Tech update time... ^^ . Got a new monitor to replace my previous one. Well, its not really that new anymore since its already been 2 months since I got it. The monitor that I picked up is the Samsung P2370H LCD monitor.

This is meant to be a replacement for my previous Samsung P2350 monitor which I posted about here. Biggest reason for the change in monitor was because I needed a HDMI input as I will explain later. Yes, this monitor is a 23" monitor too, the same as my previous one. Getting a bigger one would mean splurging more $$ and it wouldn't fit my desk very well anyway.

This is the standard packaging of the monitor. Notice the huge chunky brick there ^^" . That's the power adaptor for the monitor, unlike the P2350 which does not come with a power brick since that's built in to the monitor.

Well, the external power brick is the price to pay for having a slim profile and sleek monitor like the P2370H. In fact, all the other P2x70 series from Samsung comes with the external power adaptor if I'm not mistaken since they all share the same slim profile design.

Bezel of the P2370H. Weird that the "H" here is missing... Hmmmm. As you can see, the red lining design around the bezel indicates that this is one of Samsung's "Touch of Color" monitors.

The red tint isn't really visible under normal lighting conditions. Its only visible with a bright source shining on to it which in this case came from my flash =)

This is a Full High Definition (HD) monitor as its native resolution is 1920x1080. Contrast ratio seems to have gone higher here compared to the P2350. Then again, it only works for dynamic contrast and even so smells very gimmicky to me =p

Very slim profile viewed from the side. Do not that due to the design, this monitor is not wall mountable (VESA) as compared to the P2350.

Again, you can see the red tint which is a signature of the ToC lineup. The P2370H is not to be confused with the P2370 which was released earlier and there are a few differences between them.

Here is the rear connections of the monitor. The most notable difference between the P2370H and P2370 is the presence of a HDMI in port and also and audio out port. The P2370 only has a DVI connection for input. HDMI was the main reason I made the switch of monitors.

Audio out allows you to carry the audio signal to your sound device if your HDMI input carries audio too.

Touch buttons on the P2370H. Takes some getting use to as it does not register at times when I press the "buttons". Another quirk with the monitor is that when you press the source button, it actually cycles between 3 inputs - HDMI, Digital (DVI) and Analog. Wait a minute... analog? What's it doing in this monitor which only has 2 inputs? Very strange indeed. And it gets annoying at times since the monitor has to cycle through an additional source which DOES NOT even exist!

P2370H and P2350 side by side just for fun 8D

Widescreen is awesome for browsing and just about anything else since there is more real estate on your screen.

Video playback. You won't get any black frames at the top and bottom if your video is in 16:9 format.

Testing the monitor with my PS3.

Colours looks great on the monitor. Just note that you can't hardware calibrate the monitor using a colourimeter with a PS3. Haha.

On another note, this monitor is not without flaws though. When I first got it, I noticed some strong backlight bleeding at the bottom right edge corner of the screen. And it had a blue-ish tint to it too which is pretty annoying. 2 months after using it, the problem doesn't seem to be as bad as before. Or maybe I got used to the problem.

I'm thinking that the backlight bleed problem might be a consequence of the slim design but I heard from a fellow friend who has a P2370MS, this problem doesn't occur to his monitor. Then again, that's a different model though still sharing the same desgin. If, you do wish to get this monitor, just remember to test it out with a black/blank screen in the shop to avoid disappointment. Lol.

And here is the reconfigured layout of my workspace.

As for the backlight bleed issue, I'm too lazy to send my monitor back to Samsung for them to RMA or inspect it so yeah... I have been living with it. Other thatn the backlight bleed gripe, the P2370H is a fine monitor considering it has DVI and HDMI imputs. That's all for now =)

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My Dualshock 3 that I ordered is here =D. Well actually I got it around a week ago but haven't updated my blog with stuff yet. Long back log of stuff that needs to be posted >_<.

I ordered the DS3 from Play Asia and it took almost 2 weeks + for it to arrive. PA's free airmail shipping is usually really fast and sometimes can arrive in as short as 5 days =) . Unforutunately, it was shipped during Xmas peroiod which slowed things down. You can grab one from PA here. I used the Christmas coupon for my purchase so I got it cheaper.

