Popularity: 13% [?]

They should have named this game B.O.R.I.N.G.  I almost died of boredom during the first few minutes of the game.  It’s not engaging at all.  Graphics is outdated, AI is laughable…and why is everyone taller than me?! 

Waste of $35 right there because I’m not finishing that game; I’d rather do laundry.

I guess I’m waiting for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 then…

Popularity: 13% [?]

If this doesn’t make you laugh, you have no soul.

Popularity: 13% [?]

I have just finished playing the Normal mode of God of War II.  I wasn’t a fan of the first installment I hated the first game because of hideous collision detection.  This game seem to have been developed by an entirely different team.  The level design is fantabulous and the boss fights are mind-numbingly awesome.  Collision detection problems were at a minimum; the minor annoyance is the camera.

The game deserves the near-perfect ratings it has received from several gaming sites and magazines.

Popularity: 13% [?]

[ Disclaimer: Use the information mentioned here at your own risk.  I cannot replace your D200 if you damage it by following the instructions here; I'm still paying for mine ]

A little over a year later, my dust bunnies collection on my D200 sensor has become cumbersome…a nuisance, even.  A lot of my stock photos have been rejected due to sensor dusts.  So what’s a photographer to do?  While buying a new camera is an enticing option, the echoes of my empty wallet will keep me awake for at least the next 10 years as soon as I hit the “Submit Order” button at B&H’s website.

The only other (practical) option is to clean it.  After much googling, I bought a set of Sensor Swabs (Type 2) and a bottle of Eclipse from Micro-Tools (awesome store, BTW), and while I was on my buying spree, I threw in a cheap Giottos Hand blower pump thing. 

So when I received the items this afternoon, I started looking for information on how to actually clean the sensor.  Every freakin’ website points to a page by Thom Hogan regarding cleaning the sensor.  The web page (overrated, IMO) could have been just a little more useful if it showed…um…how to set your Nikon camera in sensor cleaning mode.  Holy crap, so much disclaimer in there when there is a glaring information missing.  Man, people really suck.

Anyway, after setting the mirror lock-up (on the Menu…NOT the MLU on the frames-per-second dial next to the self-timer!) and exposing the sensor, I used the Giottos blower and it turns out that it’s the only thing I need.  Dust is gone.  I rule.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I have received my cheap PCI Raid card (eBay is a cheap geek’s friend) and bought two 300GB diks and configured them for RAID 1 (Mirror) on my FreeNAS machine.  Good thing the RAID card worked even though it’s documented as compatible only with PCI 2.2; my motherboard is only PCI 2.1 compatible.  Setting up on the card’s BIOS was painless and my FreeNAS machine was working within a few minutes.

FreeNAS (or FreeBSD) had an obscure name (/ar0) for the RAID-ed disk and it also listed the individual 300GB disks individually, which was pretty weird.  It also doesn’t report the RAID disk size (instead displays the size as “disk1″). It threw me off at first because I even thought it was my FreeNAS partition, but when I formatted the /ar0 it reported the correct size of the RAID disk.  After a quick google I’ve read on somebody’s blog that he had somewhat the same experience (he didn’t mention the size not being reported correctly).  I did notice, however, that the Disk Space Usage on the FreeNAS admin page seem to report the correct percentage used, which is good enough for me.

As of this writing, I am backing up all my digital images using SyncBack.  RSync seems to be a better option for backing up in theory…except that the RSync clients for Windows aren’t as elegant (not even close) nor as intuitive as SyncBack.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I have in my possession my very own Nexto Ultra portable image storage, um, thingy.  I ordered mine from the good folks at EastGear.com.  They gave the cheapest price and they included the 17-in-one card CF adapter and an extra external battery.

I’m going through the paces of fondling testing the gadget as I write this.  I was a tad disappointed with the build of the device; it seems much sturdier on the product images.  Everything is controlled by one button (!) depending on the context; you have short (“S”) and long (“L”) press to sort through the menus.

Copying is wicked fast with the 50x Kingston Elite Pro.  The display (with almost non-existent backlighting) shows you how long it took to copy all the files from the CF to the HDD.

