Archive for the ‘Other’ Category

The new stuff chronicles #11: picture time!

Other, RC, The new stuff chronicles | Posted by Zhooibaal
Jun 23 2009

My birthday was yesterday and today is the time to blog about the gifts. I already told you people what stuff I got and also that I didn’t really celebrate yet and that is probably why there aren’t that many gifts. Every year everyone says that they have no idea what to give to me, but eventually they always find something cool.

So here we go. The first thing I got from my brother on behalf of my parents is this box:

Box Box

This is a parts box that I can use for my RC parts. I don’t have that many yet, but I’m sure that that will change in the future. I’ve taken out the little yellow containers on the inside of the box to make room for my charger, batteries, multimeter and the power supply for the charger.

I think this box is really cool and it will come in very handy for sure. I can just take this to the track, open it up and leave the charger itself sitting in there so I don’t even have to spread my batteries all over the pit table and I’ll have all my parts in one place instead of all over the place. Maybe I’ll even put in some tools in it as well. I just have to make sure I don’t short circuit the power supply with a screwdriver then.

The second thing I got was a Philips Living Colors Mini. Believe it or not, these things are really cool. The only con is has in comparison to it’s larger brother is that this one can’t be controlled with a remote. But just set it on cycle mode and it’ll change it’s color continuously or you can just set it to a certain color if you like that better. Here are a few pictures of it. It can project a total of 256 different colors.

The white design does give it a somewhat apple-ish look though…

That’s it for now, but soon I will post the new stuff chronicles #12 with a Corally CCT and some other RC stuff. Stay tuned!

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Birthday time!

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Jun 22 2009

Today I had my birthday and guess what, I got some cool gifts! I didn’t get many, but I didn’t get many guests either and one didn’t even bring a gift… But I’m not really celebrating my birthday today anyway, that’ll be done sometime soon.

From my brother on behalf of my parents who are on their holiday now I got this really cool parts box for my RC stuff and from my brother and his girlfriend I got a Philips Living Colors light and that thing is really cool.

I’ll be uploading some pics of the stuff I got and some more info on it tomorrow, because I’m too lazy now.

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The New Stuff Chronicles #8

Other, PC, The new stuff chronicles | Posted by Zhooibaal
Jun 21 2008

This post might as well be called the new and old and damaged stuff chronicles instead of the new stuff chronicles. Anyway, there are two items I’d like to tell you about. The first one is a radio controlled car and the other one is a trackball. Let’s start off with the radio controlled car.

BMRacer

The model in the picture above is the one I have, it’s the BMW model. I don’t have any pics I’ve taken myself of this car, but this picture gives you a good impression of what it looks like. My car doesn’t look this smooth and clean anymore though. That’s why I stated that this episode of the new stuff chronicles might also be called the old and damaged stuff chronicles… I’s missing one of it’s side mirrors, the rear spoiler is badly damaged, one wheel looks a bit messed up and it has a huge crack in the front bumper near the left front fender. It got damaged like that when I was driving it around a bit recklessly, but it doesn’t matter, it was great fun to drive it like that and it’s all just visual damage. One other thing that got damaged another day was the left front suspension. This car is all plastic and when it ran into a concrete block the left front wheel was hanging loosly in it’s suspension. One of the plastic pins holding it in place had broken off and I replaced it with a metal screw and it’s all like new.

Anyway, for some info and specs take a look at the site by clicking here.

There are also two other models available. A Mercedes model and a Porsche model. I actually like the Porsche model better than the BMW model, but that one wasn’t available and I didn’t like the Mercedes model at all. I linked to the proper product pages through the images below.

PORacerMERacer

And then there was a trackball.

Trackball

It’s a Logitech Cordless Trackman Optical. I don’t know how they can call something cordless when it has a huge receiver with it which you connect to your computer with an equally huge cord, but it doesn’t matter, this thing is great. It takes a while to get used to it, but now I can play Command and Conquer with it just like I was playing it with a regular mouse. This trackball is very comfortable, responsive and it feels durable. I bought it to be able to switch pointing device every now and then to prevent me from getting RSI. If you’re looking for a great trackball, get this one.

