Thursday, November 17, 2011
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
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
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
Monday, November 14, 2011
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
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
Saturday, November 12, 2011
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.
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
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 theleft 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.
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
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
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
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 CARDand 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
Friday, October 28, 2011
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.
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