No dents or squashes. Phew..

Complimentary lanyard from Play Asia in the package xD . Was surprised to find it in the box. I was about to dump the box away since its filled with those white foam and the lanyard was quite hidden from sight ^^;

Like the plastic and light reflection here.

The one I got is the black DS3. Comes in many other flavours such as silver, blue, white and red.

Dualshock 3 and Sixaxis label on the controller. The DS3 is meant to replace the Sixaxis which does not come with rumble a.k.a. force feedback.

Got the DS3 to replace my Sixaxis since my PS3 wasn't bundled with the DS3. Play-Asia offers differsion region versions of the DS3 which are US, Japan, Asia. Just go for the Asia one. I didn't bother about the rest since the Asia version is cheaper and all DS3s are identical. They probably have the different regions for price control like how R2 games are more expensive.

Oh and speaking of PS3 related stuff....

Not mine though ^^; Belongs to a friend.

Hmmmmmmm.

Will probably order the English version of FF XII but the lack of dual audio selection for the voice overs is a turn off OTL.

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]]> http://wakuwakusuru.zeroclipse.net/2010/01/05/dualshock-3-controller/feed/ 2 http://wakuwakusuru.zeroclipse.net/2009/12/16/wd-my-book-essential/ http://wakuwakusuru.zeroclipse.net/2009/12/16/wd-my-book-essential/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:28:45 +0000 raptor_cZn http://wakuwakusuru.zeroclipse.net/?p=588

Got a new external hard disk not too long ago. Yes, I'm my computer is running out of storage fast with all the pictures, music and videos accumulating at an exponential rate ^_^;  . Especially HD videos.

This is Western Digital's My Book Essential edition which is meant to have basic storage functions with a basic backup software included if backup is what you intend to use the drive for. Drives come in a few flavours for capacity. The one I got is 1TB.

The box. WD has certainly put in a lot of effort and idea into making a cool looking and user friendly box. Easy to unbox =D

What lies in the box - drive and another box containing the standard accessories.

Nope you won't find any CDs here. Only cables. I'll explain further below.

Grill design on the top of the device. For heat dissipation purposes I assume. Looks quite different to that of my Mirror Edition external hard disk.

As I  have said earlier, the hard disk does not come with any physical disc drivers. Why you might ask? The answer is simple really. WD has implemented a nifty feature of creating an image of the driver disc in the hard disk itself so you won't ever have to worry about misplacing that disc xD

WD chrome logo.

Rear connections of the My Book Essential. DC in and USB port. The power button is not flushed out so it takes a bit of getting used to pressing it. I had some amount of problem getting to press the button properly ^^;

With the LED status indicator showing how much free space is left on the drive. You have to install the WD software in order for the bars to light up and work.

Oh and the included software also allows you to password protect your drive which explains that lock logo below the status indicator which is plus if you bring your drive around with you and use it on public computers. Software included also makes backing up files less of a chore since its pretty user friendly.

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]]> http://wakuwakusuru.zeroclipse.net/2009/12/16/wd-my-book-essential/feed/ 0 http://wakuwakusuru.zeroclipse.net/2009/09/25/softsubs-conversion-tutorial/ http://wakuwakusuru.zeroclipse.net/2009/09/25/softsubs-conversion-tutorial/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:48:37 +0000 raptor_cZn http://wakuwakusuru.zeroclipse.net/?p=464

When I first googled on how to convert .mkv videos with softsubs to other formats such as .avi or .mp4 with the subtitles still intact, I did not get much help on how to go about it since most video conversion software aren't really helpful at converting softsubbed videos into hardsubbed ones.  So I'm writting this tutorial here since I too spent quite a bit of hair splitting hours figuring out how to get .mkv files with subtitles to play on my iPod Touch or my PSP for that matter. This tutorial should work for about any device which supports .avi or .mp4 playback.

Technically, this is more of a softsub to hardsub tutorial. First of all, you should have to the following programs and files in your computer:

• MKVExtractGui and the Wizard (Download link here)
• Avisynth and VSfilter (that should come with CCCP which you can get here)
• A video converter which supports .avs files for conversion - For my case, I used Any Video Converter (Its a pretty good piece of software and its free too. Download link here)

After downloading MKVextractGUI, the program will self-extract itself to any location you choose. For example you can extract it to your desktop. In the folder, you will see the exe file among other files.

