22
• laptop: 83 fps, 1:33
• laptop no CUDA: 129 fps, 1:01

Freemake v2403, convert to iphone 4. CUDA hardware acceleration set to auto detect

• desktop: 1:19
• laptop: 0:59

Arcsoft media converter 7.1.0.98 trial

• desktop CUDA: 2:24
• desktop CPU only : 1:23
• laptop CUDA: 2:41
• laptop CPU only: 0:41
• laptop quicksync: 0:36

Its puzzling that the CUDA actually DECELLERATED the conversion on the laptop and the desktop. Must be something wrong with the coding. Tried it again with the same results. Also take note that quicksync does give a small improvement.

Movavi video converter 11.0.1 trial

• desktop: 43
• laptop: 50

Interesting. the faster GPU can compensate. Lets try that again with CUDA off

• desktop: 1:46
• laptop: 1:40

Wondershare video converter ultimate 5.6.1, convert to H.264 iphone 3 format

CUDA on

• desktop: 1:03
• laptop: 0:51

CUDA off

• desktop: 3:09
• laptop: 2:15

ConvertXtoDVD 4.1.19.365c free, convert to DVD, burn to ISO after conversion

• desktop: 110 fps, 1:17, 1:43 including burning ISO (0:26 for the burning only)
• laptop: 140 fps, 0:58, 1:24 including burning ISO (0:26 for the burning only)

This software AFAIK doesnt use CUDA so its pretty much pure CPU

Results pretty much mirror the pure CPU tests. The core i3 is faster. But if we put CUDA in the picture, results are dependent on how each video transcoding program uses CUDA. Some use it so well that the desktop's faster GPU compensates for the slower CPU, some dont. Special mention to media converter since CUDA decellerated conversion and quicksync only made a small difference. I'm kinda disappointed to tell the truth. I was expecting a bigger speed increase going from c2d to core i3 second gen.

OK thats it. Watch out for more parts to this review in the future. I plan 3d benchmarks, hard drive benchmarks and network benchmarks.

NEXT to Part 3, 3D benchmarks.

UPDATE: Added pictures and links to the software makers

the end

Smart Bro - Per minute charging

Smart bro prepaid internet normally costs 10 pesos per half hour. But if you dont plan on using the entire half hour slot you can change to per minute charging. It costs exactly the same.

There are 3 packages:

• PhP 60 = 3 hours, valid for 2 days
• PHP 100 = 5 yours, valid for 4 days
• PHP 150 = 7.5 hours, valid for 7 days

To register, Text MINUTE AMOUNT to 2200. You use the software dashboard to text.

the end

sidewinder gaming mouse - crazy sale

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way connected to microsoft or any other company or any store. I just found this sale in my local SM so I'm blogging about it.

This is the sidewinder gaming mouse, by microsoft.

According to wikipedia, its a 2007 vintage design.

I've seen this mouse before and according to my notes (I was shopping around for a mouse at the time so I made notes of the prices and models of mice available in my local SM mall using the notes app of my smartphone) this mouse cost PHP 3790  several months ago.  Now, I saw this in another shop in my local SM mall. I'm not really in the market for a wired mouse for my desktop. I was just browsing for wireless mice for my new laptop in case the old one dies.

Then I saw this mouse in one shop. Around 5 pieces left. There was a small sticker that says 4500 pesos. I'm thinking, ok thats a bit high but still within the possible price range. Then I read the sign stuck on the box. It says it was on sale. But when I read the price, I thought NO WAY!!, A ZERO IS MISSING!! But I did confirm it from the saleslady, yes the price is correct. php 349.00. Three hundred and fourty nine pesos. Thats a 77.x% discount!!


I agonized over whether to buy it or not and I decided to just blog about it and do more research. It turns out that there are some disadvantages. This is an old model. The MS website doesn't show it, instead showing the sidewinder X3, its descendant with a cheaper price and what seem to be less features and buttons. There are some negative reviews out there on the net which criticize the buttons and the overall ergonomics. So I'm a bit glad I didnt buy it.

But if you're in the market for a gaming mouse, you might want to try to consider this. But dont blame me if its not perfect for you.

Oh yes, I forgot. The name of the shop is silicon valley . Its a well known shop in the philippines with several branches.




UPDATE: I've gotten a lot of queries as to which SM branch I am talking about. Well, look again. The first sentence of this post has a link to the facbook account of the branch in question. And if you can't see it due to the popup, well, the popup has  a close button.

the end

all about Stop Online Piracy Act

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.


