well, its been a bit too long since i’ve last posted and i apologize for the lack of updates/posts/ranting/fanboyism.

a few weeks back, i was hosting a mini Rock Band jamfest/party and had the whammy bar on one of my Rock Band guitars break.  it was still useable but would not reset back to the original spot.

so, being the DIYer i am, i decided this last weekend that i would fix it myself and thus avoid having to wait who-knows-how-long to get back my guitar from Harmonix.  here is a basic guide on what you need to do (its not very scary or hard, only requires a screw driver and some macgyver skills). Keep reading to see the details.
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fanboy, guides, rock band, ps3, culture, gaming, console, geek, hardware | 1 Comment »

well, i figured i’d rap up my current Playstation3 blog rapid-fire action with a roundup of current PS3 related guides/recipes over at techrx

• PS3 - How to convert movie DVDs to MP4 for playback on Playstation3
• PS3 : How to backup PS3 game save files to memory stick / sd / cf
• PS3 : Zoom In/Out, Go Forward/Backward in Photo Album Slideshow and Tips
• PS3 - Upgrade Harddrive Notes and Tips
• PS3 - How to use Bluetooth Remote as Controller in Games
• PS3 - How to do a factory / hard reset
• PS3 - Change visual player screens when playing audio files
• PS3 - Music / Photo / Video Tips and Tricks (prepping, copying, playing)
• PS3 - Create video thumbnail of downloaded movie/trailer/video

enjoy!

fanboy, guides, PlaystationStore, ps3, culture, gaming, psp, console, web | 6 Comments »

happy belated turkey day to everyone! 

like most that work in the retail sector, i sadly had to work this weekend also (oncall but still working imo).  so since i had to be around my pc all weekend anyways, i figured i’d pick up on a few projects i’ve been meaning to get done.

my first and now-bigger-than-i-thought-it-would-be project is turning out to be quite the task.  my mom had a ton of slides from back in the 1960s of her trips across the USA.   being the geek and good son i am, i told her that for part of her xmas present, i would scan about 1000 of them in and make a DVD video showing them (thinking it would be a weekend project only).

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fanboy, htpc, life, tv, guides, blogging, Zune, windows, opinion, geek, culture, pc | 10 Comments »

well.. as i had previously blogged about, i’ve been working on a pals G5 tower just recently.  he had the logic board (ie motherboard for the windows hardware geeks) go bad and found out it would prob cost about $700 to get it replaced including labor.

so he went out and got a new board and then asked me to install it.  hell, i figured it couldn’t be more than an hour long swap.  boy, was i wrong.  apple hardware is probably the worst designed for the DIYers in life.  i swear apple does this purposedly so they not only make money off of hardware but also off of service.

the hardest part of the swap was finding an appropriate tool to get to the screws on the heatsinks.  basically you need a 7-8″ long screwdriver and torque wrench to get to them; however finding a place that makes this tool is next to impossible.  my pal decided to fabricate two specialized tools for the job.

after making the tools and of course tweaking them to fit; we had the heatsinks off and it was downhill from there! 

here’s a great tip for anyone that messes with or takes apart hardware they are unfamiliar with; take photo of it as your doing it.  it will save you hours of troubleshooting and frustrations!  after i had the board swapped out and put back together, the G5 would boot but nothing would show for video.  after reading the service manual i found for the G5, realized the problem was the DIMM configuration; basically i had to move the four sticks to the 1/2 spots for each processor.  once i did that, bam! got the OS X boot screen and finally the desktop!

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guides, geek, hardware, apple | 4 Comments »

well, today shamanstears inquired on what it takes to get osx up on a pc so i thought i’d get up a quickie on osx on an amd/intel pc.

first thing you will need to have is a p-ata harddrive.  thus far, you can not install on a s-ata drive since the current builds for pcs of osx86 do not have the driver support….

