Hardware Manufacture's Cost Cutting

LG, apparently in a mad desire to cut cost, decided to cut in the wrong thing. LG makes pretty nice LCD monitor, and they are shipped with a courtesy VGA cable. The problem? The monitor itself is capable of displaying in 1680x1050, but the cable is not capable of displaying a stable picture at the native resolution. Instead, I see rolling lines on the monitor that would cause most people to believe the monitor is cheap/defective. This is not a good way to make a good initial impression. Furthermore, the average user probably wouldn't be swapping cables to try to fix it.

Someone is clearly not thinking when they decided to bundle a thinner than normal VGA cable.

I joined the Firefox bandwagon

Over the last several years, just out of curiosity, I would regularly try out several of the major browsers on the market. For several years, I have always returned to Maxthon, an IE-based browser shell that was developed in China. Although Firefox is quite nice compared to IE 6, the user interface wasn't really that revolutionary when compared to other modern browsers like Opera or IE shells like Maxthon.

Since last December, I have switched to Firefox for one simple reason: Facebook advertisements. One of the advertising method of Facebook is putting embedded Ads within the Newsfeed. It's a very excellent place for ads as users would tend to read the Newsfeed line by line and would unavoidably read the ads as well. I have searched long and hard for a way to tame those ads and that's when I found Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a plugin for Firefox that is capable of injecting javascript, thus altering a web page. That means you could use it to remove annoying elements of a web page. I promptly installed a Facebook ad removal script and I was happy. Greasemonkey alone is enough for me to pick Firefox from other browsers.

By no mean an I implying that Greasemonkey is a killer app for the Firefox platform; it is simply too complicated for the average people to use safely and effectively. The most user friendly way of removing ads from specific site would still be through Firefox plugin.

Note: I have actually began to see those newsfeed ads again, perhaps the script needs an update.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles - Mini Review

After I finished my last exam on December 12, I had much more free time available. I had an opportunity to try out Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles on the Nintendo Wii. I had always been fascinated by the Nintendo Wiimote's apparent ability to replicate the Arcade light gun experience in the comfort of the living room and I was able to see if it lives up to the expectation.

I was quite impressed by the game and its use of the Wiimote. The Wiimote's pointer is quite natural for pointing and shooting the zombies that appear in the game. It wasn't awkward at all to "aim the pointer" instead of aim the monster. In several parts of the game, there is action button sequence where the player has to press a button or wiggle the controller in order to dodge an attack. Those sequences add excitement to the game play as the player cannot rest while the game is in progress. The only drawback is that the button that needs to be pressed appears to be random. There are several time where the player has to wiggle the Wiimote, but the action performed on screen had nothing to do with "wiggle".

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is a great game that shows off the unique feature of the Nintendo Wii.

First Impression of Nintendo Wii Controller

One of the facinating aspect about the Nintendo Wii is the motion sensing controller called Wiimote. Before the console's release, many people had had high expectation about the controller's capabilities (ex. lightsaber). Last week, I had the opportunity to try out the console at a friend's house. I was able to test out one of expectations that I had regarding the Wiimote.

One of the minigame in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess involves controlling a flying dragon using the Wii's pointer capability. Even before I tried using the pointing capability, I already know that the controller derives the point relative to the Wii LED emitters. What I did not expect, however, is that it requires more thoughts than anticipated to keep the controller pointing at the screen. Whenever I need to reoriented the dragon quickly, I have a tendency to overtilt the controller. This is because, unlike the analog nob, the pointer does not provide any tactile feedback. As a result, the game would prompt me to point the Wiimote at the screen. I would be interested to know if the Gamecube version of Zelda provides more intuitive control for that minigame.

Infowave Software going out of business

Infowave Software announced that they are going out of business. I guess they couldn't make enough money in this field with mostly professional service and maintenance revenue. My heart goes out to those who will lose their job as a result.

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=789467

I believe the company's business registration will survive through this due to the accumulated tax loss.

View from ICICS, 7th floor

The view from the 7th floor of ICICS is truly a thing of beauty. It allows you to appreciate how beautiful natural environment around the campus.

UBC Parking Signs

In UBC, this sign is placed in the major roadways around the Thunderbird parkade and is designed to encourage people to park there at $6.00 per day. Unfortunately, they neglected to mention that the B-1 surface-lot right next to the parkade charges $4.50 per day instead of $6.00.

This sign is place all over the UBC campus by UBC Parking to promote FlexPass. FlexPass appears to be a wireless device designed to allow access to some of the parkade. Permission to access various parkades is determined by the prepaid packages that is purchased. Since I don't generally drive to UBC, I don't know much about it. But you could imagine my confusion when I first saw this and immediately I thought of Adobe Flex instead.