Stop Online Piracy Act explanation video at lifehacker

.

american censorship day

Today, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system.

This bill can pass. If it does the Internet and free speech will never be the same.

Join all of us to stop this bill.

Website Blocking

The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.

Chaos for the Internet

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn't be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

How you can help

If this law passes, sites like Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr could be shut down for letting users post freely. Join the protest to stop it. 

windows family raffle - i'm not qualified

I'm a bit disappointed that I do not qualify for the windows family raffle. I bought a Lenovo Z470 recently with win 7 home. If you look closely at the rules, my local SM is not included and I missed the nov 14 start date by 3 days. Oh well.

Buy genuine Windows 7 software and get a chance to win a brand new Mitsubishi Montero Sport, a trip to Singapore, a Windows Phone family package or family dinner at Circles Event Cafe.
*Applicable to both purchases with a PC/Laptop or FPP SKUs
**Starter not included

the end

Surgical headlamp - preview

The bigger of the 2 headlamps I bought on ebay has arrived, the 800+ peso one. around 5 weeks from order time. Arrived 2 days ago and I've been busy so I haven't had time to test it out fully. More or less it looks like this.

So far i've used it to dress one patient and excise a lipoma. It seems bright enough and the light collimation/concentration is OK enough for what I call (I'll mention this headlamp classification in my blog post and my paper if and when it comes out) "against the light" usage with or without loupes, although I havent tested it like that yet.

"Against the light" is one of the classifications of medical headlamp usage that I invented. Its the most demanding. It essentially means its bright enough that you can use it to see into a deep body cavity which is in dark shadow because of OR lights. This situation often comes up with a resident coz the surgeon is operating somewhere else nearby and he's hogging the OR lights.

Elastic straps are slightly too small for my head but I can fix that easily. Battery charger is not the best and can damage the 18650 lithium batts if left to overcharge the batt but it works. The major modification I need to do is to make a remote switch so i can turn it on and off without breaking sterility (thats one of the differences between civilian and medical headlamps in an older blog post.).

After full modification and testing, I plan to write a post here and maybe enter it into next year's PCS surgical innovations contest thingie. Maybe even write a paper. But for now, it looks promising.

Again, this is only a preview. Stay tuned for a future blog post with a more in depth review.

The end

lenovo ideapad z470 review - part 1

Hi. This is going to be a rather quick informal review of my new Lenovo z470 laptop. I'll divide it into at least 2 parts since it might be a long document. Again, this is informal so dont expect too detailed discussions as I will tend to concentrate on points that I deem important.

Part 1.a : Introduction and Outside appearance

Ok I bought this in the lenovo store in SM city, san Fernando Pampanga. I have a 7 year old IBM laptop and the backlight is starting to fail. I already had it fixed once but it cuts out from time to time so I guess its time to replace it. Cash, it cost me Php 32,500 pesos.

Freebies are a keyboard protector, a shoulder bag, windows home premium, Open office 3, 4 gig ram and a package. The package either consists of a rather low quality wired mouse and headset (intex brand) or a 4 gig flash drive/sd card. Various brands of flash drives are available but the SD card (micro sd plus adaptor) is transcend brand. Unfortunately its only SDHC class 2. But I aded 200 pesos to upgrade the 4 gig sd card into an 8 gig one. You can also pay more to get other versions of win7 OS.

Specs are quite OK.

• Intel core i3 2330M @ 2.2 ghz
• 4 gigs PC3-10700 DDR3 ram. Curiously, the first stick is Transcend brand and the second is Nanya brand. Oh well, as long as it works and it does run in dual channel mode
• 2 gig geforce 540m + built in Intel graphics, switchable, using optimus technology.
• 750 gig western digital SATA hard drive
• dual layer DVD reader/writer
• 14 inch screen 1366 x 768. Actual size 31 cm width, 27.7cm height, 35.7cm diagonal
• multitouch (I think) touch pad
• 4-in-one card reader
• bluetooth
• wifi-N

You can get the official PDF flyer here.

My personal requirements for a laptop were not high. Pretty much for surfing and office work and maybe for downloading overnight. Any decent CPU and GPU would do. However I insisted on a large HD, a large screen and 4 gigs ram for snappy performance. But since on this laptopo, the CPU is pretty OK and it has CUDA as well as Intel Quick Sync, I might use it for video transcoding. For games, I have an old desktop with a core 2 duo and a geforce 560ti.