Alternatively, if you install the Wizard, you will be able to see the exe file. In this case, I will be showing you how to use the Wizard to extract the subtitles from the mkv video. The purpose of this is to seperate the .ass subtitle file from the .mkv file which contains the softsubs since the mkv file acts as a container.

Froom here, just select the input video with the subs. As you can see here, the video which I wish to extract is a Higurashi ep with softsubs. Output folder is up to you to decide but do remember where you output the files later on as you will be needing its location ^^;

Once again when you press next and come to this screen, you will see the list of stuff that you can extract from the mkv file. Our purpose here is to obtain the subtitle file so select Track 3 if the subtitle file is in Track 3. You can see that Track 4 also has subtitles though this is the unstyled subs. If a file has more than one subtitle like different languages, then you will be able to select them from here too. Though you will only be able to hardsub one subtitle track to one video, unlike mkv files which can contain more than 1 subtitle track.

And we're done extracting! =)

This is how the file would look like after you have successfully extracted it. Now, you will have to copy the exact file name into the AVS script.

Next up, launch notepad to create the AVS script...

The script should contain the following


LoadPlugin("G:\Program Files\Combined Community Codec Pack\Filters\vsfilter.dll")
DirectShowSource("I:\Encoded\Videos\[Hauu~].Higurashi.no.Naku.Koro.ni.Kai.16.(H264.Vorbis)(B2844441].mkv", fps=23.976, convertfps=true)
TextSub("I:\Encoded\Videos\[Hauu~].Higurashi.no.Naku.Koro.ni.Kai.16.(H264.Vorbis)(B2844441]_Track3.ass"

Replace the (B28... with [B28...,  the BBcode will screw up the formatting of the post if I typed it that way >.<

In the line of DirectShowSource, you would place the location of the video you wish to convert and the text sub would be the location of the subtitle file. The converted video might work without the fps=23.976, convertfps=true but if there is video/audio sync problems then you have to add fps=23.976, convertfps=true or change the frame rate to something else.

Once done, save the file as something.avs

You can replace something with whatever name you want.

Next would be to launch your video conversion software and I have used Any Video Converter here. Open the avs script and it should be loaded to the job queue.

These are the settings that I used to get the video to work on my iTouch though you can play around with the settings to see which is best for you. Increasing the bitrate would increase the quality but also the size of the video.

And the end result!! xD

I have not tried it out on my PSP yet but it should work. You just need to get the appropriate settings for your portable media player/phone since the convertered video can be in the form of 3gp/avi/mp4. You should check which video codec your device supports.

That's all. Hope you found this helpful.

Its been awhile since I last posted ^^; . Got this like 2 weeks back which is a new graphics card for my computer.Decided to get a new graphics card to replace my aging nVidia 7600GT card, I got that card for free sometime back through some lucky draw thing =).

The price of the 4850 is really reasonable now after the price slash. Used to be like RM 600+. I wanted to get the IceQ4 version initially but all the shops that I went to do not carry stock anymore so I had to settle with this.

The fan of the graphics card. A little different from the reference design as this is a new revision. Its noticeably louder at times when compared to my 7600GT but then again, the 7600GT's fan is so small that you wouldn't even call it one? Haha.

Comes with Dual DVI output. Just when I need for my dual monitor set up. I rarely game on my PC nowadays so I didn't see the point of getting the 4870 or 4890 which is a faster card compared to the 4850. Still this card is well worth your money for its performance.

Creative has announced a portable media player known as the Zii Egg which is quite similar compared to the iPod Touch in terms of design and functions. Well, its a MP3/video player to begin with.The Zii Egg is Creative's first product to run on ZiiLABS' ZMS-05 processor.  The Zii Egg has option on running on different operating systems with the first being ZiiLABS' own Plaszma OS platform and the other being Android OS.

