All That Nerdy Stuff

Freeware Review: iRinger-Free Ringtone Maker for iPhone!

Jason Ward — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:32:49 +0000

It’s no secret that the iPhone is a huge success even in its current, highly-breakable, poor-signal-if-you-hold-it-normally incarnation, and like any other popular phone, people want custom ringtones for the thing. It’s not that the built in ones are crappy–well, it’s not just that–but more that we want to have something personalized, something that says something about us. Or, at the worst, we want to blare our favorite MP3′s ad-infinitum when we receive a call. But whatever your reason might be, there’s a single truth worth being conscious of: Apple’s iTunes store will bend you over and repeatedly rape you in exchange for the privilege of using music you already bought and paid for as a ringtone. Frankly, their fees are ridiculous, and we think you should avoid them wherever possible.

Luckily, that’s very possible thanks to a free downloadable app called iRinger, which will allow you to convert almost any audio format you can throw at it to an iPhone appropriate ringtone that’ll work with any version of the device, included the much-maligned (yet celebrated) iPhone 4. There is no application to install–you simply download the executable and run it. In my tests I found the app speedy, easy to use and virus free, though as a precaution I do encourage you to always perform a virus scan on any executable file you download from absolutely anywhere before you run it. You can never be too safe, after all.

The process is pretty simple. Open the program, click “Import,” and your music will appear on the timeline. By dragging the “In” and “Out” sliders at the bottom right of the app window (it’s a small app window, you can’t miss them) you can select the portion of the song you want to use as your ringtone. When you’ve got the clip you want to use (up to 30 seconds in length, which is the maximum the iPhone supports,) simply click “Export,” browse to the file location where you want to save the ringtone, click the checkbox that says “also export to iTunes,” and click go. In about 10 seconds your new ringtone will both save to the folder you specified and add itself to iTunes, making it quick and easy both to sync to your phone and to email your ringtone to friends, family, and of course to Steve Jobs, along with a note that says “Neener-neener-neener, I still have my $1.50!” Or something like that.

Software: iRinger

Price: Free, though they do ask for a donation if you like it.

Rating: Highly recommended if you prefer an app on your PC vs a web based solution like Myxer.

Download: iRinger

Beautiful Cacaphony: the Lost Series Finale

Jason Ward — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:11:37 +0000

**SPOILERS BELOW, BEWARE IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE LOST SERIES FINALE BUT PLAN TO**

It’s a shame, really. I do love the cast and characters (except Kate–I hate Kate for being a stereotypically weakfemale lead, always making stupid decisions that seem to illustrate that “if she’d just listened to the man” things would have been better), who’ve managed to grow on me, each in their own, wonky ways, over the course of the six seasons leading up to the Lost Series Finale. The drag is that the resolution was disappointing enough that I really will never recommend anybody start from the beginning of the series and watch it. Great acting is always wonderful, but without a well executed overall story, what’s the point?

But enough about the cast and characters; everyone already knows those are wonderful. The problem with Lost was always in its plot, or more accurately, lack thereof. In the end it sort of works out, in some sense, because Cuse and Lindelof successfully managed to explore a number of interesting themes both in the main body of the series and in the finale, not the least of which are those about personal choice and sense of self in the formation of identity.

Like life itself, Lost ends with no real revelations, no magical key to sudden knowledge or wisdom, and with countless plot threads utterly ignored. Lost can be summed up as a “beautiful cacaphony,” leaving you starved for a melody, yet mesmerized by its absence. As a series, Lost is chaos incarnate, with very little meaning in most of its machinations. It’s like Cracker Jacks: tasty by the handful, but ultimately you really do need to eat a real meal.

Is it worth the time investment? If you got into the series at the very beginning and already had a sizable time investment, say maybe, the first 3-4 seasons, I’d say yes. If you’ve never seen Lost and are wondering if you should start, I’d say no. Why? Simply put, you can get all the major philosophical themes of Lost via countless other stories or films and understand its meaning in a few short hours, whereas the series will leave you, most of the time, confused and spinning your wheels. I submit that life does that enough already.

In the interest of helping you, dear reader, avoid spoilers in the event you haven’t seen the finale but plan to, this is your last chance. Beyond the break you’ll find a list of top Likes and Dislikes about the finale, and I hope you’ll share your thoughts on this non-event Event in the history of television.