I chose lenovo because it has a good reputation and I used to have an IBM. Plus, they opened a store in my local SM which gave good prices and freebees.

As for initial impressions, I'm pleased. The back of the lid is glossy but that makes it into a fingerprint magnet. Screen is clear and nice. No dead pixels.









Keyboard has some space in between the keys. Typing is more better comfortable than some netbooks I tried since the keys have some space. Being Lenovo I would expect no less since they have a rep for good laptop keyboards. Sorry but I cant be more specific than that. It just feels OK typing and thats. My previous laptop was an old IBM thinkpad R51E.

Caps lock tends to get hit accidentally because of the tight spacing between it and the A key but I just set windows to beep whenever I press it. The home and pgup keys are close to the backspace and enter keys respectively so they sometimes get hit.

UPDATE: Another problem is that the DEL key is very small plus the DEL and BACKSPACE and HOME keys are very very close to one another. The problem with this is you might hit the HOME key by mistake and if you did not notice, you would start typing with the cursor moved to the start of the line.



I never liked touchpads and this touchpad is no different. The pencil eraser like TrackPoint on my old IBM is much better. But I have to make do. I eventually turned off the function that interprets a tap on the touchpad as a left mouse click to reduce errors.  I havent fully explored the multitouch but so far, 2 fingertips going closer or farther from each other seems to just increase or decrease font size in firefox. I just re-use my old beat up logitech mouse. Its much more responsive than the trackpad.

The increase from 2 to 4 USB ports is welcome. Although they are only usb 2.0, thats an acceptable trade off for the price. The right rear usb port does sometimes interfere with the power cord.



And while on the subject of the power cord, I have found out that the position of the power outlet plus the L-shape of the power  cord's end makes the cord more prone to fouling when picking up the laptop and repositioning it. My old laptop had a straight plug and the power port was on the back, out of the way.

Haven't tested the optical drive yet for burning but the ergonomics of the eject button is bad. Its hidden from view if you are above the laptop and it barely sticks out so it is difficult to feel with your fingers. To top it off, its a bit difficult to push. I can imagine sticking a piece of rubber on the button in the future.



The exhaust is on the left side. A quick test shows that the exhaust can get a bit uncomfortable specially if the laptop is working. Heat will eventually conduct through the plastic bottom and sometimes it might be too hot for your lap. However as long as you keep the intake ports clear and you do not load the laptop like running a CPU or GPU intensive app, the temp at the bottom of the laptop is acceptable.

Using the software PCwizard and Coretemp, and GPU-z, I measured the temps. Energy management mode was set to "balanced" and thermal management was set to "efficient thermal dissipation". All temps in degrees C. The laptop is placed on my table to ensure more or less OK airflow under the laptop

• Room temp = 28
• idle = CPU 51, GPU 43
• Load using MSI Kombustor GPU burn in = CPU 73, GPU 77
• Transcoding a DVD (files on the HD) to ipod, using Badaboom TRIAL v2.0.0.128 = CPU = 71, GPU = 67 (only around 60-70% load)

The bezel surrounding the screen sticks out a fraction of a millimeter on the right side of the screen so you can use your fingernail to raise it a bit. But this is only a small problem. This is the only thing I can see that reflects bad build quality, aside from the fingerprint magnet. No obvious scratches or poor workmanship. Then again, I'm no expert with regards to build quality, so don't take my word for it.

Part 1.b. Accompanying software, drivers and related features

Lenovo has several drivers and software that make things easier. I'll go through some of them

Battery life is claimed to be 2-3 hours but I havent tried it yet. An interesting note is that the battery software can be told to optimize the charging profile for either battery life or battery health. If you choose battery life, then the battery will charge up to ~100%. If you choose health, the batt will only charge up to ~50%. This will decrease battery life to 1 hour using balanced or 1.5 hours using the power saver setting but since the battery is not stressed out, it will last longer before needing replacement. This setting is recommended if you mostly use the laptop while plugged in.

I did use the built in software to recalibrate the battery lifespan value, but I did not do any battery life benchmarks, so the above values are approximate.

On the left right front is a selector switch. Basically wifi on or off, although I'm not sure if bluetooth is included. On the right left front is the Optimus on/off switch.

