08 April 2005 Friday

Gaming Music

I’ve learned something a bit surprising.
I like computer/video game music.
I do!
Mark tuned me into this OverClocked ReMix site yesterday.

OverClocked ReMix is a website dedicated to reviving the video and computer game music of yesterday, and reinterpreting that of today, with new technology & capabilities. This site’s mission is to prove that this music is not disposable or merely just background, but is as intricate, innovative, and lasting as any other form.

and i really really like it. it’s much extra fun when you can recognize old familiar favorites.. but just the tunes and sounds floating around while i’m at the computer… it’s very good mood. *pleased*

on the side: Faraquet has also been added to my playlist…when my playlist cycles through it, i’m not sure whether it’s part of the gaming remixes collection, or not :)

10 February 2005 Thursday

movie of the month:
The Notebook

05 December 2004 Sunday

Applications to live by

Since i’ll be doing a wipe and fresh restocking of all my necessary applications on my computer once i get it back, i figured i’d put together this list offhandedly for myself, and may as well have it up here for whatever use or interest it may be to others. It’s in some sort of an order — vaguely the order in which i’ll restock my computer. What am I missing?

1. Mozilla Firefox – web browser (open source)
2. bblean – Blackbox for Windows; replacement shell for Windows Explorer (open source). very transportable. i don’t sit long with any computer before dropping this one on it.
3. Gaim – multi-protocol instant messaging client; AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, and MSN Messenger replacement (open source)
4. Nullsoft Winamp – MP3 and other media player (free)
5. Maxthon (previously MyIE2) – web browser, Internet Explorer replacement (free)
6. Crimson Editor – notepad replacement and code editor (open source)
7. Core FTP Lite – (s)ftp client (free)
8. Mozilla Thunderbird – email client (open source)
9. VLC – Media player (open source)
10. Azureus – BitTorrent client (open source)
11. Opera – web browser
12. eMule Plus – p2p file sharing client (open source)
13. EditPlus – notepad replacement and text, html, programmer’s editor
14. Dachshund Bundle (AntiCrash, Hare, Battery Doubler, Zoom)
15. TuneUp Utilities – Windows optimizer
16. Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Acrobat)
17. Macromedia Studio MX (Fireworks)
18. Microsoft Office (Word, Excel)
19. TopStyle Pro – CSS (and XHTML) editor
20. ACDSee – digital photo manager
21. TotalIdea Tweak-XP Pro – Windows XP tweaker and optimizer, particularly to remove MSN/Windows Messenger

My computer should be back to me tomorrow afternoon. ‘Will then begin the grueling process of reformatting the disk (NTFS, not FAT32, right?) and then deleting the unwanted Microsoft and Toshiba software that comes standard. Then, in with the apps and on with the computing.

09 October 2004 Saturday

my Firefox and Thunderbird Extensions

i’m liking firefox more every day. i’m at Firefox PR1:

10 June 2004 Thursday

Choosing a Carrier: Verizon, AT&T, and Cingular

Current mobile phone plan: Verizon Wireless
I’ve been with Verizon Wireless for almost two years now. America’s Choice plan: $39.99.. 400 minutes per mo., free nights/weekends, 1000 mobile-to-mobile (other verizon cell phones) minutes, free nationwide wandering and calling.
I’ve had a few minor scuffs with them, but they’ve been pretty reasonable and usually offer me a reasonable solution. Their coverage has not been perfect, but better than any other U.S. cell phone I’ve been exposed to. Their website does not always work, but it usually does, and it keeps pretty thorough track of all ones’ information and allows for easy online payment/adjustment of features. And I can easily check my minutes from my phone, etc.

Choosing our wireless carrier in the beginning
When we (my family and I) were in the market for a cell phone plan, we found that most cell phones were unable to catch a signal at our house (we seem to be in a pocket of sorts.. wireless signal is strong around it, but not in our house). The only cellular services that worked at our house were AT&T and Verizon.

AT&T or Verizon?
So that made it reasonably easy.. We looked into AT&T and Verizon, and their plans were comparable and their coverage was similar.. but Verizon had a good family share plan going, and a trusted friend explained that Verizon currently had the strongest signal network in the country. So Verizon it was, and it has been well.

Stay with Verizon, or go?
Now it’s time to either renew with Verizon and get new phones and upgrade our plans and sign another one/two-year contract, or switch over to AT&T. We weren’t looking at any of the others, since we know only those two will work for us.

Cingular bought AT&T
Except that AT&T recently put themselves up for sale, and Cingular bit, and now owns AT&T, and all AT&T wireless towers. So.. Cingular and AT&T should be the same now, right?

AT&T will give it up to Cingular
Except that AT&T does not fully merge into Cingular for several more months. (I’m thinking the end of this year at earliest.) At which time, I am told, AT&T wireless customers will all be receiving phone calls suggesting that they turn over their AT&T cell phones to acquire new ones from Cingular to fully integrate them.

The Cingular-AT&T merge has begun
Btw, Cingular is apparently already using AT&T towers in the Washington D.C./Maryland/Virgina area, wherever the one’s signal strength is stronger than the other. This will be exercised on a national scale in the next few months. But this being the case, Cingular’s service should, then, work at my house now. Those currently on AT&T though, and expecting mobile-to-mobile calls to be free, see this.

