M're Undefined

Technical Manager at one of the market researcher company in KL who does blogging on his free time. Love cats very much. Always fascinated with new technology (as well as spending money on it)

 

Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows

With my new PC is capable of running latest GPU-hunger games, I’ve been trying quite a number of games that I can’t even play on my old PC. One thing that interest is is that, when I install Prince Of Persia game, there is this screen that’s detecting whether I have game controller installed on my machine or not. Then another crazy idea came up – I want to get game controller for my PC too.

The one that interests me is this Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows. The wired one is sold at RM149, and the wireless one is at RM199. Being a fan of wireless, of course I go for the later.

Not having enough money in my wallet today, I just decided to use credit card. Furthermore it is just 2% administrative charge for Visa Credit Card, which is RM3.98 for the RM199 controller.

So I sign the credit card slip, and walk out of the store. Only a few steps away from the door of the store, I can’t help to look at the new controller that I bought, which I happened take a glance at the receipt first. Then I got a little bit confuse.

The receipt says that the total is RM121. But the controller itself is RM199? Realizing that the cashier has punched in by mistake, the following 2 options keeps juggling in my head – the thing that I should do.

  • I should go back to the cashier tell him/her that he/she has punched the price wrongly
  • Quickly walk away from the store. The cashier might notice the mistake, and if I’m still around, he/she will definately come chasing after me.

So which option that I really choose? I leave that for you to guess ;)

So what PC games that are compatible with the Xbox 360 contoller? Luckily there’s this page has a comprehensive list of PC games which support the Xbox 360 controller without special drivers or configuration. Great! Prince of Persia and Fallout 3 are in the list.

OK. I’m off for some game playing now.

Oyen’s foot injury

Just before I went to Bulgaria last Sunday, I noticed that Oyen didn’t walk properly. From looking at his paw, I can see there’s some sort of cut, and I thought it is just a normal cut that will heal in a day or two.

But coming back from Bulgaria, it seems that it’s getting worse. Oyen can’t even put his front left foot on the floor. From looking at the paw, the cut seems healed already, but every time I touch there, Oyen quickly retracts his paw. It must be painful. Poor Oyen has to bare the pain for almost 1 week. I feel so guilty about it.

So went to visit my usual vet today – Anicare at Wangsa Maju.

Oyen waiting patiently in the cage as there are 2 cats already there before him.

So it’s Oyen time. After inspection, his pain is due to something injured him, maybe during his usual scratching, and the thing broken and left inside his paw’s meet. Doctor tried to pull it out using tweezers, but I guess it must be really painful that Oyen starts hissing madly.

There’s no other way around it than to give anesthesia to Oyen. 5 minutes after injection, Oyen flat out. The main part of removing the debris from the meat of Oyen’s paw I was not looking. But the doctor said, after it has been removed, she can still feel something inside the meet, and has to bury the tweezers deep inside the meat. And another piece of debris is taken out. I can imagine that cannot be done at all if Oyen all awake.

Oyen may look all awake below, but he is actually unconsciousness already. It’s quite scary to see him dead-alike like that.

But it’s kinda a mystery of what the thing that got into Oyen paw. It doesn’t look like wood at all. It’s kinda soft like plastic. Also, I can’t really see where Oyen would get that.

After a thorough inspection, the doctor said that it is unsafe to bring him back in his condition now. She suggested that I left Oyen there, and pick back later today. So Oyen being moved to a big cage, as when he’s awake, he will be so stressed from the anesthesia process. The big space should give him enought room to calm down. At this time, he is waking up a little. It’s quite a relieve to see that he starts licking his mouth already. But his body is still paralyzed.

4:30pm, went to pick up Oyen. Oh, didn’t I tell you that I’m on leave today? As expected, anesthesia costs the most. As usual, a little reading that I did on Internet reveals that anesthesia can only be done by certified vet. It’s also quite a risky process, and mishandling it might cause the life of the cat. I guess it costs more for the price of the skills of doing this.

