This proves I am a bigger geek than all of you combined aka Spiderman T-shirt design FTW!

So on May 1 my friends and I are gonna watch Spiderman 3 in Powerplant. It’s not my theater of choice but since a lot of my friends are watching there I figured why the hell now. Big movie events excite the fanboy in me, and so to commemorate one of the best movie franchises in recent years, I made a Siderman 3 t-shirt. What’s cool (as cool as geeky can get) about the Tee is that on the front is the red “good” Spiderman logo and on the back is the black “evil symbiote badass motha” Spiderman logo.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening working on this, and while I was still a bit disappointed with the results and tired from the heat (and paint fumes) I will wear this T-shirt proudly tomorrow, just as my friends will look elsewhere and pretend they do not know me.

Spiderman red

Spiderman Black

Food links

Bloghopping can be a hunger inducing activity, especially when you stumble upon food sites.

…

I can’t think or a witty intro, so that’ll have to do.

Brooklyn Kitchen – A restaurant in Brooklyn apparently. The Potato Ginger Samosas had mymouth watering.

lil kian chu – Mika’s actually on my blogroll, but I thought I’d add her her for some local flavor. go back to some earlier posts to see the entries that made my mouth water. Just the mere image of the apple stuffed chicken (seen above) had me drooling.

CtrlAltChicken – This is probably the geekiest cooking show ever, hosted by Diggnation’s Alex Albrecht and his fiancee Heather. Episode 1: Chicken Cordon Bleu.

Sucks to be on a diet.

Dealnews.com FTW!!!!

Oh. My. God. I just found my favoritest website ever. Ever ever EVAR. Anyone who knows me well knows that I love going to sales. I love getting things at a good discount. Dealnews.com is like discount heaven. It’s a virtual sale anywhere you look, like this sandisk sansa 2GB mp3player for only $50, or a refurbished Sony PSP for $130 (which incidentally is exactly how much a DS Lite costs).

Excuse me, I think I just wet myself.

Fuck Creative Labs, I’m watching video on my DS lite now

So Creative Labs were being bitches and asking me for more money than I had bought my Vision:M for in order to repair it.  That’s stupid on so many levels I don’t even care to think about it.  I was tempted to go and buy the Archos 404 out of spite, since for $199 I get a player with an even larger screen than the M, and it look smore durable too.  But the budget geek in me won out, and decided to do with my DS what I’d been planning to do in the first place, turn it into a video player.

All you gotta go is download Moonshell v1.71 and batchdpg v1.0, and you’re good to go.

Moonshell is the homebrew media player you’ll have to install on your DS flashcart or M3 DS simply in order to play videos, audio, etc. and batchdpg converts batches of your video files into a format (dpg) that moonshell can read.  Here’s a link to the best settings for batchdpg so your videos come out the way you want them to.

A caveat, the videos are converted, so there’s no way they’ll look as good on the creative or even an iPod, but they’ll do if you’re on a budget.  The audio is painfully weak however, and when converting videos thru batchdpg I’d suggested you check the “normalize” checkbox and invest in a cheap pair of cans (big ass headphones, as long as you can hear the dialogue, you’re fine) or in ear headphones.  My genius in-ear headphones (SRP 600 pesos) allowed me to watch Entourage while on a shuttle to makati just barely.  I tested the sounds with my Sennheiser cans and it was much better, but I don’t want to be wearing those things on me all the time.

Anyone who has a DS and wants to get a bit of extended functionality on their machines should definitely try this out, since it’s a free way to videos on your DS.

Army girl

 

Saw this dude’s blog, then went over to this dude’s blog, and felt compelled to clonk out a sketch of my own, despite my suckiness.  Done in 20 minutes on a 6×9 wacom graphire 4 and PS.

God I feel artistically inept.

Broken Creative Vision:M LCD Screen pt2 : I’m screwed

What’s a polite way of saying, sorry, you’re screwed?   Let Creative Labs show you how.

Dear ryan

Thank you for the information provided.

As regards to your enquiry, I would like to inform you that the limited
warranty does not apply to the damage caused by normal wear and tear,
abnormal use or conditions, misuse, neglect, abuse, accident, improper
handling or storage, exposure to moisture, unauthorized modifications,
alterations, or repairs, improper installation, improper use of any
electrical source, undue physical or electrical stress, operator error,
non-compliance with instructions or other acts which are not the fault
of Creative, including damage or loss during shipment.