The ZMS-05 Processor

Some of the features and specifications of the Zii Egg are:

• 3.5" 320x480 resolution screen (which is about the same as the iTouch's)
• Capacitive 10-point multi-gesture touch display
• X-Fi audio processing (This is Creative's high end sound system found in their sound cards with carries the same name)
• Up to 32GB Internal Flash Storage
• SDHC slot which supports up to 32GB of external SDHC Card
• 720p and 1080p support
• 3-axis Accelerometer
• Dual cameras (this enables video calls, etc.)
• Hardware GPS receiver (Something not found in the iTouch which would make a great feature ^^;)
• Bluetooth 2.1
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
• Headphone socket, built-in speaker and microphone

The Zii Egg won't be able to masses as of yet. You can only get it buy purchasing the software development kit (SDK) bundle which its name implies, is targeted towards software developers at the price of USD399. ZiiLABS plans to market it through OEMs which means that "the device is marketed to sell to third parties rather than retail customers where they can modify it and sell it under their own brand rather than Creative or ZiiLABS" according to Wikipedia.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out to be.

More info can be found on the official site.

Finally got to jailbreak my iPod Touch after much delay. Didn't bother jailbreaking my iTouch when I first got it a few months back but I decided to try things out now.

See that little app on the dock there called Cydia? Once your iPod Touch or iPhone is jailbroken, it will be installed and will allow you to download tons of third party stuff not available in the official app store. Plenty of customization options here too including changing themes etc.

Downloaded this app called mxTube. It allows you to download and save videos from YouTube onto your iPod Touch which is really great since you can't do this with the normal YouTube player which comes with the original firmware.

I used redsn0w 0.3 to jailbreak my iTouch running on 2.2.1 firmware. Everything went smoothly. Encountered no problems with the thing getting stuck or whatsoever. There's a guide here to jailbreak your iTouch if you are using 2.2.1.

What is that CiRcLeS? o.O

And this xP . Osu! Its a rythm based tapping game.

And to humour you ^_^ . That's how I feel after jailbreaking my iTouch.... Well, kind of.

Still trying out the other apps available on Cydia. Will update if I find any cool ones.

I present to you..... the My Book Mirror by Western Digital xP. Well,  I acquired this external hard disk which is known specifically as the Western Digital My Book 2TB Mirror Edition.Went looking all around is Low Yat Plaza for this but out of all the shops that I went to, only one of them sold this. This is an external hard disk drive if you cannot guess from the picture ^^;

It comes in a green box denoting the environment friendly thing. There's a even a green leaf there on the picture lol. The box is neatly packed and is easily recognizable as an external hard disk with the picture in front.

Stuff which comes included

The external hard drive comes included with the usual drivers, manual, etc. There are a few softwares which come included like the WD Anywhere Backup but all of them are trial versions of the software and you have to purchase them after the trial period expires. Did not bother installing them as it will just nag me to register it later on.

Power adaptor

I found this charger to be rather cool and interesting. The design of it seems modular and you can change the type of sockets for the adapter so that it will fit into your power outlet depending on which country you are in.  It comes with 2 other sockets. The one that I'm using is the 3-pin one.

The drive comes packed with a plastic wrapper to prevent scratches.

Here, we have the drive itself. It only comes in the colour black and it has a glossy finish. Looks really sleek and it fits well in most places but the glossy surface means that it will be a fingerprint magnet if you fiddle with it often. Well, that's not really an issue if you just leave it there to work.

Rear Connections

As for the rear of the unit, it comes with a USB connection an input for power supply. There is a button at the back too to power up/power down or wake it up from "sleep" mode. Speaking of power, since WD emphasizes on energy savings and what not, the drives will enter a kind of "sleep" mode which consumes less power if you leave it idle (no transfers to or from the drive) after a couple of minutes.

WD Logo

Inside of this external hard disk is actually 2 x 1TB hard drives which are pre-configured to run in RAID 1 mode which is data mirroring which is what all this external drive is about as the name suggests. You can set it to RAID 0 if you do not want your data to be mirrored and want to make full use of the 2TB space for storage. But that kinda deafeats the purpose of getting an external hard disk which is meant to work with RAID 1.

The hard disk drives in the casing are meant to be user-serviceable, meaning that you can change it any time in case one of the drives fail.

