Quest for Better Entertainment

As one begins the exploration into a new field of entertainment, one would be advised to look find the gurus of that genre and/or taste the latest hot topics and classics of the respective subculture.  As one grows accostumed to the new genre, one will realize that some of these touted experts know as much as the person itself.  Therefore, it is critical to develop one’s ability to accurately appraise an items worth in order to find the gems in the rough. This will take time to build up the experience just like how a wine taster must taste hundreds of different wines to know the good from the bad from his or her point of view.

Due to the accessibility of the internet, one must learn how to quickly and reliably find trusted sources, regardless of the topic at hand.  Fortunately, there are several online articles that demonstrate how to use “Google” and produce the desired results.

Once one has acquired enough experience to figure out his or her preferences, he or she no longer needs to rely on other sources or opinions for those respective fields. Instead, these sources would be used as a soundboard and material for discussion.  These are the true gurus who can stand on their own two feet and make an honest statement within these specialized/niche areas.

[IMPRESSION] WordPress App Test

Apparently, WordPress has an app for blogging to their website and I am testing the capabilities of this app to see if it does live up to the ratings. From current usage as of now, this app was clearly intended for tablets with a good keyboard app such as SwiftKey and a screen size of at least 7″.

Upon inspection, it is not possible to edit current hyperlinks without inserting a new one at the cursor mark. Pictures do not have this problem and are easily removable from the post. One can easily set the position and size of the picture. However, copy and pasting pictures is a hard endeavor, even with a good keyboard app. Therefore, pictures should be inserted last unless one is 100% sure that he or she has no intention of moving that picture. Photos must be stored locally, or anything stored in the Google Android Gallery app.

All in all, this is a pretty solid application for general usage as long as one has all the pictures or videos stored locally or in the gallery app. Of course, there is always room for improvement such as more detailed interface (ie. Bullet or numbered lists). One could try syncing a keyboard and mouse, but that would defeat the purpose of traveling light with a tablet. For now, it has lived up to my most common needs of a blogging app, which might encourage me to post more often to the net.

Windows 8 Woes

If only fixes were that simple.

 

During my 3 month stay on Windows 8 for my Home Theater PC (HTPC), I was pleasantly happy with the system managing my home theater needs (Music, movies, tv shows, emulators, games), until today when I ran out of space on my main system partition.  In an effort to migrate and free up space on the system partition (C:), I have decided to follow a tutorial that would migrate the Users folder to a different partition. Folders were moved and symbolic links were made to the system. Upon reboot, I was greeted by Windows prompting me with an error

“user profile service Service failed the log on. User profile can not be loaded.”

On top of this problem, I couldn’t even log into Windows 8 nor boot into safe mode post bios boot.  As much as I enjoyed Windows 8 and want to keep it as my Operating System (OS) of choice for my HTPC, I cannot fathom the time lost if I decide to backup and repartition my hard drive to accommodate Windows 8 gluttonous demands.  Frankly, I think Windows 7 might be the easier and lighter option in maintaining a Windows oriented HTPC.  I have considered Linux as an option, but finding a way to harmoniously merge all of my emulators, music, games, videos into XBMC/Openelec is a tough deal to accomplish by today’s means.  Heck, has anyone even found a way to make emulators (retroarch, pcsx2, dolphin, etc) work within XBMC on the Linux side?

For now, I will most likely install Windows 7 over 8, despite it being a step (or possibly 10 steps) back, but that will have to wait another time when I actually have free time again.

[IMPRESSION] SlimPup 3.4

SlimPup 3.4 is based on Lucid Puppy with the intention of emulating crunchbang.  This meta-review is solely based on my live-iso experience with the distro, and most of it is positive.

Upon boot of the live environment, I am greeted with the standard puppy introduction screen for setting my locale, time, keyboard configs.  After those settings are saved and Xorg is restarted, one is left with an openbox environment with a minimal conky in the lower left corner, displaying the time with a CPU and RAM usage bar.  There is nothing more on the screen besides a black wallpaper.