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fanboy, guides, osx86, geek, opinion, mac, hardware, web, pc | 3 Comments »

well, i’d consider myself a veteran if not expert on buying products online. i joined ebay about 8 years ago and prior to ebay had used Amazon.com and Newegg.com since their inception. however, after speaking with co-workers and friends throughout the year; i realized that there are still a lot of newbs or first timers out there when it comes to online purchasing.

so this blog is a very quick overview on things to watch out for if you are a newbie.
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life, review, guides, culture, geek, hardware, opinion, general gadgets | 21 Comments »

is july the official RMA month? sure seems so for me, had to RMA three items this last week: my new W810i phone (arrived DOA, argh!!), a 1GB MicroSD card, and of course my Western Digital 80GB laptop hd.  however, i guess i can’t really complain since prior to this month i’ve only had to RMA 4 items in the last 5 years (considering how many geek toys/items i buy, not a bad number).

i’ve officially given up on getting OSX on my HP TC1100.  using a different external cd/dvd drive did not seem to resolve any of the install problems/slowness.  i might try the deedmo image method but at this point don’t see any reason to try since it will prob run slow as heck.  so instead, i’m back to my dual booting XP/Vista setup.

been thinking about a few of the mods i want to do w/my new phone (that is once i get a replacement and verify that it works fine since my mods will nullify the warranty).  so far these are the mods i plan to do (given the phone is CID36 not CID49; the RMAd W810i was a CID49 so i may be limited on what i can do w/the filesystem and UI hacks).  glad i held onto my buddies dead K750 so that i can use those parts w/my W810i. i love how sony ericsson phones are so moddable! now if only they could get rid of that WSOD; however i think the problem i had w/my phone was mainly because it was really not a NIB phone (phone had signs of wear and tear; the camera lense had a nasty coating on it and the memory card slot was broken and the LCD display was not properly centered; i could see light on the side of the lcd). so hopefully get that back soon.   here’s the mods list i want to try:

-housing mod:  going to use K750i camera cover side, replace all black buttons w/silver K750 buttons

-software mods: complete overhaul of UI (black/orange brushed metal style) and Walkman player.  Possible camera and acoustic driver hacks (use drivers from K750, W800). I may see its possible to add the camera lense switch from the K750 (given there this is supported on the W810i, which it may not be).

and i’ll see if i can get tethering working too since i was able to get the non-existant VPN Internet plan from Tmobile (the $19.99 that doesn’t include wifi since who wants hotspot service to start with eh?).

i’ll be posting up some recipes to my hacks/mods later next week.  btw, if your a sony ericsson user, head over to my other fave SE hangout area: http://se-nse.com  some good SE fanboys/hackers over there.

peace

geek, fanboy, guides, osx86, handheld, modding, apple, mac, hardware, gaming, general gadgets | 4 Comments »

well, one of my previous blogs about my PS3 mentioned how i was able to get HDMI and Digital Optical output at the same time and then how i wasn’t able to duplicate it. well, i think i have finally figured it out and mastered audio out on my PS3! hehe..

first things first, my setup.

• Olevia 237V LCD HDTV (1080i) connected to PS3 via HDMI cable only (no other audio cables from ps3 to tv)
• standard run of the mill Sony 5.1/DTS AV receiver connected to PS3 via Digital Optical Cable
• PS3 set to output all formats to Digital Optical (aac,dts,dolby,pcm). Movie/BD audio set to Bitstream.

what i’ve found out, atleast in my case, is that its the order in which i turn on my devices and how i turn off my ps3.

whenever i power off my PS3 when watching a movie (just have movie playing, hold PS button, turn off system) and then if i turn on my setup in this order i get both HDMI and Digital Optical sound on my PS3.

1. PS3
2. TV
3. Receiver

it almost seems like by doing this tricks the PS3 in its digital/drm rules of audio output.

i have now duplicated this 5 times in a row.. however, i do have to do the exact steps above to get it to work including power down the ps3 while in a movie/dvd.

also, this works ONLY with DVD movies, not Blu-ray movies

my youtube clip of it in action!

fanboy, tv, guides, ps3, hd, gaming, console, geek, hardware | 14 Comments »

well, as w/the other cult believers in the HP TC1×00 tablet; i upgraded my OS to Vista for almost a month now and finally have gotten my performance/stability issues all worked out!  i decided to redo my setup (only the 6th os setup i’ve done on my baby.. hehe) and soley run Vista since i prefer its tablet features over XP.  so here’s two more tips i’ve found and tried for my TC1100.

one thing i’ve always wanted to get working or try to get working was Microsoft’s Origami experience pack for Vista.  This addon to Vista is mainly aimed at UMPC machines and in turn if you attempt to install it on a non-UMPC device w/Vista it will of course give us errors. 