LED Indicator

The LED indicator here shows you the status of the drive, whether it is powered on, trasnfering data or is in sleep mode. When it is in sleep mode, the lights will blink on and of periodically. The indicator even does a nifty job of telling you how much free space is available left on the drive. The more filled up it is, the higher the blue bar gets lighted up ^^

The Mirror Edition only comes with a USB connection. If you are looking for Firewire and eSata, then you should consider getting the WD My Book Studio Edition II which also has 2TB variants and supports RAID 1. The Studio Edition II will also support Macs though its more expensive than the Mirror Edition.

Morse code? o.O

Supposedly, some morese code runs along the top, back and bottom of the drive. Not sure what are the meanings though ^^;

Overall, the WD My Book Mirror is great if you plan on backing up your files onto a external hard disk. Having RAID 1 means having to worry less in the event that one of the drives will ever fail. Your files are still safe as they are copied to both of the drives as soon as you trasnfer them from your PC.

Decided to get this due to the growing amount of stuff on my desktop computer not to mention the need to backup data. I have given up on backing up data onto DVDs as its really time consuming and it will be messy to burn all the DVDs and having to store them which will take up a lot of physical space. Not to mention DVDs are write once only unless you are willing to fork out extra $$ for rewriteables or DVD-RAMs.

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It seems like Evangelion fans in Japan can't wait to get their hands on this phone. Just hours after NTT DoCoMo began taking orders for the Evangelion phones, all of the 20000 pre-order units had been sold out according to Anime News Network.

The phone which is only produced in limited quantities by Sharp for NTT DoCoMo is being released in conjuction with the 2nd "Rebuild of Evangelion" movie of the 4 part trilogy later this year.

Only 30000 units of this phone are produced and the remaining 10000 will be sold on the release date itself. Looks like the chances of getting this phone outside of Japan is rather slim or has already gone down the drain ^^;  Even if it does end up on sites like eBay, the prices or auctions prices will most definitely be jacked up.

Eva pilots

I'm interested in the movie which is going to be released soon but don't know when it will end up over this region. Took about a year for the previous movies to make it to the cinemas here and they even censored out some scenes *facepalm.jpg*

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Samsung 23" Widescreen Monitor

Okay, here is another post to my blog ^^ . Just got a new monitor recently.  This monitor being the Samsung P2350 LCD monitor.

As you can guess from the model number, this is indeed a 23" monitor and a widescreen one with a native resolution of 1920x1080 pixels.  Yes.... you guessed it right, its a full high- def (HD) monitor based on the native resolution it has. Though I was hoping that it came with the 1920x1200 resolution since there seems to be more wallpapers for that resolution and its more suitable for video playback using video players like Media Player Classic since the control bar does not block the video when you are in full screen mode.

Samsung Logo on Bezel

As with most monitors nowadays, the Samsung P2350 comes with both VGA and DVI inputs. No HDMI input though sadly. But I am not really complaining since I don't have any use for it now. Maybe in the future =p.

Front Bezel

It has a maximum contrast ratio of 50000:1 as you can see from the picture above. Although that only works if you enable Dynamic Contrast.

Touch Control

The other Samsung monitor that comes with the Touch Buttons that I know of is the P2370. However, that model only has a single DVI input and is more expensive OTL.

Bezel

Forgive me for the dust on the bezel. My area has some issues with dust ^^;

Touch control menu buttons

The touch button controls are a bit of a hit and miss though. Yeah, it looks cool and stuff with the menu icons emitting a faint glow but its kinda hard to navigate through the OSD at times since there is no tactile feedback when you press the buttons unlike regular ones.

Here you can see how sites that do not have dynamic width thingy where it adjusts to wider screens are displayed.

Lowyat.net Forums

Stretches all the way and wider than before xD.

Video playback is good on this monitor. The colours are well represented and the contrast is decent too. Here you can see that full screen fills the entire fram without any letterbox strips on the top and bottom of the screen.

DUAL MONITORS!!!

This is a picture of my dual screen setup. Dual screen is WIN. Once you have experienced it, you will never go back to single screen ^^ . Much more real estate to work with things. My desk is kinda messy here haha.

Overall, I must say that I am satisfied with the performance of this monitor. Price wise, its not that expensive. Prices of LCD monitors are getting cheaper now so.. ya. =)

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