The openbox menu is cleverly minimal, since most of the options are stashed away in the puppy control panel.  Connecting to wireless access points (APs) was painless.  The preinstalled apps were snappy upon launch too.

However, I had a few qualms with this distro.  Although the selection is fantastic, there are too many preinstalled applications that accomplish the same function in all of the categories.  Being a new user to puppy linux, I could not figure out how to uninstall their packages in spite of using the provided package manager.

The attempt to make a crunchbangified puppy linux is well done, but I believe it could be even better by being more selective with the built-in applications.

References: http://slimpup.com

[Impressions] Daum Potplayer

It is not as great as I would have suspected, seeing how it is developed by the same creator of KMPlayer.   The internal codecs are definitely superior to KMPlayer’s internal codecs with the fact that it can playback just about anything without hiccups and without relying on external codecs.  On the other hand, KMPlayer requires an external codec like CoreAVC (for less capable machines) to playback 1080P movies, videos, etc.

However, there are still two things that I would like to see before jumping onto the Potplayer bandwagon.

1. Lack of subtitle options like real time playback support.  Hence subtitle karaoke effects are broken. (Not very good for music videos or animes)
2. Full english support, especially for the latest versions.

These impressions are currently based on PotPlayer1.5.23507beta (english version).

More info and download link available here

**UPDATE 11/09/10**

In reply to XenonMagazine, I have tried the latest beta for PotPlayer (Daum PotPlayer 1.5.24134) and the two features I mentioned above are still lacking from Potplayer.  Additionally, KMPlayer is still in active development and has a solid foundation to be on par with Potplayer.  When Potplayer incorporates real-time rendering of ssa/ass subtitle support, then I would most likely replace KMPlayer with Potplayer.  For those who do not need real-time subtitle support like karaoke effects, Potplayer is the obvious one step forward from KMPlayer.

Here is a better link to a more updated thread and download information for Potplayer.  Link

[News][Impressions] Btaccel -> Torrific

Old news, but BTaccel recently changed their name to Torrific.  In addition, Torrific started a new premium plan which allows users to have the site fetch torrents on demand and have better service overall.  For the most part, Torrific is still free (basic account) for the general user.

The site is still good overall, but I still have a few qualms about the service.

1. Some sites like demonoid and BTJunkie always seem to be maxed out, which disables btaccel users from even downloading its contents even though Torrific says that they 100% completed the torrent.

2.Flaky torrent fetching.  Sometimes the torrent reaches a certain percentage, then defaults to zero percent because it could not find another seeder to complete the file.

3. Flaky Torrent downloads.  Whenever downloading a big file (500mb-1000mb), the connection somehow gets lost during the transfer and the direct link to that file expires.  This basically means everything is for naught.  This is the least bit helpful for file download managers (Jdownloader, Downthemall, etc.) for people who just want to set it and forget it so they can do better things in their day.  Either Torrific likes to reset connections and rehash direct file links to torrent files for leecher-proof protection or that their server are still under heavy load from millions of torrent requests.

Torrific’s service is still good, but I doubt I’ll use it for any considerably large torrents (which are a big chunk of my torrents).  Therefore, I will probably use this just for torrents around 300 mb filesizes, whatever that might be.  The convenience is good when the local bandwidth is maxed out, and that is probably the only reason I would use this service.

Official website – http://www.torrific.com
Sign up is free.

Alternatives to Evil Empire while it is down

Seeing as how the Evil Empire has been down for a couple months due to harddrive failure, manga collectors are a bit in the rut when it comes to convenient manga depots. There was always the direct visit to the scanlation group (which is a good thing), but that also becomes very tedious and time consuming.

