The Flip Side, by A. E. Wallace

I love swackett.

2011-02-11T13:17:00.001-06:00

This app is amazing, and then I turn around to see this...

...So it gets even more points now. :)

Posted via email from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Snow? Snow.

2010-12-25T14:45:00.001-06:00

Download now or watch on posterous

2010-12-25_12-46-48_133.3gp (43464 KB)

Christmas. Magical.

Posted via email from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Mmm, baking.

2010-12-22T17:15:00.001-06:00

Hello, my pretty. You will be done soon. Then you get to cool, then you get a nice vanilla frosting coat, then you is will be a delicious.

Posted via email from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Dear funky art: you were worth an A/A-.

2010-12-15T19:01:00.001-06:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

I hated doing all but the colorful, trippy one. But yay for 2D design!

Posted via email from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Small ad fail, Facebook. But maybe the other's a win...?

2010-05-22T11:00:00.001-05:00

I think it's fair to say that it's not gay pride day on the first one, Facebook. So close. Yet so off and so irrelevant.

But the second ad seems to be more fitting to the stereotype of nerds. Nerds definitely need help figuring out when girls like them. You get a pass on this ad. Just do a better job next time.

-A. E. Wallace
Composed with Postbox for OS X

Posted via email from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Keep Tube Grabs HD Videos From Popular Tube Sites - YouTube - Lifehacker

2010-05-14T11:46:00.001-05:00

Keep Tube is a web-based video downloader that handles a wide range of formats and web sites. Where Keep Tube really shines is grabbing the highest quality video from a given site, where many other video downloaders fall short.

You'll find no shortage of web sites devoted to helping you download video content. Keep Tube stands out by supporting a wide variety of sites like YouTube, Google Video, Dailymotion, Mega Video, Metacafe, Veoh, and more. Of interesting to users who don't stray too far from popular sites like YouTube and Dailymotion is Keep Tubes support for grabbing top quality and restricted files—check out this comparison chart to see how Keep Tube stacks up against other popular downloaders.

Keep Tube is a free service available as a web-based tool or a Firefox extension.

via lifehacker.com

I'd imagine YouTube doesn't like you downloading videos, but since users still want to grab the occasional video to show to friends while offline, this should help.

Posted via web from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

So... Disturbingly delicious. - 1...2...3!

2010-05-03T23:02:00.001-05:00

Click to view large

via rambles.posterous.com

I had to re-share this.

Posted via web from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone - The Oatmeal

2010-04-02T21:21:00.001-05:00

via theoatmeal.com

The Oatmeal understands me so well.

Posted via web from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

makezine.com: Owner's Manifesto

2010-04-02T11:23:00.001-05:00

If you can't open it, you don't own it: a Maker's Bill of Rights to accessible, extensive, and repairable hardware.

By Mister Jalopy

The Maker's Bill of Rights

Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included.

Cases shall be easy to open.

Batteries should be replaceable.

Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.

Profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong and not making special tools available is even worse.

Torx is OK; tamperproof is rarely OK.

Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable.

Consumables, like fuses and filters, shall be easy to access.

Circuit boards shall be commented.

Power from USB is good; power from proprietary power adapters is bad.

Standard connecters shall have pinouts defined.

If it snaps shut, it shall snap open.

Screws better than glues.

Docs and drivers shall have permalinks and shall reside for all perpetuity at archive.org.

Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.

Metric or standard, not both.

Schematics shall be included.

via makezine.com

Posted via web from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Google Reader (1000+)

2010-03-28T20:33:00.001-05:00

1347150
from MyLifeIsAverage | MyLifeIsAverage
3 people liked this
Today, my dad came home from hanging out with some friends of his. He was acting really strange and hyper, so I asked him why he was acting like this. He says "Well, I just drank 8 Red Bulls." I asked him why he drank 8 Red Bulls, and he said it's better than drinking "the A word." I asked him what the A word was. He leans forward and whispers "Alcohol." MLIA

via google.com

(Note: this is from Google Reader, so links aren't the "normal" links.)

This is going to be me when I grow older. I refuse to drink alcohol. But do I really have to drink Red Bull? Sure, it's better than alcohol, but there are so many things that are ten times better than Red Bull and can leave me with the same head ache if I drink enough.

Posted via web from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

xkcd: Useless

2010-03-22T20:38:00.001-05:00

via xkcd.com

Oh, so true. I just don't understand it at all.

Posted via web from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

At least I'm applying my skills to something in the real world.

2010-03-13T08:24:00.001-06:00

...thank you, Physics Lab (for Physics II with Calculus, dontcha know), for making me realize that my music's play count can be expressed as a power function. Yes, I did put the numbers into Numbers (Apple's version of Microsoft's Excel) and graph it. Just for the curious, here's the graph & associated power curve/equation fit:

Yes, I am that nerdy, and I am trying THAT hard to not do homework. But at least I don't feel like my major is going to waste now!

--
-A. E. Wallace
Composed with Postbox for OS X

Posted via email from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Final thoughts on Postbox

2010-02-21T14:03:00.001-06:00

The program is pretty good. The more I looked into it, the more I noticed similarities, but I'd still say it's worth the money in at least 70% of usage scenarios. As a matter of fact, I love clicking the "new post" button on Posterous and have Postbox just open up to its wonderful interface. It really does feel like an extension of what is there. I hope to have the full review up later on The Digital Cheat Sheet, pending a little review. It saddens me that RSS feed support is weak as it is, and that the additional features I cited before were tweaks of already existent features of Thunderbird, but to tell the truth, I just like the Postbox implementation a bit better. I am amused at the initial cost of the program, and even more amused that the team behind the program have made it relatively easy to get coupons and referrals to make the cost of the program essentially free. It is hard for me to not like this program, but I do have to acknowledge the few flaws I found and the mediocrity it may present to some users....I have hopes that the program will continue to be improved as it has been since its beta testing days.

Posted via email from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Facebook ads certainly are accurate...

2010-02-18T15:51:00.001-06:00

Thanks, Facebook. You knew that I wanted an iPad (even though I don't), a good Christian girl (not too far off on that one, except I'm not keen on meeting random people VIA THE INTERNET), and who the devil likes VIRTUAL chocolate?! That's just a tease. I'd rather give the real thing.

Good try, Facebook. You might need to get some better ads if you really want me to buy anything, though.

Posted via email from A. E. Wallace's Posterous

Postbox: better than Apple's Mail & Microsoft's Windows Live Mail clients?

2010-02-17T13:20:00.001-06:00

I'm trying out a not-so-new bit of software by the name of Postbox. I've tried it before, when it was in beta, and I ranted and raved about it. Now, it's out of beta, it costs some odd amount of money, and...I don't know if I am still as in love with it as I was.

