ZinZam

New Skate Shoes arrived

February 15, 2010

My new skate shoes arrived today, Nike SB Paul Rod.

Check them out.


Aren't they great.

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I got my Mozilla shirt in the Mail Yesterday

April 16, 2009

Photo is out of focus.

Says
"INTERNET
BY THE PEOPLE
FOR THE PEOPLE

mozilla
FOUNDATION"
on the back.

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Christmas

January 01, 2009

This year for Christmas I got something I wanted, Mindstorms NXT. I haven't opened the packets of pieces yet as I do not want to loose them without having a place to put them (such as a toolbox).

I have looked around online on what I can do with it and I am super excited. I can use matlab to control robots over a bluetooth interface. It's a control engineer's dream come true.

I also got
Kings of Leon - Only by the Night
Weezer - Weezer (Red Album)
NIN - And all that could have been (live)
The Dark Knight BD (blu-ray disc)
Sony Camera Tripod
Water feature (thanks once again chiv)

I also spent $333 on networking equipment so I can play my Wii and PS3 on the internet and not put up with GPRS for another 6 months while vodafone (still) build their (6 month late) national 3G/HSDPA network. That said when the 3G network is launched I have found the phone I want, the Sony Ericsson W705, it is basically the replacement to my current phone that I have been waiting for. The reason is that I use my phone intensively for it's extra features.

• Alarm - I do not need a bedside clock, and uniform alarm that travels with me everywhere
  
• LED torch light (useful to read maps in dark places, light dark footpaths at night etc...)
  
• Timer - cook food
  

Improved features

• 3.2 MP camera
  
• Better video light
  
• Better battery life
  
• Larger screen
  
• Better screen resolution at 320x240 (QVGA, improved from QQVGA)
  
• 98 g (1 g lighter)
  
• Thinner (better for pockets)
  
• Improved music player (W800 music player is annoying)
  
• Improved AAC support (should support reading ID tags, W800 ignores AAC ID tags)
  

Additonal features I like

• UMTS 900 support, the vodafone regional network in Australia will only be UMTS 900, past handsets have UMTS 2100 support only (metro only)
  
• Wifi - allows you to use skype/voip
  
• Youtube streaming
  
• DLNA certified (stream from Windows Media Player/PS3?)
  
• GPS (useful for people who walk everywhere and cannot justify a car GPS)
  

That said I cannot really justify getting any other phone on the market to satisfy my lifestyle, the phone part really has to be an add-on to a multi-use gadget that is pocketable.

I also really like the SE bluetooth watch MBW-150 Executive edition. It looks classy!

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Hobbies

May 10, 2008

There are various hobbies that keep people occupied. Some are free, while others cost considerably more to pursue, with some people taking it to the extreme. It is in fact that the pursuit of academia was once reserved for the wealthy with too much time on their hands.

For the past decade my hobby has been spending as much time on the computer being creative. Here I call software a creative industry, and I don't see why it shouldn't be considered so. First with application development, and moving into web application development. Best of all for a teenager, these pursuits didn't cost me any money, as I didn't have any.

Previously my hobby was building with Lego, Lego trains, and Lego Technic. However now that I work, I have a bit of money to pursue mechanical, and mechatronic hobbies again. Something that led me to major in Mechatronic Engineering at university. But the problem again is that applying my training to create a small robot as a hobby would be quite costly (at least the way I want to do it).

And again I elect for the cheap hobby, web development, and ZinZam continues to be worked on. My big overspecified/feature bloated blog :P

Maybe one day I'll bite the bullet and create a small robot. And when I do, I challenge you to create a better one than me.

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Firefox

March 28, 2008

My Firefox plushie came today.

If you don't already use Firefox, then Get Firefox today!


Also here is a picture:

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The Lego® Company comes through again

September 22, 2007

It has been a year since I last got a Lego set with the World Club magazine (which didn't cost me anything). Since this is the first issue since I renewed, it means they got the renewal form which is good.



This time it came with a small set from the City range, a small boat. I think it's a fire fighting boat. It doesn't actually say what it is supposed to be. Though it's fairly obvious it's a small fireboat.



Again a fair number of pieces came with the set, and even a single spare part. Lego are good at giving you spared of the piece you are most likely to loose. This case is a transparent blue round 1x stud. I almost lost one of them opening the packet.



And the completed set, set against a blue screen I setup on my laptop lid opened at 180 degrees (horizontal).



Again it came with a lego man which is quite awesome. The Lego Company is awesome.

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New Lego Magazine

September 19, 2006

The fact that I just got a new Lego® World Club mazagine today means one thing, it's been three months since my last blog post, anyway here is a picture for those who want to see one.



Unfortunately this time it came with no free Lego, but it did come with the second half of 2006 catalogue in which the NXT is listed on the last page.

In other sad news they have once again murdered their Train Set range. All the trains are new and now are battery powered. For something you don't need batteries for, the battery poweredness is the spawn of evil. It is obviously a conspiracy set out against young children by the battery companies, ohh look it's sponsored by Duracell, how convienient [1]. By the looks of it they have also screwed over anybody with existing sets once again by removing the little metal in the rails.

quote:

Tracks do not conduct electricity and therefore are not compatible with LEGO 9v Trains. [2]

All it not as grim as I have made it sound, you can still get the metal tracks from Lego Shop at home, for double the price per track piece as you would pay for the new battery powered ones. I fail to see how what must be 10g of metal is worth $12.50AUD. And you can still buy the 9V track powered train motors. But, they do not list the 9V transformer and speed regulator.

