Happy New 2012!

Have a Blessed Year 2012 to Everyone!



Cheers!

My CDR King experience...

Well, who would have thought that my newly bought CDR King cheap 2.1 speakers beat my Altec Lansing 5.1 in terms of sounding? Hahaha. Satisfied? Yes! Even if it broke within a year...

It's the risk you have to take. Don't blame CDR King for your bad warranty experience, you always have the chance to buy something from better stores in the first place instead.

Chrome passes Firefox in Market Share

Not so surprising, I never installed Firefox on all my systems (now including 3 systems & 1 in the office)... ever since. IE9 built-in to OS & Chrome neat/light design really grabs my taste.

Free Source Code: Payroll Application written in C / C++ / Java / C# / VB / ASP / .NET

How lazy are you? Are you expecting a copy-paste code from this page? Then if you answer YES... YOU FAIL lazy dumb-ass.

Well, somehow you're in luck and I'm going to help you with your code in a different way. Let's get this straight to the point and just follow accordingly.

3x LG Flatron E2360 23" + MSI Twin Frozr II AMD Radeon 6950 2GB = Eyefinity mode!

Eyefinity project done!

My setup use 3x LG Flatron E2360 23" and MSI Twin Frozr II AMD Radeon 6950 2GB. I have to buy separate mini display port adapter to enable 3rd display plug.

Got good deals with the same LED models I have and I think my model is almost phased out hehehe. For my videocard, I sold my 6850 and replaced it with 2nd hand MSI Frozr 6950 so technically I spend only P5k from my savings. Totally worth it!

PC System Upgrade CPU vs GPU?

Sa gaming ala masyado maitutulong ang CPU compared pag inupgrade mo GPU as it will only improve overall performance. That is kung galing ka sa cpu from ancient generation, probably better CPU will show improvement but not that much. How come?

I won't go into details but it should be obvious lalung-lalo na pag ni-claim sarili mo na techie :)

I remember I almost upgrade my q6600 P35 system to i7 860 but since I'm cheap and tight on budget it would be wiser for me to upgrade the GPU sell my current GPU instead. It turns out my system gained significantly faster gaming performance and I save almost 8k-10k. After more than a 1 year, I'm still happy!

Rant: Globe Tattoo / Mifi / Superstick with 3 - 7mbps

Some benchmark using Tattoo stick + Plan999:
Malabon - 1-2mbps
Tandang Sora - 1mbps
Ortigas Ave - 3.5mbps!

Mapapansin nyo napakarami nabubwisit sa service ng Globe regarding of wireless connection (don't get me started on Globe DSL upload speed!!!!). Masyado marami naaakit sa marketing nila and to think about it sino ba aayaw sa 1299/mo na aabot naman ng 7mbps?

Actually it's all about signals. Pag di makakuha ng maayos na 3g signal pero fullbar ang gsm nag aaverage lang ng 2mbps tapos nag upgrade pa smart at globe ng 7mbps to 12mbps. Walang effect!

Nikon D800 or D700s to replace D700?

If Nikon will follow the steps of Apple, they should release the D700s soon. Lol!

Does AMA Computer College school sucks?

I choose AMA QC kasi malapit sa bahay... super lazy ako nun pero ngayon lazy nalang (improving!).

I believe na napakarami magagaling sa computers at doon ako naging competative at naging adik narin sa computer specifically programming. In my college days in AMA, I won a programming contest twice and joined AMA team for Microsoft Philippines competitions several times with the Dean's Listed guys.

Dean's Listed... henyo? hell no! I took Trigonometry 3 times and Calculus 2 times. Hahaha :D

Are you a Copy-Paste Programmer?

Most programmer will probably say YES as it does really save time, no doubt about it.

I'll probably say YES but for only codes that is cryptic, that is waay beyond my knowledge and skills how the code works and probably too desperate to use.

Really I'm a NO, most of the time I type the code I'm copying from the net from scratch. I believe that way I analyze the code better and at the same time I improve I scale and I optimize much faster.

AMD Radeon HD 6950 vs Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti... which is which?

Simple, let's put it this way...

AMD Radeon HD 6950 = Eyefinity
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti = Physx

In Comparison...

Probably you won't see any speed difference between the 2 except for PhysX exclusive games in favor of 560ti.

6950 1gb & 2gb is identical in terms of speed but both takes the lead by a great deal in a shader driven game compared to 560ti.

My next game... Battlefield 3

After I finished Battlefield Bad Company 2 game, I can say it was the best game ever. I was a big fan of that game. It was like more than a year ago that I told myself that my PC should be ready for their next game.

I saw many games that was released after but I wasn't impressed with the gameplay... and probably won't run playable on my PC (Crysis2).

I actually stopped playing for over a year and never tried any fps games. I was busy trying new things.

Accelerometer with Windows Phone's SDK 7.1 - Mango

I've been trying out Accelerometer in Non-Mango or Nodo sdk version but it's nearly impossible to test it without using your actual device. Now with the release of Mango SDK, they finally added accelerometer in the emulator. I'm quite amaze how easy to code and use it on the emulator... why would Microsoft took so long to develop/release this such useful feature?

