The new Radiohead video for House of Cards is now available to watch online. Very cool video, that used no cameras to create it. They used this laser machine that reminds me of a radar. It really does make sense in this age of data, where everything in life is technology and data. Check it out:
There is also the ”making of” video:
You can also go here to remix the video and create your own visualizations.
Well I received my Zune from Matchstick. If you want to get one for free like I did, click here.
In the package was an 8 GB Zune with headphones and 3 colours for the headphones. Pink, orange, and black. The Zune itself is black. There was also an AC charger. Personally I can’t believe the Zune only comes with USB attachment for charging. I prefer to charge through my AC charger because it’s faster I find. Also came with the premium headphones which are really cool, but any time you touch the wires you can hear it through the headphones while listening to music. They are too sensitive apparently. They’re fabric covered instead of rubber, which might be why, I’m not sure.
As for the product… I’m disappointed. I’ve been waiting so long for Zune to come to Canada. First of all 8 GB is not enough for me, which is not Zune’s fault, as they do have an 80 GB model available. The promotion however only had 8 GB models. The screen is far too small for my liking, which again is because the model size. The 80 GB model has a much larger screen.
The worst part of the Zune is not the product itself, it’s the software for updating it and listening to music on your computer. It lacks a lot compared to iTunes. It has no system tray icon, so when you minimize it, it goes to your taskbar, taking up valuable real estate there. It is very memory intensive and has a slow response considering how feature lacking it is. It also lacks my favourite feature of iTunes, which is the skip when shuffling option. You can’t update just the album cover, you have to update all of the mp3 tag info or none at all. Shuffling only works in some places in the player. The social aspect is definitely the best part of the software and experience. This is something that is seriously lacking from iTunes. The other crappy part is that Canada isn’t getting the full experience from Zune, as the Marketplace isn’t working right now. Apparently it’s coming later this year.
The FM tuner is very awesome. I like that I can keep up with anything that might be going on in the news. If something is happening in the world, I can just turn on the radio and find out the most up to date information if I’m on the go and don’t have access to a computer or TV.
Overall though, I am not impressed and have no intentions of buying the 80 GB version. This is mostly due to the software. Microsoft should know that in order to compete with iTunes, they need to have everything iTunes has and more. iPod Touch here I come! (When the price comes down.) Sorry Microsoft, I really wanted to like your product, but you failed.
Back in early May, I came across an offer for a free MP3 player on one of my RSS feeds. My iPod is on it’s last legs I think, plus it’s one of the old versions, so I’m in need of an updated player. Plus I had a feeling it might be for the Zune, since they were releasing it this spring.
Turns out I was right! It is the Zune. I got a call last week from someone at Matchstick, who asked me more questions, and then informed me I was eligible for a free 8 GB Zune! I was thrilled about this as I’ve been waiting for the Zune for a long time now. Ever since it was announced and released in the U.S. Now I get to have one of my very own! I don’t know which colour I’ll be receiving, hopefully black. I wish that I could have had the 80 GB version, as I have more than 8 GB of music, so that kind of sucks, but I’m not going to complain about a free Zune. Not to mention I get a second free one, to give to a friend. Now if only I had friends that I actually hang out with to try out the wireless capabilities. I still haven’t received it yet, but you can be sure I’ll be blogging about it when I get it!
Apparently there are still more to give away, so if you’re interested in the Zune, which you should be, because it’s awesome go here:
So Thursday night I noticed my torrents were downloading absurdly slow. I’m talking slower than dial-up speeds circa 1995. After some fooling around and checking that it wasn’t something I did or the tracker I was getting the torrents from, I called Bell Sympatico.
The "technician" did a check to make sure it wasn’t my connection. I put technician in quotations, because really they know nothing more than the average internet user in most cases. It turns out it is because I’m using torrents, as I’m able to download regular files just fine from web pages. And web pages are loading just fine as well.
