Nope. This is my own screw-up involving Elemental.

Elemental is one of the games that has been on my radar for a very, very long time. Ever since its initial announcement in 2008, I had been steadily following the game’s development. I decided not to participate in the private beta for 2 reasons: I do not have the free time to donate to a company who have their own internal test team, and I do not wish for the beta to tarnish my experience of running the release build of the game for the first time. So when I got an email stating the Elemental will be shipping on 24th August and that Stardock is taking pre-orders, I jumped. I managed to convince the missus of the awesomeness of the limited edition, which has a lore book and a pewter Elemental dragon (which will look great on my desk), and promptly pre-ordered it.

I paid via paypal (for some reason, I pay everything online via paypal these days) and Impulse pulled my address from there. In my excitement, I failed to properly check that Impulse correctly pulled my address and immediately confirmed the payment.

I was shocked to find that the address Impulse pulled was wrong. In the email receipt, it is stated that my address is:

Shipped To:
Nur Muhammad Sirat
Blk 725, Bedok Reservoir Road, #08-
Singapore, Singapore 470725
SG

ARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!! MY UNIT NUMBER GOT TRUNCATED!! AND I DIDN’T CATCH IT WHEN I MADE THE ORDER!!

Stardock takes a hell of a long time to respond the my issue. This is especially worse since I’ve already handed them my money, and when the item in question is going to be shipped. By the time they responded, my package was already sent out but they updated my address “on file”. I made a request for them to contact USPS regarding the change of address, but again, it will probably take a week for them to read and respond.

The game is shipped via USPS First Class. I guess the best bet is that I hope to get a tracking number from USPS with which I can contact SingPost about to correctly send to my home address. If anyone reading this has any tips as to how I can rectify this, I would appreciate it!

There’s really nothing I can add here besides the all the great things touted by the big name blogs and the people over at notebookreview forums. So go read those first.

Basically, it’s what you would have read already: an 11.6″ notebook marrying a ULV processor with an Intel integrated graphics-Nvidia GeForce 335M hybrid. As most games today are basically bound by the GPU, the somewhat-perceived-as-sluggish ULV processor is more than enough to run them with. It is the inclusion of the Nvidia 335M GPU that what makes this notebook live in its own special and flawed bubble.

The main thing that one would probably notice the first time one takes it out of the box is its size. It is small, almost to the point of unbearability. The small-ness means that the keyboard feels cramped and that you have to squint at the screen. Having been spoiled rotten by roomy keyboards on the Lenovo Thinkpad T400 and the MacBook, the Alienware M11x R2 feels like it’s made for a kid’s hands, not a 100-kg man’s hands. As with all notebooks, the arrangement of the keys require a little getting used to. In this case, I took some time to get used to not pressing the left arrow key when I wanted the down arrow key. I have no idea why my hand would think that the left arrow key is the down arrow key if I didn’t look at it. After getting used to it though, I am more at ease on the keyboard, though code junkies would definitely prefer to plug in their favourite keyboard.

The screen would be another consequence of its small physique. An 11.6″ screen is about as large as an 11.6″ screen. Mix that with a 1366×768 resolution, and you can achieve a +1 to myopia. The good thing is that the resolution is high definition, so all those 720p videos would fit nicely, albeit accompanied by black bars. One thing that is a tad annoying is that the screen is extremely glossy. Any blackness on the screen and you can use it as a mirror. However, I find that the reflectiveness does not mar or interfere with your perception of the image on the screen, so it’s not such a bad deal. But I would love to find a good anti-glare or matte screen cover made for the M11x. Dell has it, but it’s only for US customers. I find it hard to justify the cost of shipping it here.

For a gaming laptop, the absence of an optical drive is, again, a minor annoyance, but entirely can-live-with-it. It would, of course, be nice of Dell to include a USB optical drive with the price, seeing as to how cheap an external ROM-drive (not a writable) can be. A lot of games still require a CD check as part of its DRM. Of course, a good search and one can discover a cracked executable or a mini-image, but for purists, I guess you will have to carry an optical drive around for such games.

My Alienware M11x R2 also comes with a SIM slot, but without an option for a WWAN card. Considering that Singapore is blanketed by three major telco companies, a 3G signal can be gotten pretty easily. So I find it strange that I have to hack it in myself, instead of having an option to purchase it. I did read that such an option is available for US locale only. Why the geo restriction, Dell?