Top things that disappointed me:
1. No mention of Walt. He went from being so UBER important to being an “also ran”
2. No “special revelation” of knowledge for characters who accepted being the Island’s guardians, they’re as clueless as everyone else.
3. Very little explanation of the alternative universe. Was it really JUST for them? Were they the only “dead” people in it or was EVERYONE in it “dead”?
4. When the Man in Black went into the hole with the Magic Lightbulb, he became a Smoke Monster. When two additional people went into the same hole, nothing happened to them. Why did the Man in Black become a smoke monster, exactly? Because he wore black?
5. No explanation for virtually anything that happened on the island over the years. Christian’s empty coffin, the Time Travelling, the Polar Bear, Walt appearing to people in visions, women unable to have babies, the Dharma Initiative–everything appears to have been a dead end.

Top things I ENJOYED:
1. Thematically, the idea that YOU have to decide the person you are, and not fall into the trap of what other people TELL you you are.
2. Thematically, the idea that the people in your lives, whether friend or foe, are there because you need them and they need you, to help shape the course of your life.
3. The “connection” of the living characters to the dead and the reunions of people who loved but had lost each other; those scenes were SO effing sad, I love it!
4. That all the characters died in the end. No possibility of “Lost: Return to the Island!” in five years.
5. The urge to wonder and criticize: Lost did a lot of things well: connecting the dots of a coherent story is not one of them. What’s an interesting emergent from the chaos, though, is the desire to think about what happened, how and if any of it connected or didn’t connect, and to think about abstract ideas such as identity of self, relationships, etc. It’s unsatisfying, but at the same time cool, and in a sense it mirrors life–there are no easy and guaranteed answers; from childhood until death we must always question, always wonder. That’s a decent moral.

All in all I feel both cheated by and glad that I watched it. I wouldn’t recommend the series to anyone else because thematically the whole series could easily be summed up in a 2-3 hour movie (See: Pleasantville, among others), but, having gotten on board not knowing what to expect, it was an interesting–if frequently frustrating–ride.

FREE This Week: IObit Advanced System Care PRO

The Web N3rd — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:37:54 +0000

Previously we’ve done a review of Iobit’s excellent freeware product “Advanced System Care Free,” and recommended it whole heartedly. For the next few days, though, they’re offering the PRO version for free, in celebration of the product’s five year anniversary. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the free version, but let’s face it: if you can get the Pro version for the same free price, don’t you sort of owe it to yourself?

Why Heroes was Cancelled–and Deserved It!

Jason Ward — Tue, 18 May 2010 07:14:52 +0000

I remember when I began watching the first season of Heroes, a little nervous of this seeming X-Men Lite show from the very beginning. But over the course of that first season I found that very shortly I could scarcely wait to watch the next episode as the mystery of the villanous Sylar and his role in destroying New York City unfolded. The show seemed to have everything it needed: an engrossing plot, a frighteningly powerful villain with a plan, a cute girl, comic relief, political tension, the mysterious Mr. Linderman, and of course, a character with the proper soul of a Hero, Peter. I’ve talked about Heroes before, of course, and like the show itself my hopes and thoughts for its future have fluctuated from the positive to the abysmal. So goes the nature of a show that nobody had a clear vision for, and as much as I sort of wish I was, I’m not remotely surprised that it’s now officially been cancelled by NBC.

So now the question is, why was Heroes cancelled? This is a topic that could go on forever, and I’ve already reviewed a few other blogs and media outlets dishing ever so briefly on the topic, so now I think it’s time I had a bit of say, myself.

1. Let’s start with the obvious: following the first season, the show failed to ever execute a cohesive, well-planned plot or villain again. Sylar, in season one, was a masterpiece of a television villain, played to near perfection by Zachary Quinto. Season 2 didn’t really have a villain at all, Season 3′s “Villains” arc suffered a similar fate (Arthur Petrelli was OK, but really just a crusty, much less intimidating retread of Sylar), and while Season 4′s Samuel character was an interesting character, he was a useless villain with an ability so lame that all anyone had to do was run away from him in order to take it away. And while it was clear early on that the writing team on the show really tried to make the final season much better, and to a large part they succeeded, there were simply too many other problems, which we’ll get to.

2. Character development. Perhaps only a little less annoying than its plot issues was the show’s character development, specifically because, there pretty much wasn’t any. By the end of the final season, Claire was still the same whiny, self-flagellating brat she’d been since season one, only by then it had gone from being the endearing mark of a character going through something new and scary, to that place where you’re just sick and tired of hearing her whine about being different. Come on, Claire, get over it and move on, already! The same was true of One-Note-Nathan, who like any living politician stereotype, wobbled endlessly between the side of good and the side of evil. By the time he died, I was glad to see him go, and a lot of other people were too. There are only so many times you can watch the same character flip-flop back and forth. Pick a damn side and let’s get on with it.

