Kamis, 20 Maret 2014
Rabu, 19 Maret 2014
2013 Book Reviews
Books of the year have been selected!
Non-Fiction
Read More..
Non-Fiction
- No Easy Day
- The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2012
- How Children Succeed
- Teach Your Children Well
- The Signal and The Noise
- Your Childs Growing Mind
- The Fine Print
- The Best American Essays 2011
- Happy Money
- Lance Armstrongs War
- The First 20 Minutes
- Contagious
- Modernist Cuisine at Home
- Naked Statistics
- The Sports Gene
- Deep Risk
- Cure Your Child With Food
- Skating to Where the Puck Was
- The Story of the Human Body
- Wheat Belly
- The Ages of The Investor
- The Hydrogen Sonata
- The Perfect Woman
- Odd and the Frost Giants
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainteneance
- Redshirts
- The Corpse Reader
- Every Day
- Storm Front
- Fool Moon
- Grave Peril
- Dont Turn Around
- Summer Knight
- Death Masks
- Blood Rites
- Ghost Spin
- Nickel Plated
- Dead Beat
- Proven Guilty
- White Night
- Neptunes Brood
- Small Favor
- Turn Coat
- Changes
- Enders Game
- Ghost Story
- Cold Days
- Six Earlier Days
- Invisibility
- The Temple of Gold
- The School For Good And Evil
Selasa, 18 Maret 2014
Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Rage Wireless
With the Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Rage Wireless, you’ll never feel like you didn’t get your money’s worth—this is the most feature-packed headset at this price point. Most notably, it’s wireless, connecting to your computer with a USB dongle and charging via a removable, braided cable. Wireless headsets have been known to have some problems, like latency or interference, but we never experienced either with the Rage.
The Rage Wireless is a USB headset, and provides its own audio processing, which can be great if you don’t have a discrete sound card. Sound Blaster is a company that obviously knows what it’s doing in this arena, and the downloadable SBX ProStudio software has some nice features, including soundstage-broadening virtual surround and a Crystalizer that enhances and clarifies most compressed audio sources.
Our main gripe with the set is that it’s not terribly comfortable. The leatherette-covered foam on the earcups and headband has a little less give than we like to see, and the whole set is quite heavy. We’re also not crazy about the inclusion of a removable boom mic. It’s flexible, and recording quality is fine, but between the removable mic, the removable foam windscreen, the wireless dongle, and the detachable charging cable, the chances of you keeping track of all the components of your Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Rage Wireless are slim to none.
At $100, this is one of the least-expensive quality wireless headsets on the market. If you’re trying to cut the cord without breaking the bank, the Tactic 3D Rage is a good option.
Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Rage Specifications
| Driver Units: | 50mm Neodymium magnet |
|---|---|
| Frequency Response: | 20Hz ~ 20kHz |
| Impedance: | 32ohms |
| Sensitivity: | 102dB/mW |
| Microphone Type: | Noise-cancelling condenser |
|---|---|
| Frequency Response: | 100Hz ~ 6.5kHz |
| Impedance: | <2.2kohms |
| Sensitivity: | -40dBV/Pa |
| USB Transmitter: | USB 1.1 or 2.0 port |
|---|---|
| Wireless Technology: | Uncompressed 2.4GHz ISM band |
Senin, 17 Maret 2014
Review The Corpse Reader
The Corpse Reader is a strange novel as far as origin, subject matter, and story is concerned. Originally written in Spanish and translated/distributed/published by Amazon, the story is set in ancient China and his historical fiction about Song Ci, regarded by many as the father of forensic medicine.
In many ways, Song Ci is almost a perfect person for such a treatment. While he has written a massive treatise which serves as much of his legacy, little is actually known about the person. The author, Antonio Garrido, writes an afterwards where he reveals what his own research has said about Song Ci, and the life that he appears to have led does not seem to be particularly drama-filled. Nevertheless, Song Ci appeared to be much more politically inept as a person, in contrast to his pioneering competence in forensic science. In that regards, Garridos portrayal of Song Ci in the novel is fairly accurate.
