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Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Hey everybody, I’m still alive! For the last month I have been looking for a good FM Transmitter for my car;  because seriously who wants to be creating CDs to listen to music anymore? my car does not have an AUX audio input, so a Modulator is not an option,  the only way for me to go was wireless, so I went on a quest for a good FM Transmitter, to my frustration none of them worked as they should, with all honesty they ALL sucked big time, but I will go into details about that later… I made some research and came across The Whole House FM Transmitter, I was hesitant at first because – I’m sorry to say – their website does not look very professional at all, first impressions are always important to me, still I decided to research even farther and came up with some really nice reviews about this product on the internet, so I was like what the heck, let’s give it a try and went ahead and ordered this baby, oh boy… to my surprise it worked just as expected, this little device works exactly as advertised, The Whole House FM Transmitter claims that it broadcasts whatever audio source you want up to 150 feet in all directions. This means it can cover more than 70,000 square feet, I have verified and I can bear witness that it does indeed do what they claim.

As an universal FM transmitter, it can broadcast any audio source to every FM radio. The audio sources include TV, Satellite TV Receivers, DVRs (eg. TiVo), Home Stereo Systems, DVD Players, VCRs, iPod, Microsoft Zune, Creative Zen, SanDisk Sansa MP3 Player, Other MP3 Players, Stereo Systems, Satellite Radios, CD Players, Tape Players, Palm Pilots, and Computer Audio (Internet Radio, Streaming Audio, Audio Files & Audio Downloads).

You don’t need FCC license to operate Whole House FM Transmitter. You can power up the transmitter unit via wall outlet, car adapter, USB or 3 x AA batteries. It just takes 10 minutes or less for set up, The Whole House FM Transmitter Gold Edition comes with an FM transmitter unit, 1/8? (3.5 mm) Stereo Headphone Jack, Stereo RCA Jack with Volume Control, 110/220 V AC Power Supply, 12/24 V DC Automobile Adapter, and USB Power Cable.

You create your own FM radio station to broadcast around your house and even outside your house with any FM transmitter. But many FM transmitters don’t work because they are not powerful in broadcasting signal as you will see from my experiences below, and from the experiences of many other reviewers out there, check out the Bestbuy reviews and you will see what I mean.

Before finding The Whole House FM Transmitter I started with the Griffin iTrip Universal; the idea behind that transmitter is great, it is a wireless device that charges through the USB of any computer and does not need to be connected to your car’s lighter charger to work, the charge lasts enough for a decent trip and it also works good at home to listen to your computer tunes through the house on any stereo system, however the problem with this transmitter breaks the whole point of an FM Transmitter, it is not powerful enough, I constantly heard static through my little trips throughout town while I tested it, so I went back to the store and this time I got the none wireless Griffin iTrip Universal, this one proved to be much better, but I still struggled to get a good signal, I kept hearing a lot of noise and static through my speakers, then went back to Bestbuy and got myself The Microsoft – Premium Car Pack for All Zune MP3 Players, I love Microsoft products but come on Microsoft, this? really…..? I don’t want to even get started with this one, even though it was the most expensive of all and that I have a Zune player (I would expected it to be %100 compatible) it was horrible, I could not get a single frequency with a clear signal in the whole FM spectrum with this device, so I returned it in just 2 days.

I was about to give up on FM Transmitters, when I decided to give the Belkin Tunecast Auto FM Transmitter model  F8Z439 a try; this one proved to be a lot better than the previous ones, however after trying it out for two weeks I knew already that it was also sucky, the belkin managed to keep a solid signal most of the time while making trips around town and while going to work etc, however as soon as I got into the freeway, the story changed, I could drive more than two miles without having to change the frequency, that aside from annoying it’s very dangerous if you are driving, yet I had already made my mind to keep it since all my previous experiences were worse and it seemed to me that price made no difference either, I decided to keep the lesser of the 4 evils, it looks like the FCCs regulations along with companies not really caring much to make a good product is killing the quality of probably all the assortment in this category in the market these days.