But the after effect of anesthesia is something that I can’t bare looking. Once I got home, Oyen is so wobbly. He can’t stop shaking his head, can’t really walk properly and all of his senses are all over the place. But the doctor told me that it is normal and will normally worn out completely in 24 – 36 hours. After 3 hours in that condition, he’s finally fall asleep (and still sleeping while I’m writing this). Hope that he feels better once he’s awake.

My New PC VI

Before I pack up my semi naked new PC, and get my computer table organized again, there is just a little something else that I need to do. Behold, another blog entry of my new PC. LOL.

But if you look at the part being the motherboard tray, there’s this place with a lot of holes.

It’s not an ordinary holes. Actually another chassis fan can be installed here, where it will suck out the hot air at the back of the motherboard, which is used to cool down the motherboard.

This fan is optional already, and is not included by default. But to reach the optimal air flow configuration for this chassis, I so really feel that I want this fan to be installed as well. But it required a rare 80mm x 80mm x 15mm chassis fan. Getting 80mm x 80mm chassis fan is not a problem, but getting the one with 15mm thickness is a bit of problem. Most chassis fans are 25mm in thickness.

Searching Lelong.com website yields very promising result, so with haste, I placed an order for Cooler Master one.

But the next day, I get an email telling that my order is cancelled. When I check my order status screen, there’s no remarks written of why my order is cancelled. So I left a message to the store owner asking why my order is cancelled. Is it out of stock? Do they have stock for Evercool one?

But waiting for 2 days, I got no reply at all from the store owner. Gosh. This is so frustrating. I’m trying to help your business by ordering from you, but you seems to ignore your customer. Anyway, I have nothing against this store, just a bit frustration that my queries never been entertained.

So it’s time for a visit to Low Yatt plaza again. Man. I’ve been going to Low Yatt for 4 weekends straight. LOL. After searching high and low, I managed to find what I’m looking for – 80x80x15 chassis fan from my usual shop – All IT Hypermart.

Shopping devil haunting me again. Since I still have 1 unused SATA port left on the motherboard, and my chassis still have space for 2 more hard disks, I also bought another SATA2 320GB hard disk. I’m thinking of using this as my experiment hard disk. Will be installing Windows 7 Release Candidate on this hard disk.

So here is the fan installed at the back of the motherboard tray. You really need the fan with 15mm thickness or else you can never put back the cover as 25mm fan is too thick for it.

So after a month my computer table is a total mess, with my computer half naked, and just lying on the floor, finally I’m able to organize everything back today. Believe it or not, this is the place that I spend most of the time at home when I’m awake (I will be on bed for sure when sleeping)

Yes. My computer table chair is a bit off. Thinking of buying a better computer table chair one of these days.

Read the rest of the stories relating to my new PC

  1. My New PC I
  2. My New PC II
  3. My New PC III
  4. My New PC IV
  5. My New PC V
  6. My New PC VI

Goodbye HTC Touch Pro

It’s time to say goodbye to my HTC Touch Pro. After I got the iPhone, this phone is just basically sitting there in my drawer. I was thinking of keeping it, but come to think of it, I don’t really manage 2 phone lines. Before the price of the second hand HTC Touch Pro keeps dropping, let’s get it out of my unused things, at least I will have some spare money to spend :D

Well, the final photograph of my HTC Touch Pro. Feeling quite sentimental now. Sob! Sob! Will be selling it to Nazri a.k.a Chikos (officemate). I guess there’s need for me to link to his blog here. He’s quite a shy person. Hehe.

This makes this phone is the one that I use the shortest. 4 months 20 days to be exact. Bought this November 1st last year. It’s quite scary to see that I’m selling this at 1/2 price of what I originally paid to get this. But that’s the nature of second hand products. Futhermore, there are a few new models that make the price of the brand new HTC Touch Pro also drops. It’s even HTC Touch Pro 2 in the pipe line already. No! No! I’m not looking.

Even though I own this for only a short period, the blog entry that I did on how to fix the GPS lag problem on HTC Touch Pro is indeed the most famous blog entry of mine this year.

Well my friend. You served me well. Won’t be forgetting what a great phone you are.

