Battle of the Gadgets

Today is the last day of 2011!
Now, before we go to face the 'End of The World year - 2012', there is a summary of battle of technologies and gadgets.

If you are old enough, you should have known these products or gadgets from somewhere or used these products or gadget before.

The infographic included:
Betamax vs VHS - both are dinosaurs now :P
Sega Genesis vs Super Nintendo - both are retired now
Laserdisc vs DVD - DVD still popular since BD still expensive
Nook vs Kindle - on going fight!
BD vs HD-DVD - BD won, but for how long since nowadays more and more people are moving to online streaming
PS3 vs Xbox360 vs Wii - on going fight!
Zune vs iPod - iPod won, most people at countries outside of US never ever see the Zune real product anyway.

Click on the image to see in full side.

Happy New Year!


Hope you will enjoy this post, subscribe to my RSS or mailing list or follow me on blogger or twitter. :)
source: dailyinfographic.com

Play LEGO without buying LEGO

Excuse me? How to play LEGO without buying LEGO?
Imagination in my brain?
Not really, we are really able to play or design LEGO with need to buy the LEGO first.

Introducing LEGO Digital Designer.

The downloaded setup file size is about 140MB and installation need about 200MB only.

Here is the interface (from Lego website, I don't need to explain it again here, haha):


It will calculate how many of each type blocks that you need to build a Lego project, which is very convenient when you going to buy the real physical Lego to build the real Lego project.
It also include the Lego with micro computer, Lego Power Function, which make it a is a very good planning tool to plan for a Lego project, either huge or big or small.

Talking about Lego, I posted a few video showing Lego projects that people built using Lego:
How to waste 8mins on Tuesday
Build film projector with LEGO
Predict eclipses with LEGO
ARM that solves Rubik's Cube

To download this software, go this this link, choose either Windows or Mac OSX. Supported Windows version are Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
http://ldd.lego.com/download/default.aspx

And yes, it is absolutely free!


Hope you will enjoy this post, subscribe to my RSS or mailing list or follow me on blogger or twitter. :)
pix source: LEGO website
video source: http://ldd.lego.com/getstarted/default.aspx

Making Intel Graphics more comfortable to see

If your laptop is the new Sandy Bridge platform and using Intel's integrated graphics, and if your eyes sometimes feels very tired after staring at laptop's monitor after a while, then you are on same situation like me.

In order to prolong the battery life, the default setting of the refresh rate on Intel Graphics is most likely is set at 40Hz only. This is a very good feature on Sandy Bridge platform to preserve power, my few months old Sandy Bridge HP laptop on single charge can last up to 7 to 8 hours on wired network, or 4 to 5 hours on WiFi [okay, okay, it should be longer, but I always open at least 15 Windows at same time, not including over 30 Chrome tabs :P ]

However if your eyes are sensitive like mine, 40Hz refresh rate would be more like a burden than convenient. I would rather bring along the charger than killing my eyes.

To make Intel Graphics more comfortable to see, here are few simple steps:
1. Open Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel (the top left icon in below picture) by double click on it.


2. Change the refresh rate from 40Hz to 60Hz. Save it as a new Display Profiles.


3. Repeat the step while the laptop on charging as well. My laptop has both on charging and on battery at 40Hz refresh rate, so I have to change the refresh rate and save the Display Profile for both.

Do note that changing power profile might change it back again to 40Hz again, use the above step to make your eye comfortable. :)


Hope you will enjoy this post, subscribe to my RSS or mailing list or follow me on blogger or twitter. :)
source: I wrote this tutorial!