Geek and a Half

October 23rd, 2007 by Jake

I’ve dealt with a lot of video converters over the years, a lot of which were utter crap. But recently I stumbled upon a converter that did it all, for free. I’m actually impressed that other converters aren’t as simple as this one.

It’s called Any Video Converter. No, I’m not getting paid to write this, I just wanted to tell the world that I think this is a great program.

It’ll convert to/from MPEG, AVI, FLV, or MP4. There are even advanced options for customizing size, aspect ratio, bitrate, and start/endpoints. It even works with the custom codec and unusually high bitrate used by Fraps, so I can take a 1GB game video and compress it into a 15MB MPEG-2 video for YouTube with a few clicks. And while there’s a “nag screen” after converting is complete to buy the Pro Edition (the standard version is freeware), it’s a small price to pay for a solid, working video converter.

To all the other video converters out there: Take a page out of this program’s book.

October 1st, 2007 by Jake

I just posted some pictures I took of my new iPod in a Flickr Photo Set. The iPod came on Friday, Sept. 28, the day that it was supposedly officially released by Apple nationwide. Good timing Apple.

I really like it a lot. It’s exactly the way I envisioned it, too. Of course… some of the gripes that you’ve seen circulating the Internet still hold true (crippled Calendar app, anyone?), but most of them are fixable. And my iPod is thankfully a Week 38 iPod, so I can confirm it does not have the infamous screen defect. And, despite what people are saying, I didn’t ever expect this device to be or act like an iPhone (however similar it is), so I’m quite happy with it.

November 19th, 2006 by Jake

That’s right, you read correctly, and if you can use your awesome inferring skills, you can probably guess I’m talking about a PlayStation 3.

It’s actually a funny (and damn lucky) story of how I came to own one. I’ve got a friend who works at GameStop. He invited me at around 11PM to come and grab a Wii because he knew they’d be getting in extras. I bring a friend, we show up, and unfortunately, he got less Wii’s than he anticipated. Oh well, that’s fine, no big deal. We wait around, watch the Wii Countdown Clock reach zero, and as I’m talking with the manager, he literally says to me, “But yeah… we don’t have any Wii’s, they’re all preordered. I do have a PS3 though.” I’m sure my mouth fell open for just a second because I couldn’t be hearing right. Every place sold out pf PS3s within 5 minutes of opening their doors, how can there be a PS3 at this lowly GameStop almost 48 hours after release? Well it was true, and although it was only a core system, it was in fact a PlayStation 3.

I brought it home, and taped the unboxing. Unfortunately, my friend (who I guess didn’t have much experience with camcorders and tripods) didn’t shoot a very good movie for me while I was unboxing it. Fine, whatever, YouTube will survive without another “PS3 Unboxing Video”. Now, let me clear some rumors about the core-premium system differences. The differences are that the premium system has a 60GB hard drive (versus a 20), WiFi (versus no WiFi), the core system does have HDMI out (that was a bad runor), and no Memory Card slots (on the core system that panel doesn’t even open, it’s just part of the case). Oh, and no silver trim, either. I think I’ll manage.

On first boot, just like a PSP, it asks for your language and the date and time. It then proceeds to boot with a nice orchestrated startup sound and a smooth digital ribbon that floats across the screen, much like the PSP’s. Here’s a screenshot from my TV Tuner (yeah, it’s not the best quality (blame the TV tuner.)):

Sensational. There are a ton of features. Here are a few that come to the top of my mind in no particular order:

• It obviously uses the XMB [Cross Media Bar] Menu Format identical to that of the PSP. They’re supposed to release version 3.0 of the PSP firmware which will allow me to control my PS3 remotely and stream content back and forth. Sweet.
• The power and eject buttons are touch sensitive. To eject a disc, (I have mine upright and I can’t see the button…touch…panel…thing) all you really need to do is slide your finger along it and it’ll catch it at the right point. It makes it feel futuristic, really, it’s cool.
• The controllers are tilt-sesitive (the game has to support it in its own unique way). You can power on and off your PS3 from your controller, as well as just power off the controller. They charge via a MiniUSB cable which you can hook right into one of the PS3’s four USB ports.
• There’s a user account system on the PS3, allowing you or your friends to create their own accounts on the PS3 so each can have his own saved data and preferences. I don’t know to what extent this is customizable (which settings are user-based and which are global).
• You can plug in a USB flash drive, and the PS3 will read its contents, allowing you to play or display the media on the drive. You still need to use the PSP-style folder names (”Music”, “Photo”, “Video”, etc) but be happy that it can read USB flash drives. [EDIT: You can browse the filesystem and search manually for music, photos, or videos. Simply select the drive, press Triangle, and select “Display All”] I need to look into this some more, but this is definately a strong point about the console.
• The PS3 can emulate older PSone/PS2 memory cards (8MB virtual-cards, stored on the hard drive) and will emulate them while you’re playing a PSOne/PS2 game so there’s no need to actually have a memory card anymore.
• Once again, there’s a built-in web browser (this time, obviously, with a bit better resolution). In case anyone’s interested, the User Agent string is: Mozilla/5.0 (PLAYSTATION 3; 1.00)
• There’s a friends network (some people are referring to it as the “PlayStation Hub”), and I registered in time to get the username I wanted. If you’ve got a PS3 and you’re on the friends network, add me: SpikeX
• As far as the PlayStation Store goes (yes, it’s real and working), you can purchase smaller games for a small price (PSOne games are supposedly $14.99), you have a virtual “wallet” where you store funds which can be transferred from your credit card, there are also mini-games you can purchase as well as free demos to download)

That’s pretty much it. Overall, it has some awesome media capabilities, and having it hooked up on a high-def TV is pretty damn sweet. The fact that it’s capable of USB flash drives, mice, keyboards, and more is cool, too, and its design, however big and heavy, is still pretty sleek.

The gameplay is unbelievable. It might be that I picked up one of the better release titles (Resistance: Fall Of Man), but I love how it plays. The graphics are noticeably better and the wireless controller is light and functional and doesn’t lag the gameplay at all (it helps that the controllers are Bluetooth). Here are some screenshots of Resistance (note the bad quality, blame the TV tuner):

The screenshots don’t do it justice, I promise.

That’s about it, here are some pictures on Flickr of the whole setup:

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August 2nd, 2006 by Jake

I stumbled across this little app while looking for itunes Plugins (which I later found out only works with Mac…stupid Apple…). It goes through your entire iTunes Library (or a playlist), searches either Amazon or Google and finds album art for each song. It’s supposed to be $10 shareware, but I haven’t found any restrictions yet. It utilizes track name, album name, and title. There’s even an automatic mode, so you can just let it run (it makes sure the song is in the album before assigning the art to it). I manually went through a playlist I have, and it seemed like it would have about 90% accuracy if I had let it run on its own (Certain art I changed because of preference, i.e. from a “Greatest Hits” album to the original). I’m going to let it loose on my library tonight and see what it comes up with (After it’s done it shows you % success), I’ll edit this post and let you know the outcome.

Download iArt Now! (And pay the guy $10 if you like his app!)

Edit: So there is a limit. I think you can do about 50 album arts before it stops working, which is reasonable. So I forked out the money and let it run last night, and my lirary was full of art this morning. It wasn’t always successful, and if I didn’t have an album there it would choose one for me and add the art (and fix the tags). I might delete all my album data and let it run again, just so that it can do everything all at once and have all the right data from Amazon. It is a really nice tool, especially if you do it manually.

April 9th, 2006 by Jake

Paypal’s keeping up with the times.

TextPayMe is a service that will allow you to send money just by texting the amount and phone number to their servers. When they were starting out, they also gave away free Xbox360’s to anyone with 36 referral credits. A friend of mine made the attempt, but unfortunately, didn’t make it.

Now PayPal has introduced a new service, PayPal Mobile, to rival TextPayMe’s unique service. You can either call and send money, or even send a text message to them to send money. The activation of my cell phone was uncomplicated and went by smoothly. Right when they said they were calling me, thy did. All I had to do was type in the PIN that I had set one screen earlier, and viola, my mobile phone is now tied to my PayPal account.

But which is easier, which is better? TextPayMe still offers a complimentary $5 just for signing up, no questions asked. And yet PayPal has it’s million-user base, so all it needed to do was slap an ad after you login to advertise the new service. Which do you think will come out on top?