Such a sad turn of events. I should also add that I don't own any 9V train sets, I have the even older 12V sets, so I've been in a situation much more grim than this for the past 15 years with no compatible sets being avaliable. Not that I can afford Lego, but hum ho.

And I shouldn't be so hard on the Lego company, I like their products, I really do, but IMO they keep short changing those who like trains. And they should be congratuated for spelling catalogue correctly, as it was meant to be spelt.

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The Lego® Company has still got it.

June 25, 2006

After reading about the NXT in SHS`' blog back in January and reading about it's great features such as having an AVR microcontroller embedded in it, I couldn't think the Lego® Company could get much better. This all changed a few days ago when my subscription to Lego World Club came in the mail.



To my surprise, for the first time ever it actually came with a small Lego set. This is quite peculiar as firstly it has never come with one before, and secondly I have only ever paid renewal once, and every other time they have renewed for free, so this must be costing them quite a bit of money.



I open the packet, and there is a good selection of pieces, quite a few more then you would have received in a McDonalds Happy Meal back in the early 90s.



Surprisingly enough it also came with a Lego man, if you have ever bought a pack of 5 Lego men before, you will know that in the late 90s they equated to about $2 each retail (to be honest, I once recieved a Darth Vador keyring Lego man as part of this, but never a set).
DSC00452.JPG
It only took a few minutes to construct the set as it was quite a small one, and the instructions were easy to follow.




Thats about it, sorry I have no idea what the set is supposed to be, but hey, free Lego is free Lego :D.

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w800i update

February 09, 2006

A while since I last posted a blog entry.

I got the w800i phone for christmas and I am very happy with it. It works very well, and the only thing missing is a phone plan* that supports GPRS to test out 90% of its features with, or even a competent phone company to begin with.

I have since got a case and the MXE-60 fast port external flash accessory for my w800i, but I will talk a little about the phones data features first.

It support IMAP4 which is great, only one problem, Telstra pre-paid plus says it supports GPRS, but it doesn't bloody work. I was able to setup sending mms, which is great and all. But when Richard tried sending me a mms on his birthday (yes Happy Birthday), my phone wouldn't recieve it (nothing wrong with my phone, telstra are nubs). I got an sms which said to go to http://www.telstra.com/info/msview . The only problem with that is that page doesn't exist. That really takes the biscuit, and affirms my position to change to vodafone when my credit expires. Sure I may have credit left, but when I have a phone which costs more than I will ever spend on credit through it, I'd rather be able to use the phones features.

The MXE-60 external flash accessory (camera flash) is great. Not as bright as some other cameras, but it really improves the quality when taking photos of near-by subjects in low light (extra light due to flash decreases exposure time required).

So yeh, it really is a nice phone and I would recommend it or the k750i to anyone who has the opportunity to own one. Its really built solid, and has the best hands free earphones of any phone out there. The quality of the camera is as good as any top of the line 2MP camera (I know cameras aren't made like that anymore, but from when 2MP was top of the line).

Every so often it does have some interface (transparency on menu) glitches, but nothing that stops the phone from working.

I also downloaded the opera midilet, which is great, but been unable to extensively use due to a lack of a GPRS service.

The calendar and contact integration with outlook is great, a single record for a single person holding multiple numbers is really convinient. The MP3 player is better than my previous NEXII, but that is to be expected (apart from the lack of WMA support).

So thats about it from me.

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W800i

June 17, 2005

Sony Ericsson make some of the best phones, and their recently announced models do not dissapoint.

My favourite of these models is the W800i. Why?

It's a camera (with print quality @ 2 megapixels), phone (tri band) and MP3 player in one. Not only that it takes memory cards up to 1GB and is supplied with a 512MB one. The only thing to disapoint is that instead of going with a standard like SD (aparrently the PS3 will support SD), the W800i only supports Sony's heavily overpriced Memory Stick Duo. It's not really that much expensive, but when you're buying 1GB of it, the small percentage is quite a bit of money I could spend on music.

The good points is that it supports MP3 and AAC unlike sony's failed attempts at MP3 players in the past which required the use of their propietry Atrac 3 plus format. The only disapointing thing is it doesn't appear to support WMA, but AAC is just as good and you can use iTunes to convert to the format sans-DRM.

The phone is a step in the right direction, and while it looks great (I love orange), it isn't completely right, but I also felt that about the SD format when it was first released in order to squash consumer rights.

Unfortunately I won't be able to afford this phone as the inclusion of a 512MB card seems to indicate it will premier at retail at between $600 and $1000 AUD (speculation mine).

Sony have a real opportunity to make camera phones right with the inclusion of a 2MP camera, the largest I have seen advertised attached to a phone, and combined with Sony's CCD and lense technology it isn't likely to disappoint for a camera phone, though it still isn't likely to rival a dedicated Camera with a proper lense. Also aparrently a first among camera phones is the inclusion of an autofocus on the camera, so no more taking out of focus pictures.

Whats more it that it can pump out a massive 15 hours of music with the phone turned on! This figure rivals the iPods rediculously inflated claim of 12 hours.

While it could seriously replace your iPod shuffle, the fact is the camera in phones is still much to be desired compared to dedicated camera. But who can complain at only a fraction the size and weight of a real camera. It will be classed as a good enough to take everywhere, good enough for prints (6x4's)and the web. But it isn't good enough to have the pictures blown up to 8x10's.

It's good to see this phone comming soon and only being a fraction larger and heavier than my T100 (smallest lightest phone I've ever seen, well 2nd smallest, and ties with a Nokia my friend used to have).

Well, I'll see how this plays out, still I won't be able to afford it, but it would be one cool toy.

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