The GSM difference
Another note.. the main difference betwen Verizon and AT&T right now, by my understanding, is that Verizon does not operate with GSM, while AT&T/Cingular does. (Verizon uses CDMA.) This basically means (to me) that AT&T/Cingular GSM phones use SIM cards/chips.. If you’ve spent some time outside of the United States, you probably know that most of the rest of the world seems to have been using these SIM cards forever. They’re tiny (cardboard?) cards that fit somewhere near your battery, that are easily removable and changeable. They are the identity cards for your phone. If you put a different card in it, you’ll be operating with a different phone number and can be on a different plan. So you can travel the world with one of these phones, buy a local temporary card or borrow your friend’s card, and use your cell phone locally. Apparently the AT&T GSM phones are locked so that the phones will not work with other SIM cards, but if you pay a one time fee ($50?) you can have the phone unlocked; Cingular, it seems, automatically unlocks its phones once you’ve been with them for a period of four months.

A note about T-Mobile
I actually have no experience with T-Mobile. Catherine Zeta-Jones is hot and she does their comercials. That’s about the extent of my knowledge about them. Read this for an interesting brief, though.

Cingular, then?
So… Cingular is looking pretty good right now.. what with their rollover minutes, too.. And you can apparently pay an additional fee (boo!) each month to have your night minutes start at 7pm (yay!) rather than 9pm. And I guess their phone I’m looking at is the Motorola V400 GSM phone, with built-in speakerphone (I’ve become quite accustomed to that feature on my current Kyocera QCP 3035), color-screen, and built-in camera.

In-network calling
And of course, there’s currently unlimited ‘in-network’ calling for all Verizon, AT&T and Cingular customers.. Simply meaning if you’re on a Verizon plan, you have unlimited calling to and from all other Verizon network customers, and AT&T customers have unlimited with AT&T, and Cingular with Cingular. And that’s all really good… but that deal’s not going to last forever, for obvious reasons.

Conclusion?
So at the moment I’m thinking Cingular’s mobile phone service is probably the way to go. —Though I’ll be sorry to leave Verizon behind. They do have the highest growth rate right now of all the wireless carriers in this nation.. that whole “bring your phone number” thing has really made the market interesting. If anyone else has suggestions/ recommendations/ corrections on any of this, I would be glad to hear them. I’ll be making a final decision probably next time next week.

29 May 2004 Saturday

i got mine

oh, yes. —> <—
*terribly pleased*    

(thanks to enrique for the badge)

15 April 2004 Thursday

WordPress on the brain

i wasn’t going to spend my time on this today.. i really wasn’t.

i’ve been delving into a comparison of WordPress and MovableType.

where i’m beginning my “Word Press versus Movable Type” considerations from, are thus:

• this (rasasayang.net my first experience with blogging.
  
  
  
• as of this date, i’ve not yet opened this site to the public. only one other person has current access, and no more than five pairs of eyes have ever been “in” rasasayang.net
  
  
  
• wordpress looks to be very clean and promising. it’s thoroughly picking up what it’s learned from established web publishing engines-the arguably best of them being movabletype-and integrating into their standard programming what used to be available only as plugins / tweaks / hacks to MT, etc.
  
  
  
• i haven’t even really looked at the so many other blog publishing engines that are out there. but WP gets rave reviews, and it could (maybe?) be a bit simpler and more organized than MT, if for no other reason than it is new and clean.
  
  
  
• my number one issue / concern and biggest hesitation about moving over to a different blogging engine, is that it might not continue on its promising path. MT is very tried and very true. WP looks very true, and many people are now trying it… but it might not stay. its founders / maintainers / etc. may lose interest for their own reasons, and the WP community may or may not save it.
  
  
  
• i have been waiting-anxiously, even-for MT 3.0 to make its debut. i’d even be half satisfied with an estimated (of course you can’t necessarily be sure exactly when a coding / program / project will be done) date of release, and especially a list of new features that will be in it. i like the MT community. i do. and if i could really learn how to properly use css to thoroughly code this page (must figure out how to do the three column format and stuff… so far, i think i’ve been doing a fairly creative job with tables..and trying to be as minimal about that as my limited expertise / exerience allows), then i guess i would suffer through the rebuild times and keep with MT.
  
  
  
• i am a lil concerned that since TypePad is SixApart’s priority over MT (fairly reasonably.. it’s paid—MT is free), and that might make future improvements / fixes to MT slow and such. if they do make big changes, it’ll be within TypePad and not MT. so all reliance really would fall to the MT community, and the existing and developing plugins and hacks and such things. what if WP really does develop a community with staying-power, and does turn out to be sustainable and reliable and dynamic? i’d be thrilled, and probably even more hordes of us would migrate from MT to WP.
  
  
  
• i’m kind of leaning toward trying WP. but hopefully i won’t do it super soon, simply because i shouldn’t be spending so much time here these days anyway! but i want to be able to clean this site up, and make it what i’d like it to be and be comfortable that i can keep building to it without having to readjust the whole thing after moving it someplace else.

i’ll probably note more on this matter later. it might be simply to say, “i’ve decided to stay here (with MT) for a while yet…” ..but it might be to say, “check it, i’m moving!” i wonder, after that pending post, how many years will pass before i open up public access to this site?