Optimus technology essentially means that the laptop has a power thrifty Intel video card and another discrete Nvidia video card. If optimus is off, only the intel video card is active. If optimus is on, the laptop by default uses the intel vid card but switches to the nvidia when CUDA is needed or you run gpu accelerated stuff like games. I'll try this out in part 2 with benchmarks.

Microsoft security essentials antivirus is included.

CPU temp at idle is a little high at ~ 65 deg C at idle while GPU temp is ok at 55 deg C. At load using MSI Kombustor 2.0.0, I get CPU and GPU temps of 70+ deg C.

Lenovo has something called onekey theatre. A button on the upper right controls it. Basically the settings are always off, always on and automatic or intelligent. Intelligent means the software decides when to turn it on or off. While off, the colors look a bit muted and light. while on the color and detail pops out.

I'm not gonna review the speakers. They are loud enough and quality is OK. I'm not that picky.

So to end part 1, I can say that the quality and value for money is quite good. I say 4/5 stars. But again, this is not a formal review and my requirements are not that high.

A future blog post will be part 2 of this review, benchmarks. So stay tuned!

update: Part 2 is online!

The end.

Renewed smart money card and Paypal

My smart money card will expire at the end of the month, but I put in for a replacement. Actually, All I did was fall in line at the local Smart office and apply for a new one, only to discover that you can't do that unless the card is already expired. Since the expiration date is 11/11, it will still be valid until 12/11 or December 1, 2011

But later on I did receive a text message from Smart money saying that I will receive a replacement. I have no idea if this is automatic or it was triggered by my trying to have it replaced. If it is automatic, then kudos to smart for making things easy for the customer.

Today, its only November 9 but a 2Go letter arrived with my replacement card. Since this is a renewal of an expired card, I get the same card number. The only thing that changed is the expiration date and the CSC. The card came with a sticker that says call 15177 on your smart cellphone to activate. OK, I called and got it activated. Actually it was already active since its just a renewal. They then texted me the instructions.

To nominate your primary card: Just type ENROLL CARD   and send to 343.

OK I did that. Next I went to paypal to link my card. This procedure is much faster than with a new card.

• unlock card for internet transactions
• login to paypal
• you will be at the my account tab
• click update my credit card info
• click edit
• change the expiry date to the new one and change the CSC

After that you will recieve a text: Approval of Php 43.54 purchase at PAYPAL Merchant from card . Avail Bal: Php XXXX Ref: XXXXXX


And thats it. 

The end

Hamstersoft ebook converter full

Hamstersoft is a software company that makes several free softwares. I like their hamstersoft ebook converter. Its free and easy to use. You can download the software on their website.


However, their style is that when you download the software, you cannot download the full software, you only download a small downloader software which in turn downloads the full software and installs it. This is OK for first world users with lots of fast internet but its not OK for third world users with intermittent or slow internet. I prefer to have a backup of all my software accessible off the net so I can install it in say a reformatted PC without a net connection, and it does save on bandwidth. I cant do that if the installation program is in itself a downloader. I contacted hamstersoft and they more or less said that they wont do it. However I was able to get my hands on the full version installer.

Download the full installer here.

The end.

LED emitter ranking

A list of LED emitters arranged by light output.

Here's the List of LEDs by order of lumen output.