However base on the information you provided, I am afraid that you will
not be able to use the warranty claim for in warranty servicing. As such
we will treat the product as out of warranty case and you will be liable
for servicing cost and subjected to stock availabilities.

For more information on warranty coverage, you can refer to the link
below:
http://asia.creative.com/support/warranty/warranty.asp

In case if you need any clarification, please do not hesitate to contact
us. Thank you.

So the short version is that they won’t be able to help me out.  It’s hard to get angry because they were really polite about it and the responses came back very quickly, but I’m disappointed because this isn’t an isolated case.  Like I pointed out with some of my earlier posts, this has been happening a lot, and a company as large as creative labs should have the responsibility to take care of situation slike this where it’s obviously a manufacturing defect that’s causing these screen cracks.

They lose a lot of goodwill this way, and word of mouth spreads like wildfire these days, especially with the internet (ahem ahem).  A month ago I would have gleefully endorsed creative to anyone who would listen, but now I can’t really encourage anyone to buy one afte what I’ve experienced.  Acoworker of mine was actually asking about what MP3 video player to purchase, and I suggested an archos instead, just because I couldn’t wholeheartedly reccomend a piece of hardware whose screen might crack at any moment for no given reason.

Chen Shui who?

 

In one of the most ludicrous shoe related news I have ever read, Nike’s put out a limited edition Air Force 1 shoe with Taiwanese president Chen Shui Bian’s mug “lasered” on the side of the shoe.  I seriously doubt that any self respecting Taiwanese hipster would want to wear these shoes, but what do I know right?  I’m just a geek blogger after all.

In other presidential show related news, Nike Philippines is releasing its own limited edition shoe with former president Erap Estrada’s face printed on the side of a red, yellow, and blue colored shoe, with a matching wristband to boot.

Starcraft Origami

 

I have been away for many days, mourning the cracking of the ZEN:M.  NO, I lie.  I was just lazy.  I’m still not over it so please, be gentle and don’t ask me any questions.

But.

This Flickr page hath brough me cheer.  Starcraft Origami from the kids in Korea FTW.  Not that it’ll take the stench of the VT kiler out of everyont’s collective mouth, but at least this must be proof that not all those kids are bad seeds.  Nobody who could make origami this beautiful could be bad, could he?

Broken Creative Vision:M LCD Screen

I thought I was alone, but this site proves me wrong. So this has been happening all over the world, after all, and I’m not just a poor schmuck who happened upon a shitty creative. I wonder why this hasn’t stirred up a bigger fuss? Anyway, the site doesn’t really help me with my problem, but at least I know I’m not alone.

theBroken

No, this isn’t an emo post.

Well, it is, but i’m being emo aobut a broken gadget so…

Anyone who reads my other blog knows I get excited about gadgets in a manner that is somewhat distrurbing. So when one of my gadgets gets damaged, it’s not a pretty sight. I hooked up my creative zen to my dad’s laptop this morning to get some podcasts on it, and I noticed something funky with the screen. I figured it was just acting up or I’d plug in the zen improperly so I promptly unplugged it and plugged it in again. Same screen. Almost half of it was white and there were…lines…streaking out from a corner…

Then it hit me.

My screen had cracked. The screen on my barely 4 month old DAP (digital media player wassup?) had cracked. I wasnted to scream. But I was almost late for work so I just sucked it up and went on my daily commute. But FUUUUUUUUCK. I spent 10k on that just last christmas and now it’s fucked! I’m lucky that the other half of the screen is sort of legible so I can still scroll around and generally use it as I used to, but it’s called the Zen “vision” M for a reason, you’re supposed to be able to watch videos on it DAMMIT!

fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

I did some snooping on the internets and found some people with the same problem, and it looks like I’ll have to pay upwards of 5k to have the unit shipped to creative and fixed, which is really sucky. I’m gonna call the creative service center here in the philppines to see what’s going down, but my hopes aren’t incredibly high.

Update: I called the local distributor of creative and they said that they don’t do hardware fixes because they’re not authorized to. They only do firmware upgrades and shit like that. Hell, I can do a firmware update on my own. Sigh. They said I could have it shipped to singapore, but that it would cost around 8 thousand, not including labor, so my only recourse is to find someone who’s gonna be in singapore soon, or go there myself. Sigh.