DVD Factory Ltd

One of the limitations that the missus and I put on Gerry and Gordon is the amount of time that they can watch TV. Actually, they don't even get to watch TV but rather, we have a stack of kid friendly DVDs that they are allowed to watch for limited periods of time during the day. The problem with this approach is that kids are not particularly good at looking after DVDs and you can expect your nice new DVDs to get scratched, stepped on, bent and thrown around with reckless abandon.

In my dad's day, you would have to just suck it up and spend a ton of money on DVDs (or rather, VHS?) while bringing out the cane to teach those damn kids a lesson about respecting property. Damn kids today are spoilt rotten anyway and could do with a little thrashing ... sorry, where was I?

Oh yes - DVDs.

Luckily, with the wonders of modern technology, I've gotten around this issue by making a backup of the DVD and then giving the backup to the kids while the original DVD goes to a safe location. Anytime a DVD gets too beat up and is no longer playable, I simply burn another DVD and the kids are back in business. As you can imagine, spending less money makes me a happy pappy!

After running this system for a while, I recently realised that there is a downside to this approach. As the backup DVD is simply the DVD+R plus the name of the DVD written on the face, its hard for the kids to find the right DVD that they want to watch. Basically, all they see is a stack of dull looking DVDs with lots of words on them. We needed a way to make it easy for the kids to find their favourite DVD.

Cue the DVD label. Over the weekend, I went out and bought a stack of DVD labels. Coupled with a quick online image search, I've been able to print out labels with different graphics for the different DVDs and I have to admit - the results have been pretty spectacular. Granted, you can tell that they aren't original DVDs as the graphic doesn't always line up perfectly with the disc but at first glance, they look pretty authentic (particularly to kids).

Or another way of looking at it - I now have all the tools to start my own pirate DVD factory...

Laptop vs Desktop

As I mentioned on Monday, I now have a new desktop PC. Which might make you wonder why I went with a desktop this time considering that I deliberately went with a laptop 3 years ago. Was this an acknowledgement that I had made a mistake with my laptop purchase?

Not as such, no.

The reason I went with a desktop is simply because I already have a laptop and didn't see the need for another one. Bear in mind, although the desktop will be "replacing" my laptop in that I will probably use my desktop more often (particularly for games), the laptop is still invaluable to me. The laptop gives me a couple of key advantages:

Portability

The first is obviously portability. If I ever go on holiday, I can take my laptop with me which clearly isn't possible with a desktop. This has several major advantages - the biggest of which, from a hedonistic point of view, is that I can take my PC gaming with me.

Also, with the installation of Dropbox on my PCs, I now have access to key files even while I'm on holiday. That is, assuming that I did adequate planning and put those key files into my Dropbox folder in the first place.

Now all I need to do is find a way to change the default save locations for my games to my Dropbox folder and I will effectively have a cloud save game system!

Multiple home PCs

The second advantage of having a laptop is that I now have 2 home PCs. In the past, with just one PC, it could sometimes get awkward when both the missus and I want to get online. Or rather, it could get awkward for me as I generally lost such arguments and corresponding PC access...

With an additional PC, we can now both be online at the same time. And with one of the PCs being a laptop, it doesn't take up much space in the event that I'm not using it. Granted, this doesn't happen that often but considering how important internet access is in this day and age, the value in being online and connected should not be underestimated.

Conclusion

In short, I don't regret my laptop purchase. In fact, I might even end up alternating between buying laptops and desktops on a go forward basis to ensure that I always have two usable PCs. With that said, who knows how tablet PCs will develop in future. In three years time, I may no longer have any need for a laptop at all as I will just be using dumb terminals to log into my home PC.

Dell XPS 8300

You may recall that approximately 3 years ago, I purchased a Dell XPS 1530 laptop. And after around 3 years of use, the DVD drive has started to break down.