The story revolves around Song Ci, who like many heroes is deprived of his family early in the story and begins a journey to maturity. He makes many many stupid decisions very early on, but does show some great qualities as well. Some of the stupid decisions are ridiculously stupid (Ci basically gets taken in by every woman hes ever met who wants to fool him), but the rest of the plot isnt terribly bad. Well, the motivation of one of the major villains makes no sense to me, but the plot moves fast enough that even that realization doesnt come until after youve zipped through the book.
Whats the most disappointing to me about the book is that theres no sense of progression for our protagonist. There isnt a series of challenging investigations where Ci is stretched to learn new things about Forensics. In some ways, the book focuses on his journey rather than his investigative challenges, so at the end youre left with very little impression of how he came to understand forensics.
All in all, this is a decent summer read. Very mildly recommended.
Read More..
In many ways, Song Ci is almost a perfect person for such a treatment. While he has written a massive treatise which serves as much of his legacy, little is actually known about the person. The author, Antonio Garrido, writes an afterwards where he reveals what his own research has said about Song Ci, and the life that he appears to have led does not seem to be particularly drama-filled. Nevertheless, Song Ci appeared to be much more politically inept as a person, in contrast to his pioneering competence in forensic science. In that regards, Garridos portrayal of Song Ci in the novel is fairly accurate.
The story revolves around Song Ci, who like many heroes is deprived of his family early in the story and begins a journey to maturity. He makes many many stupid decisions very early on, but does show some great qualities as well. Some of the stupid decisions are ridiculously stupid (Ci basically gets taken in by every woman hes ever met who wants to fool him), but the rest of the plot isnt terribly bad. Well, the motivation of one of the major villains makes no sense to me, but the plot moves fast enough that even that realization doesnt come until after youve zipped through the book.
Whats the most disappointing to me about the book is that theres no sense of progression for our protagonist. There isnt a series of challenging investigations where Ci is stretched to learn new things about Forensics. In some ways, the book focuses on his journey rather than his investigative challenges, so at the end youre left with very little impression of how he came to understand forensics.
All in all, this is a decent summer read. Very mildly recommended.
Computer Maintenance Tips and Advice
It seems like just about everyone has a computer, but for the most part, relatively few understand much beyond on/off, open web, facebook, twitter, etc. I was once like that, maybe a little more knowledgeable. I gamed on my PC and could Google (or Yahoo back in the day) most issues I had. It is important to be able to resolve some basic issues on your own, but what Id like to cover here is a few tips on how to avoid having issues from the start.
Anti virus software is extremely important. You dont need to spend $80 a year on Norton, but you should definitely purchase something. PCs are vulnerable to a multitude of attacks, whether from emails, websites, malicious programs, or direct hacking attempts. Having a good anti virus installed will remove a lot of headaches, and generally dont impact performance much if at all.
Theres some free anti virus programs out there like AVG and Avast! and Windows Security Essentials, theres also ones you pay for like Norton, McAfee, and F-Secure. I use the latter. If you are a student, chances are your school will provide either a free or a discounted anti virus program. If not, perhaps you can get a deal through work. Keep in mind that the free anti virus programs may need to be used together, with programs like Malwarebytes and Spybot.
List of Windows 7/Vista/XP security software
The risk of losing everything on your computer is not huge. However, what if it were to happen? What if you lost all your home photos and videos? Maybe you have school work, or business work, on your PC. Its probably not worth risking.
One option you have is to use online backups. There are "cloud" services that offer online storage. You can always upload your photos to somewhere like photobucket, but its probably faster and easier to just maintain your own personal backups.
Info for Windows 7 users: Backup and Restore
Another great feature is Restore Points. These are backups of only critical items like your registry, so they arent huge files, and they save every time you install something new. In this way if you find suddenly your PC is acting weird, you can restore it to a point maybe a few days or a couple weeks earlier, when it was still fine.