3. Meaningless deaths. In the first season, we got some real deaths, and they were pretty damn sad. Charlie, Isaac, Simone, all were reasonably well developed (less so in Charlie’s case, but she was developed very well in a short space) and that worked out. Unfortunately, nobody ever died and stayed dead again after that. Charlie ended up being brought back during the fourth season, which really served no greater purpose than to ruin the original story’s sadness; Nathan, even after being killed in season 3′s finale, kept right on coming back to life via Sylar in season 4; Nikki, the show’s most annoying character from the very first episode, came back as a clone. Time after time, characters were shot, beaten, maimed and blown to smithereens, only to somehow return again. If there are no real death stakes, what’s the point of killing the character at all?

4. Stakes and consequences. The stakes rarely got any bigger on Heroes, either in the sense of devastating plots or in the sense of transformational character events. No, Arthur draining off Peter’s powers does not count. What characters needed were life-altering events like you’d find on better shows such as Angel or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was unilaterally a superior Superhero show to Heroes. There, we watched the writers do horrific things to established, recurring characters, killing off some, utterly reshaping the character of others. No character on Heroes ever faced stakes where they would have no choice but to cut down the person they love the most in order to save the world. No character on Heroes ever fell in love only to have that loved one brutally murdered before their eyes. And when Heroes characters died and returned, there was no price to pay, no shift in the balance of the world’s power, no consequences. When Buffy died while saving the world and was (months later) resurrected, there were consequences first for her character, which was fundamentally transformed by the trauma of death and bliss of Heaven, and later for an entire season as her return had triggered a shift in the balance of the world’s power that ultimately lead to the deaths of several of her allies and goodness knows how many additional innocents. Heroes never played with stakes like that.

5. Lack of advance planning. Heroes creator Tim Kring has said publicly that they do not plan the series very far in advance, preferring to write by the seat of their pants so as to always introduce new story possibilities. I suppose as theories go, that’s all well and good, but it’s still no excuse for not establishing an overall framework for where your story will go. How can you possibly write a series that says something if you don’t have anything in mind you want to say? And therein lay perhaps the root of Heroes’ problems: it doesn’t really have a message. Buffy was about female empowerment; Angel was about the neverending battle between good and evil; Star Trek was about an optimistic view of the future and humankind’s ability to succeed in it; Veronica Mars was about both female empowerment and the ability to understand and deal with the world logically even when it wasn’t very logical; Battlestar Galactica (new version) was about how humankind is a screwed-up mess with no true direction, just a fantasy.

What is Heroes about? I have no idea, and really, neither do its creators. And that was ultimately its biggest failure, and the most prominent reason why not only did it fail, but it earned its failure.

Windows Home Server ‘Vail’ Beta Available!

Jason Ward — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 06:14:57 +0000

Yes, I know-we’ve been slacking off on the updates for awhile. We’re leaving that in the past and moving forward now; hope you don’t mind!

Today the Windows Home Server Team Blog (don’t try typing that while holding your breath!) lifted the veil on ‘Vail’, the next version of Windows Home Server. Like all of Microsoft’s other server products, WHS will be turning x64 only starting with this generation of the software, so for those of you with existing Intel Atom powered devices–sorry, you’re SOL. On the bright side, chances are that if you own a WHS device already, you’re a bit of a nerd and will be eager to drop the cash to upgrade your hardware along with your software. Thank goodness for Capitalism! And Chef Boyardee. They both warm our hearts and tummies!

Anyway, they’ve got a nice introductory video available on their blog site showing off some of the cool new features (streaming to devices outside the LAN and video transcoding ftw!), and the WHS Team would just love to have you test out the software, give them some feedback, and maybe help shape the final outcome of Windows Home Server’s snazzy new design, built from the ground up on the Windows 7/2008 R2 codebase.

Check out the video, and look for our impressions of the beta here in about a week!

Tom Lehrer: A Brutal Genius

Jason Ward — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:42:05 +0000

I had no idea there were VIDEOS of this awesome guy!

MAG: The Beta I’d be playing if PSN didn’t suck

Jason Ward — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:49:54 +0000

Update: Finally got into the beta, and it sucked. BORING as dirt.

So, it’s been nearly two weeks, and generally speaking I have been enjoying my PS3 quite a bit. I finished Metal Gear Solid 4 last night (more on that later), I’ve played a fair amount of God of War Collection (including the very nice looking demo of God of War 3), and I’ve tinkered a little with Little Big Planet. And of course, I’ve downloaded some demos from Playstation Network, AKA PSN, thinking it would be awfully fun to play some potential purchases.