I started out with Postbox on Windows XP and Vista machines. It was leaps and bounds above Microsoft's Windows Live Mail web client as well as the local application by the same name. I have never dealt with the full Outlook, but it was more accommodating than Outlook Express for me. It had a clean interface, it was speedy, and it had tabs like the popular web browsers of today to enable a cleaner workflow for better multitasking.

By now, though, I've gotten to know OS X as well as Windows 7, with Apple's Mail client and subsequent versions of Windows Live Mail. My verdict? Postbox is still awesome, but I'm not sure if the cost is reasonable.

It's a very close cousin to Mozilla's Thunderbird, and it can appear that Postbox is little more than a re-skin of the popular client. The interfaces have some slight similarities, and they both share the same engine as well as tabbed e-mailing. But for as nice as Thunderbird is, Postbox still adds a few goodies into the already nice Thunderbird. To-Do lists, the ability to search for & add components of previous emails to a new composition (without hunting through individual emails), more fluid I/O performance, and a few features that will be discussed at length in a later review. Ciao for now! =)

-Albert

Posted via email from aewallace's posterous

Bumping around in OS X and Windows XP: How do I do it?

2009-12-16T10:58:00.002-06:00

I realized that I've had my own computer for 9 years now. I got my first computer in 2000, when I was 10, for Christmas. It was an HP Pavilion XL768, with 128 MB of RAM, an AMD Athlon 900 MHz slot A processor, 60 GB hard drive (I use more than this for my iTunes library now!), and Windows Millenium Edition. Boy, were those the days.

I sank my teeth into ME, slowly but surely. At first, everything was going great...MusicMatch Jukebox was running reliably, burning my first audio CD (about 6 months into actually using the computer). The Internet was at my fingertips. Midtown Madness (both 1 and 2) were running reliably and I was having a blast. The multimedia keyboard was wonderful, and the mouse with scroll wheel was outta this world.

A year in, however, I found I was making things start to fall apart at the seams. I was making Windows crash on a fairly frequent basis with my tinkering, I was into figuring out how to make my OS installation run lean, and I'll be darned if I wasn't convinced that I could make that 60 GB hard drive run faster with Maxtor's prototype PATA transfer rate accelerator drivers (which used a chunk of system memory to buffer data & improve burst rates). All that led to an unstable system.

Then Windows XP came out. "A breath of fresh air for my computer!", I though to myself. When I finally got it, it was indeed a breath of fresh air. It was a new, less crash-happy OS. All my hardware was supported, and it was amazing. Soon, though, I began to clog XP down, too...and I had to figure out a new way to use my computer.

So I began to finally learn how to recover from serious system failures. A bad driver and XP went down faster than the Titanic, so I learned how to use System Restore and how to roll back to last known good states. I now had data to save, so I learned to partition better. I learned how to use the command prompt to fix registry issues. It was all coming together.

Soon, I ran into a major issue. I kept saying to myself, every time I used the computer, "I'm finding that I can no longer do one thing I did so well with my first computer: keep things fast enough for my use. What is there to do?!" What WAS there to do? I was in love with my items auto-launching on startup, since I had the memory to do it; as a result, boot times sank. Application load times were not decreased any more than before, but now I had shiny utilities one click away. Anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewalls....all of this was clogging my system up, using my precious resources, and driving me mad.

The worst thing, though, is that XP was having fun thrashing my hard drive every time I tried to open a folder or seek for an application. I suffered with this for year. But with the introduction to OS X and Spotlight this year, things changed for the better.

In OS X, Spotlight helped me launch applications just by searching. It was more intuitive; I knew what I was looking for, so I could just Command-Spacebar, type, and go. It was wonderful. I began to wonder why nothing like this was done for Windows.

Then I remembered Vista had a nifty search feature in its start menu, as did Windows 7 (which I am currently running as the Release Candidate). I knew that it would only be a matter of time before XP was eradicated from my everyday life, but until then, I would have to find a way to do a search like OS X.

Back to OS X, someone hipped me to Quicksilver. It's a wonderful app that does, amongst many things, pretty much replaces Spotlight for opening apps rather fast. But it was buggy for me. It crashed randomly. Then I found Google Desktop.

I had tried Google Desktop (and other apps like it) before on Windows XP. I had found them useless resource hogs. I just really had never given them a chance until OS X came around. I thought they were just like Windows indexing my hard drive to help me search for things faster (when the search feature is so limited and actually takes more time to find things if I know where they are). But they weren't. At least, now they aren't. They're so much more.

Google Desktop (which has migrated to Google Quick Search Box) on OS X is a stable replacement for Quicksilver, made by the same person who did Quicksilver. I never had much of a chance to see Quicksilver's true strengths, so QSB was a wonder for me. Then I noticed that there was a version available for XP....oh, yes.

I now have the magic of Spotlight's aptitude for launching apps on XP, and an enhanced OS X experience. Google Desktop/QSB has done so much to speed up my workflow. I no longer have to wait for my hard drive to thrash as it trudges through the various .lnk files; instead, the properly done index means that I can launch an app in an instant. I get to search the Web even faster, and since it's by Google and I have a Google account, it can look at my search history and get results tailored to my needs. It can search through my Internet history, which isn't that bad (and is easily disabled), making it so much easier to pull up "that one topic on hard drives spinning down when they don't need to in OS X". (Most of my searches aren't THAT natural, since I'm a proponent of Boolean queries, but I've come close to that with excellent results).

Since realizing the potential of Google Desktop (and other things like Microsoft's Windows Desktop Search--available as a separate download for Windows-- as well as Quicksilver), I acknowledge that the clicky interface with which I worked so well in 2000 was now failing to match my needs in 2009. I still cling to it when I need to do manual file copying, but now I integrate more keyboard shortcuts into my work flow. Knowing cut, copy, and paste alone makes my life so much easier and saves so much time. Being able to invoke the dialog to shut my computer off with a keystroke saves me more time, and the ability to switch applications without having to kludge my way through 15 open apps is simply wonderful.

I consider myself a somewhat advanced user, but I see so much more potential out there. It starts with learning keyboard shortcuts. Soon enough, I'll be wanting more shortcuts, and I'll find the software I so desire to help give me even more shortcuts than natively implemented. Then I'll move on to gestures. I had gestures in FireFox at one time, and they were AMAZING. I have since dropped my usage of FireFox, and miss them so, but (at least on OS X) I can make use of Apple's built-in gestures & the multitouch trackpad to accomplish much (thank you, BetterTouchTool for helping me sleep my display & keyboard backlight with a Command+4-finger-swipe). Then it'll be on to voice control, then beyond.