All in all, I’m happy so far.  We’ll see how it performs in the field.

While you wait for my thorough review (which may not be written soon), read this excellent review from another photographer with much higher credibility than me.  Note that I did not go through the same import inquiry hassle that he did; he was probably one of the first owners from the US of the product.

Popularity: 13% [?]

For the past couple of days I’ve doing a little research on what I need to create a decent panorama via image stitching.  

I started with the hardware and so far the only relatively-cheap (under $200) panorama heads I can find with decent reviews are: Panosaurus, KingPano, and Nodal Ninja.  The problem with these inexpensive heads is the lack of Arca-Swiss compatibility and weight restrictions (average capacity is around 4 lbs).  These reasons pretty much swayed me away from these products–although if Arca-Swiss compatibility is not an issue, I would have gone with the least expensive Panosaurus.

I would love to have the complete Really Right Stuff complete pano kit or even the not-so-complete kit, but I’m not really planning to do a lot of panorama shots…yet.  My Tripod already has a bubble level (for level horizontal panning), so I am opting to buy the Kirk Long Rail Plate.  I will buy this instead of the equivalent RRS product because it’s cheaper and the Kirk one can be pivoted.  The RRS MPR-CLII, however, has a ruler built in.  It’s debatable at this point.

As for the software, at first I looked at PTAssembler+PanoTools (PTAssembler is a GUI front end for PanoTools).  While it’s really cheap ($35), I found it very unintuitive and the UI is not quite polished.  It also doesn’t support 16-bit outputs.  Automatic panorama creation can be done with AutoPano and EnBlend, but in the end this frankenstein of a software isn’t really as good as I thought–not to mention it’s dog-slow, too. 

The only other software I looked at was PTGui, which is also a front-end GUI for PanoTools.  At around $80, I can hear my wallet whimpering, but judging on the output (it can support 16-bit) and ease of use (not to mention a lot faster than PTAssembler), this will probably end up in my library of software.

I know there are other software out there, but I can’t imagine any other software that can best PTGui.  There’s RealViz Stitcher, but at around $400, I wouldn’t care if it’s 10 times better…although reviews show that even this mega-expensive software is trumped by PTGui in automatic panorama creation.

I will keep this updated when I purchase the hardware.

Popularity: 18% [?]

I found it hard to believe that most mainstream reviewers actually found this game good…instead of marginal at best. 

Are these reviewers on drugs?  Or have they actually not played a decent fighting game before playing DJI?  I would say both, and that they were paid by EA to give a positive review.  I mean, seriously, check out these reviews:

“…but it really shines thanks to its crazy story mode and healthy roster.” -Gamespot.  Is it me, or is the current line-up of Icon roster is so LAME compared to its predecessors?  If the highlight of fighting game is its story mode, we have a problem.  The last thing I care about in a fighting game is its story.

“A great entry to the series, combining a fluid control scheme, pulsating environments, and cool simulation features…”  -GameZone.  Unless you check the author’s name, you’d swear an employee from EA wrote this review.  Real impartial for somebody who sipped every drop of that Kool-Aid.

“In the end, Def Jam Icon is more like a bump-n-grind slow jam instead of the club banger that it should have been, but it still deserves merit.” -Team XBox.  Wait, that’s a negative sum-up, right?  And the game still received an 8.0?  Wait there while I pick up the pieces of my head that just exploded.

“But as pretty as the game is, and as great as the soundtrack might be, the game’s real draw lies in the eight amazingly detailed rumble locations. ” -Gamepro.  This one’s my favorite.  I always look for the amazingly-detailed rumble locations in a fighting game. Whoopee.

(more…)

Popularity: 13% [?]

I have just breathe a new life to an old Pentium III computer by making it a PC-based NAS.  I installed FreeNAS on it and will try to put a RAID controller in there somewhere and have an additional RAID-1 500GB network drive for my porn digital images (I currently have a measly 100GB storage in there now).

It used to have Microsoft MCE installed hoping I could use it for streaming videos and photos.  It ended up unuseable because it’s just too damn slow.

Popularity: 15% [?]