The problem is, PSN sucks. It sucks a LOT. For all those fans who decry Xbox Live and its yearly fees, citing the free PSN as the holy grail, let me tell you something: You get what you pay for, and PSN is the proof in that pudding. Let me give you some examples of why this is so. I decided to try out the demo of Dante’s Inferno, which weighs in at about 1GB, and I thought at the same time that it would be fun to try out both the PS3 and 360 versions. So I fired up my PS3 and kicked off the download, and watched as the progress bar slowly crept to 1%. “Well,” I thought, “This is boring. I might as well start the 360 download too.” And so I did. One hour later, I was playing the 360 version-and the PS3 version was at 30%. 5 hours later and the PS3 version finished downloading at last. “Woohoo!” I thought: “Now I can try it out, too!” And then the install screen popped up. The Install Screen, people. On a CONSOLE. Luckily the install only took about 5 minutes, but still: On Xbox 360, you never, EVER install demos. Once the download is finished, you’re ready to play.

So today, they released the public beta of MAG: Massive Action Game. I’ve been a little excited about this. I’m not typically an FPS fan, but this one seemed like something special, what with its 256 player online doolabob and huge levels, and so I eagerly signed into the Playstation Store and found my download. “Hooray!” I thought, “it’s only 289MB!”

Three hours later, it finally finished. Three.Fucking.Hours.

I know what you’re gonna say: “But Jason, it’s your internet connection, it’s too slow for the awesome size of 289MB!” And to you I say “Ha! In your dreams, buddy! I’m on a 10Mb Fiber connection! I can stream HD movies from Netflix and hulu and rarely have so much as a blink!” But here’s the fun part: So I go to launch the MAG demo, and what do I find? After going through the tedious 5 minute install process, it pops up a screen to ask if it’s OK to download another 1.8GB before I can play the demo. That’s about as lovely as it can get, isn’t it? So that’s where I am.

Waiting on PS3 to download. Can’t do anything else with the system while that happens.

Good thing my 360 still works. Moral of the story? You get what you pay for, and you need look no further than the free PlayStation network to see that in action.

Xmas Aftermath: My PS3 Slim Micro-Review

Jason Ward — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:48:21 +0000

So, for Christmas this year (my favorite Consumerist holiday; go Commercialism!) I was fortunate enough to receive a brand new PS3 Slim console, with a 120GB hard drive. I’d been looking forward to it for a month (we actually got it on Black Friday, but figured since it was an expensivish item close to the holidays we’d make it a gift), so I was excited when, late on Christmas Eve, I finally got permission to open it up. The experience was cool at first (is opening up a new gadget ever not fun?), but quickly took a dive into frustration before it finally emerged to become cool again. Here are my thoughts:

Little Big Planet is awesome. Blows away almost every other game this gen, especially the “realistic” garbage! BRILLIANT art design!

Metal Gear Solid 4 looks pretty good, but certainly no better than games like Modern Warfare 2 or Gears of War 2. This is one of those games that was supposed to be a “360 can’t do this” example but, ummm…it’s not. Controls sucked at first, but I got used to them after an hour or so and then it became fun. The Cinematography and voice acting are phenomenal.

God of War Collection kicks ass. Looks very nice. Clearly still just an upscaled PS2 game, but the filtering and other enhancements make it passable, like a first gen PS3 or 360 title almost. Still a great game!

PS3 itself-is not a consumer friendly product at all. Out of the box I had to manually enable Optical audio out (connecting an HDMI cable automatically disables all other audio output. Why? Silly!), then find out which codecs my Onkyo 6.1 receiver supported and manually enable those before it would work. The download of the firmware update was fast (5 minutes) but the install was ridiculously long (literally, 30+ minutes. WTF?). Software updates to games are unbelievably slow. 2 hours to update MGS4 so I could play it, 20 minutes to update LBP. Mind you, I’m on a 10MB Fiber connection, and the downloads were speedy enough, it’s the installation process that’s slow, which is systemic. Four other friends have told me that’s the way theirs are as well. Why is it so mind numbingly slow?

Installing demos after download is lame and varies wildly. Fairytale Fights took about 30 seconds, Ghostbusters about 5 MINUTES. Why do these need to be “installed” at all?

