A screenshot from my fully working OSX. Bought OSX 10.6.3 Snow Leopard DVD from Apple store for CAD$35 and installed it on my intel based system.

System specs:

• Intel Xeon x3350 at 2.66 GHz
• 4 x 2GB DDR2 800 RAM (using 2x2GB during installation)
• DFI Blood Iron P35 motherboard (an ancient P35 motherboard)
• eVGA Geforce GTX 280

Tools required:

• Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 DVD (CAD$35 at Apple site)
• iBoot (Burned into a CD/DVD)
• Multibeast
• 10.6.6 dmg file
• patience

Software installed so far:

• Firefox 3.6
• VLC
• Adobe reader

I followed tonymacx86 guide for installing OSX Snow Leopard on an Intel based PC thoroughly and the only thing that I did different was that I used ‘-x PCIRootUID=1‘ instead of just ‘-x‘ when installing OSX. After successfully installed OSX, the next step would be to upgrade it to 10.6.6 which was a breeze. Still hard to believe how easy it was to install apps and update in OSX compare to Windows. Installing audio and video driver were also a breeze except I had to do a lot of reading on their forum before hand to make sure I installed the correct one using Multibeast.

It’s only fitting this hackintosh named as Saber Alter because my windows 7 PC was named Saber so now I can dual-boot windows 7 and OS X Snow Leopard ^^.

If anyone has any questions regarding hackintosh, feel free to ask and I will try to answer them.

Image via Gelbooru

As an otaku, our biggest enemy that drills a big hole on our wallet from time to time is impulse buying + countless SAFS (Suddenly Acquired FigureS). I believe it has happened to us all especially during otaku related events, for example, anime conventions, a place where price is no longer an issue as I would call it ^^. We all are drooling over those anime merchandise and figures.

Now, since my passion is not only for anime/figures/anything related but also for computers/gadgets, you all can imagine how often I was left broke at the end of the month. Not to mention, technology expands and evolves exponentially so new stuffs just keep coming out ^^;.

Last week, I succumbed to temptation and purchased a sub notebook, Lenovo Ideapad S10, from my regular etailer, NCIX.com. I know that I had been wanting to get a small notebook along the line of Asus EEEPC, MSI wind, Acer Aspire, etc for a long time since I bought one for my dad’s bday present but I always thought I would get it some other time and try to save $$$. The evil NCIX (yes , they are evil for making me spend $$$ >.> ) decided to have an approx. 25% discount on Lenovo Ideapad S10 and also big thanks to my evil friend for telling about the promotion ^^;;.

Being cheap on the shipping part, I chose the cheapest possible for shipping with UPS ($10). My ideapad was shipped on Monday and arrived on Friday afternoon. Not bad for a cheap shipping, I thought. After I got home from work, I opened it right away and completely absorbed with my new toy. I feel like a little kid who just got a new toy and totally ignored everything else ( I delayed my dinner to test out my new sub notebook). The box is 30cm x 32cm and I was guessing that it’s as big as normal motherboard box.

The specifications are as the following:

From the front, Ideapad looks pretty small and thin and it’s definitely easy to carry around which makes this notebook perfect for travelling.

On the left side, there are 1 vga connector, 4in1 media reader, 1xUSB and power.

While on the right side, there are audio and mic jack, 1xUSB and LAN port. The PCI express card slot is located right beside the headphone jack. One of the biggest advantage of this sub notebook is the Express Card slot. It can accept FireWire 800 (1394B), Serial ATA external disk drives, Solid-state drives, Wireless network interface cards, TV tuner cards, soundcards, additional memory and memory card readers so it gives the user more jacks basically.

The bottom part can be opened so you can replace the HDD or add more RAM to it. I upgraded mine to 2gb RAM since RAMs are so cheap these days. The RAM installation was pretty straight forward and I followed this guide here and anyone can easily do it so there is no need to bring it to your local computer store.

Since sub notebook is generally small and compact, I am having a tough time with the keyboard. Having big fingers does not help either ^^;. It takes sometimes to get used to it. My biggest peeves were the small left shift button and backspace where I kept pressing Fn key and + key instead.

Lenove Ideapad s10 comes with installed windows XP home SP3 and there is no recovery disk for this laptop. The recovery files are in the HDD itself. Boot time is reasonably fast and it takes approx. around 25-30 seconds from pressing the power button to Start screen.

One thing that I was really eager to try is to watch 720p resolution anime and see if it’s lagging or not. Firstly, I played Tales of Abyss episode 26 subbed by Abyssal Chronicles. The sound and picture didn’t synchronize with each other.

Then I tried Mahou Tsukai ni taisetsuna no koto : Natsu no Sora episode 12 with 720p resolution and I didn’t get any lags and the sound and picture synch perfectly. After couple google searches and asking a friend, it seemed that it depends a lot on what kind of codec/media player is used to play the movie. I used windows media player classic to play both movies. I think we all agree that playing 1080p is pretty much out of the question.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with this sub notebook and there are only two things that I would consider as the weaknesses. First, it’s the battery life. Since it’s only a 3-cell, the life time is obviously not as long as 6-cell. This issue is easily fixable if you are willing to fork out more $$$ and grab a 9-cell battery from ebay.