I realize now that, before blaming software for being slow and chunky, I have to look at myself and streamline my activity. Not everything is multi-threaded as well as iTunes is on OS X, so I have to help create 1-click events to do multiple operations in one fell swoop.

If you want to be power user, learn first how to control the computer. Don't just dive in headfirst and declare something inadequate. Who knows? You could fall in love with some software you initially thought you would hate. The mouse isn't the only way to get around, and the keyboard gives you no reason to be full of fear.

-Albert

What I want for Christmas...

2009-12-15T21:53:00.002-06:00

Being the tech geek I am, I often seen quite a few gadgets and such that I really want but couldn't dare justify buying. (Incidentally, much of the stuff I buy still fails to have justification for why I opted for that particular item over any alternative.). When Christmas comes around, I revert to a child-like innocence, hoping & wishing I could have everything on earth.

Well, not totally. I know Santa's sleigh can only hold so much, so I have to choose the few things I want the most of. But that doesn't mean I don't want other things. On the contrary, right about now I would LOVE...

An Xbox 360. The Xbox platform seems to be the most popular amongst my peers, and it has one or two of my favorite franchises ever: Halo & Project Gotham Racing. Call me a sucker for choosing the popular games, but I have to admit: I really like them! Plus, I still have a few older Xbox games that work with the 360 (not flawlessly, but well enough). I just wish Santa's version of a 360 didn't red-ring.
A Wii. I have a decent number of friends/acquaintances at school, and I know we would get a kick out of playing the Wii together on those rainy days when we need to take a break from studying. It would also be great to bring home. I don't exactly like to go anywhere unless I have to, and this includes just going outside. At the same time, though, I get really antsy if I have nothing to do. The Wii would allow me to immerse myself into something like Wii sports, Wii Fitness, or any of the various old & new school Mario/Donkey Kong franchise games. That would provide some serious joy for me.
A PlayStation 2 & recent PS3, or PS3 with the Emotion Engine. Again, like the Xbox, I have a few older PS2 games I'd like to play. I'd also love to enjoy Blu-ray movies (what's the purpose of a decent hi-def TV if you can't experience all of the HD you can?!) and the HD games out for the PS3 (all of which look gorgeous!). Plus, I'm a Sony fanboy, & I can really appreciate and use the PS3 for quite a bit of stuff (the possibilities are endless...well, they're limited, but the PS3 would provide more possibilities than I'd ever completely make use of).
3rd generation iPod touch, 64 GB. All that iTunes media has to go somewhere, and I like the touchscreen & the apps. I could live without this, though I'd be sad. In its stead could come a 160 GB iPod Classic.
An Apple TV, Popcorn Hour media hub, or updated media center PC with Windows 7 Ultimate or OS X (so, basically, an Acer nettop with an ION or a Mac Mini). I just really want a media hub, and I want the best experience I can get. The Apple TV would be limited, but again, I mainly just have iTunes media. Anything else can get converted. I wouldn't mind the flexibility and capability of the media center PC, though...and the Popcorn Hour would just be a fun toy to play with and test out. (Somehow, I get the feeling that playing Family Guy Blue Harvest as purchased from the iTunes Store would be difficult on the P. H.).
A Sony home theatre system. Maybe a system with 500 old-school watts (or 2000 new-school watts) of power to the satellites and center channel, dual 10" or larger active subwoofers, and overall 7.2 surround (dual subs, remember?). A Denon or Onkyo receiver may be used instead, and Yamaha, Polk Audio, Harman Kardon, Klipsch, Bose, or Altec Lansing drivers may be connected to that receiver. Make as many of those speakers floor-standing as possible. I'd like to avoid those beaming horn tweeters, if possible.
A Bose Companion 3 or Companion 5 multimedia speaker set. I love the current Altec Lansings I use with my laptop now, but the sub isn't quite as smooth in its transition of frequencies as I like, and it basically gets a little "thud"-y (I like a smooth, wall-shaking, low-frequency hum over the sound of someone hitting a snare drum). Logitechs may be used instead. Basically, just give me another home theatre system, just make it 5.1 and a single 10" passive woofer. Again, no beaming horn tweeters, unless well-blended.
A Sony X-series 32 GB MP3 player. I would only put my favorite music on there in really high quality. I know Sony's devices have a better sound quality than Apple's.
Sony, Shure, and Audio Technica earbuds/earphones. Give me the full spectrum, from the smallest in-ear earbuds with excellent bass, to the largest studio monitors for DJs and...studio professionals. I want to have a versatile range of audio monitoring equipment.
A D-SLR. A Sony Alpha (I always wanted to try a Konica Minolta camera) or Canon dealie would work well for me. 15x optical zoom or higher, please. I have the opportunity for some amazing shots, but my point-and-shoot just can't always please.
A standard SLR. Film is not dead in my family, and I can see why.
A standard, but high end, point and shoot. I can't carry an SLR/DSLR around with me all the time, and I would hope to be able to get some of the more fun moments that don't require the full range of options an SLR offers. Sony or Canon. Ricoh would be nice here, too.
An HD, HDD-based video recorder. A Sony unit would be lovely. 1280*720...ehh. Can I go up to 1440*900 at least, please? I want to stretch my wings, but Hi-8 (VHS quality, tape-based) isn't doing it for me anymore. A dedicated camcorder would save the battery life of my other camera, too.
A 20" or 18" behemoth desktop-replacement laptop. I'm strong enough to lug one around (if I'm not lugging anything else around) and I want to be able to edit those high-quality pictures and videos in a pinch. A 17" MacBook Pro would do decently if all else failed, but that's as low as I'll go.
A PC based on Core-i7 technology. A new iMac would suffice, if Apple could fix the issues they're currently having with them. A Mac Pro would be beautiful, but it'd have to come with the software to use/handle all 4 or 8 cores. Let me multitask enough, though, and I'd be using some CPU cycles. (I wouldn't mind joining Folding@Home or the search for the next Mersenne prime, either). If not something with a built-in display, give me at least 2 x 24" displays with 1920 * 1080 resolution.
A Drobo or 6 external FireWire or eSATA hard drives. This would be for backing stuff up, having my own file server, or hosting a huge media library, with multiple pictures, videos, shows, movies, and music files. It might be a combination of all the above. 6 drives would be distributed across all mobile devices, or devices lacking substantial internal storage. 5400 RPM drives are fine, except 2 drives must be 7200 RPM or SSD-based to cut back on seek times when dealing with lots of small files.
A Time Capsule along with extra AirPort Extreme. I know the Time Capsule wouldn't last long, and at 2 TB max, I would fill it fast if I tried to use it like I used the Drobo or the 6 external drives. I could connect extra drives to the AirPort Extreme and have a mega-network of storage, if needed, and I could just store my iTunes library on the Time Capsule (since not all of it would go to the Apple TV, after a point, and I'd need to have some sort of instant backup destination for any Apple computers with Time Machine). Having basically two AirPort Extremes would result in increased performance and throughput if I ever actually had 4 computers; 2 would be on one, 2 on another, or 3 on one, and one using another, depending on the work load.
A Droid or Droid Eris. Since I'm on Verizon, I won't be getting an iPhone, but that's not so bad. I might even take a decent WinMo-based device, if one exists. I just want to upgrade from my Alias to see if I actually become more productive and get farther in a shorter amount of time in comparison to just sticking with a "dumb-phone".