The main attraction of this notebook is its ability to switch GPUs between an integrated (some Intel nonsense) or discrete GPU (Nvidia GeForce 335M). This is not the first notebook to be doing it, but the Nvidia 335M is one of the more powerful options for a notebook with hybrid graphics. The reason for this is that a discrete GPU drains the battery life. If you’re not gaming, an integrated graphics unit can handle all your graphical needs, which (somewhat) makes sense. In the first version of this notebook, this is manually done via a toggle. In the later revision, the M11x R2, this is done automatically using Nvidia Optimus technology. As always, letting an algorithm decide what one wants is not as perfect as one would like. However, so far, it’s working as advertised for me, even for certain games that make use of launchers. The switching is entirely transparent, so perhaps one aspect of this dual graphics thing I would like improved is a way for me to know which GPU is running when. Maybe a light indicator or a short 1-second graphical overlay. Just as a little feedback to me. Currently, I have updated to the 258.96 drivers but the indicator is a system tray application, which is a little difficult to view since almost all games run in full-screen.

However, despites its flaws and shortcomings, in the first week I got the notebook, I didn’t fire up my gaming desktop one bit (which I have since given away to my brother to replace his aging rig). I installed the games I currently play on it (which isn’t that many now) and although I needed to tone down the graphical settings I normally set to, every modern game I throw at it is perfectly playable for now. But I’m not a guy who buys into the hype of every hyped up high-polygon-count game, and I have a preference for indie games as well, so Your Mileage May Vary.

Overall, I am definitely satisfied with this purchase. Hacking the WWAN card in makes the deal even sweeter. I definitely recommend this notebook for ultraportable gaming.

I’ve nailed it down to a few things:

• Obviously, I need to buy an aftermarket mini-pci-e internal WWAN card. Not sure where to get one in Singapore, but the best place would of course be the local IT forums.
• Getting signed drivers for it for Windows 7 64-bit.
• There is no antenna built-in for an internal WWAN card to use.
• Some sort of software to make the 3G connection.

Well, it wasn’t easy, but I managed to get it all working!

Firstly, I managed to find and purchase a cheap Dell 5520 WWAN card from hardwarezone forums from some nice dude. The S$30 price tag was small enough for me to justify to myself that should this experiment fail, it wouldn’t be such a hard hit wallet-wise. He was kind enough to tell me to bring my notebook along when collecting so I could try it out first, but I knew this would require a lot of trial and error so I didn’t bother. I got the card, antenna, a couple of small screws and a mini-CD containing the drivers which didn’t work.

Installing the Dell 5520 internal WWAN wasn’t difficult. However, the screws didn’t work, so I had to cannibalize a screw from the chassis. It is part of the “palm rest assembly” for the M11x, and judging by that section in the service manual, that part had a lot of screws holding on to it, so I figured one less wouldn’t matter much.

The problem now is the antenna. Armed with the service manual and a teardown of the M11x on youtube, I began to dissect the M11x. Removing the battery, hard drive, and hinge cover, and tracing the WLAN antennas, I found that it went behind the LCD panel. Even the service manual did not cover removing the LCD from the display assembly, so I shot that idea down for now. Googling, I came across a post from (where else?) notebookreview forums that someone used one of the antennas for the WLAN instead. Apparently, the drawback is that 802.11n will be unavailable. Not a big deal. So I removed the AUX antenna from the WLAN and fixed it to the MAIN port on the WWAN.

Booting into Windows 7, the device manager recognized that there is a new device but of course, did not manage to find the drivers for it. Google led me to this page where a link to Dell ControlPoint Connection Manager is available. However, the setup routine failed the machine check. Conveniently, the MSI I needed is not wrapped in a “setup.exe” file, sparing me further headaches. Unpacking the MSI via the command line brought me to the necessary driver files needed. (For the convenience of readers here, I have uploaded these files to my DropBox public folder: original MSI, unpacked.) I had to manually install these via the Device Manager (Update Driver.. -> Browse my computer.. -> Let me pick.. -> Have Disk -> point to folder where the unpacked MSI is) and select the first inf file. There will be 4 “unknown devices” without drivers, so you will have to do these 4 times. If you’re curious, the 4 drivers are:

I did try the “Generic-I” and “Generic-L” ones, but they didn’t work.

