mandazi » Tech

Why SOPA and Protect-IP is bad

Amir Sahib — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 22:38:40 +0000

Autonomous Car in Germany

Amir Sahib — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:22:24 +0000

Very cool.

Intel i7 Core Price Drop?

Amir Sahib — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:06:08 +0000

According to this post the Intel i7 core CPU will be cheaper in the coming weeks. Maybe it’s time to build a new gaming desktop PC. Mine is less than 2 years old. It’s a Core 2 Duo. Runs Starcraft 2 just fine, so I doubt I’ll build a new one for a while. Maybe next year, when the i7 Cores are cheaper.

Windows 7 isn’t that bad

Amir Sahib — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:48:03 +0000

I recently got the HP dm4-1060us laptop since my old laptop (which was my wife’s old laptop) died after close to 6 years of use. I used it only for web dev work so I didn’t really need a fast machine. As soon as I got my laptop I installed Ubuntu 10.04 and got it running smoothly out of the box surprisingly. Only minor issue is the mouse trackpad being buggy, but I use a USB mouse most of the time anyway. I kept Windows 7 to try it out and after using it for about 2 weeks now I’m impressed. It’s not as bad as I expected it to be. I’ve never used Vista and when I used it for a few moments on someone else, I dreaded it. It was slow even on a brand new PC that was just booted up. Windows XP SP 2 was the standard OS that I have been using on all my machines since it was released. My gaming desktop PC is still currently using.

So what impresses me about Windows 7? The speed for one. It is fast. I loaded IE, FF and Chrome all at the same time and opened multiple tabs of various sites and tried to recreate a common crash scenario I usually almost always experience while working on XP. It didn’t crash. It started to lag but nothing crashed. This wasn’t a good test, since I didn’t have Dreamweaver or Photoshop open but it was still better than I expected.

Microsoft definitely took some UI layout styles from Apple’s Mac OS X. I wouldn’t be surprised if they even looked at Ubuntu. Browsing the computer is very user friendly and simple.

All in all, it’s not that bad at all.

Diving into Ubuntu (again)

Amir Sahib — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:08:32 +0000

A while ago, I attempted to start using Ubuntu, but failed to install it on an old gateway laptop that didn’t have any linux drivers for audio, visual and wifi devices. Or at least I couldn’t find any online for the laptop. Due to the failure in getting it to work, I stopped my Ubuntu journey. I wasn’t ready for it. Skip forward a year later and I found myself installing Ubuntu 10.04 on my newer HP laptop. Installation was a breeze and everything worked out of the box except for some issues with double fingers on the touchpad and the right/left click ares on it. I was impressed. Wifi, bluetooth, sound, video, and pretty much everything worked instantly with Ubuntu.

As soon as I started to use it for a few hours, I noticed they took a some of their UI from Apple’s OS X and Windows. It’s the best from both OSs combined into one. Workspaces is cool. I’ve never experienced that working on Windows. I find that very useful when multitasking. I also like the way alt-tab works when switching from one item to another.

The best part of it all is developing with Ubuntu, which is the main reason I switched. I was having a hard time dealing with Windows and developing with Ruby on Rails. On Ubuntu it was extremely fast for obvious reasons. I haven’t tried developing in PHP or Java yet, but will soon.

Bomb proof Wallpaper

Amir Sahib — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:54:00 +0000

Wow.

ShoutReel

Amir Sahib — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:20:36 +0000

My friends and I have been building this basic app called ShoutReel. The idea is basically taking the forum and making it simpler. An easier way to explain it is Twitter is micro blogging while ShoutReel is micro forums.

Check it out here. Of course it’s still basic and still in beta or pre-beta. Let me know what you guys think.

The Future of the Mouse and Keyboard? – 10/GUI

Amir Sahib — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:56:32 +0000

Looks very interesting. The only way to truly see it’s benefit is to actually use it. Will wait for testing it out before commenting on it.

Here is their website.

Piano Stairs, Deep Garbage Bin – The Fun Theory

Amir Sahib — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:33:16 +0000

Interesting and fun idea.

Here is another one:

PhoneGap

Amir Sahib — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:44:29 +0000

Anyone use this before?

Looks interesting. Planning on trying it out soon.