Add to that all needed and wanted accessories. For example, I'd probably need a new Logitech mouse, and a new keyboard or two to get things done the way I like. SD cards or Memory Stick...sticks would be required, too, and many, many cables would be needed so everything could connect to everything. A Wacom tablet would be lovely to allow me to do some digital sketching, and a wide-format printer would be nice. An industrial scanner (maybe Xerox-machine in platen size) would be nice to go with that wide-format printer. I'll need some decent desks with good storage & organization options. For the 17/18/20" behemoth, I'll be needing a backpack with ample storage space. Flash drives would abound, and a few hub-powered slim HDDs/external SSDs (giant flash drives?) would be needed, too. A Blu-ray drive would be needed somewhere in the mix, with ample Blu-ray media, to distribute high-quality media.

A nice massage chair wouldn't hurt my productivity, either. ^.^

Yes, I know that's all a pipe dream for now. Maybe when I get older and get a job....if I had all that stuff now, though, I'd be churning out stuff like no other. The potential is there. I just need all the outlets I can possibly have.

-Albert

I haven't given up yet

2009-08-04T22:50:00.003-05:00

I know, this site has only been slowly getting my attention. But I haven't stopped posting. Quite the contrary; I have been posting on my personal blog [the Wordpress one] quite frequently. Now, it's nowhere near as good of a tech read, but it's still a totally viable option for when you feel the need to make sure I'm still alive. [You can always check the site/feed updates on the left side of the page to see if there's anything new].

Oh, and I guess it would be worthwhile to mention that technology DOES sneak into a few of my posts over there from time to time. Check out my post: "Who has dreams for the future?". It's basically a post of wishful thinking, but you might actually understand some parts of my post better than the average person.

Thank you, and do be sure to return soon. I'm sure more ranting and more posting will be done soon.

-A. E. Wallace

Dear PC production companies: Please correct this.

2009-07-21T13:02:00.004-05:00

There are a lot of options for computers out there today in terms of the brand. HP/Compaq, Sony, Acer, Dell, Apple, and other brands that aren't important whatsoever to me at the moment because they don't deserve my chastise are all still fair game these days. They all produce their products in China, but that's not a good explanation why things don't always work so well for certain manufacturers. There are flaws that each company really could work on that would make them a bit better and provide less of a reason to disown each one for certain situations. As such, I'd like to write a short letter to a few of them.

First off, Dear HP:

Please use the Compaq brand as something more than a marque for your cheap computers; let it gain some recognition, too, since you're killing off the HP/Compaq branded Pro computers.
Regarding your laptops, please use your Pro line when styling your Consumer line. The Pavilions and Presarios are sexy when and where they want to be, but consumers can appreciate a more robust build quality in their investments. Thank you for using a nice polycarbonate that stands up to falls fairly well, but using something either less thermally conductive or more thermally conductive with better ventilation would work wonders for you [adding a well-placed fan with INGENIOUSLY designed ducts and heatsinks/heatpipes would give you serious street cred, and maybe allow you to lose some of the obnoxious fan noise required to keep your slabs of plastic cool].
Please, to keep your costs down, use proven, last-generation technology that is only a single-digit percent slower than this generation's devices. There's nothing wrong with a Core Duo running in your lineup for 1 more refresh until you knew what you were doing with the Core 2 Duo, and it would have been cheaper. Also, the ATI chipsets that you used to use for both AMD and Intel systems in various laptop generations...continue shipping those before you switch makers and run across a nasty heat issue that kills a large percent of your laptops. You could save a lot of money by not having to recall over half of your production notebooks; I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to throw in a bit more effort to optimize your older designs for a bit more performance.
Please reintroduce QuickPlay Direct Play for your entire Consumer/Entertainment line up. Before you do, however, please choose the most feature-rich & user-friendly multimedia suite possible, use a standard version of it that will be supported by CyberLink or whoever directly, don't try to re-badge it in ugly QuickPlay design, and layer it on top of an embedded Windows OS that can properly manage memory. If not Windows, go back to Linux; nothing's wrong with open source. A quick-boot Windows Media Center on an integrated 4 GB SSD with read performance greater than a traditional hard drive would work wonders.
Bring back Voodoo PCs. Obviously, it wasn't that strong, but let it stick on as a boutique brand that offers even more than your average HP. And put the Blackbird or whatever it is now under than brand. And the HDX. Actually, rename the HDX the Envy. Make it fit into the Voodoo line up. And add some perks to buying Voodoo, like a killer warranty and better U.S.-based customer support [since it wouldn't be too taxing]. Please and thank you.

Next up, Dear Dell:

Please have one consumer line and one pro line, each with customizations out of the wazoo, with an even distribution of names to make generational distinctions more lucid. Vostro? Studio? Studio XPS? Inspiron?
If you're at a loss on what that little Alienware brand can do for you, it can give you more gamer cred. Let the Alienware marque handle your gaming XPS systems, or call them "Alienware inspired", or something...differentiate them from the standard XPS systems with a better name, please.
Be a little more choosy in your choice of laptop screens, and make your professional line of computers...more professional?
You offend the least, but that means you take some of the smallest risks. Your design team is spot on, but can we get some radical refreshes, please?

Then, Dear Acer:

Please go away. You make my soul cry. You are cheap, and you raise the expectations of every consumer with a bang/buck ratio that results in the other PC makers having to lower quality.
If you have to stay, do what I told HP; use older technology; in your laptop lineup, however, you're allowed to go as far back as the Pentium M and GeForce 4 MX. With that, you can target the large netbook market...it's OK to actually create a successful niche not just based on being cheap. You are allowed to go to Broadcom for your HD acceleration, or take a trip to ATI/AMD for their multimedia prowess. We won't kill you for not including a 1920x1080 screen on your laptops.
With your desktop lineup, you are allowed to put yourself out there a little bit more. It's easy to cost-cut with a desktop. But Intel makes great motherboards with reliability, expandability, and performance in mind, and they are more than happy to make a good OEM board with reduced BIOS options for you, pair it with a decent last-gen Core 2 [let's get real, a Pentium Dual Core or Celeron D], and throw in a decent ATI Radeon HD 2400. I hear Hitachi might also give you a few good hard drives, and you might be able to get great prices on DDR2 RAM; LiteOn might even have a few good optical drives in stock, as well as a few PSUs that won't die in 2 days [you don't have to be the eMachines of this generation!].