At least on a monthly basis run a Disk Defrag program. Windows comes with one by default, but according to a fairly thorough benchmarker, MyDefrag appears to be one of the best. After you delete a few items of your computer, it will leave empty spots on your HDD. Eventually youll install something else, and pieces of it will get stored in all these different locations. This means accessing a fragmented file can take a long time, because instead of a fast sequential read, it will be more of a random read as the head needs to constantly move around to read each little piece of the file. Note that HDDs are built to run for millions of hours, a defrag operation isnt any worse than what happens when it is fragmented, and shouldnt impact HDD longevity. There is a sidenote: this is not applicable to Solid State Drives, which should never be defraged.
A great review on the Impact of Disk Fragmentation
Another important thing to do at least every few months is to run a scan disk. Once you set it, you will need to reboot and then it will scan your HDD after the intial boot screens. What scan disk does, is it looks for sector errors on the HDD and either recovers them or essentially "removes" them so that data isnt put into a bad sector. Sometimes a bad sector can cause a lot of stability issues. Scan Disk is found in your System Tools (Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > System Tools. Please be aware, if you start getting bad sectors, the problem usually will get worse and worse until your drive is completely useless. If this is the case, please go get a new HDD.
You should consider deleting and uninstalling anything you dont use regularily. If you have a huge amount of photos and videos, consider burning them to a DVD or external drive and free up HDD room. This can also help improve performance, as HDDs slow down the more full they are.
Windows registry is a vital part to a stable PC. It contains key values for every single thing installed on your PC, and then some. It is in many ways at the very core of your PCs performance and stability. Eventually, a registry will get full of clutter. I use a program called CCleaner to keep my registry free of junk. This program is also good for finding other clutter on the HDD, like temp files. You shouldnt clean your registry all the time, but even every other month is good. Keep in mind that this can cause issues, too, so please at the very least make sure youre backed up and also save the registry before cleaning (via the prompt).
You can also go into your System Tools and run the Disk Cleaner which can find some of the junk left over. For example if you install a Windows Service Pack, you might have a couple hundred megabytes occupied by a "ghost image". Essentially this is a redundant backup - you may wish to keep it for a couple weeks after updating to a service pack, but otherwise its just taking up space.
I would also suggest if you need to reinstall a program, do what you can to uninstall the old one/old version and remove it from your system. Sometimes left over traces of a program can really mess with a new install. With regards to graphics drivers, see yesterdays post.
Some programs, when uninstalled, like to leave traces outside of the registry - traces that use up sometimes precious hard drive space. You can manually hunt these down, typicall within the install location as well as in C:UsersyournameAppData or under C:ProgramData - both of these files are typically hidden. An easy way to find them is to run a search. Alternatively, a program like Revo Uninstaller can be extremely useful.
After a few months, a PC will be dusty. There is usually at least 1 fan inside a PC case to move air in and out which means dust is being sucked through the case. Fan filters can help slow this down, but dust gets everywhere. At least every 6-12 months you should open your case and clean it out.
CPU coolers and graphics cards have fans and heat sinks, which are very prone to clogging with dust. If the heat sinks get clogged, the cooling performance is greatly reduced and you end up over heating. Ive personally killed a graphics card this way, and its pretty common for people to neglect this simple thing.
To clean the inside of your PC youll ideally use a compressed air duster. Simply blast away the dust. Youll need to be careful when blasting the CPU and GPU coolers, because you dont want the fans to spin up or they actually create a voltage. If a heat sink is especially clogged, you may want to use an old toothbrush. You should not use a vacuum directly on PC hardware because it can generate a large electro static charge, and if it discharges into your PC it can break hardware. You can keep a vacuum nearby to suck up the dust, just dont let any bare metal touch the PC. If it is very dusty, you might want to just take the PC outside where you wont need to worry about the dust kicking up. Also, if very dirty, you may have to remove parts from the PC, including taking fans off the heat sinks, to really get it clean. To avoid all this hassle, just clean it out more often.