After some digging, i ran across a nice article over at http://origamiproject.com/forums/thread/16181.aspx  on how to get it to work on a non-UMPC, so lets see if we can get it to work on our TC1100/TC1×00.

–Getting Origami Experience Pack to work on your TC1100/1000 (notes from http://origamiproject.com/ and http://www.umpcportal.com and of course my own experience).

First things first, you will need to download the Vista Origami Experience pack from microsoft.  Get it here:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ac349e84-c109-4ae7-a973-411c1de2457f&DisplayLang=en

you will need to download it from a PC running a genuine copy of windows.

Next, you will need to get the SDK Installer (we will need to use ORCA to customize the MSI installer file so that it does not check for the screen resolution; the main problem/reason why the Origami pack does not install on non UMPCs is because the installer checks the devices screen size and if it sees anything over 7″ it assumes the device is NOT a UMPC).  that can be found over here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C2B1E300-F358-4523-B479-F53D234CDCCF&displaylang=en

This download is for the windows sdk for vista, again you will need to download from a genuine windows pc . run the setup.exe file you downloaded

when you get to the Installation Options, just uncheck everything except the Win32 Development Tools.

It will just download the setup files to this location: 

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin

browse to here and run the file called orca.exe, this installs our good ole MSI Editor that we will use to hack the origami msi to bypass the screen check!

after you install ORCA, open it up from your start menu.  Once you do, then click on File > Open.

Find the OrigamiExperiencePack.msi file we downloaded.

on the left side, scroll down and click on InstallExecuteSequence and then on the right side click on the LaunchConditions item and then hit the delete button and choose yes to the warning.

Next, we will want to click on the InstallUISequence option on the left and again click on the LaunchConditions option on the right  and hit the delete button and choose yes to the warning.

now just go to File > Save or click the save icon. 

Finally, run the origami msi file we just updated and choose your installation!

After it finishes you should now have some origami options in the start menu.

here are some screenshots of it on my tc1100.  

a note; the origami experience does not fill the full desktop if you run any resolution higher than 800×600; just drop down your rez to 800×600 to get the full effect.

–Divx playback in Media Player

this is a super easy one, just go and download the latest Divx build over at http://divx.com , when you go to install just install the Divx Decoder/Codec and you should be able to playback your divx files in Media Player.

 hopefully those tips will help out you other TC1100 lovers that want the origami experience. peace

fanboy, tablet pc, guides, geek, applications, hardware, windows, vista, pc | 8 Comments »

i’ve used outlook for my emails since outlook 97, however if there has been one thing i’ve never really been able to conquer in outlook is the ability to use a centralized PST mailbox file that all of my pc’s and user accounts on pcs can use.  i know that this would not be a problem if i were to run my own Exchange server but to me that is overkill for a simple task that should have been made easier.  however, i finally sat down this last weekend and did some thinking and tinkering and think i finally got it work.  i also realized that i could have done this prob w/XP and 2000 but had given up for awhile on it (since i had to learn more about networking stuff and sharing ; man, i know a ton about sharing media files in Vista and Media Center).

so here’s my situation:

i have two computers that i want to share my Outlook PST file to, however on each of those pc’s (my main htpc and tablet) i am also dual booting XP and Vista (so my htpc has vista and xp sp2, while my tablet has xp tablet ed 2005 and vista).  I have all OS’s running Office 2007 and in turn Outlook 2007.  My current pst mailbox files is about 300mb in size and is located on my main PC.  My tablet connects via 802.11g to my network.

finally, what i want to be able to do is to use my Outlook pst file on both my tablet and main pc and the most recently updated copy would then be sync.  also, i would want to be able to have access to it on my tablet before i leave in the mornings and use it offline and then sync back so at night i could read my emails on my main pc in front of the 24″ beauty.. (i have NO regrets on my Dell 24″ monitor purchse 1 1/2 ago; the most rewarding upgrade of mine ever besides my si and lcd hdtv).  oh yea, there must be security so that only authorized accounts on my main pc can access the files (since it is my personal emails!).  so, lets explain how i did this using just basic Network shared folder and the Sync center / offline files option in Windows. 

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life, tablet pc, outlook, guides, geek, applications, windows, vista, mobile, pc | 7 Comments »