And Sony? Dear Sony:

No more exploding batteries. Kthx.
Make your laptops fit together a little better. A little give in the battery bay is OK; but don't make it like the Grand Canyon to ensure that stuff will always fit well.
You are allowed to not shove Blu-ray into every laptop, and you are also allowed to re-visit the ATI/AMD camp more often.
You are allowed to have a professional system like the Mac Pro for the Windows folks. You had a decent series in the RA line back in 2005; those were great studio video/image production/editing machines. You are allowed to come out of the living room. Just say "IEEE 1394" or "FireWire", and include something above the lowest-end discrete graphics available. Last generation's high-performance is OK in most cases; if you have something reliable last gen that still has a ways to go before hitting the speed ceiling, you can probably splurge on a great this-gen graphics card, though.
Offering something like the Qualia line, but for computers, is OK...as long as you actually make the investment worthwhile. You might want to just barely beat retail price for whatever; people love a good deal. No exorbitant pricing this time around for headphones that functioned no better than your $30 builds.
PS3...too expensive! We love the technology, but find some way to make that bad boy cheaper but keep a good reliability, K? That'd be the key to my heart.

Last, Dear Apple:

Re-design the MagSafe cables. Strain relief is not cool; that's why other people's power adapter cabling is typically thicker than their USB cord's cabling. And it's OK to use springs to help prevent premature failure of the cabling; it would fit well with your aluminum designs of this era.
Go back to the pre-Intel era, where you tested every possible scenario and looked back at your own notes before releasing something. Your firmware updates as of late have been kind of underwhelming. [EFI? Bluetooth? iPhone OS 3.0 on older AND newer hardware?] And so have some of your hardware accessories, so I hear.
Tray-loading drives that match the MacBook casing are OK, and I hear they have a better reliability. Ask Sony; you CAN make a tray cover look sexy. [While you're at it, ask Matshita/Panasonic to design a drive that isn't so finicky, and provide firmware updates to improve performance every now and again].
Ambient light sensors are great. Just acknowledge that with a limited set of light bulbs in some areas, your sensors will make the backlighting flicker easily.
USB ports on "Books" are our friends. So are FireWire ports. A break-out cable would be OK; you're allowed to tweak the connectors a little bit and add a few motherboard-mounted hubs.
Accelerometers are great, too. But can we get some ability to lessen the frequency of the SMS's activation other than "off"? And maybe control just what the accelerometer in the iPod/iPhone will and will not do? [I don't always like CoverFlow].
Apple Remotes are nice, no matter what you say, and it doesn't hurt to throw one into the box with mid and high-end computers that support it. And make it so that the remotes get to "decide" which device they control, rather than having each device "ignore" all but one remote.
Your build quality is amazing. Why are you NOT teaching the others how to do this? Don't keep this goodness to yourself!

I suppose that's it for my rant. Now, get to workin', people! Make me a happy consumer!

-A. E.

My new MacBook Pro

2009-07-08T18:18:00.003-05:00

In the last month, a lot has happened. The ending to all of that is my newest toy/productivity tool, an Apple MacBook Pro. June 2009 Unibody low-end 15" model.

Regardless of me saying this is the low-end model, this is still pretty deserving of the Pro moniker. It hasn't faltered at any task I gave it [unless I was just trying to do it wrong, and while the innovative features on this Pro are similar to previous Apple laptops [making them slightly less than 'innovative'], they are all a step up from the HP hardware I was previously working on. [The only downgrade is from 17" to 15", but I have the same screen resolution, so it's actually better in a way].

To the nitty gritty: the actual hardware details. Well...

the hard drive is a 250 GB, 5400 RPM, SATA 1.5Gb/s model from Hitachi. I hear little noise from the drive, possibly due to the Mac's casing. In any case, the HP I had let out lots of noise [including obnoxious spin-up sounds] from both the Fujitsu and Western Digital I used in it.
I've 4 GB of DDR3 RAM at my fingertips. I don't think I will run out of memory too often. It's not 8 GB, but then, I don't have such lofty expectations and needs. Of that 4 GB, about 256 MB of that is shared with...
the nVidia GeForce 9400M G integrated graphics controller. This little bit of circuitry integrated into the nVidia controller hub [which provides USB 2.0, SATA 1.5Gb/s or 3Gb/s with certain laptops and EFI update 1.7, a decent amount of PCI or PCI Express lanes, and pretty good power management from the MCP C51M on my HP] has provided all the video acceleration I could need and want, without putting any strain on the...
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 GHz processor. I'm too lazy to find out the actual Intel model number, but it's been pretty snappy in day-to-day use. It runs only slightly warm inside the Apple Alu casing, which is great.
The optical drive is a model made by Matshita. Matshita is known to have poor slim laptop drives, and I would have preferred a model by Optiarc, but I'm hoping that Apple could bin a higher-quality part from Matshita so I don't have unreliable burning and reading capabilities. It's standard 8x/24x [DVD/CD] fare. Model UJ-868. Connected using SATA, so we've got a bit of power savings and faster recovery from buffer under runs.
Bluetooth is provided by the Broadcom BCM2046 chip. I have this in my two USB dongles, and it works well. This is obviously an internally connected USB model. I expect it will work well and provide me with all 7 virtual channels of Bluetooth goodness.
The WiFi [Airport Extreme] is another Broadcom fare. My HP had a Broadcom card, and it was pretty reliable compared to the Atheros in my dad's Acer, or the Zydas/Atheros USB dongle [branded as a Belkin]. I'm seeing the same reliability with this one; the connections are rock solid and speedy, though my iPod touch occasionally downloads some content [podcasts] at a much faster rate.

I don't have a clue who makes the display on my particular Mac, but it is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. It has hit hues that I have never seen reproduced so well; I saw a specific shade of blue on it, and I drooled a little.

The touchpad is nice. It's not glossy like my HP's, but the texture is still smooth. I'm not a fan of the whole touchpad being one physical button, but combined with Apple's gestures, I'll get over that REALLY fast. It's very responsive and accurate enough for me.

The audio subsystem has pretty good amplification. It's slightly more distorted with exaggerated EQ levels than the Conexant chip in my HP, but it still gets the job done with a decent precision that's close to what I like.