To be fair, this wasn't really a surprise. The DVD drive on my old XPS 1530 was a slot drive and slot drives are notoriously prone to breaking. The laptop itself is still working fine - its just that I can't use the DVD drive (which is annoying). Still, after 3 years of solid use, I guess I shouldn't complain too much. All of which is just a really long winded way for me to say that I was in the market for a new PC.

Cue the XPS 8300.

Its a pretty nice machine which, although not top end, is good enough for my purposes. I went with the i5 processor as being a nice middle ground to avoid the extremely high premiums charged for the newest tech. However, a 23" monitor, 8GB of RAM and a 2TB HDD soon brought the cost up to just under HK$8,500. Granted, not exactly breaking the bank but still considered relatively expensive by modern standards. A fair price to pay for the specs I was getting though.

And after using it for about a week, I have to say that I love how much faster this machine is relative to my old laptop. It's incredible how much zippier everything is - particularly noticeable whenever I move files around. I also played the last couple of campaign missions of SW:EAW on my new desktop and the improved graphics and speed of saving/loading just blew me away.

Sony

You may recall that I am currently boycotting Sony. The main reason for this is that I felt that Sony are an extremely arrogant company which had led to them undertaking either a lot of anti-consumer activities or marketing with an attitude of "you should be privileged to own our product". And frankly, all of that added together just rubbed me the wrong way.

With that in mind, I have to admit that it was with a certain level of glee that I read about all the recent troubles that Sony has been having with hackers. Those news articles also strengthened my conviction to boycott both Ubisoft and Capcom for requiring players to be online to play their games (in short, PS3 owners couldn't play their Ubisoft and Capcom games as PSN was down).

But then, Sony went and did this.

For the first time that I can remember, Sony actually had a pretty good response. Basically, read the blog post from Shamus that I linked to as I can't believe how closely my views aligned with his with regard to Sony.

Could it be that Sony have learnt their lesson? Could it be that Sony are no longer the arrogant behemoth that I despised? Could it be that Sony would be leaving my boycott list?

Or then again, maybe not.

Gerry goes camping

The highlight of the recent Easter holiday was, without a doubt, the overnight camping trip to Ma Wan that we took Gerry on.

I say camping trip but the reality is that the trip was targeted at families so the whole thing was very civilized. For example, instead of pitching our tent on the ground, we actually pitched it on a viewing platform near the top of the mountain.

Gerry helps to pitch the tent

Still, the actual act of pitching the tent and sleeping in sleeping bags was genuine so in that sense, we did manage to capture the camping feel.

Success! We are now formally "roughing" it.

The weather was also beautiful for the two days that we were in Ma Wan. In a sense, we were extremely lucky as the weather the following day turned a bit rainy.

On the second day in Ma Wan, we got to hang around the recreation centre. For some reason which I can't quite fathom, Gerry and I ended up building paper airplanes while everyone else was building butterflies. Still, I have pretty good paper airplane skills so it wasn't long before the other kids were clamoring for their own paper airplanes.

Can you spot the airplane?

The Ma Wan park also had an outdoor play area where Gerry and I managed to get a bit of exercise. Lots of fun but tiring on the muscles (hey, I ain't no spring chicken!)

Taking a quick break

Actually, one thing which did impress me was how much confidence Gerry now has in his physical ability. He was the youngest kid willing to climb the ropes and managed to do it all on his own.

Spider-Gerry goes to work on the ropes

Gerry doesn't get a bow wow

Gerry has always loved singing so its a good thing that he has a pretty nice voice. This was recognised by his school recently when they put together a kindergarten choir to enter into some competition. The school hired a singing teacher to help them select children for the choir and to teach the kids the song.

By now, you can probably guess that Gerry was selected for the choir.
:)

I don't have any footage of the competition itself (video's weren't allowed) which is a shame as the children gave a really good performance in the competition. Several days after the competition, the school gave a repeat performance at one of the local fairs in HK which I managed to capture below for your viewing pleasure.