Luxeon Rebel 040-bin (84+ lm @ 1A)
Luxeon Rebel 050-bin (105+ lm @ 1A)
Luxeon Rebel 060-bin (126+ lm @ 1A)
SSC P4 S1-bin (127-141 lm @ 1A)
SSC P4 S2-bin (141-165 lm @ 1A)
Luxeon Rebel 070-bin (147+ lm @ 1A)
SSC P4 T1-bin (165-188 lm @ 1A)
Luxeon Rebel 080-bin (168+ lm @ 1A)
Cree XRE/XPE P4-bin (177-192 lm @ 1A)
Luxeon Rebel 090-bin (189+ lm @ 1A)
Cree XRE/XPE Q2-bin (192-207 lm @ 1A)
SSC P4 T2-bin (188-214 lm @ 1A)
Cree XRE/XPE Q3-bin (207-220 lm @ 1A)
Luxeon Rebel 100-bin (210+ lm @ 1A)
Cree XRE/XPE Q4-bin (220-233 lm @ 1A)
SSC P4 U1-bin (214-235 lm @ 1A)
Luxeon Rebel ES (225+ lm @ 1A)
Luxeon Rebel 110-bin (231+ lm @ 1A)
Cree XRE/XPE Q5-bin (233-251 lm @ 1A)
SSC P4 U2-bin (235-256 lm @ 1A)
Cree XRE/XPE R2-bin (251-268 lm @ 1A)
SSC P4 U3-bin (256-280 lm @ 1A)*
Cree XRE/XPE R3-bin (268-286 lm @ 1A)
Cree XRE/XPE R4-bin (286-306 lm @ 1A)
Cree XPG R2-bin (380-406 lm @ 1.5A)
Cree XPG R3-bin (406-433 lm @ 1.5A)
Cree XPG R4-bin (433-463 lm @ 1.5A)
Cree XPG R5-bin (463-493 lm @ 1.5A)
Cree XPG S2-bin (493-520 lm @ 1.5A)
Cree MCE H-bin (490-560 lm @ 2.8A)
SSC P7 A-bin (440-570 lm @ 2.8A)
Cree MCE J-bin (560-648 lm @ 2.8A)
SSC P7 B-bin (570-700 lm @ 2.8A)
Cree MCE K-bin (648-753 lm @ 2.8A)
SSC P7 C-bin (700-800 lm @ 2.8A)
Luminus SST-50 F-bin (635-823 lm @ 5A)
Cree MCE M-bin (753-858 lm @ 2.8A)
SSC P7 D-bin (800-900 lm @ 2.8A)
Cree MCE N-bin (858-980 lm @ 2.8A)
Luminus SST-50 G-bin (823-999 lm @ 5A)
SSC P7 E-bin (900-1100 lm @ 2.8A)
Luminus SST-50 H-bin (999-1175 lm @ 5A)
Luminus SST-50 J-bin (1175-1410 lm @ 5A)
Luminus SST-50 K-bin (1410-1645 lm @ 5A)
Luminus SST-90 K-bin (1410-1645 lm @ 9A)
Luminus SST-90 L-bin (1645-1998 lm @ 9A)
Luminus SST-90 M-bin (1998-2350 lm @ 9A)
Luminus SST-90 N-bin (2350-2820lm@9A)
Luminus SST-90 P-bin (2820-3408lm@9A)

Newer Leds

XML T5 (504-543 lm @ 1.5A)
XML T6 (543-582 lm @ 1.5A)
XML U2 (582-621 lm @ 1.5A)
XML U3 (621-660 lm @ 1.5A)

XML T5 (845-910 lm @ 3.0A)
XML T6 (910-975 lm @ 3.0A)
XML U2 (975-1040 lm @ 3.0A)
XML U3 (1040-1105 lm @ 3.0A)

The list is unverified so take it with a grain of salt.

List courtesy of tipidpc user ian2381
source


the end

cherry picking batteries

I use 4 AA sony cycle energy LSD NIMH batteries for my digicam. Almost a year old by now. Here's a pic with my unomat charger

I've noticed that sometimes my camera shows a low batt warning well before the expected time. I dont have exact figures, sorry. But today I noticed something. I was charging and one batt is more empty than the other.

The #1 batt on the left has 1 of 3 bars blinking on the LCD display and the #2 on the right has 2 solid bars and the last bar is blinking. It only looks full because the camera caught it at the wrong time.I mentioned that I have 4 batts, and the other pair also has a weak one.

I've always followed the dictum that for multiple cell devices, i.e. devices that use 2 or more batteries, always use the same batteries together. I do this by labeling the batteries. This is to avoid polarity reversal which is a situation where one battery is weaker and runs out before the others and the others attempt to charge the weak battery. And this damages the weak battery.

What could have happened? My smart charger has individual charging channels so each battery is guaranteed to be fully charged. Its possible that over time, polarity reversal did happen. Or maybe, the weak cells were like that from the start and I just didnt notice or they got worse due to polarity reversal.

Well, whatever, I relabeled the batts and now I'll test the weak and the strong batts separately. My digicam uses 2 AA batteries so I'll pair up the weak and the strong ones and see what happens.

I also would like to note that I would never have known this if I used a lesser charger which did not have a LCD display.