The speakers introduce a great deal of treble and are really "bright", as if they were only tweeters and not rather small midranges; with that said, you can still tell there is some bass trying to come out [even if it doesn't make it out very well]. I miss the Altec Lansing speakers on my HP a good bit, and the fine volume control it offered, but in no way is this a deal-breaker. If you are used to the iPod/iPhone audio output quality and you can take it, then you will be happy.

The backlit keyboard is amazing, and combined with the ambient light sensor, it [and the self-adjusting brightness of the screen] are just genius. The chiclet keys only took me a few days to get accustomed to for normal typing, though I am still looking down a lot more than I usually had to [but as time passes, I will learn this spacing and layout and forget the one from my HP].

I am leery of the build quality of the MagSafe power adapter. I don't usually like my cabling to be that thin unless it is for a headphone or speaker, and I anticipate replacing the unit multiple times throughout the life of the computer because of the cable getting worn out excessively fast [especially if I let someone else wind the cable up and it gets wound up tightly]. Also, the magnet may be a little too strong in some instances; I feel like I have to exert a bit more force than with my traditional HP cable to remove it by pulling it straight out. Rocking the magnet out of contact works well, though, so I can only say that this may be one of the things that depends heavily on the user for ultimate success or failure, which is the case for every laptop. [If you jerk the cable around too much on many systems, the jack on the computer itself can break, which is far worse than just the adapter having to be replaced, so I am neutral].

The fan in my system is pretty quiet, and was undetectable until I put a good load on it using iMovie. Even then, I had to use the tool smcFanControl to get it to speed up to 4000 RPM before I actually would be annoyed by it; at that time, however, the cooling was so great, and the noise was still so easily bearable with a little music playing that I left it there until encoding was complete. It is sitting around 2k RPM right now, and the system is under 50 degrees Celsius, which is 30 degrees lower than the temperature at which my HP idled. I doubt that any cores are being shut down in this thing.

Overall, I love this MacBook. It is leaps and bounds above my HP in terms of initial hardware build quality. I am not going to comment on the Mac OS at this moment, because it has so many options and features that it wouldn't be fair.

A quick recommendation: Microsoft's SyncToy 2.0

2009-06-17T19:07:00.004-05:00

Alright, so in honor of everything having been about backing up for the past few episodes [a good idea, mind you], I figured I would just share my method of backup.

Since I'm a Windows user, I don't exactly have the ability to use Time Machine with a Time Capsule. What I do have, however, is a Western Digital My Book Essentials 750 GB external USB 2.0 hard drive. On my computer, this drive is decently fast, with up to 30 MB/s both reading and writing in an ideal scenario, and still decent at about 15 or 20 if I forget to allow my computer up to its highest performance level.

Now what software do I use with this beefy hard drive? I use Microsoft's own SyncToy 2.0. It's a pretty nice bit of software meant to sync data and only data back and forth between two directories. It doesn't do anything else besides the typical read, write, overwrite [for update], and delete, but this is basically all I need for my typical backup.

Let me explain. I don't backup my whole OS, including settings, etc. I just back up my music purchased [in digital format], podcasts, videos, music videos, pictures--you know, the stuff that you can't really get back with a clean OS installation. But SyncToy does this well. It keeps a database of your selected syncing options, and it copies the files as they are to the destination. You can have SyncToy sync, so it copies and deletes files both ways [from source to destination and vice versa], to just contribute [only back up files to the destination without deleting anything], and have it meet somewhere in the middle, where you basically keep a mirror image of, say, your music folder as a backup [deletions and additions in the source folder are done in the destination, but not the other way around].

This program does require installation, and it doesn't support anything other than basically what you could do manually copying files to a flash drive, CD, etc; it doesn't do any compression on its own, but you can set the destination hard drive to be NTFS with compression [so you can just grab the backup files from any computer as they are]; it doesn't have an easy way to schedule backups, but scheduling is supported via manually adding a task to the task scheduler [instructions are provided in the Help file]; but even with all that, SyncToy is a valuable tool for me that I've been using for the past year now, almost. I used it heavily when I booted into two separate OS installations but wanted to be able to access my files from either side in an easier location, and it has made it easier to do clean OS installs and copy all my media back over as it was.

So, SyncToy may not have all the options you need, and it may not copy everything to allow you to do a full system recovery just by employing it to restore your files, but it is a brilliant tool for people that regularly get new media and need to back it up, so they can just do a few clicks and set it up to run. I've tried other tools, but had to ditch them because they did not support Unicode [SyncToy is the only free tool I've found that can do all this and still support Unicode]. It's pretty stable, albeit a little slow as the amount of files increases [but it has to check to make sure files have not been edited on either side, with the way I have it set up, so it's bound to be time consuming], but I really do recommend it as a great companion to the integrated Windows Backup of the last few versions of Windows, as well as a helper for System Restore [which doesn't always back up every one of your media files, if backed up at all...and you can't trust it to be there if you accidentally delete a file], as well as other backup solutions that can do a full image from time to time.

SyncToy can be found on the Microsoft website in various places. Currently, the most obvious link is here, and a quick Google search can secure you a link in case that one fails. SyncToy is for Windows XP & Vista, and is running smoothly on Windows 7; 32-bit and 64-bit versions are available.

Top 5 pieces of software I love to hate

2009-06-05T14:14:00.003-05:00

Being a computer user obviously means you use a bit of software every time you do anything. Right now, you’re probably looking at this through your favorite internet browser. But has there ever been a time when your favorite internet browser has shown its weakness in one tiny area, thus ticking you off? How about your favorite messaging client? Media player? Surely you’ve run across something where you’ve times you love to hate your favorite software. This is my own personal rundown of the top 5.

Since I’ve basically been on Windows all my computer-using life, I will only be covering Windows versions of the software. Unless otherwise mentioned, I will be covering all software revisions up to the time of this post.

Windows Media Player (all versions from 8/Windows XP to 12/Windows 7)

Ideally, this would be the perfect beginner jukebox software out there. It’s usually fairly lightweight, stable, and plays back whatever files supported by your system.

However, for every bit of good, there is a potential dark side. The interface, which has gotten progressively better with each new version, does often make significant changes, so each new release has required a bit of a learning curve to get accustomed.

Also, new features have always been added or old features have been tweaked, usually for good. However, in trying to make things easier, the ability to fine-tune how files are added to your library [whether or not files of a certain length are added, what file types are added, which folder is added, and how the files are distributed across the libraries in the main WMP Library] seems to be slowly disappearing. I just today found that some of my files have been added, but to a generic “Other media” library, as opposed to the main Video or Music library that they truly belong to. In previous trials, WMP has even added files, but then 2 seconds later removed them from its library, but added the second copy of the files I have set up explicitly for iTunes. [And getting rid of the iTunes copies does not allow me to get the original version for WMP back].

