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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Watched Transformers 3 in 3D

arkLast Monday, we went to see Transformers 3 in 3D at 109 Cinema's – Kawasaki. We went for the morning show, so that we could have lunch after watching the movie and return home. We planned to have lunch at a special venue – more of that later.

We reserved tickets on Saturday. After a lot of forwarding and backing, we managed to book the tickets. It’s mostly in Japanese, so it is not easy, if you are doing this for the first time. The tickets were expensive as well. JPY2200 per grown up. Since this was my first 3D movie, I didn’t really worry about it too much.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Canon S95: Just what the doctor prescribed

S95Sold my Canon SX1 IS. I didn’t really take much use of it, mostly because the auto mode didn’t give me good quality photos and it was very heavy. It was as heavy as a DSLR. Only positive things about it was, one: not requiring lenses to be changed, two: not 20x zoom.

Zoom is so over-rated. While some times you need it, most of the times it is not needed. But big zoom means, you need a tripod to get a clean photo. That is another burden.

After looking at few ultra compact cameras, I decided to go with Canon S95. It is pretty expensive for a Point and Shoot. I didn’t want to go very cheap on the camera. Heck, there are only a few things I need, so why go cheap? (What few things? Am I not spending too much money on gadgets??? Well, what I need is really a great PC, great Camera, great Phone, and maybe…a (great?) laptop.) I have a great PC and now a great camera. I cannot just change the phone when I want. I have to wait for the right time for that. The laptop…well, it only it being used when I sleep at night…to watch streaming TV from the bed, so doesn’t really need anything more powerful that what I have.) So basically everything is covered? We shall see. I love gadgets, and I don’t have to explain myself about my purchases to anyone. Everyone has to have a hobby, right?

Want to install Windows 7 from hard disk instead of the disc ?

Found a guide online and I made my own video tutorial. Videos ftw!

No need to look for the installation disc every time something goes wrong. You will always have the installation files on the hard disk.

Install Windows 7 from hard disk (launch from bootup menu)

Saturday, August 6, 2011

What Microsoft can do to improve Zune Player user experience

Some time back I said that I had enough of iTunes and moved to Zune Software as the default media player and podcast downloader. I am quite pleased with it, but it with no flaws. There are few things they can do to make it a much much better software.

Here’s my list.

1. Double clicking the video playing window doesn’t make it run full screen. Almost all the software work like that, but there is a first to everything. But that is not a good thing at all. Add that feature.

2. Make that timeline longer! How can we precisely navigate to a location like that? Dumb! It stays the same size even when you maximize the window. Make it navigate using the mouse, scroll for going forward and backwards just like JetAudio. (Following is the actual size of the timeline)

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3. And we need a way to set keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts to go into different pages, shortcuts to easily pause and resume track CTRL + P is such a crap key combination) Make proper use of the mice with lots of buttons. Winking smile 

4. Make it manage music just like iTunes does. What I am saying is, when you drag and drop music files onto the player, it should make folders for Artist, Album and rename the music and copy to the location you specify in the settings. Bring that feature. That is one of the two reasons why I have to use iTunes. Other being that I have an iPhone, but even if I had a Windows Phone or Android, I will still have to use iTunes to media management.

5. Support more music formats. Let me rephrase it; support all the formats Windows Media Player supports. These are the few formats it supports at the moment.

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6. And also it should cache the thumbnails. It always reloads them. While it is not ugly as Windows Explorer, as in it first shows the files and then generate the thumbnails, Zune does it nicely. But still, it would be faster, if it saved thumbnails. Heck, why cannot it use the readily available Windows’ own thumbnail cache??

These are the issues I see at a quick glance. I’m sure there are more, but at least these should be fixed or introduced with the next version, or an update. Then it would be an awesome music manager, player and podcast downloader. (Of course I haven’t used it with a Windows Phone, which is a major feature of the software, and I’m sure I will find more problems when I explore that area.)

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