Some people reported that their on-board AC97 had noise, and I found a similar situation on my new PC. When you move your mouse, or when the hard drive begins to spin, you can hear the subtle noise, especially at night when the environment is relatively quiet. Therefore, I proceed to buy an external USB sound card in the hope to fix the problem.
However, the problem persists.
Then I know why, my speakers are drawing power from the USB port of the motherboard, and those were the real source of the noise. I tried to power the speaker from some other sources and the noise was gone!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Royal View Hotel
http://www.royalview.com.hk/chi/index.html
We just had a short local holiday there. In short, when you got only two days of holiday and you don't want to travel far away, finding a good local hotel might be a good option.
Near this hotel we have a beach, the water was no good in quality but if you're parents and you will know that all the kids wanted would be a beach so that they can play around the sand, digging here or there and building sand castle, etc. Therefore, there's no problem for the relatively bad water. Anyway, people still swim there but it's not recommended.
The food is nice, the restaurant was a small one but the variety and the quality of food is superb, they keep re-filling and changing food all night, even during the last half-an-hour. The price is cheaper than outside given similar quality, it is especially true if you go for their promotional packages during holidays.
The guest rooms are big in the standard of Hong Kong, and the view outside is unique and good. The swimming pool is nice and clean, with some toys so that your kids would enjoy. Finally, there are two playing rooms for the kids where you can find video games, indoor playing equipments, chess, boardgames, etc.
It's just wonderful to stay there for one night, simple and relaxing.
We just had a short local holiday there. In short, when you got only two days of holiday and you don't want to travel far away, finding a good local hotel might be a good option.
Near this hotel we have a beach, the water was no good in quality but if you're parents and you will know that all the kids wanted would be a beach so that they can play around the sand, digging here or there and building sand castle, etc. Therefore, there's no problem for the relatively bad water. Anyway, people still swim there but it's not recommended.
The food is nice, the restaurant was a small one but the variety and the quality of food is superb, they keep re-filling and changing food all night, even during the last half-an-hour. The price is cheaper than outside given similar quality, it is especially true if you go for their promotional packages during holidays.
The guest rooms are big in the standard of Hong Kong, and the view outside is unique and good. The swimming pool is nice and clean, with some toys so that your kids would enjoy. Finally, there are two playing rooms for the kids where you can find video games, indoor playing equipments, chess, boardgames, etc.
It's just wonderful to stay there for one night, simple and relaxing.
Stepmania and Economical Dancing Pad
In short, my kids (4 years old and 7 years old girls) enjoy it very much and it's just inexpensive and fun.
The USB dancing pad:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4234
The software:
http://www.stepmania.com/
Zero complain, and actually, I've something similar many years ago but it was a parallel port version and the quality was just far worse. This one is USB (no driver required) and it is much better designed. Highly recommended for your kids.
The USB dancing pad:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4234
The software:
http://www.stepmania.com/
Zero complain, and actually, I've something similar many years ago but it was a parallel port version and the quality was just far worse. This one is USB (no driver required) and it is much better designed. Highly recommended for your kids.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Using the last drop of ink
I found that my inkjet printer was running of out black ink, there were nothing shown on the last few pages which I have printed, just a trace of black hint here and there, but it's definitely unreadable.
Last night, I pulled out the ink cartridge and clean the printing head with a tissue, after cleaning the mess, I inserted the cartridge again. And strange enough, the print out now is very good, and there's no trace of low ink as viewed from the printout. I don't know why, but it works. I believe this trick might be useful to squeeze the last bit of expensive ink from those original ink cartridge.
Last night, I pulled out the ink cartridge and clean the printing head with a tissue, after cleaning the mess, I inserted the cartridge again. And strange enough, the print out now is very good, and there's no trace of low ink as viewed from the printout. I don't know why, but it works. I believe this trick might be useful to squeeze the last bit of expensive ink from those original ink cartridge.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Identifying "new" version of Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM
There is no new version officially, but people noticed rather significant improvement for this lens recently. Basically, you will want one which has a date code later than UV04xx and better yet UV06xx. And there is also another more subtle signature of the newer version:
As you can see, older version of this lens has "0" and "1" as the label for the stablizer, and the new version has "on" and "off". However, given the above two signs for new version, the date code is more consistent and more reliable.
Someone suggested that the so-called new version is just tighter quality control, and actually, older version can perform as great as this so-called newer version, provided that you are lucky enough to get a good copy.
The major improvement of the new version is that, it works nearly as great (someone suggested at least 90%) as a Canon 400mm f5.6L at its 400mm end!
As you can see, older version of this lens has "0" and "1" as the label for the stablizer, and the new version has "on" and "off". However, given the above two signs for new version, the date code is more consistent and more reliable.
Someone suggested that the so-called new version is just tighter quality control, and actually, older version can perform as great as this so-called newer version, provided that you are lucky enough to get a good copy.
The major improvement of the new version is that, it works nearly as great (someone suggested at least 90%) as a Canon 400mm f5.6L at its 400mm end!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Canon 450D video
There is no need to modify the camera, and I believe the principle behind this software is just to encode and write the live view stream to the hard drive. Since the camera does not have any audio input device, sound would be lacking. And for the camera will need to rely on the computer for the video capturing work, it would be nice if this software could be enhanced to take the audio stream from the computer.
This is just a testing video to see the effect of depth of field by using a cheap but fast camera lens. With that in mind, one should not say DV is superior for video capturing. And I always believe that most people would do video capturing in form of short video clips rather than continuous recording for very long.
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