DVD playback is gorgeous. Easily the best upscaling dvd player I’ve ever seen, not even a question. It’s dvd upscaling playback capability pisses all over the 360’s, and to my surprise even passed up my dedicated DVD player’s upscaling. Nice indeed. I haven’t played or bought any bluray movies, but I don’t really care, either, as I don’t think most movies are worth paying double or more. The only way I’d buy the bluray version over the DVD version is if they were the same exact price, maybe a dollar more. With the upscaling, though, I don’t think I’ll have a need in most cases anyway. Visual Effects heavy epics might be an exception on occasion, but again, only if the cost is comparable to the cost of a DVD.

Audio output is phenomenal-easily better than 360’s, especially on DVD’s. Star Trek sounds and looks better than ever when played on the PS3.

The lack of an IR port for the universal remotes is lame, as the selection of Bluetooth capable remotes is simply awful. The dedicated PS3 dvd remote is garbage, useful for absolutely nothing but the PS3, as it has no IR port for compatibility with other devices, making it essentially useless. I’ll just keep using the controller, I guess, but in my view, Sony really missed the boat on either a)putting an IR port on the PS3 itself, or b) adding IR capability to the official remote so you could use it as a universal. Remotes that only control one device are so…1980′s.

I love the design of the slim. It’s sexy, relatively small (compared to the phat) and has a nice finish instead of that “ghetto fabulous” gloss crap on the old model. I’m still not sold on the controller, because even though it’s dual shock 3 it still feels a little too light and flimsy compared to the solid heft of a 360 controller. It’s also not nearly as ergonomic or comfortable, but then, we’ve been dealing with the exact same controller shape since 1995. Sigh.

All in all, I really like the system. The games, of course, look about the same as 360 games, but the audio is better on movies (and I’m using an optical connector on both). It doesn’t do streaming as well as the 360 does (for some reason the PS3 stutters video from Hulu, streamed via PlayOn media server, while the 360 does not, from the same server. Errors in the server event log indicate that PS3 doesn’t handle the DLNA implementation correctly, which is probably why. Hopefully it gets fixed in a firmware update).

I love that I can stream stuff from the PS3 to the PSP, I just wish the PSP had a more reliable battery. Even my double capacity battery only lasts about 3 hours with wifi enabled. So far the functionality of streaming to PSP from a remote location over the internet is spotty-sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, which is a bit of a drag, but to be expected.

Anyway, I’m glad to add the system and a few games to my library. So far I have MGS4, LBP, Warhawk and GoW Collection. I plan to snag Motorstorm next week, since gamestop has it for $9.99 used, and it seems like a nice HD Excite Truck type game, so hopefully I’ll enjoy it.

Dollhouse: barreling toward the end

Jason Ward — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:15:54 +0000

This month has been really exciting on Dollhouse, as the plot races along at full bore toward what will undoubtedly be an epic conclusion. In the leadup to the series finale-which I have to say, we really should be grateful to Fox for letting the season run its course in spite of the awful ratings-things have gotten really exciting. The entire season has been really good, but in the most recent six episodes especially, the development of characters and plot has reached the proverbial “fever pitch”. The evolution of Echo into-dare I say it-a REAL character-has been both gripping and surprising in many ways. Similarly, the development of Victor and Sierra-about whom I couldn’t have given less of a damn for most of season one-have rapidly become my favorites.

Wha I’ve been especially impressed by is the quality of performances we’ve seen from Enver Gjokaj (sic?)-Victor-in particular. That guy is frickin’ AMAZING, easily slipping between various personalities with complete believability. His spot-on portrayal of the Topher Brink character was beyond brilliance-it was as if the actual actor (I forget his name, and since I’m writing from my iPhone I won’t bother with the research) had somehow slipped into Victor’s skin. I truly hope to see him in another series soon.

So, lots of questions remain: how will the return of Caroline to her own body affect Echo? Will they-and how will they-bring Rossum down? And perhaps just as importantly, if they do manage to stop Rossum’s nefarious plans, how will they explain that in the context of Epitaph One, set another decade in the future?

On most of these points I have no clue, but on the last one I was struck with an idea while watching the second of last night’s two episodes. The faux future we saw while Echo, Sierra and Victor were trapped in the attic, stuck inside the Dollhouse technology’s creator’s mind, bore an awfully strong resemblance to the future in Epitaph One. Now, this could be simple: after all, one post-apocalyptic future looks pretty much the same as the next-or it could be that Epitaph One’s characters were, in fact, simply current era dolls who’d been sent to the attic. I can’t decide if that would be a cop-out of a development or not. What do you think?

Pretty cool: How Processors are made

The Web N3rd — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:58:44 +0000

A friend sent me this very cool video of how Intel makes processors, so of course I thought, “Hey, that’s some Nerdy stuff!” And sure enough, it is. Check it out, it’s darn cool!