Training Tae Kwon Do With My DVD Player

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: July 15, 2005 - 4:09 PM PST I promised. Now I have to pay. When I set my Siemens C45 cell phone on fire I promised that my next victim would be my lousy DVD player.   My pet, which played only the DVDs it felt like “in the mood” for playing – a chronic problem on the optical unit for this particular model, I learned from other friends with the same problem –, has finally drop dead. So, the time has come... After several months thinking what I would do with it, I finally destroyed it. Several options crossed my mind: set it on fire (since I had already done this with my cell phone, I immediately discarded this option), throw it from the tenth floor (I was afraid of hitting someone or a car, even just before dawn), bury it at the beach and play “Treasure Hunt” with my readers, fill it with sand and drown it at the sea or at a lake (I think nature has nothing to do with my anger), and I even though in renting a stone crusher or a steamroller to destroy it. I was with my phone in my hand to call a company that rents out big machines to construction companies when I had another idea. To break it by literally kicking it, using my Tae Kwon Do knowledge. So you can laugh AND learn something useful at the same time. click to enlarge Figure 1: Yop Tchagui (side kick). click to enlarge Figure 2: Impact detail. click to enlarge Figure 3: Punch. click to enlarge Figure 4: Another punch... click to enlarge Figure 5: Ap Tchagui (front kick). click to enlarge Figure 6: Concentrating for the final blow (Sonal Tiregui, open hand punch). click to enlarge Figure 7: Sonal Tiregui (open hand punch). click to enlarge Figure 8: My DVD player after my “Falling Down” session. I already have a good candidate for my next “Assassin Rage” session: that 3-disc Aiwa CD Player that stops working after some years of use. I don’t have one of this but after the cell phone story and DVD player wreck promise at least three people offered me their Aiwa mini system for destruction. I’ll be back... Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top

I Set My Siemens C45 Cell Phone on Fire!

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: July 4, 2005 - 5:56 PM PST I had a Siemens C45 cell phone that didn’t work right, in my opinion. I could barely hear who was talking to me and the person on the other side listened what I was saying even worse. It was impossible to have a conversation without at least one “I couldn't understand you, can you repeat please?” Besides that, C45 menu was insupportably slow and confusing. This cell phone delays one century to turn on and finding any option on the confusing menu of this cell model is a work of patience. Having an old Startac from Motorola before, my C45 seamed like an old VW Beetle, in my opinion. Of course these problems could be something related only to my particular phone. This doesn’t mean that all cell phones from the same brand and model are bad. I sent it to a repair shop and they said the cell phone was just fine. So, it seams that this cell phone isn’t as good as my old Startac because they were located in different price ranges (these days you may find a C45 even inside a cereal box). Anyway, I lot my patience with it and I decided to set my C45 on fire. Literally. Follow the pictures below, they talk by themselves (before you ask, I removed the battery in order to not face an explosion). The fire was over, but my anger not. I decided to hammer it until I felt the animal was really dead. Now I am pleased. And I went back to my retired Motorola Startac. Once again I want to let it clear that all comments and the “murder” of my Siemens C45 are completely biased, since they reflect my personal opinion without any technical basis. The goal of this entry on my blog is just to relax a little bit and have some fun (at least on my opinion!)… You may be beautiful, but you are bad! The last farewell. Argh! What an awful cell phone! I lost my patience with you! You are going to die! I always said that isopropilic alcohol is the technician’s best friend! I’ll show you who the boss is… Die, bastard! What a wonderful sight! The fire is over. But my anger is not! Now we are going to get even! Die! Ahhhh, yes! I fell lighter now! I really needed this. The next victim of my death wish will by my lousy Brazilian DVD player that only plays the discs it likes. Coming soon… Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top

Cell Rotary Phone

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: June 29, 2005 - 8:53 AM PST Don't let its appearance mislead you. The phone on the picture below is a cell phone. Simply amazing: a GSM cell phone adapted to run inside an old rotary phone. Costing USD 399 it is sold at Spark Fun: http://www.sparkfun.com/shop/index.php?shop=1&cat=1&itemid=416 You can see more about this phone at http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/06/portable_rotary.html. This guy has even taped himself using this strange creation. Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top