What’s left now is the software to dial for the 3G connection. In that NBR forum post, that dude mentioned using “VMC from Vodafone”. Again, thanks to Google, I found the page for it on vodafone’s website and downloaded the latest version (at this time of writing), 9.4.6.20529 RC9.

A restart later, I inserted my SIM card, fired up the software. Amazingly, the software detected that my SIM is from MobileOne.

It also detected my WWAN card automatically.

Awesome! I just clicked “Connect” and it is done! My Alienware M11x is now a true mobile gaming ultraportable notebook! I would probably try to figure out a way to install the additional antennas next.

Disclaimer: of couse, this isn’t an accurate picture of what happened. There was much heart-skipping involved, especially when I’m doing the teardown of my M11x. This is only a rosy happy-path of what I have learnt so far. Any enterprising dudes and dudettes wishing to try this out, happy hacking away! I’m just an email or tweet away if you require assistance, although I must say, Google and reading/posting on NBR forums will do a much better job.

(Dell 5520 image taken from Dell.com.)

Anyway, one of the things I mainly do on my machine is playing games, right after surfing and videos. Most of my games are not compiled for OSX, especially the more hyped, AAA games. The ones that are mostly requires a re-purchase, which I am definitely not willing to do. I mean I’ll pay for porting, but I won’t pay for the whole development twice. I bought Parallels and bootcamp-ed my MacBook in order to run these games, and ended up bootcamp-ing more. Once it’s on Windows, I don’t want to reboot just to get back to OSX to play my games. I’ll just stay there. But the problem is that the power management on Windows isn’t as good as the ones on OSX. I found that I want a laptop that is powerful enough for me to run my games (so no Intel integrated BS), yet has the 7-hour rated battery life of my MacBook when doing everything else.

And that’s when the Alienware M11x hit my radar.

I first saw it on one of those blogs and it was intriguing. Gaming has always been GPU-bound in my opinion. A CPU bump will no longer provide any significant improvement, at least none that’s noticable. So if I were to build a gaming system, I would save most of my cash into buying a good GPU, probably something mid to high end, depending on my monitor resolution. Thus, the CPU of the M11x, being a ULV processor, will serve most games just fine. The GPU, a GeForce 335M, isn’t the best mobile GPU, but it’s definitely the best for its class of notebooks: the ultraportable. Having owned a Dell Mini 9 before, I’m well acquainted to the ups and downs of using such a small notebook.

I had wanted to get it there and then, but there were some rumours floating on the web about a refresh, with Core i5/i7 and Nvidia Optimus. At first, I was a bit skeptical. How could a notebook released in March, get a spec bump in June? I wasn’t too sold on auto-switching graphics, but the Arrandale ULV CPUs was too drool-worthy. Plus, there was that officially unofficial video of Dell’s Head of Consumer Operations casually dropping that the M11x would get a spec bump in June. Availability of funds dictate that I wait until May, so I decided to wait until June before I place an order.

Seems like my patience has paid off. I was super stoked to read about Intel’s official announcement of new ULV CPUs and soon after, the rumours of the bump in spec proved to be true.

So it has been ordered and will arrive some time this week. So exciting! (Update: when I was proofreading this yesterday, Dell called and informed me that it will come today! Woooo!!)

Now, what to do with my MacBook? I hate to lose the ability to use OSX when I want to. And it could be useful for jailbreaking my iPhone some day.

I have always maintained my belief that the most evil companies are telcos. Exorbitant rates for roaming, data and especially SMS have fueled this belief. Oh, don’t get me started on data roaming. You wanna throw away money fast? You don’t gamble, you go to a foreign land and start using 3G data roaming. Your rate of expenditure will be faster that way.

Getting the television rights to the World Cup 2010 for Singapore was a huge drama itself, with the media outlets speculating that Singaporeans might miss out on football’s greatest tournament. It is only on 29th April 2010, about a month and a half before the massive event starts, that channelnewsasia reported on its online portal that the rights have been secured.

Of course, the details of the deal will never be published. In propaganda-crazy Singapore, it usually means bad news.

Like any “good” journalist, a few figures were magically plucked out of the air and thrown into the article. It’s hard to believe when words like “according to sources” and “it is believed” are used. According to sources, it is believed that such words are only reserved for highly opinionated, misinformed and biased blogs.