Therefore, I have compiled a few sites for those who haven’t already started using them.

mangatraders.com
Very large user-generated depot site for manga.  The site also has some good weekly picks.  However, this site is prone to inaccurate/unorganized manga chapters/volumes along with requests by licensing companies to take down respective manga series.  Free membership required.

mangashare.com
Very extravagant and useful manga warehouse.  Some of the download links are third party.  Although not as big as other depots, this place does tell the viewer which scanlator has done the chapter.  Online manga viewing is also available for some of the series.

mangadownload.net
Another excellent manga depot.  However, there are even more series available if one has the premium account (it’s not a very big fee either).  This site just recently had a renovation so all one has to do is just register for a free account and pick from their selections.

stoptazmo.com
This was one of my most frequented sites in the past.  At the moment, the list of series has increased almost exponentially.  This site also requires a free account registration.  The nicest part about this site is that it tells the reader which series are complete from a quick glance at the homepage.  Just recently, stoptazmo started hosting anime files.

gotlurk.net
This is one of my most favorite sites of all time.  However, one must be familiar with internet relay chat (IRC) in order to download almost any scanlation available on the nets.  Because it is IRC, downloads are relatively painless.  However, the IRC channel requires a registered nick and it would be even better if one donated money to this site to keep the place running along with fast downloads.  From what I remember, there is a beta FTP going around for those who donated money to lurk.

Zero no Tsukaima 2 is a Disappointment

“Sorry no Picture today”

One Line Synopsis: The zero duo try to prove their worth to their princess but only ended up looking for the true meaning of their crappy lives.

What started out to be a really good show turned out to be a run-of-the-mill anime that one can easily toss aside into the garbage. There are no memorable characters, except for maybe Siesta and his homosexual looking father. There was too much emphasis on boobs throughout the whole series that it lost its humor. The plot was not even epic or the driving force of the series. Only one person died and he only proved one message: “War is not glorious and kids should not be drafted into it.”

In fact, the whole 12 episodes mostly revolved around Louise and Saito struggling with their love relationships. Louise was practically the only one who struggled with confessing her love to Saito, whereas Siesta and Saito were very straightforward with it.

The anime as a whole was not too bad, but it was not very memorable. Fans of this series should probably give the first few episodes a watch. Other than that, there is really nothing much to miss except for some character development and periods of ambivalence.

Good for rentals and brain-dead days. Definitely warrants my NWmT tag, since there are definitely more memorable and better shows out there.

NwMT = Not Worth My Time

WinXP Pro Performance Edition Dec-08 is most excellent

This is multilingual and contains no drivers.

I have been using this for atleast 2 weeks now and I am very satisfied with how the creator of this distro decided which parts needed to be stripped out or substituted. This release has a few minor fixes and no longer contain any errors during the installation phase (funi.dll). To keep things short and simple, here’s a link to the torrent and its list of updates.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4577405/XP.Pro.Performance.Edition.December.2008-TJ

[REVIEW] KMPlayer – Best Media Player Ever

 

Forget using any other media player for your entertainment purposes, this one wins hands down.  I’ve tried numerous media players and came back unsatisfied until I found this excellent piece of freeware.  Apparently, this neat application can basically playback almost any media format without a hitch.  Also, this program only uses the necessary internal codecs so it does not hog any more resources than it really needs to.  Nonetheless, one could most likely setup this media player as a media center application.

Because this program is mostly community driven, one can expect regular updates and timely feedback.  Also, there is a nice slew of incredibly great skins.

If one is still not convinced about how awesome this program is, then check freeware genius’ review that praises its glory.

List of media players that failed my interests

• Gom Player
• Video Lan Client (VLC)
• Media Player Classic
• Winamp
• Zoom Player
• SMPlayer
• Miro
• BSPlayer
• Windows Media Player

For those who only want to play music, check out Foobar2000.  It’s an extremely lightweight and customizable music player.

Other than that, please check out this gem and find out if it holds up to your standards.

Freeware Genius Review: http://www.freewaregenius.com/2008/06/30/the-kmplayer-one-media-player-to-rule-them-all/

File Download: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_players/kmplayer.cfm