So I kept my Belkin for a couple of weeks but deep inside I could not believe there was nothing out there that would actually work as intended, and that’s when – Praise be To God Almighty-  lol, I decided to research and came across the The Whole House FM Transmitter, If you are looking for a transmitter that actually works, be that you want it for your car, home, office, or business, then do not waste your time trying out all the worthless crap out there, make yourself a favor and go order one of these babies, you will not regret it, what’s even better, the company has just came up with version 2.0 of their product and this one seems to have been improved over its predecessor, I will be ordering a second one to use as my personal home radio station soon, that way I can stream my tunes all around the house and keep my original one for my car.

One thing I STRONGLY recommend with this device is that you attached the provided extended antenna that comes along with your order inside the package, your experience will be even greater if you do.

NetGear’s WNDR3700 what an excellent router it is! got mine a few days ago and I couldn’t be happier with it because of its great speed, long range, and the ease with which I was able to just hook up my FreeAngent USB drive, thus making my media and files available to me in my entire home network and worldwide via FTP and HTTP, overall it was so easy to setup, I love the ability to create a guest network for home visitors etc, this is an awesome machine, loving it, not one single crash or disconnection in any device throughout the house, oh and finally my Zune finds my home network! The person who gave this router a 1 at bestbuy.com must have some serious cabling or interference issues or simply doesn’t know how to set up a router.
The only downside I noticed is that the setup wizard CD that comes with it is not compatible with Windows 7, given the fact that Win 7 is around the corner NetGear should have taken care of that, however the router can easily be setup manually by going to http://192.168.1.1/index.htm with your browser.

A month ago I had a big storm in my area and all my equipment got bricked, modem, NIC card, external dialup modem (which I only use with Phonetray) and yes my router, I had been a Linksys loyal user for years, but when this happened and my WRT54GX2 gave up the ghost, I had no choice but to start looking for a new router, first I tried the Linksys WRT400N but it turns out that this one did not have Gigabit ports and on top of that the router was crashing whenever I attempted to stream videos to my PS3 with it, so I went for their top of line product the WRT610N which cost me a nice $199 USD, but I was totally disappointed with it, this product could have been one of their best ever, its concept and set of features is magnificent, it did look really feature complete to me, so I went ahead shelled out that amount of money and bought it home, days after using I realized it must be one of the worst products Linksys has ever put out on the market and the certainly one of the worst I have got myself.

I did not pay attention to the reviews, but boy that was a mistake! I had horrible connectivity issues in all my devices, PS3 kept getting disconnected and whenever I tried to access files or videos the Router would crash and reset my internet connection in all my devices on the network, the storage feature (one of the main reasons I bought it for) is a mess, it wouldn’t recognize my created users, I couldn’t change passwords, and while attempting to connect from the internet with an ftp client it always complained that the user/pass was wrong, but IT WAS NOT! the software that comes with the router DOES NOT work and crashes, sometimes it won’t even start! and for the record YES I DID upgrade the firmware to their latest version, Linksys should fire or demote whoever watched over product quality when developing this product, I can’t believe they are charging $200 for it, it’s not worthy $20, get it out of the stores, recall it, it’s giving you a bad name Linksys! I wish I could get v2 but there’s no tell until you open the box, and who knows if it will be same?

I’m now a happy camper with my storm’s nightmare behind me, I only paid $159 for a product far superior and that actually does what it promises, keep up the good work NetGear.

   Finally got around designing my own WordPress theme, and well you can see the results yourself lol, I’m still playing around with it, not totally satisfied with colors etc, so I most definitely will tweak it in the upcoming days, but it was already time for a change, my previous theme was over  a year old and besides nothing being wrong with it however, it was boring already. If you usually visit my site from a mobile phone, you will not see any changes because the mobile theme has not changed at all,  it’s only the main site look that was modified for now.

I still need to update some areas of my blog such as the current look of my desktop etc, heck I don’t even use Windows Vista any more lol, anyway I hope my visitors enjoy the new look and if you have any suggestions please let me know, once again thanks for reading me.

Yes; so late, I finished reading this treasure, “Cien años de soledad” as it is known in its original language, and I must say that it is for sure one of the best novels ever written, and must definitely the best work in modern Spanish literature; and I don’t say: “so late” because it was at a late hour of the day that I finished reading it, but because it was so late in life I decided to read it, I should have done it years ago; this book can certainly change one’s way to look at many things once you’ve read it.