But hey! Look at the bright side, we get to watch the World Cup! All of the matches! For only S$70.62 if you sign up before May 31st, and S$94.16 thereafter. If you have an existing StarHub Cable TV subscription. More if you dont’t.

Wait, what? A bit of googling around (because of my poor memory), StarHub only charged us $10 (for early birds) back in 2006.

I’m sure for most Singaporeans, $70 is pocket change. It’s probably the cost of one weekend, maybe lesser. Surely we can sacrifice ONE weekend of shopping to get all 64 matches. But what message will that tell StarHub? That they can happily charge exorbitant rates? That they can dilly-dally with securing the rights to a very popular event? That they can pass down their mistakes to consumers?

I’m a sucker. A huge one. But even suckers have their limits. As much as I would like to, I can’t justify the cost. Call me a non-hardcore football fan if you want.

At least the semi’s and final will be shown live over-the-air! For the rest, there’s always kopitiams, McDonald’s and the internet.

However, when you post articles like this, it just reeks too much of ignorance.

Let me go through the steps Steven Sande has done and try to provide him with some advice.

1) Screw antenna into base of webcam at 6:55PM. This is going to be fun!
2) Plug in power supply. Camera moves for a bit, then settles down.

Off to a good start! Sounds cool!

3) Fire up Windows, then realize that I can’t use the camera software install CD since it’s one of those mini ones that were so popular in 1998. They don’t work in slot-type SuperDrives. Need to download the software from vendor’s website.

This irks me some too, but can be easily remedied by a simple external USB DVD drive. Cheap and useful to have around. I’m sure he knows someone who has one that he can borrow for a day. I don’t have one myself, but my SATA/IDE-to-USB converter cable with power cord saved me a million times already.

4) Start up IE7 in Windows.

Uh oh. He has lost geek cred by an infinite amount.

5) Can’t get to downloads page from IE7 so download and install Firefox.

Phew…

6) Go to vendor site, get to the downloads page. Can’t download the software until I download and install the Flash plug-in.
7) Install Flash Player.

Yeah, I hate it too when this happens. But that’s what you get when one buys a product from a company with dubious reputation, for its cheapness rather than quality.

Download the software, finally. It’s an .rar archive.
9) Windows has no idea what an rar file is. I have it “use the Web service to find the correct program.” I find out that WinZip or StuffIt Expander will work.

First off, a simple Google search for “rar” will net him the software he needs. Even more awesome, it’s the first on the search page. In fact, 5 out of the first 6 results are links to WinRaR! I have no idea how he came up with WinZip or the wierdly named “StuffIt Expander”. Using WinZip is like using IE7. Geek cred now stands at negative double infinity.

10) Realize that WinZip is a program that, with all the add-INS, will cost me almost US$37. Didn’t it used to be free?
11) Go to StuffIt site and download free StuffIt Expander. Wait while McAfee scans for viruses.
12) Install StuffIt Expander. “This may take several minutes” it says.
13) Installation continues for an incredibly long time, most of which is marked by a status message that doesn’t change. Considering taking up smoking. Read War and Peace cover to cover while waiting for installation to complete, then build a 1:1 scale model of La Sagreda Familia out of toothpicks. About to perform a self-appendectomy when the installation finally finishes. Put away the X-acto knife and vodka.
14) Trying to reinstall StuffIt when Windows tells me in needs to activate. That’s perplexing since I installed and activated this legal copy of Windows Vista Ultimate weeks ago. Decide to at least try reinstalling StuffIt before going through activation again.
15) StuffIt Expander installer won’t run since it says that there’s already another installation in progress. System monitor shows no other application is running.
16) Restart Windows. Or at least try to. It takes forever to shut down. Finally Force Quit VMWare and hope for the best.
17) Re-launch VMWare, which unfortunately comes up in Windows shutdown mode. Finally find the Shut Down command in VMWare, then restart Windows Vista. It’s now 7:55 PM. Windows Vista plays its 4-tone startup tune, which I salute with two raised middle fingers.
18) Start up the StuffIt Expander installer again. Get an error message. Re-download the installer and try again, this time sacrificing a chicken while starting the installer. The installer takes its good time, but finally shows a completed installation. I feel sorry for the chicken, but happy that StuffIt Expander is installed.
19) What was I doing before all of this? Oh, yeah – I was trying to unzip the webcam installer. This goes well until the unzip crashes. I see the installer on my desktop, so I double-click to install. This installer runs quickly, but I need to reboot the Windows virtual machine.
20) Weeping uncontrollably, I wait as the virtual machine lies to me about shutting down. It’s now 8:09 PM. I wait, and wait. Did I mention the waiting?
21) I’m so bloody tired of waiting for the shutdown that I invoke the Shutdown menu item again. Windows reboots again.

