My Frivolous Blog

I am not going to repeat what the tech world was buzzing with today. What is going unheard in the din is that even current AT&T subscribers need to sign a new two-year contract to get the new iPhone. Are Apple/AT&T trying to keep their users from jumping to Android-powered devices which are going to [...]

Since this past weekend, when I turn on my dual-boot (Windows XP and Fedora Core 7) PC, I get:

AMD BootBlock V1.0
BIOS ROM checksum error
Reading Drive A:
Insert system disk and press Enter

I have tried to clear CMOS, tried to load MS DOS (both 5.0 and 6.2.2) from floppy disk but I see the same error message. [...]

Did you buy an HD-DVD player long before HD-DVD format has been discontinued? Feel you shouldn’t have bought it before the winner of Blu-ray vs DH-DVD war was declared? Despair not…but hurry. The return policy on HD DVD players has been extended to six months. Check out http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120742749977492469.html
I was excited when I purchased mine in [...]

As a software developer, I sympathize with the 100s of software developers that were laid off at Yahoo! today. While I am sure many of them will not have any difficulty finding another job in silicon valley and/or elsewhere, I hope this serves as a reminder that each of us should look out for our [...]

Photoshop Elements 5 or Photoshop Elements 6 do not read Nikon D300 RAW files without updating the Camera Raw plugin. Searching for “camera raw update” in the search box at adobe.com brings separate links for Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter for Macintosh and Windows. The useful results show up near the top of the [...]

Is “Sent from iPhone” really needed at the end of every email message sent? Other than showing off that the sender (probably) has an iPhone, what else is that achieving? I can’t think of anything good. Sure, each email message now has to carry with it few extra bytes. That means more bandwidth/electricity consumption to [...]

See the smiley on the big box? That’s what is on my face now!! I came home from work this evening to find it at home, delivered within 48 hours of placing the order. I hope to take it out of the box and for a spin this weekend.

Any store selling anything that has to do with electronics seems to have had at least one GPS device on sale during “black friday” 2007 sale. I checked out two stores, Fry’s and Best Buy this morning. I ended up buying two GPS devices. (One of them will be returned, without the box ever opened.) [...]

I am using Yahoo! as my default search engine in Firefox for the past few months. I find Yahoo!’s search results are as good as Google’s, if not “better”. Those who think Yahoo!’s search results are not good, I ask them to check out search.live.com. Try comparing the results for region-free hack for samsung dvd-hd755 [...]

Having spent over $200 on my first DVD-player 7-8 years ago and seen the prices of DVD players fall since, I have vowed not to spend more than $100 for any video player. I bought an HD-DVD player yesterday at Walmart for less than $100. When Blu-ray player is available for a similar price, I [...]