It’s a wonderful piece of software, included in almost all versions of the Windows OS [except for in certain European versions where explicitly left out]. But when it fails, it fails in the most ANNOYING way. If it wasn’t so slick [when it does work], I would throw it out the window, use iTunes exclusively, and never look back.
iTunes (versions 7 and 8 plus all sub-revisions)

Once again, a perfectly good jukebox for your computer, but in this case…

Older versions have been hampered with slow performance in comparison to the Mac versions, and the dependence on QuickTime means that it will be a bit sluggish, anyway.

With the latest version [8.2] great strides have been made, BUT there are still a few performance issues. Hardware video acceleration is still a bit choppy, in comparison to Windows Media Player and various other pieces of software that can play back video with no issue.

Syncing my iPods is usually OK, but the automatic syncing [and the services required to have the ability to sync at all] take up a few system resources that don’t always need to be kept running. Plus, connecting my iPod does not always equal automatic syncing, even with iTunes open, so I’ve disabled it.

Other than the odd performance issues, iTunes has been pretty stable for me. Now, if only they could make everything flow as well as CoverFlow…
Internet Explorer (IE6 SP2 to IE8)

Ahh, it’s everyone’s favorite Windows browser, the ol’ reliable Internet Explorer. It’s been there for a long time, getting people on the Web, serving them updates for their Windows machines [up to Windows Vista, anyway], and opening certain file types that you’d expect other Windows extensions to be able to handle [animated GIFs, anyone?].

For me, all versions of Internet Explorer have started out rather fast, but installing those required plugins [for Flash, Shockwave, PDF support in the browser, etc] slows the browser down instantly. Even in its latest iteration does IE have this problem; it gets so bloated so fast that it seems to just bog down when loading certain pages and it has a dreadfully slow startup time. And if a plugin is broken, forget about having an easy time troubleshooting; this may cause IE to close, and you won’t have the foggiest clue why…

Then of course there are times where it cannot quite properly render pages, when other browsers do much better. This one gets kinda annoying if you frequent the site and no one can find a cause for the failure of the IE rendering engine, so you’re stuck with the random error messages about certain page elements not loading properly. In worst case scenario, one little “broken” element causes the whole page to cease all usefulness. You can click “reload” and hope for the best, but remember to be realistic; it probably won’t fix anything.
Nero Burning ROM (versions 7 to now)

Nero started out being one of the best burning programs around. Its ease of use and myriad features left other comparable bundles in the dust. As it progressed from a simple burning program to a suite, it gained even more popularity; it allowed people to do things they hadn’t been able to reliably do before, and it was simply the king! It was reliable, quick, and just informative enough to be a happy medium between a beginner’s tool and the expert’s toolkit.

Nowadays, however, the Nero suite has gotten progressively more bloated, slow, and hasn’t introduced that many new features to sweep users away from other software suites from the likes of Sonic/Roxio, InterVideo, or Cyberlink. Granted, it still has all the bells and whistles you can want, but other software is more user-friendly to both beginners and experts, the interface more fresh on other suites parallel to Nero’s market position, and other suites seem to require less resources than Nero. Plus, there are plenty of freeware/open-source applications out there; while they may not all be a part of one package, they oftentime have even more features, a greater ease-of-use, lighter resource requirements, and infinitely better support than Nero does—and for free! As a matter of fact, unless I absolutely need something that Nero has [which is rare], I just use tools such as the freeware ImgBurn to create my discs; it handles all of what I need it to handle when paired with other suites.

Let’s not forget that Nero’s burning ability seems to have gotten ~~stronger~~ weaker, too…
All HP software (past 2 to 8 years, depending)

In this, I basically categorize any bit of HP-branded software that comes with HP hardware, including that bundled with printers, scanners, cameras, and PCs. Now, not all of it is bad; no two programs are bad for the exact same reasons. Some of HP’s software has been very good, and advanced for its time [such as HP’s QuickPlay Direct Play, which allowed users to play movies and view some multimedia files without booting completely into Windows].

However, like all other good things, the positives to HP’s branded software must come to an end. Rarely does HP stick by a particular piece of software, even if it is still completely useful. So while it may get updates to fix bugs, if it even gets updates at all, there may be no growth to the software except in terms of the sheer amount of space required to do the same thing.

In terms of helpful software found on HP consumer PCs, a lot of it takes up valuable resources; ironic, since oftentime users will head to that very same software to figure out why their PC is being so sluggish.

And no printer needs a software CD full of software that will be installed by default. The old HP Printer Toolbox was more than enough for me, and the help files helped me get what I needed to get done, done. But now…there’s a full solution center? For my printer? And when I uninstall it, you recommend me leave it installed when it does nothing but sit there and bloat everything up? I know how to change cartridges; I know how to align the printhead; I know how to run the printer’s self-clean cycle; I know how to load paper; and I don’t need to have the electronic solutions manual available to me 24/7! I don’t need to know that the door on my printer is open; I can see that! And even in that case, your Printer Toolbox bundled with the older 600, 700, 800, 900 series of DeskJets was MUCH faster to tell me that my ink is low or that my door is open, and didn’t offer me more than a “close” or “OK” button [all that I NEED, thank you!].

Come on, HP. Get some better software programmers. You have killer ideas…just implement them properly & stick by them ~~like you’ve been doing for the past 2 years~~.

My Recs for The Study Guide, May 27th, 2k9 [Episode 7]

2009-05-27T16:34:00.007-05:00

A lovely service by the name of Delicious is worthy of a recommendation today. Delicious is a self-proclaimed social bookmarking site, but it is most definitely a valuable tool for anyone that uses multiple browsers and/or multiple computers, and cannot trust their bookmarks to be tied down to any one browser or does not feel like manually exporting their bookmarks every time they add one.

Basically, you sign up for Delicious, you [optionally] add a bookmarklet [Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Chrome and Opera all support them, and this includes Safari for Windows] or an add-on [Internet Explorer or Firefox only, at the moment], you back up all your bookmarks, upload to your new Delicious database [Delicious will be guiding you through this process], and you now have all of your bookmarks located in one place! You can access your Delicious bookmarks from any Internet-enabled computer, too, which is the whole driving force behind it; your bookmarks are available whenever you want to use the Internet!

Delicious automatically takes your folder organization and applies it to its “tagging” organization, where you can click on a tag and see all the bookmarks in that tag group. However, do note that whereas you can have spaces in your folders and such on your own computer, the spaces in the tags will be automatically converted to underscores during the import, or when adding new bookmarks you will have to add some symbol [I chose underscores] in place of spaces; adding a space when doing new tags separates the tags [each bookmark can have multiple tags].

