Well, with the lesson learned, I thought may be it is time to go low tech again and print the photos so that when this type of disaster comes, I have hard copy of the photo to fall back to. Redundancy, redundancy and more redundancy is a must!

Then another thought came to mind when deciding to print the photos. I realize that I didn’t have them organized for one thing, but how about make it bit more special by creating a photo-book of the different event photos, like … say of the family vacation that I’ve taken with all of my siblings two years ago.

I’ve researched a bit into to before because I was going to plan something for my wife, however, this became a perfect opportunity to test out different online photo-book options that I have from where I live in Toronto, Canada.

There were four photo management/print tool that I’ve tested which seemed nice enough. However, for my purpose, I’ve decided to go with blurb.com which has an excellent client program and user interface along with nice set of themes and templates that will suit my purpose.

There were others, such as Costco, Picasa, and Photo-book. Here’s a quick run down on why it was not suitable.

Picasa: Though it is nice photo organizing software along with integration of google map, blogger, etc. it does not have photo processing store that handles photo-books.

Costco: Though their price is competitive, their client software is bit awkward and though it has some templates for collage, it seemed to decrease the quality of the photo altogether when resizing it. So I didn’t like it. Their photo printing services is still one of the cheapest around.

Photo-books: This is one of the first companies in Canada that started this photo-book trend. However, their client seemed limited without much options to choose from. No captioning available and their price was bit more than the one from blurb.

Hence, my choice in blurb.com Canadian site. Maybe I’ll do another post to describe the experience and the quality of the product they send out.

There are work around it by:

- slipstream correct driver in a new WinXP CD

- use F6 / floppy drive – if you only have floppy drive hanging around somewhere

Is that it? Well you can install Windows XP (which ever version) in ATA mode rather than AHCI in BIOS.

But wait… is it this simple? Well… no… there’s a bit tinkering to do, other wise you’ll be faced with BSOD.

Here’s how to avoid BSOD:

1) Download the HDD driver from laptop manufacturer’s site.

2) Once you download the file, run it with a -a switch:

IE: iata76_enu.exe -a

This will NOT install the Matrix Storage Manager. What this will do is run the installer, and ONLY EXTRACT the files to C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel Matrix Storage Manager. Again, this does NOT install anything.

3) Your drivers are now located in somewhere you have designated. They will be found in either \Driver, or \Driver64, depending on whether you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit OS.

4) Go to Device Manager –> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Double-click on the “Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller” (this would be the typical IDE controller installed with ATA enabled.

5) Go to Driver tab, and choose to Update Driver.

6) Tell the Wizard prompts:

- No, not this time

- Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)

- Don’t Search. I will choose the driver to install.

- Click the “Have Disk” button. Point it to your correct driver location.

- After you install the driver and click OK out of every menu, reboot the laptop.

7) During reboot, go into BIOS and turn on AHCI mode and Flash Module

Voila! WinXP will boot up with no BSOD!

My first reaction to this device was, it was slimmer and smaller than I had thought. The weight, after few hours does get to you if you have hold it that long.

The touch screen as reviewed by many is very slot to respond. Like etch-a-sketch but not real time. You scribble something on it and sometimes after a second or two delay the image jumps onto the screen. Definitely not a note taking tool. But for occasional scratches of check marks and ideas, it seemed fine. I wasn’t going to write a full book report on this anyways.

Here’s a scenario where it may work. Let say that you have a sample test or a questions as part of the pdf book that you have loaded. Then you might just want to answer them right on the ebook reader rather than trying to remember what your selection was. A good study tool in that sense.

One of the other main reason for buying this device, though I have denied time and time again with my wife, was that I will be reading Manga (Asian Comics) with it. From many reviews that I’ve searched online, this was a perfect tool for the job. Basic premise is that you will need to convert whatever files that you have of the Manga into epub format. As such I had to get acquainted with few new tools, “comiclrf” is a command line tool that can run in command prompt of windows which did the job pretty good. If you prefer GUI interface, there is a tool called “comictoepub” which does pretty much the same thing. Both down-loadable online and both free. But for both tools, files need to be converted into comic book format of “cbz” or “cbr” which can be easily achieved by zipping files and renaming the extension to cbz. There is another tool however, called calibre which is do it all of ebook conversion tool which I have yet to try. Perhaps later.

Having Korean backgound and being bilingual, I enjoy books in both languages. As such, another important factor for me for purchasing this device was being able to read Korean text. But problem was this too need some tinkering in order for it to work. As many of my files were in text format, I had to use a software called “txtconv.exe” clean out the formatting. Then I just used good old word to print it out in PDF. So far this seemed to work fine. Next is to try out the software called “koTxt2EPub” software and try to create epub book instead.

So far, my impression of the device is good and despite all that ipad hype, I think this is more or less what I need for various reasons. After long periods of continuous reading, it really did not strain my eye. It as if I was reading a normal book as e-ink technology should be. So far, I’ve been reading few books to just to test it out. I have no qualms over the glare or the response of the touch screen. It was never built for speed (at least not yet) and I try not to read where it is too bright so no worries there. Basically, I did the research and understood what I was getting. It was a eBook reader for library of books that I had in my possession and this is what I needed.

Next time, more on other trick and tips.

It’s an interesting short cut, but it going to need some getting used to.

Link to the original article is listed at the bottom of the page and the original content copied is as below.

Tip: ^ and ! in the shell

$ ls
bin  d  Desktop  rpmbuild  tmp
$ !!
ls
bin  d  Desktop  rpmbuild  tmp

$ ls -l /etx/httpd/conf.d/local.conf
ls: cannot access /etx/httpd/conf.d/local.conf: No
such file or directory
$ ^etx^etc
ls -l /etc/httpd/conf.d/local.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 76 2009-07-16 14:59 /etc/httpd/conf.d/local.conf

$ !ls
ls -l /etc/httpd/conf.d/local.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 76 2009-07-16 14:59 /etc/httpd/conf.d/local.conf

Original Link: http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/tip-and-in-the-shell/

In order to do this, simply copy and paste following command line for Debian etch

apt-get update
apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5 php5-cli php5-mysql php5-gd php5-mcrypt mysql-client mysql-server libmysqlclient15-dev phpmyadmin

and follow relevant steps to configure apache, mysql and phpmyadmin and secure it before putting online.

iPhone GS:
- multi-lingual support out of the box
- sleek and solid design
- faster than pre
- vast array of software from App Store
- support max size of 32G

Palm Pre
- true multi-tasking OS
- recently released online SDK so potential for just as many apps in coming months
- built in keyboard but no multi-lingual support

So far iphone wins by bit, because of it’s speed and multi-lingual support but Palm has very good potential in coming months with it’s SDK being public. I’m sure there are slew of developers eager to get their hands on it, if they haven’t already.

Maybe my decision may change by November but we’ll have to see as I eagerly wait.