 Gabriel Garcia Marquez work is studied in universities across the world and is no surprise to me as its "magical realism" (as his style is commonly known) involves you from the start to the very end of this book, it is highly original, imaginative, and unprecedented. One of the most charming qualities of this book is that you can pick it up and allow it to fall open at any random page, read that one page only, and still enjoy it for the imagery, the sheer beauty with which everything is described and narrated.

The novel acquires so much momentum and strength at the very end with its monumental and surprising ending! Gabriel Garcia Marques certainly took his time writing the last pages of his work to create a masterpiece finish really fitting his great novel; there’s so much I could say; I could write pages about the quality and literary value of this work but you must see for yourself, If you like reading do not, I repeat DO NOT die without reading it. (that’s the advice a friend gave me about the book and I really must thank him because he could not be more right)

Today I finally received my VadoHD camera on the mail, I have been looking for a while checking out the different HD pocket cameras on the market, reading reviews and comparing features, After some reading and asking many VadoHD users about its performance and quality I decided to go with this Creative’s product and I hope it lives up to its hype.

So far the camera has performed great for me, I would not call the video quality amazing but it’s definitely great for a camera this size and with this price point, If you want professional video quality then you really need to spend some more serious bucks ’cause this won’t cut it for you, but if you are like me, someone just looking for a way to capture those special little moments that come out of the blue every now and then then this is the camera for you.

It has 3 recording modes to record in SD, HD and HD+ the last one being the best quality of them three, additionally it has options for anti-flicker and it lets you select the type of TV system you want such as PAL/NTSC, it also has options to decide which language you want the menus to appear, you can also select options such as Time/Date and Instant Record capabilities, when turn on Instant Record puts the camera in a standby mode where it wakes up instantly when you press any button.

The camera also comes with an HDMI output (cable included) which allows you to connect it  directly to any HDTV in the house and watch your videos directly from the camera in full HD from the source, and it has a nice rugged cover to protect it, the only thing I don’t like about the cover is that it is white and the camera is black so it doesn’t look too good when you put it around the camera.

Editing and creating small home movies is very easy with the included Vado Central software that comes included with the camera, it does have a limitation though where it only allows you to put together 3 videos as part of the movie, if you want to add more than 3 you are required to buy the pro version of the application for under $20 bucks which is not a bad deal in my opinion, Vado Central also allows you add music and pictures as part of your videos.

If your computer has an HDMI port then you can also use this camera as a webcam; of course don’t expect to be streaming HD videos using Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo messenger, these applications have built in limitations on the quality of the video you can stream, nevertheless another nice thing you can do with this device.

Keep in mind YouTube takes out at least 20 percent of the original video quality so this is by no means the actual quality of the videos you get with this camera, but at least you can have an idea, so here’s a short demo movie I made with my VadoHD:

Ok my previous Microsoft Lifecam was giving lots of trouble, specially with audio and it was horrible for recording video so I went ahead and bought a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000; this baby is fitted with a 2-megapixel sensor with autofocus and a built-in microphone. It features Carl Zeiss optics that provides crisp, high-resolution images and videos. Its microphone is equipped with RightSound Technology, which eliminates echo and feedback that is often created by a microphone and speakers that are in close proximity. so I don’t have the need for a headset. I can also add creativity while I communicate with my friends or prepare a video presentation with Logitech Video Effects. It is an application that recognizes facial features and maps them so I could create three-dimensional animated characters or two-dimensional face accessories. It even has downloadable fun-to-use filters that let you add video effects like fisheye, black-and-white effect, neon and more. Taking High Definition 960×720-pixel or 1600×1200-pixel videos with the QuickCam Pro 9000 results to razor-sharp shots whether it is close-up or from a good distance. You can also take photographs with a resolution of up to 8 megapixels.

Taking the web camera outdoors will never be a hassle because it comes with an adjustable attachment, a universal monitor clip for any kind of notebook or desktop PC. It can be connected to your notebook PC through USB 2.0. The Logitech 960-000048 QuickCam Pro 9000 supports 24-bit true color depth and up to 30 frames per second. Aside from the motorclip, the QuickCam Pro 9000 is bundled with a six-foot USB cable, QuickCam Software CD with several helpful tools to get started, and a Quick Start guide.

Here’s some videos I took within few minutes after I bought it, so you know in case you wonder that despite this camera being able to record HD video it does NOT shot videos in 16X9 aspect ratio proper of HD TV and also used by YouTube HD, I had to use a third pary application called Super to crop the video to a 16X7 aspect ratio.