I’ve used Delicious for a few days, and have found it very useful. I’ve used the web interface on browsers where no bookmarklet or add-on [specific to Delicious] was installed, and it worked flawlessly. They have really worked this down to a science. You can even export your bookmarks from Delicious [a feature I haven’t tried] to have a hard-copy for wherever you want it.

Another bonus is that you can have bookmarks be private, or public [hence the “public bookmarking” part of the whole premise]. You can share you bookmarks with anyone you want, and when creating bookmarks, you can select to have it be private or public on-the-fly. [Be aware: importing a lot of bookmarks will make them either all private or all public, according to what you decide at that moment; altering that decision for a random selection of your bookmarks may get annoying if you have a great number of ‘em; but you still have the option].

I’ve seen little downside to using Delicious thus far, and encourage everyone to try it out. Head on over to Delicious’ site: http://delicious.com/, & be sure to check the Delicious FAQ and other good questions located at http://delicious.com/help

Also, SUPER, a freeware re-encoding application, is an OK, 3rd-tier pick [not quite as supe a pick as Delicious, pun fully intended]. Basically, you can take most any multimedia file that has NO DRM [so sorry to those of you with anything purchased--other than iTunes Plus, Amazon MP3s, etc--that has DRM; it won’t break that] and switch the format for use with another application or another device.

I used it just today to transcode [re-write] a video from YouTube format to Applie iPod/iPod touch/iPhone format, since I wanted to be able to view the video even when I don’t have an internet connection for my iPod. It started as something that was compatible with iTunes, but iTunes couldn’t make a proper version for the iPod. This app handled it and did an amazing job.

Its power lies in that it support almost every mainstream format when reading [and supports whatever your computer can play back, sans DRM audio/video], and can create files in almost any mainstream format, even providing a few profiles that guide you in creating a file that some very popular media playing devices will support.

It uses many open-source tools to do all the dirty work, allowing it to be free. And because many parts of the supporting structure are open-source, it allows the community to keep updates constantly flowing, improving quality and speed as well as offering new functions. And there’s never a worry about a specific company going out of business, leaving you with a decrepit piece of software that handle the latest formats. The user interface doesn’t get many updates, though, but that doesn’t mean anything as it is pretty nice to use once you get accustomed to the layout and plethora of options.

For those of you that feel that this might be sketchy, because it’s something you’ve never heard of: And when retrieved from a reliable site [which is something I always recommend everyone out there do], it has no malicious viruses, spyware, etc that can harm your computer. Various older versions have been reported as having viruses and spyware, but they were false warnings, and in all my time of use [a couple of years now], I’ve never had a problem with any version. I don’t want a virus, and I wouldn’t want to ever help spread a virus.

I recommend it as a tool you keep in your arsenal because you will eventually run across that pesky video file or audio file that won’t work with your device, and you will be glad to have this handy. Just note that it is a very powerful tool, and has many options, and if you have an easier way that works, there’s no need to always use this. It fails quite often, and requires a bit of work to find the magic combination of options that will work to get your files to your preferred format [making it a 3rd tier recommendation at best]. But where other fail, this usually can handle it, even if this takes a bit of work.

I recommend you download from VideoHelp.com [a reputable site, with easy to source download links] at http://www.videohelp.com/tools/SUPER , and visit the official site at http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html for tips, hints, and other good information.

-A. E.

My picks of the week for The Study Guide, Episode 6

2009-05-17T10:15:00.005-05:00

Shape Collage
a nice piece of software for using your own pictures to make a simple collage in the shape of your choice.
by Vincent Cheung
found at www.shapecollage.com

and

Diesel Sweeties
a pretty interesting webcomic going strong since 2000
by R. Stevens
found at www.dieselsweeties.com
[Wikipedia page found here]

plus

Google Pack
A selection of software & quick links to Google services; a good pack to have when you do a fresh Windows XP or Vista operating system installation, and have no other tools.
provided by Google and its affiliates
available at pack.google.com
[be sure to check out the "learn more about Google Pack" link to learn more]

Poor grades...every student's fear.

2009-05-12T18:33:00.004-05:00

Luckily, I don't have to worry about that fear! I think if I cut out my social life, I can do better...but I don't want to do that, haha. Also, I think my schedule next semester, which is far more geared towards math, being one continuous stream of one basic idea [mathematics] may make it easier than switching between philosophy, psychology, theology [none of which go together in any way, in my mind], and literature. With my mind being mostly in one place, maybe I will be more efficient. [I could also fail more because I don't get a break from math, but whatever.] Bring it on, sophomore year! =)

Welcome to The Flip Side!

2009-05-08T19:43:00.002-05:00

This site is yet another venture by me, A. E. Wallace. Along with my WordPress blog, this site serves as the central hub of my ever-growing Internet awareness. This site caters more to the shorthand explanation of my life, barely scratching the surface; my WordPress blog goes deeper, getting more in-touch with my emotions and all of my thoughts. They are meant to complement each other.

This site, as I put on my WordPress...
"Caters much more to my affiliation with the podcast. Typically where I will try to focus on technology, promote the podcast, and do short posts from time to time. The most superficial of my sites, geared towards offering a few tips and advice as well as getting my name out there to tie everything together. Offers me the least expansion, though, so nothing too huge is posted there."

...Yeah. That basically means that really short posts will be done here, about the most random stuff, and I make no promises that this blog will be too terribly official. But it should still be enjoyable with all the rest of the sites I run.

A basic list of A. E. Wallace-driven sites/pages [which I call CoreDigitalÆ sites] can be found on the side bar.

Thank you for visiting, and come back again soon! =)

Happiness: Now with less remorse over the past!

2009-05-08T01:01:00.002-05:00

I can't believe it is over! my freshman year has gone by ridiculously fast. I had so much fun this past year. It started with a perfectly nice roommate, but we just didn't mesh. Then we fast-forward a bit and I get a kid by the handle H. T. Henning, & he was an amazing roommate. We have a pretty good friendship, and he reminded me that good people do still exist. And the rest of my friends are equally awesome. I've made it this far thanks to their introduction into my life, and I really hope that The Big Guy decides to allow them all to stay in my life. If there are any people better than these folks, I'm amazed. But now...time to work on my summer!

[Just gonna point out that I hate the above picture so far as it's fairly unflattering of me, but I can get over being the most rotund of the 3 because we're all smiling and chilling and...yeah. =) ]

And the clean-up begins...

2009-05-04T09:17:00.001-05:00

Just...argh! I can't believe it's time to begin packing up. *le' tear* So sad. I'm not ready to leave my cool friends yet!