All avoidable if he just used WinRaR. If one has knowledge of good software to use, all this is moot. He just seems to be making his own hell. Notice that he can skip TWELVE steps, and not to mention a whole lot of heartache, if he just bothered to Google “rar”. Sigh.

22) Double-click the webcam software. After I nearly have a heart attack when it temporarily can’t find the .exe file, it launches. This program is supposed to find a camera on the network and allow me to change settings. It’s doing nothing, so I decide to start pinging addresses on my network from Safari. I find my printer’s built-in web server, but not the webcam.
23) While I’m playing on the Mac, Windows mysteriously reboots itself. WTF?
24) I figure out that Windows thinks it is on another subnet. I look at some of the glowing reviews on Amazon and see the key phrase “connect to the camera over Ethernet the first time.” Nice of the vendor to put that in the docs. I’m tired. It’s now 8:58 PM. I decide to try this tomorrow on my old iMac since I have work to do. I’ll set up a small Ethernet network using a router I have, and hope that I can get this to work.

*Time passes*

25) It’s now the next afternoon. I set up the old Linksys router, grab a few Ethernet cables, and fire up the camera app on the old iMac under VMWare and Win XP. Not surprisingly, Win XP works much better than Vista and within about 5 minutes I’m seeing the camera “anonymous” in the camera app.

Wait a sec. If the camera is controlled over the network, why would he need to install software for it? It’s just installing software for my router or NAS. Useful, but usually not needed. Just fire up the browser and point to it’s IP. One can just look it up on the router.

Hmm. But the software probably is needed for configuration purposes. My NAS comes with software too, to enable it’s built-in bittorrent client, and to automate certain tasks, but I could have easily done those had the software not do it. The great thing is that the software for my NAS does not require installation, and is a one-file executable. Simple and intuitive. It’s generally what you get when you spend a bit more and buy a product from a reputable company.

27) Reading the tiny print in the poorly-translated user manual for the webcam, I see that the vendor recommends using IE to bring up the built-in administrative web page and set up Wi-Fi. I double-click the name of the camera, and I’m immediately rewarded with a login screen for the admin web page. I log in using the default user ID and password, and then watch as IE7 proceeds to block the various controls that are trying to load.

Buy from funky Chinese company, get funkily translated manual. When IE blocks something, it can be “allowed”. Even if Google blocks a website because of suspected malware on the site, you can still access it if you want. It’s not permanent. Such controls are blocked for a reason. If one is resourceful with using search engines, it’s not difficult to find out why they’re blocked.

PS: where did step 26 go to anyway? Never use “ol” tags? Even more geek cred lost. Sigh.

28) At this point I’m discouraged and shouting four and more-letter expletives at IE7. I decide that it’s time to grab my spouse and go out to eat (and drink) away my frustration. A few beers later we’re back home and I download Firefox onto the virtual Win machine.
29) I launch Firefox, go to the IP address of the camera, and become very happy when the camera controller loads properly and responds to my commands.
30) With the webcam finally up and running, I tell Windows XP to quit. Soon I’m greeted with a happy message that says something like “Windows is installing update 1 of 37. Do not shut down this machine.” I wander off.
31) Two hours later, the message says “Windows is installing update 31 of 37.” I may never get to shut down Windows.
32) Another hour passes. The message hasn’t changed. I decide that Windows XP has locked up, and I invoke the magic VMWare virtual power switch. Who knows if the flippin’ thing was updated or not?

Why does he need to run a browser on the virtualized OS to see it? If it’s browser-based, why not just try it from a browser on the native OS?