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Well… a few days ago YouTube closed my channel because of some videos I uploaded, I understand their reasons so I don’t blame them, what I don’t understand is the companies behind it forcing YouTube to shut down channels which contain their material which is copyrighted, what difference does the URL where their content is being played from makes to them? all that matters is that when their content is played they are paid their royalties and that proper credit is giving to the provider and the artists, right? it looks that they are not willing of course to share part of the pie with YouTube though and rather than to make their content available to everyone by other means, they simply in many instances don’t make it even available to the public at all, like in the case of my channel where the offending material was NOT available anywhere else.

Some content providers however do work with YouTube and allow users to post their copyrighted material and simply require YouTube to add a link to the provider and to also include advertisement on the video page, that seems to me like the right approach that every content provider should follow, is it that hard?

Anyway I have a new YouTube channel, which by the way is in many ways better than the previous one, with the exception that I have no subscribers now lol and I lost all favorites and friends, hopefully I will find them again soon, as you probably know YouTube has started allowing the upload of HD files to their site, therefore some of my videos are now in HD (well Near HD) and also some of the videos I had before are now High Quality and I have fixed letterboxing etc. you can visit my new channel at: http://www.youtube.com/ElyOnTV enjoy and don’t forget to post some comments and rate my videos!

My old PC was getting old, I have been with it for a while and since I love beta testing for Microsoft and I want to fully test Windows 7 I decided it was time for some PC shopping, I could of had built up my own rig, but I always prefer to buy a good system off the market then upgrade at my own taste and pace, I’m lazy to go buy every single part on line etc; so after looking at what was being offered in terms of OEM PCs I decided to go for the Gateway Model: FX6800-01e this baby comes packed with the latest Intel® i-7 Quad Core CPU the Intel CoreT i7-920 Processor along with the RADEON HD 4850 graphics by ATI and 3GBs of DDR3 memory, I’m planning on soon upgrading to at least 6 more GBs of RAM and probably add extra hard drives and set up some RAID 0 array for optimal performance.

Last night I was ready to put this system to the test and in every thing I tried I notice this monster can take anything you throw at it and the CPU will not even notice it, streaming HD movies content from it to my PS3 was a dream come true as well as editing video which used to be a very tedious work on my old PC.

It came with Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition 64-bit operating system with Service Pack 1 (SP1) preinstalled but I immediately made a fresh installed of Windows 7 x64 on it which by the way runs so smoothly, this is my first time ever testing a 64BIT operating system so I’m really enjoying this, I can hardly remember this is still a beta OS, can’t wait to test future builds on this system, my only concern right now are drivers and how good they will install in future builds of Win7, I’ll keep you updated. (Note: Just added 3GBs more of RAM for a total of 6GB, system can take up to 16GBs! but I don’t think that’s necessary for now lol) 

Check it out HERE

I’m not political, however not being into politics does not stop me from appreciating poetry wherever it might be, today was a historic day for America and the world and as I watched in amazement like everyone else how the first black president of the United States officially took office, some special moment occurred as poet Elizabeth Alexander recited a beautiful poem which in my opinion portraits what America is today, I loved the poem and I hope that you will too, so if you missed the moment here it is:

This year has been remarkable in many ways, so many things have happened in the world, and so many things happened to me,  I found some good friends, and lost some friends, I found love and then lost it, for the first time I wrote some poetry which later on I disliked, my bank failed, but I didn’t loose my money, the US got a black president despite the saying that racism would never allow such a thing to happen on this nation, I started exercising and happily lost some pounds, I read some good books but didn’t get to finish another good one, I received some good news from mother land, but the news made me uncomfortable, Why is it that some good things happen sometimes at the wrong time? 

Life is like a year with its seasons, you go through changes and states of mind, this year I started to  see the world as an old man, and it scared me, I learned that I’m getting experience in life, and I learned that life is really short, I found some Bible truth and it hurt me, I was lied to but I found out, Even though this is something I always knew, I finally realized that the color of the sky can change, that its blue is just an illusion, I learned what it meant to look at the world with different lens,  I’m now making sure ignorance never bites me again, I have learnt that there’s always an angle of the truth which they not always want you to see, just like the hidden side of the moon, there is always this bit of the tell you must explore and find out yourself, and sometimes that bit can change the whole story.