I then expressed my dissatisfaction at this, and that I was not sent a letter in the mail, or an e-mail, or any kind of notification that this would be happening to me. Apparently according to Mirko Bibic in an interview with Roberto Rocha of the Montreal Gazette, it’s 5% of users who are sucking up 50% of Bell’s available bandwidth. Apparently I’m one of those 5%, because the technician I was speaking with on the phone told me that I’m making the speeds for those in my neighbourhood slower because I’m using up all the available bandwidth. BULLSHIT! I don’t max out my connection! I don’t allow it because then my browsing speeds will suffer. I limit my connection to 200 kB/s download which is half of my available download bandwidth, and I limit my upload speed to 40 kB/s which again is half my upload bandwidth speed.
So now I’m getting dial up speeds, but paying for unlimited high speed internet, and the worst part is there is no alternative! Rogers is doing the same crap, but also have monthly caps set, and if you go over those caps, you pay more for your bandwidth. The third party resellers who use Bell’s lines, are also being throttled. I remember Bell would always mention why their Sympatico service was better than cable internet because you wouldn’t experience any slowdowns when traffic was high on the network. That you wouldn’t be affected by those in your neighbourhood when they were sucking up speed. Whatever happened to that?
I got a number to call the corporate office which I will be doing on Monday. I’ve also signed a petition, which I recommend you sign as well. It’s almost at 10,000 signatures right now. The CRTC has received a complaint and hopefully they will step in and do something, but I don’t know if I have a lot of confidence in the CRTC.
I also think this has more to do with other things that we are not being told. I have a feeling that Canadian ISP’s are facing pressure from movie and music companies, and by limiting speeds to the people who are downloading movies and TV shows and music through Bit Torrent technology, they will not bother anymore. So basically that leaves ISP’s controlling what we download and when and how. Since when do the Canadian ISP’s own the internet?
Click here to sign the petition.
I discovered this awesome technology called PhotoZoom through a blog I read called LiveSide.
PhotoZoom uses the Silverlight technology developed by Microsoft to basically allow you to zoom into your photos for infinity, until that spec of dust on one of your digital photos becomes an entire screen of grey. It’s absolutely phenomenal.
Anyway, I’ve found a way to show this technology on my blog here, so you too can see what I’m talking about, instead of just reading about it. You will need Silverlight 2 beta, I believe when trying to view it, it will automatically ask you to install it. If not, go here.
So I present Snoopy in PhotoZoom! (Use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out. Click and drag around the pictures to zoom in on a specific picture or place. Use the + and - symbols in the top left if your mouse is of the non-fancy type.)
I got a new hard drive yesterday from Canada Computers. I decided to get a 160 GB Seagate drive, instead of the 320 GB Seagate drive, even though the 320 GB drive was only $20 more. I’m not exactly rolling in money right now, so I figured I’d save the money, and I don’t really need 320 GB right now anyway. Good thing I didn’t get one that big, or I’d be more ticked off than I already am right now.
So of course in order to get Windows XP installed on this drive, instead of the one it was already running on, I’d have to format the new disk first. I ended up installing Windows, and then accidentally doing a repair on top of it, which basically started the whole installation process all over again. This is after I did all of the Windows Updates. That’s over 100 updates, for your information. Grrrr. I was pissed off. But what really irked me is how my drive was saying it was only 127 GB in size, even though it’s a 160 GB drive. Now I know the amount shown is not the actual size of the drive, because part of it is being used by system files, so you don’t see the real amount. However, Windows does not need over 30 GB of space for system files, so I thought maybe I created a partition by accident while formatting the drive. That’s how I accidentally did the repair. So I cut short the repair, and did a full format of the drive again, and then reinstalled Windows again, did all the updates, and then looked for an answer online as to why my drive was missing over 30 GB of space. Turns out that Windows XP installation disks made before 2002 do not support drives over 130 something odd GB’s. Well isn’t that nice to know now, after buying a 160 GB drive. There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it either. Oh well, at least I still have lots of space available, and my computer does seem to be working a bit faster now running Windows on this new drive, instead of that old crappy one from 2002. It did it’s time though.
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