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It’s fun to talk at the I-M-V-U!!!

Other, PC | Posted by Zhooibaal
Jun 07 2008

Sing it along with me to the Vilage People rythm! “It’s fun to talk at the I-M-V-U! It’s fun to talk at the I-M-V-U!”

As you can see I have added a banner to the website of IMVU, which is somewhat a mix between instant messaging like MSN, AIM and Yahoo and sites like MySpace combined with pretty decent 3D graphics. Nothing high end, but for some reason it’s pretty heavy on your system, but that doesn’t make it less fun.

IMVU logo

On IMVU there are several things you can do: create your own 3D avatar, get stuff for you avatar like accessories (jewelry, gloves, hats and other stuff), get pets for your avatar ranging from little baby dragons to penguins and even bodyguards. You can also decorate your own rooms and design your own stuff if you have the expertise to do so and then you can sell the things you make for IMVU credits with which you can get new stuff again of give gifts to other people. And besides all that you can also chat.

Chatting doesn’t occur in just another flat window, but in the 3D scene you, or your chat partner choose. You can also enter public rooms with lots of people and chat away. If you have no friends on IMVU you can simply hit the Chat Now button in the program’s main window and you’ll be connected to someone who has also hit that button and trust me, there’s always someone. The only downside of this Chat Now feature is that most people leave even before the avatar is fully loaded and they don’t say a word, but you shouldn’t give up too quickly as there are interesting people to be found occasionally and you can also look for potentially intersting people on the website instead of using the Chat Now feature.

If you have chat now enabled there will also pop up a balloon on your taskbar every now and then telling you that someone is waiting for a ChatNow session. In this case your room will be used, if you hit Chat Now yourself, the room of the other person will be used and if the other person leaves in that case you will be sent to one of the default rooms with noone else in it and the program will ask if if you’d like to give it another try and you’ll be connected to someone else.

I have found a few nice people through Chat Now, so it’s really worthit to try it once you’re there. Besides Chat Now and a people search there are also groups, so communities within the IMVU community. Just try to find a group, or multiple groups that are to your liking and you might just come across some cool people to chat with or to hang out with in public rooms or even in real life (RL) if they’re close enough.

I’m
Zhooibaal
on

When you sign up there will always be a Guest_ prefix before your name though. It doesn’t bother me too much, but some people find it annoyin. But getting rid of it will cost you some $$$. Which brings me to the only real downside of IMVU. It’s more or less free to use, but to get everything out of it means that you’ll need to spend some $$$. I don’t do that, at least, not yet, you never know what might happen in the future.

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Powerspawning babies!

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Feb 12 2008

Ok, so this post has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the blog, who cares? A friend mailed me a little while back with these pictures. Apperently the originate from webpark.ru, but finding pictures there is pretty tough when you don’t read Russian. Anyway, I think they’re pretty funny and I also think that you should view them, so here they are.

BabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBabyBaby

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No more hotlinking!

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Feb 08 2008

I was browsing my site stats yesterday and found out that the greatest part of the bandwidth this site uses up is due to hotlinking. Hotlinking without permission is bandwidth theft and therefore forbidden. Unfortunatly I can’t find the website anymore that had it all explained how you can even take legal action against hotlinkers and scrapers because I flushed my cache to test the hotlink protection I installed and ofcourse I forgot to bookmark the page. Anyway, anyone who tries to hotlink now will get this image:

no hotlinking! NOT ANYMORE!

This way other people will be able to see where the original picture that was supposed to be there came from and the other webmaster is being called a cheap son of a pig and he might be offended. Ofcourse I don’t give a shit about him/her being offended, because that’s the point of the little text.

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Celebrate Carnival

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Feb 07 2008

First off, for anyone who doesn’t know what Carnival is, check this page. I directly linked it to the part where the Dutch form of Carnival (called Carnaval here) is discussed which is obviously the most important section of the page for obvious reasons.