Computex 2005 Showgirls Review

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: June 4, 2005 - 4:54 AM PST In all IT trade shows the manufacturers display the most important hardware: women. For many nerds trade shows are not only an unique chance to touch a GeForce 6800 Ultra with dual GPU and 1 GB video memory from MSI for the first time in their lives, but also the chance of looking at gorgeous girls at least once in their lives (touching is a totally different story). Actually I believe they are more interested on the first option than the second. Attracted by these beauties we had to publish a Computex 2005 girls review here. Please be warned that this review is completely biased, since this review follows exclusively my personal taste. We sorted the models below in reverse other of their score in our tests. Unfortunetly the manufacturers didn't provide us reviewing samples for benchmarking, so our review follows the "first impressions" type. 11th Place - SiS Girls Definitely the package doesn't help to sell the product. The product can be good, but I wouldn't buy it. click to enlarge click to enlarge 10th Place - HIS Girls Not high-end. For emergencies only. click to enlarge 9th Place - nVidia Girls They come by the dozen, make a lot of noise, but their hair is fake. I don't trust on fake products. But are they SLI, working in parallel, doubling the performance? click to enlarge click to enlarge 8th Place - Intel Girls I'm attracted by girls in vynil outfit. But there are better products in the market. click to enlarge 7th Place - MSI Girls The package is good, but the content needs to be worked on. click to enlarge click to enlarge 6th Place - ULi Girl As said before, girls on vynil outfit attract me. But if you pay close attention the logo is just a sticker glued to her outfit, make it seems that there is no fidelity. Danger. click to enlarge 5th Place - AMD Girls Congratulations AMD, on this Computex you showed a superior product in both quantity and quality to Intel's equivalent. Keep it like that Dr. Hector, you are on the right track to steal market share from Intel. click to enlarge click to enlarge 4th Place - ATI Girls Oh, ATI is a very special company. They are one of the few with know-how on this subject, as have already posted here. This occurs because they have hired an officer exclusively to evaluate the performance of this kind of product. On this Computex ATI presented two models: Pro and XT. Even though XT model offers a higher performance, we believe that Pro model offers a better cost/benefit ratio. If it were sucking a red lolipop it would achieve first place on our tests for sure. click to enlarge click to enlarge 3rd Place - ATI - Intel Interface ATI lauched during this week an interface that allows two different boards to be connected in parallel, only requiring an external cable. I wonder the performance of the system when I install my Crossfire. click to enlarge 2nd Place - VIA Girl High performance, which generates consumption and cooling problems, since this model is really hot. click to enlarge 1st Place - Shuttle Girl Mini-PC. Underage. I can go to jail. Does anyone know a good lawyer in Taiwan? click to enlarge Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top

Super Machine

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: May 15, 2005 - 1:40 PM PST All my friends know that besides being crazy about redhead girls dressed in cheerleader uniforms and liking red lolipops I am also a huge fan of movies and TV shows from the 80's. My favorite movies are those that take place in high schools (Ferris Bueller's Day Off - a classic!) and where the nerds get even at the end (like Revenge of The Nerds) - maybe that's something from my nerd teenage years, where I wasn't able to score no girl at all. These kind of movies are available on DVD for some time now, but the great news is that TV shows are being released as well. So far I've bought Magnum, A-Team and Knight Rider and I am anxiously waiting for CHiP's (I hope they release it)! But Knight Rider is really a must. The show was about a black Pontiac Trans Am, called K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Two Thousand), which had several red lights on its front, making K.I.T.T.'s typical noise (K.I.T.T.'s noise has the same importance to Knight Rider as the noise of the light sabers has to Star Wars). click to enlarge click to enlarge What Knight Rider has to do with computers? Everything. K.I.T.T. was a talking computer, capable of doing anything you can imagine, bringing features that would reach the market only today, like GPS and voice recognition. Today, almost 25 years after the show was first aired, K.I.T.T.'s dashboard still awesome. click to enlarge Wow! It looks like Darth Vader's bathroom! Knight Rider is the story of Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff -- yes, the very same actor from Baywatch), an ex-cop sweared to death and supposedly killed by some criminals that defends the weaks and the oppressed ones with his super car. The first thing Michael Knight said when he entered the car for the first time was "Wow! It looks like Darth Vader's bathroom!". It makes sense. click to enlarge David Hasselfhoff before chasing silicone breasts on Malibu beach. The series go really hot when K.A.R.R. appeared - a car exactly equal to K.I.T.T., but from "the evil side". It had green lights instead of red ones. These episodes were the best! Re-watching Knight Rider I stepped into several "special defects". I don't know if we at the time didn't pay attention or if it was because the TV sets were smaller at the time, but the errors are there. See below a scene were a burglar stels K.I.T.T. and the car starts to spin. Pay attention on the steering wheel. You can see that the car used was another one, since K.I.T.T.'s steering wheel wasn't rounded. click to enlarge And when the car was driven by itself? On the pilot episode you can clearly see how this trick was done: there was a dude behind the driver's seat. The hole of the head rest was a window that allowed this guy to see where he was going to with the car (compare the left head rest, normal, with the right head rest, that has the window). The guy drove the car using gloves made of the same material as the car seats in order to dissimulate his presence. click to enlarge click to enlarge click to enlarge On the following episodes the producers must have noticed this defect and they started shooting K.I.T.T. driving by its own from another angle. But you can clearly see the window on the driver's seat on almost all episodes. The "special defects" don't cut the fun of watching Knight Rider. Afterall, these were the resources people had at the time to imagine a "dream machine", a fully computadorized car. The theme from the episodes may sound silly and even naďve compared to what we have on TV today. But maybe that's why Knight Rider is so much fun.I think we miss TV shows like this. Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top