Windows informs you beforehand that it will install updates before shutting down if you have them. From this, it seems evident that he doesn’t really read what’s on the screen, preferring to quickly click Next or OK buttons to continue on. It’s the very reason why Windows users get infected with unwanted software that hogs resources, toolbars covering valuable browser space, malware and viruses. Lucky for him, he’s an OSX user, which has better installation procedures than Windows. I use both, but my Windows machine, which I have yet to install an antivirus software for months now, is still clean, running fine and stable. Generally, I consider such problems PEBKAC.

By the way, there are various settings of Windows Update that one can set it too. From fully automated (default) to extremely manual, or something in between (my preferred one).

But the point of this entire exercise was that if Apple had ever stooped to selling Wi-Fi webcams, the installation process would probably be like this:

1) Plug your Apple iCam into a wall socket.
2) Launch the iCam utility software on your Mac or Windows PC. It’s included on the CD that came with your device.
3) Your iCam appears in the “cameras on this network” list. Highlight the camera you wish to update.
4) Give the camera a name, and click save. Note the web address that is now listed on the page — this address is where you can point any web browser in the world to view your camera and listen to what’s going on in streaming stereo audio.

I would expect it too, because Apple is a reputable company that makes good products! Comparing Apple’s imaginary camera product to an unnamed Chinese brand, it’s really a no-brainer to choose Apple’s, if it has the product in the first place. This whole time, I had thought he was frustrated with using Windows. But that’s because heinadvertently bought a cheap webcam, but expect stellar product quality. Don’t companies that specialize in webcam or networking products, like Logitech, Creative, D-Link, Netgear or Linksys make a network-controlled cameras as well? I’m sure there is, and the installation process would be as painless as Apple’s imaginary Wi-Fi webcam product.

I’m sure I’ll have some comments along the lines of “Well, if you had some familiarity with Windows, you’d realize that…” I am familiar with Windows. Way too familiar, as at one point in my career I was a project manager on a 12,000-seat Windows deployment for a large enterprise. Since that time, I’ve had my share of Windows experiences with my Mac consulting clients who have one Windows device on their network that ends up taking more support hours to keep up and running than the dozen or so Macs in the office.

“Much to learn, you still have.”

And I’m certain that someone will say “A real PC wouldn’t have done that; you’re running a virtual machine on a slow Mac.” Wrong, this type of thing has happened to me many times on real PCs as well. This isn’t a slow Mac; it’s a quad-core i7 iMac running 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate.

Generally, it’s not the CPU, it’s the RAM one gives to the virtual machine. And no matter how fast the CPU is, it’s still limited by how good your hypervisor is at translating the instructions from the virtual machine to the host machine. One thing that’s always irksome about using virtual machines is networking. And since he’s trying to configure a network-based hardware, either he needs to properly configure the network settings of the virtual machine (NAT is too troublesome for my liking) or simply reboot to a bootcamp’ed Windows.

But the big lesson here isn’t about using Windows or OSX, it’s that you get what you pay for. If one wants a quality product, it’s a good idea to buy from companies that have good reputations of releasing such quality products.

“Don’t stop, make it pop, DJ blow my speakers up…”

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

So the LCD TV is definitely unfeasible. One thing I had to combine was my PC, PS3 and Wii to one monitor, with each having its own audio and video input requirements.

• PC: VGA or DVI with 3.5mm output
• PS3: HDMI (with audio) or composite audio
• Wii: Component video with composite audio

Most monitors these days have multiple video input sources. However, in the case of the Wii, it doesn’t have digital video output. It’s pretty difficult to find an LCD monitor with composite or component video inputs. Plus, I don’t want to invest in an audio switch (by component audio, I mean stereo audio output with the red-&-white jacks.

A little googling later, I found my solution: Samsung 2333HD. It has a bigger cousin in the form of the T260HD, but I opted for the smaller one for the smaller footprint.

This monitor has a resolution of 1920×1080, ie. 1080p-capable, or “Full HD” for those of you who follow idiotic marketing jargon. I’m not so sensetive on the RGB colour gamut, temperature, panel quality, etc side though. I can’t really tell the difference, but I love this monitor for the host of input connectors it has at a nice price. It’s using a TN panel by the way, which is commonly used in all LCD monitors you didn’t proclaim “That’s damn expensive” to. It’s not the best panel type, of course (all you graphics artists stay away from this monitor!), but it is the fastest and cheapest. Good for cheapskate old-school gamers like me.