This is just touching the surface, Ill be writing a few more maintenance posts in the future, the next one will have to do with keeping system performance up.
Read More..
Protect your Computer
 |
| Credit http://news.discovery.com/tech/first-human-infected-with-a-computer-virus.html |
Theres some free anti virus programs out there like AVG and Avast! and Windows Security Essentials, theres also ones you pay for like Norton, McAfee, and F-Secure. I use the latter. If you are a student, chances are your school will provide either a free or a discounted anti virus program. If not, perhaps you can get a deal through work. Keep in mind that the free anti virus programs may need to be used together, with programs like Malwarebytes and Spybot.
List of Windows 7/Vista/XP security software
Keep Backups
The risk of losing everything on your computer is not huge. However, what if it were to happen? What if you lost all your home photos and videos? Maybe you have school work, or business work, on your PC. Its probably not worth risking.
One option you have is to use online backups. There are "cloud" services that offer online storage. You can always upload your photos to somewhere like photobucket, but its probably faster and easier to just maintain your own personal backups.
Info for Windows 7 users: Backup and Restore
Another great feature is Restore Points. These are backups of only critical items like your registry, so they arent huge files, and they save every time you install something new. In this way if you find suddenly your PC is acting weird, you can restore it to a point maybe a few days or a couple weeks earlier, when it was still fine.
Hard Drive Maintenance
At least on a monthly basis run a Disk Defrag program. Windows comes with one by default, but according to a fairly thorough benchmarker, MyDefrag appears to be one of the best. After you delete a few items of your computer, it will leave empty spots on your HDD. Eventually youll install something else, and pieces of it will get stored in all these different locations. This means accessing a fragmented file can take a long time, because instead of a fast sequential read, it will be more of a random read as the head needs to constantly move around to read each little piece of the file. Note that HDDs are built to run for millions of hours, a defrag operation isnt any worse than what happens when it is fragmented, and shouldnt impact HDD longevity. There is a sidenote: this is not applicable to Solid State Drives, which should never be defraged.
A great review on the Impact of Disk Fragmentation
Another important thing to do at least every few months is to run a scan disk. Once you set it, you will need to reboot and then it will scan your HDD after the intial boot screens. What scan disk does, is it looks for sector errors on the HDD and either recovers them or essentially "removes" them so that data isnt put into a bad sector. Sometimes a bad sector can cause a lot of stability issues. Scan Disk is found in your System Tools (Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > System Tools. Please be aware, if you start getting bad sectors, the problem usually will get worse and worse until your drive is completely useless. If this is the case, please go get a new HDD.
Clean your System
You should consider deleting and uninstalling anything you dont use regularily. If you have a huge amount of photos and videos, consider burning them to a DVD or external drive and free up HDD room. This can also help improve performance, as HDDs slow down the more full they are.
Windows registry is a vital part to a stable PC. It contains key values for every single thing installed on your PC, and then some. It is in many ways at the very core of your PCs performance and stability. Eventually, a registry will get full of clutter. I use a program called CCleaner to keep my registry free of junk. This program is also good for finding other clutter on the HDD, like temp files. You shouldnt clean your registry all the time, but even every other month is good. Keep in mind that this can cause issues, too, so please at the very least make sure youre backed up and also save the registry before cleaning (via the prompt).
You can also go into your System Tools and run the Disk Cleaner which can find some of the junk left over. For example if you install a Windows Service Pack, you might have a couple hundred megabytes occupied by a "ghost image". Essentially this is a redundant backup - you may wish to keep it for a couple weeks after updating to a service pack, but otherwise its just taking up space.
I would also suggest if you need to reinstall a program, do what you can to uninstall the old one/old version and remove it from your system. Sometimes left over traces of a program can really mess with a new install. With regards to graphics drivers, see yesterdays post.