My New PC V

Wow! It’s the 5th blog entry about my new PC. Anyway, I got new chassis, new CPU cooler and modding cathode light here, and I got additional 4GB RAM and internal All in One Card Reader here. Now it’s time to dismantle my 27-day old PC, and transfer all the components to the new chassis. Sigh. Thinking of going through all the hassle again makes me keep postponing this from the day that I first bought my new chassis. But I managed to gather all the strenght today to get started.

Well, firstly is the unboxing process for the Cooler Master CM 690 chassis. This is the chassis out of the box.

And the chassis out of the wrapper. This thing quite huge. But the photo below won’t to the justice. You have to really see this thing in real, and it’s quite heavy too.

On the right is my old 27-day old Power Logic Azzura 2000 chassis in comparison with the CM 690 one.

Lets look at the side of this chassis. This is the transparent side window panel that I mentioned previously, where cosmetic is the main subject for this kind of chassis.

The side panel cover opened. It has an ample space. I can imagine that there will be good air circulation inside with the space this big. I don’t think there’s a need for me to go through all the features that this chassis has. You can read all about it here.

So, let the work begins. The very first thing that I have to do is to take the motherboard out from the old chassis. So, here it is, with the original CPU cooler still attached, and 4GB RAM still in the slot. Now I need to install the newly bought CPU cooler for this.

So this is the content of Gigabyte G-Power Pro CPU cooler – everything you need is inside. Even though the documentation claims that it will be a tool-less, but for LGA775 motherboard, the one that I’m using, you will still need to use screw driver to install the retention mechanism to the motherboard.

The same as last time, installing the CPU cooler is the scariest part of all the exercises for this – where you really have to apply a big force, and in this case, when installing the clip that will hold the CPU cooler to the retention mechanism. Furthermore, the retention mechanism is made out of plastic, and I’m getting so paranoid that I will break it when installing the clip.

Anyway, the nightmare is finally over (after several round of attempts), and behold, the G-Power Pro CPU cooler is attached to the motherboard already. Noticed that I have also installed the additional 4GB DDR2 RAM to the motherboard, totalling it to 8GB RAM. Woohoo…

Here’s another look at the CPU cooler from different angle. Anyway, I’m using 50mm lens for this where the distance is compressed when using this lens. That’s why you see the fan is so big in comparison to the motherboard. In reality, that’s not the case.


Telephoto and other long-focal-length lenses are best known for making distant objects appear magnified. This effect is similar to moving closer to the object, but is not the same, since perspective is a function solely of viewing location. Two images taken from the same location, one with a wide angle lens and the other with a telephoto lens, will show identical perspective, in that near and far objects appear the same relative size to each other. Comparing magnification by using a long lens to magnification by moving closer, however, the telephoto shot appears to compress the distance between objects due to the perspective from the more distant location. Long lenses thus give a photographer an alternative to the type of perspective distortion exhibited by shorter focal length lenses where (when the photographer stands closer to the given subject) different portions of a subject in a photograph can appear out of proportion to each other.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephoto_lens

A little lesson on photography won’t hurt right ;)

Okay. Back to my new PC. Here’s the close up look at the CPU cooler Ain’t it beauty? I can’t really takes my eyes off of it.

Finally, the motherboard is in the new chassis already. And it’s time for the next headache…

… the headache of wiring everything together, and getting the cables organized. That surely a lot of cables to manage.

But thanks to the cable management feature that this chassis has. Look ma. It’s quite neat. I like it very much, especially the cables from power supply unit can be slot through to the back of the motherboard, as there’s quite a big gap between the side panel cover back there where you can run the cables behind there.

This is the how the cable at the back looks like, not organized at all. Well, that the point. We just want to hide those clumsy spaghetti like cable out of the sight.

It’s the moment of truth, powering my new PC with the new chassis for the first time. Well, I’m kinda impress with the blue light look that this chassis has, from the CPU cooler, front chassis fan and top chassis fan.

So what’s next? I need to install OS on this, and as what I stated in my previous blog entry, I really want to try 64-bit version of windows. Will be installing Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and will blog about my first experience using 64-bit Windows.

Read the rest of the stories relating to my new PC

  1. My New PC I
  2. My New PC II
  3. My New PC III
  4. My New PC IV
  5. My New PC V
  6. My New PC VI
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