DVI, VGA, HDMI, component and composite inputs, and a funky 3.5mm jack for audio input. At the side, it has another HDMI input and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Pretty handy for me! There is also an antenna input for its built in analog tuner and an ATSC digital tuner. The latter is a bummer as I require a DVB-T digital tuner (I need to read up on their differences; something about US and European standards. It’s the whole confusing NTSC-vs-PAL thing all over again!) to get OTA (over-the-air) HD channels from Mediacorp (I think it’s just one channel for now. ).

I couldn’t just say I love this monitor without nitpicking it. The speaker system is adequate, but not the best. I wouldn’t play my music with it, but it’s sufficient for PS3-ing and Wii-ing. But if you use the rear 3.5mm input jack, the audio is really bad. Volume is almost non-existent. If I was playing the console, the volume is set to 10-20%, but if I’m using the PC, the volume has to be set to 70-90% for it to be barely audible, with the software volume up all the way to 100%. It’s that bad, so I tend to use headphones while I’m on the PC. I may have to get another set of speakers, just for the PC use, since I’ve given away my lovely Logitech X230.

Another thing I hate is the stand. It looks so unbelievbly fragile. If your desk shakes, get ready for your heart to reach your throat while the monitor shakes. It looks very much like General Grievous’ body, and we all know what happened to him. It’s stylish but seems a little too flimsy for comfort.

My old LG 1940PQC LCD monitor has served me very well for the past 3.5 years. I’ve donated it, along with my speakers, to 4PM, the youth welfare organization where my wife works at, and it’s happily living in its new home now. Let’s hope the Samsung 2333HD will last me that long.

• Feeds required: every 2-3 hours.
• Milk consumed: 1-3 oz. every feed.
• Breast-fed: Yes
• Formula-fed: Yes (as a complement)
• Formula used: Similac (infant), S26.
• Cost of formula: S$38++ for 900g, S$18++ for 400g

Output

• Poop: uncountable
• Live-pooping viewed: 2
• Pee: uncountable
• Pee’d upon: 3
• Diapers: Change every 3-4 hours.
• Diaper used: Mamypoko Newborn
• Diaper cost: S$17++ for 52

Likes

• Feeding.
• Given a tour of the house.
• Sucking.
• Sleeping with the arms and tongue out.

Dislikes

• Being wrapped like a burrito.
• Hunger.
• Dirty diaper.
• Lying down alone.

Lessons learnt

• Identifying the different types of cries: hungry, uncomfortable, HOLD-ME-HOLD-ME-HOLD-ME!!
• Feeding with one hand, bejeweling & surfing in the other.
• No water, just milk.
• Burping: it’s an acquired skill.
• Changing diapers.
• Changing diapers quickly.
• Watch a video on the laptop while holding him, and he will just sleep through the noise.
• Make the tiniest bit of noise while he’s on the bed, and he will stir.
• I need money. Lots and lots of it.

Yet to learn

• Bathing. I tend to snooze after the subuh prayers.

A few people I talked to (read: non-geeks) don’t know that google comes from googol, which is 10 to the power of 100, or 1 followed by 100 zeroes. And the name of its headquarters, the Googleplex, is yet another number, the googolplex, which is 10 to the power of 1 googol, or 1 followed by a googol zeroes. This number is so large that it cannot be written in the observable universe, nor can the time be taken to do so.

I was always amazed at what Google gave away for free. And since everything is online, it doesn’t matter which machine you use. All your stuff will always be there, as and when you want it. I use Google Search a million times a day, Google Reader as my one stop page for the web, Google Mail as my primary email, Google Maps as a convenient mapping solution and have all my domains tied to Google Apps. At the beginning of this year, I’ve added Google Ads on this webpage. I’m very tempted to use Google’s DNS service.

Using those services, Google knows what I search for on the web. It has the feeds of all the websites I regularly read. It knows the kind of email I send and receive. It knows where I like to go and what landmarks I like to visit. It knows the type of content I have on this blog. If I use its DNS service, it knows which site I usually visit.

Google uses all this information to build a very good profile about me. It knows exactly what ads to show me. Which gives it extremely good leverage to negotiate for advertisements. Which accounts for almost all of its revenue. Rinse and repeat.

Yup, “free” isn’t really free. There is always a price. Goodbye privacy. It’s been nice knowing you.