The end

Steve Jobs should have seen a doctor earlier

Steve Jobs should have seen a doctor earlier.

smaller version

In mid-2004, Jobs announced to his employees that he had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his pancreas.^[111] The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor; Jobs, however, stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.^[111] After initially resisting the idea of conventional medical intervention and embarking on a special diet to thwart the disease, Jobs underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004

- wikipedia


This is a quick and dirty educational poster I made. The positioning of the text and the wording and translation was rushed but I think it gets the message across: Do not delay by trying out non proven treatments first, see your doctor early before the disease gets worse. The department of Health should use something like this in an educational campaign.



All images copyright Apple inc.

BTW: I am a surgeon in addition to being a tech geek and a blogger.


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maryfi - turn your wifi equipped laptop into a hotspot

Maryfi or mary-fi is a freeware app that turns your wifi equipped laptop into a wifi hotspot. Win 7 only AFAIK.


I've tested it using a usb 3g modem (sun bro). Works great and not that difficult to configure. The program has a small PDF file with step by step instructions. It also supposedly works if your laptop's internet is coming in via LAN cable.

But an interesting claim is that even if your laptop's source of internet is wifi, you can in turn re-broadcast the internet, turning your laptop into a repeater. So if laptop A is in range of the wifi router but another laptop B is out of range, but in range of laptop A, with mary-fi laptop A can repeat the wifi signal to laptop B. Pretty cool trick. Unfortunately I haven't tried it yet so I cant confirm because I need to borrow another laptop to do that.

As of now, the website of mary fi is down. This is what I can see

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Fortunately, I have mirror links to the file, that is an alternate download link.Filename is  Maryfi-EN.exe (2.07 MB)

LINK


the end

Sawoid - free game

 

Sawoid is a breakout clone style game. Its free for today

Update: there seems to be a problem with the HTML code I got from the site. You just see a blank. But you can still click on it.

the end

second generation LED maglite repair

If you read my older posts here, you know that my family has a few second generation led maglite 2AA flashlights. My mom uses hers practically every day. Lots of scratches and its fallen from the table a few times. But this time, the light died.

I was dismayed. I though maglites were indestructible! I initially despaired of being able to fix it and bought a cheap cdrking LED flashlight as a temporary replacement. A few days later, my mom asked about the flashlight and she suggested that I disassemble it and try to repair it.

So now, I'm at my desk, poking and prodding at the flashlight. It was empty, i.e. no batteries. I removed the end cap and was poking the emitter head back and forth when this fell out. By the way, its normal for the emitter head to move like that.

Its a plastic holder with the positive electrode for the batteries on the posterior end and a circuit board inside. There are 2 electrical slots on the inside posterior end of the plastic holder which should match with the 2 contacts on one end of the board.

UPDATE: the circuit board can be inserted onto the  black plastic holder in 2 directions. Since the holder is pretty symmetrical, its difficult to know which direction is correct. So you can try using trial and error.





This gave me hope. I thought that if I could get at the emitter head, I might have a chance of ficing this. I thought about asking in a flashlight message board that I'm a member of. But before asking, I decide to search for "maglite dissasemble" in the forums. I found this.

I used two screwdrivers and just pushed the LED module out the other end. Now for reassembling...

OK so this gave me hope. I opted to use a  small hammer and a chopstick to remove the emitter head.



I placed the tip of the chopstick on the metal beside the actual LED and VERY GENTLY began tapping with a hammer. Eventually, the metal emitter head fell down through the back end of the flashlight body. A black plastic ring remained which fell out the forward end of the flashlight body. The ring serves to lock the head in place

UPDATE: you can use your fingers to press the metal emitter head down instead of using a hammer.



I just re-assembled the emitter head, the board and the black holder. The emitter head has 3 electrical slots on its back so the end of the circuit board with 3 electrical contacts goes there. But I noticed that there are no positive and negative signs and the board can go in 2 ways. I thought, OK go for broke, 50/50 chance. I'm just hoping that what maglite says about the electronics being vulnerable to reverse current flow isnt true.

UPDATE: The metal emitter head has writing on one side and the other side as seen in the picture above has no writing. For standardization purposes,  the side of the circuit board with the cylindrical black plastic cylinder with wire coiled around it and a "100" printed on top faces the side of the metal emitter head which has writing on it. And getting it backwards doesn't seem to fry the electronics if you don't try it for too long.

I placed the emitter in the back end of the flashlight body and placed 2 AA batteries after the emitter. I then pushed the batteries upwards with my finger. The emitter head is now in the proper place. I got the black ring and pushed it through the front end of the body and with a gentle push, locked the head in place. I then tried the flashlight, IT WORKS!!!!

the end