SLI from ATI

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: April 28, 2005 - 11:45 AM PST Yesterday ATI held a press confere to announce its new RS400 chipset - Radeon Xpress 200 version for Intel platform. But it was a frustrating, since the CD containing the presentation was defective and we couldn't watch the presentation. On the other hand, ATI presented more detailed info about their HyperMemory technology (which we already explained here how it works), always telling how their tecnology is superior than nVidia's TurboCache. We have already got both Radeon X300 SE with HyperMemory and GeForce 6200 with TurboCache for reviewing, very soon we will be able to tell by ourselves which tecnology is more efficient. Besides the frustration, Paul Ayscough mentioned that ATI is creating their own SLI tecnology to compete with nVidia. When it will be lauched? We don't know. We speculate that it is possible to lauch it during Computex 2005 - the most important trade show for the hardware industry (we will be there, of course). Some questions are in the air: How ATI architecture will be? nForce 4-based motherboards will run video cards based on ATI SLI solution? Will ATI lauch a SLI chipset? Will the motherboards with this chipset (if it is really launched) run nVidia-based SLI video cards? How it will perform? Yes, for now we have more questions than answers and unfortunetly ATI is not able to answer our questions yet. But what is REALLY interesting on ATI events are the models dressed like Ruby. In a room packed with a bunch of nerds it is really funny to see a lot of grown ups drooling over a girl - including me, I am a hardware man but not made of steel! - looking like they never saw a woman before. Folks that have met me in person know my admiration over redheads, even the fake ones. Another mystery is where does ATI arrange those gorgeous women. Is there an ATI officer exclusively in charge of choosing those models? That would be a very interesting job. click to enlarge Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top

Our Newsletter

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: April 7, 2005 - 5:05 AM PST Hi folks! Our newsletters are finally up and running! On every issue of our weekly newsletter, sent every wednesday, you will learn about the latest releases in the PC hardware industry. I have also created a newsletter archive in our forums, so if you missed any of our previous editions you can read it at http://forums.hardwaresecrets.com/forumdisplay.php?f=30. To get subscribed, just fill out the form available in all Hardware Secrets pages called "Newsletter - Subscribe Today!". Enjoy! Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top

Tech-Fluentials

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: April 6, 2005 - 11:02 AM PST PR agency Burson-Marsteller has done a research on the habits of technology consumers. They concluded that there is a group of people, called "Tech-Fluentials", that can influentiate on the consumer's buying decisions. This group is basically made by friends, relatives and co-workers. You can read the full research at: http://www.efluentials.com. Funny how a company spends time and money to figure out what everyone already know: at the end, is "my-cousin-that-knows-everything-about-computers" that makes the final buying decision. At least he got a shorter and funky name, "Tech-Fluentials". Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top

Gabriel's Blog

Author: Gabriel Torres Date: March 30, 2005 - 1:41 PM PST Hello everybody. This is just an entry to let everybody know about the latest Hardware Secrets feature, which is my blog! Here I will post some personal insights on computer industry trends and also some personal opinions. I hope you like it! Our next new feature will be a dictionary. Have you ever went nuts with so many acronyms that are used in the computer industry? Even hardcore users have trouble reading some computer-related texts! Our dictionary will solve this problem. There you will find not only what the acronym means, but also a deep explanation about the term with pictures and related links, whenever possible. Coming soon... Print Version | Send to Friend | Bookmark This Entry | Permalink | Comments (0) top