Anyway, I’ve been celebrating Carnival and I (as well as my mom and a female friend, yes, female) have taken a few pictures. Not a lot, just a few and I decided to post them here for the entire world to enjoy. There’s nothing shocking to be seen in these pictures, but I think they are all well worth a look.

First off with the pictures that I have taken and seriously, this is all of them, not nearly as many as I had planned to take.
CarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnaval

It’s just a shame that I don’t have the pictures that my mom has taken yet… But I’ll post those as soon as I get my hands on them, but for now, here are the pics that Leonie has taken (her being the girl in pic number 13 above).

Carnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by Leonie

And that’s it for now.

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S40 based Über Zombie Nokia Theme

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Feb 07 2008

You might remember Über Zombie…

If you don’t remember, I suggest you download and play it before you read on.

Anyway, About half a year ago I got this pretty new little phone. A Nokia 6300 and I think it’s pretty cool. The only downside being the dull default theme. So after all this time I found out how I can create my own theme and I created an Über Zombie theme. Here are some shots taken from the theme editor.

Über Zombie ThemeÜber Zombie Theme
Über Zombie ThemeÜber Zombie ThemeÜber Zombie Theme

Ofcourse everyone who has ever played Über Zombie loves it, so those people will probably also love this theme, so I’ve been so kind to put it up for you all to download. Just click here to download it. It should work on any Symbian S40 based Nokia cell phone. On www.nokia.com you can pbobably find whether you phone is S40 based or not.

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MyMiniCity

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Dec 16 2007

Pingwing now has it’s own little town on the internet called Pingwing and it currently has a population of 1. This can be increased if anyone clicks the following link.

link

This is going to be the best city on the net!

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X-Rotor series Gyrotor

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Nov 28 2007

Well… What about that? A post? No way!

Well, this is the deal for today: I got myself a Gyrotor. The full name of the contraption is X-Rotor series Gyrotor and was made by Silverlit Electronics. As you can see in the image below, the Gyrotor is a helicopter. A radio controlled helicopter to be exact, which is really fun to play around with.

Gyrotor

As you can see it looks pretty cool, this is the exact model that I had (yes… had). I haven’t taken any pictures of it myself, but this gives you quite an impression of what it looks like. Besides looking cool it flies pretty well. The controls are responsive and it’s not too hard to keep it floating around, but that’s all it does, fload around. Because you don’t really have an option to make it fly forward or backward, you don’t have very precise control of it’s actions. The only options you have are up/down (throttle) and left/right (turning), but you don’t have a forward/backward control. This means that you can only make it fly forward or backward by increasing or decreasing the throttle while turning, which makes it pretty tough to fly it in tight spaces allthough the Gyrotor is primarily designed to fly indoors.

There is however still one cool little feature left: the nose light. It has a blue and a red led in it’s nose which both blink while the Gyrotor is being operated, but all in all that’s about the best feature this helicopter has…

The box said that the flying time of one charge was about 5 minutes, but in fact it was about 10 minutes, which is good. But the charging time was also considerably longer than stated on the box which was about 40 to 45 minutes instead of 25.

But the worst of it all was that after 2 days and a little flying the thing broke. The rotor someone got detached from the engine. So I returned it and got a new one, but also this one broke after very little time as well… This time the rotor got severely unalligned causing the helicopter to dramatically fly to left and crash badly and then it wouldn’t fly properly anymore.

All in all, this product is pretty crappy and you shouldn’t buy one. It’s pretty fragile for it’s price and claim to be very durable, this product sucks. Only the remote seems quite durable and functions really well and it has cool leds on it, but that’s it, stay away from these things (and probably any other mini helicopters like it) and spend a little more on a better quality helicopter with better control options and have fun with one of those. The Gyrotor was a funny gadget for the little time that it lasted, but I think I’m going to save up some money to get a helicopter that won’t just fall apart.

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