Anyway, the moment I test it I immediately integrate the Accelerometer in my engine.

    device.AcceleratorActive = true;
    ..
    foreach (SphereObject obj in listBalls)
    {
        obj.Force += device.AcceleratorReading * 50.0f;
    }

There are so many new features in Mango SDK update that I wanted to try out but I'm more exited with Sockets... here's my rant before: Programming Sockets with Windows Phone 7

Manny Pacquiao vs Shane Mosley... then Floyd Mayweather?

After watching Pac vs Mosley, I was starting to think like I don't really know how Mosley fight so my curiosity begins.

Then watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAC6o9420fc and other videos for hours, I was like wow! Mayweather fighting Pacquiao? uhm....

I mean c'mon Mosley CONNECTS punches on Floyd but nearly NONE on Pacquiao. If Floyd keep THAT stunt forever during his fight... he'll get murdered by Pacquiao for sure.

Nikon D90 vs Nikon D5100

You can get a D90 body for only 36k or with a 18-105 kit for 47k... that is already available.

Obviously if you like to shoot on lowlight more often or probably capturing videos more than shooting photos then probably D5100 would be ideal for you.

Yet it is fact that D90 still have acceptable high ISO capabilities and video quality. D90 already gained one of the greatest reputation and well respected camera for about 4 years.

What's the Funniest Naruto episode you have ever seen?

Question: What's the Funniest Naruto episode you have ever seen?

Answer: Episode 101, when Team 7 tries to take off Kakashi's mask!

Programming Sockets with Windows Phone 7

I've been coding sockets for more than 10 years and it is very important because most of my ideas are all network based or multiplayer based - it's just part of my coding life.

So, I spent hours and hours looking if there's a Socket for WP7 and the only information I got is Windows Communication Foundation using single request/response access to HTTP.

Shipment experience from EBAY: Hong Kong to Philippines

UPS: Few weeks ago I ordered a phone costing around P19k and delivered to me with P2k tax charges... fine.

DHL: A week later, I followed a replacement battery and wall dock charger which cost P3k. The seller was very accomodating so I waited. Then I noticed it's been 6 days and I should have already received the items 3 days ago. So I visited DHL tracking site.

Windows Phone 7: No offline Contact/Calendard synchronization...

PocketNow stated...

Everyone has always complained about problems with ActiveSync on the desktop. Many people often ran into errors and wished it would just go away. Well, with Windows Phone 7, ActiveSync is gone. Windows Phone 7 only connects to Zune when you plug it into the PC and only syncs music/videos/podcasts/pictures. That means there will be no more errors or frustrations for you when trying to sync all of your personal information management data between your Windows Phone and Outlook.
...
How to Sync Windows Phone 7 with Outlook

That's PURE CRAP!

Pinoys should look for another Marcos to rule the country...

nuff said

Dance Central's Just Dance - Hard Pure Perfection?

If you don't have xbox/kinect/dance central I suggest you buy one and you won't regret it.

Dance Central's Just Dance - Hard Pure Perfection? Not me, I wish! You need to watch this guy... I don't dance and I only dance with my friends just for fun :))

Choosing between Nikon D90 or D7000?

D7000 is a lot better than D90 for one reason that it already match (or somehow beats) D300s feature... or more.

The reason I would probably get D7000 for it's better AF, more AF points, better video recording and more external function -- but using weak lens then it's pretty useless. Thanks to my Nikon 85mm/1.8, video with my D90 looks awesome (except the wobbling).

Dual SD is more like a PRO function to me. I never had any jpg/raw failure from my D60 for the past 2yrs to D90 1yr plus as well. I always move files thru my backup machine when I got home and keep my SD card clean.

Demo game and updated particle system

This is just a demo game screenshot for my game engine. The game has all features I have in my engine except for Scrolling Background and AI (check my previous post) which I haven't really thought of the right concept to match the actual game.

Art sucks I admit! Every image/texture resource was just a re-use from the old test apps. I wish someone could help me on this department! =)

Anyway here are the screenshots...

XNA Game engine status

What have I done so far...

Device - main game engine / framework
Screen states - small framework to handle screens eg. start menu, ingame, options
Input manager - keyboard, mouse, keypad
FPS utility - simple benchmark monitoring
Font manager - handles all font files
Texture manager - handles all texture files
Sound manager - handles all sound files with XACT

ArithmeticException was handled. Function does not accept floating point Not-a-Number value

After my years of game engine writing this is actually my first time to write a working physics engine with a simple sphere-sphere, sphere-box 2d collision. Though one thing bothers me is that at some point the application crashes randomly.

So I noticed that my application consistently crashing at Math.Sign() with NaN values passing in it. I tried to fix the bug the whole day without luck -- the bug is very trivial what causing it.

Happy New Year! (2011)

Have a Blessed Year 2011 to Everyone!