Secondly, it’s the lack of more USB ports. Having only two USB ports is not enough ( I don’t think so at least ) but having the ExpressCard slot somewhat makes up for it.

There are many other reviews out there and some of them are as below:

• Notebookreview.com
• Cnet.com
• Laptopmag.com
• Pcworld.com

Image via Gelbooru

I started this new project to build another PC specifically used for storage/data only (Anime episodes, Mp3s, images, web development , etc) back on last October 2008 when one of my HDDs was crapping out ie dying. Since I have no way to recover my data if the HDDs fail, I went for Hardware RAID solution which is something I have never done before. For those who don’t know, aside from being an otaku, I am pretty much a PC Hardware geek.

Image via Moe Imouto

My figure expenses certainly were cut back severely in order to afford my file server. In addition to having $$$, I had to do a lot of research here and there which is why it took couple months before I finished my build. Not to mention, on December 2008, I went on spending spree with figures and Christmas gifts so this project was hold off.

Image via Gelbooru

Since I have a lot of spare parts due to yearly upgrade, I managed to minimize the cost. I already have a 600w PSU,  motherboard, Intel E4300 Dual Core processor, 1 gig of RAM and DVD-rom which is about to die anytime soon ^^.

Image via Gelbooru

The only parts left are HDDs and a RAID card and those are the costly ones. Not to mention, there are so many RAID cards out there with different features and functionality but my pick finally went to Areca 1220. As for HDDs, I chose Seagate 1TB HDDs x 6. The raid card cost me about 12 figures approximately and the HDD was about 2.5 figures each so you guys do the math ^^;;.

Image via Gelbooru

As for the RAID itself, I went for Raid 6 (striped disks with dual parity). Using this setup, I can recover from the lost of 2 HDDs which is a very rare to happen. Total storage for RAID 6 with 6 HDDs is (6 – 2) X 1TB = 4TB which is plenty and will last me for a while (hopefully).

As for more important data like my photos, web development stuff and mp3s, I have another back up on an external 500gb HDD.

I spent my last weekend getting my file server up and running. Len-Vesper suggested me to use FreeBSD as the OS but I don’t have time to wait for another month and so learning FreeBSD. I took a shortcut and used Windows Vista ^^;;. Since I only use it to store data, I figured vista is good enough. I really need to learn linux :S

Image via Gelbooru

Full system specs:

• OCZ ModStream 600W PSU
• DFI Dark Infinity LGA 775 Motherboard
• 1 Gig of RAM
• E4300 Dual Core Processor
• 1 x 120 GB Seagate HDD for OS
• 6 x 1 TB Seagate HDD running on RAID 6 (4 TB total)
• Areca 1220 Raid Card
• Name: Monoceros-Server
• Windows Vista Ultimate x64

Image via Gelbooru

Overall, it’s a good learning experience to do something that I had never done before and the next step is probably to use FreeBSD or Ubuntu as my next OS. Thanks for reading and hope you guys enjoy the pictures ^^.

]]> http://www.sakuafk.com/2009/02/09/my-new-persocom/feed/ 4 http://www.sakuafk.com/2009/02/01/project-aiko-when-science-meets-beauty/ http://www.sakuafk.com/2009/02/01/project-aiko-when-science-meets-beauty/#comments Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:57:06 +0000 Saku http://www.sakuafk.com/?p=2619

Image via projectaiko.com

Having Chii (Chobits) as your companion/lover may not be too far ahead as one man named Le Trung, a fellow Canadian living in Ontario, tries to fulfill his childhood dream by making a life size gynoid ( robot that looks like a human female). Le was greatly inspired and motivated after watching Chobits so on August 15, 2007, Project Aiko is officially started. Big thanks for my fellow ffxi gamer, Jackie, who told me about this.

He named the gynoid , Aiko (愛子) , which means “beloved one” in Japanese. Aiko will be used for simple tasks such as cleaning, cooking, making coffee / tea or even companions for the elders. His work has become apparent after quite a few public appearance since he started this project. He even made it to CNN recently.

Aiko also made her first U.S. appearance at  New York Anime Festival 2008. For fellow otakus who went there, you might catch a glimpse of Aiko while you were there.

For those who wonder what Aiko’s measurements, here it goes: Height 5 ft Bust: 32” Waist: 23” Hip: 33” and Aiko gains weight every month but her figure stays the same… nice eh ? ^^ .

Image via projectaiko.com

If you want to know more about Aiko, please visit her official website : www.projectaiko.com.

My parents got me a new 24″ LCD Monitor for my bday back in October and it’s a BenQ V2400W. The nice thing about this LCD monitor is that it has a HDMI input and 2 DVI inputs which means, I can connect my ps3 to this monitor. My experience so far has been really great and so happy with this monitor ^^. More pictures under the cut ^^.

There are still some plastic covers on the back that I haven’t taken them off yet ^^;;

2 DVI inputs and 1 HDMI which connected to my ps3 so I can just switch input around between my pc and my ps3. Since it has a max of 1920x 1200 resolution, I can play games at 1080p if the games are capable of it.

Me playing Eternal Sonata at 720p resolution

I sold my 19″ monitor(the left one) in my previous setup. It had served me well for almost 2 years ^^.