Some programs, when uninstalled, like to leave traces outside of the registry - traces that use up sometimes precious hard drive space. You can manually hunt these down, typicall within the install location as well as in C:UsersyournameAppData or under C:ProgramData - both of these files are typically hidden. An easy way to find them is to run a search. Alternatively, a program like Revo Uninstaller can be extremely useful.
Clean your PC
 |
| Credit: i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii184/3Z3VH |
CPU coolers and graphics cards have fans and heat sinks, which are very prone to clogging with dust. If the heat sinks get clogged, the cooling performance is greatly reduced and you end up over heating. Ive personally killed a graphics card this way, and its pretty common for people to neglect this simple thing.
To clean the inside of your PC youll ideally use a compressed air duster. Simply blast away the dust. Youll need to be careful when blasting the CPU and GPU coolers, because you dont want the fans to spin up or they actually create a voltage. If a heat sink is especially clogged, you may want to use an old toothbrush. You should not use a vacuum directly on PC hardware because it can generate a large electro static charge, and if it discharges into your PC it can break hardware. You can keep a vacuum nearby to suck up the dust, just dont let any bare metal touch the PC. If it is very dusty, you might want to just take the PC outside where you wont need to worry about the dust kicking up. Also, if very dirty, you may have to remove parts from the PC, including taking fans off the heat sinks, to really get it clean. To avoid all this hassle, just clean it out more often.
This is just touching the surface, Ill be writing a few more maintenance posts in the future, the next one will have to do with keeping system performance up.
Minggu, 16 Maret 2014
How To Be An Even Better Manager
This book is for those who want to develop their managerial skills and competences. It covers all the key skills that managers use, and refers to the main aspects of managing people, activities and themselves with which they need to be familiar. You can dip into this book at any point – each chapter is selfcontained. But it would be useful to read Chapter 1 first. This defines the overall concept of management and the areas in which managers need to be competent, thus providing a framework for the succeeding chapters.
Download How To Be An Even Better Manager
Sabtu, 15 Maret 2014
Dell Laptop
| DellTM StudioTM 14 Processor Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T6400 |
| Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium |
| Chipset Intel® 965GM Chipset |
| Memory 3GB DDR2 SDRAM |
| Hard Drive |
| Display/Monitor 14.1" Widescreen WXGA CCFL (1280x800) TFT Display with True LifeTM |
| Network Card Internal 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet |
| Graphic Card Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 |
| Sound Card Intel® High Definition Audio 2.0 |
| CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/Disk drive Slot Load 8X max DVD+/-RW Drive6 with DVD+R double layer write capability |
| I/O Ports VGA, RJ11 (via optional USB dongle), RJ45, 3 Audio jacks (1 line-in, 1-line out, 1 Mic-in), 1 Express Card 54mm slot, 2 mini-card slots, 1394a, consumer IR, 3USB 2.0 ports (SR), 1 HDMI, Sim socket |
| Modem N/A |
| |
| Carrying Case N/A |
| Service/Warranty 1 Year Limited Warranty (Next Business Day On-Site Service) |
| Software Microsoft® Works 9.0 |
| Speakers Integrated speakers |
| Keyboard DellTM Keyboard with Touchpad |
| Anti-virus McAfee® Security CenterTM 30 days Introductory Offer |
| Bluetooth DellTM Wireless 370 Bluetooth Internal (2.0) mini-card |
| Controller Card DellTM Wireless 1397 802.11b/g Half Mini Card |
| Additional Accessories N/A |
| Media Direct Dell Media DirectTM featuring Instant Office |
| Webcam Integrated 2.0 mega pixel web cam |
| Card reader 8-in-1 Memory card reader |
| Color Kit All colors available |
| Remote & Ear Buds DellTM Travel Remote Control & Noise Isolation Ear Buds |
| Strike Zone Strike ZoneTM Shock Absorber |
| Security Feature Sensible Vision Fas tAccess Facial Recognition Software |
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