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  • MSI X340 two weeks later

    Ok, many reviewers have knocked the MSI X340’s keyboard, build quality, reflective screen, and touchpad.  I still have some gripes with the touchpad, it is too sensitive and I have contorted my typing style to avoid touching it while typing.  For those who don’t rest their wrists while they are typing will be fine, unfortunately that eliminates most people who use notebooks on their laps as their wrist are used to keep the notebook from falling off. So for me I have to say that the slim for factor has really made the difference for me.  I can now say I understand what the MacBook Air owners experience with their notebooks.  For me I couldn’t justify the price tag for a MacBook Air but in the light of the recent price cuts, it is ever so more tempting. The Core 2 Solo SU3500 processor coupled with a 2.5” SATA II 320GB hard disk has made the performance very respectable.  For day to day use I have not seen a performance issue and it even beats our my two year old...
    Posted to Alex Parker by alex on 06-15-2009
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  • Sushi Hiro is My Hero

    Finding good sushi in London is more of a challenge than I expected. (Finding good food in London is more of a challenge than I expected.) Overall I've been disappointed with Japanese food in London because I can't find soba noodles in dashi and it's difficult to find udon or ramen. Most of the sushi places I've encountered don't have specialty fish or cuts such as aji or ingawa or oh-toro. Also, you can forget getting things like maguro nato with a raw quail egg on top. When it comes to sushi, most of the time it's overpriced and not always made by Japanese chefs. While neither are high quality, I find myself going to Wasabi and Itsu out of convenience. However the truth is I have some kind of moral problem with the amount of plastic wrap and garbage I produce when I eat at Wasabi. I also have a hard time with mass produced sushi because of my worry about overfishing tuna. Tuna fishing is one of my favorite hobbies when I'm in the US and even recreational fishing...
    Posted to American Bloke by American Bloke on 06-10-2009
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  • The mission to find the best burritos in London - Take 1

    For the past 15 months of my life I've been moaning and groaning about not being able to get decent Mexican food in London. Where was my Chipotle ? Where was the El Torito ? I wasn't asking for much! These are just chains for God's sake. It's not like I was looking for amazing mole or carne asada from the hole in the wall Mexicans joints the line many of the streets in the US serving up the best Mexican around. Where was even a decent plate of nachos? For the most part, getting nachos in London is like ordering a big bowl of soggy Doritos covered in sweet chutney-like salsa, horrible cheese, and cover with tons of sour cream. I just couldn't get it. Making decent nachos isn't rocket science but to the English maybe it is. I've tried Chiquito in Leicester Square in my desperation for a good burrito on Cinco de Mayo. Maybe I should have know the place would be horrible because of it's tourist trap location. Maybe I should have known when the waiter didn't...
    Posted to American Bloke by American Bloke on 06-08-2009
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  • Disappointed in a "promotion" of sorts

    So like I said my first post is about office politics and not about the food and drink I plan to mainly focus on. In this cause, however, I just simply need to vent. I've been for all intents and purposes promoted at work today. Apparently it was decided last Thursday but I only found out today. Instead of being overjoyed, I'm frankly disappointed, nervous, and down right frustrated. Now I don't mean to be a whiner about something good happening to me but I think maybe this will shed some light on the situation: I work in IT on a agile project. We employ a development approach called Scrum and until this point I've been a Java lead. I was pretty proud of that fact since I've only really been doing Java development for the past 9 months. All my prior work experience was in C# to that point and, while they are similar, I was picked out of a lot of talented Java developers with many years of experience. I think that there are many reasons I got selected as a Java lead,...
    Posted to American Bloke by American Bloke on 06-08-2009
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  • Introduction to my blog and to me (kind of)

    So after a long hiatus from the blog world, I decided to start blogging again. I had moved to London from New York and so much of what I saw intrigued me. Some pissed me off, some made me laugh, and much of it just didn't compute. In many ways, despite the fact that we spoke the same language, there was a massive divide in communication between many of the people who lived here and me. I felt a need to chronicle my thoughts and experiences and so I asked Tim if he would be so kind as to host a blog for me on /*. Seemed like there is no better place for my comments than a place named /*. So about 15 months after the fact, I'm finally posting my first entry. First, why it too me so long to write my first post is a long story. Let's just say last year was one of the most bizarre years of my life. Maybe I'll have time for the sob story later but to cut the the chase in many ways I'm happy I had some time to absorb London before writing anything. While it would have been...
    Posted to American Bloke by American Bloke on 06-08-2009
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  • Anti-Glare Screens / Screen Protectors

    As I mentioned in my previous posting about the MSI X340 the screen is highly reflective, so much so that you will never use it in an outdoor environment. With that said, I have been using a screen protector for my Toshiba M400.  Now on the M400 the screen protector is a little annoying since it does cut some of the brightness, but this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem on the X340, even at the lowest brightness setting. I will post a picture of my screen installation later but for now I just ordered a screen that is slightly larger in length and width of the X340’s screen and I trimmed the protector to fit.  Now I can see the screen with a bright background and reflection isn’t as distracting… When you order the screen you should find one that is 1/4 inch wider/longer that the visible portion of the screen.  The screen protector is attached using low-tack double sided tape.  In any case wander over to www.strongengineering.com to take a look. -Alex
    Posted to Alex Parker by alex on 06-04-2009
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  • MSI X340 Touchpad Driver

    One of the most talked about things on the MSI forums is the lack of drivers for the Sentelic touchpad.  Someone even went to the extreme of replacing the touchpad with the Synaptics equivalent.  The main issues with the Sentelic touchpad are: MSI doesn’t provide drivers Sentelic cannot use the familiar scroll to the left and right like the Synaptics touchpad, instead it just uses a prolonged click gesture to scroll up and down, which is not the same experience as sliding your finger up and down. Multi-touch is the future, why don’t you include a multi-touchpad? In any case the MSI X340 uses the Sentelic touchpad.  As you can see from the MSI driver download site , the drivers are missing.  So what are we to do?  Google is your friend here …I think I downloaded the file from one of the links on this forum post . The driver works just fine under Windows 7 RC (7100).  Also you might want to download the System Control Manager from the MSI driver site. 
    Posted to Alex Parker by alex on 06-02-2009
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  • MSI x340

    The MacBook Air and the Lenovo x301 have really put ultra-thin notebooks in the lime light.  Unfortunately due to the price and the economic climate, the new media favorite are the low cost/light weight/and long life netbooks. (Netbooks typically have a low powered processor, have a 10” screen or smaller, 1GB to 2GB of RAM, No Optical Drive and cost less than $500) MSI has broken the trend of both netbooks and ultra expensive ultra-thin notebooks with their X series.  ( X320 , X340 , X600 ) Both the X320 and the X340 share the same thin chassis similar in size and weight to the MacBook Air, except that the X320 uses a netbook class processor and the X340 is using a Core 2 Solo 1.4GHz processor.  The X600 is a 15.6” ultra-thin notebook. Laptop Magazine has a MacBook Air vs. X340 comparison article.  They also did a very nice review of the X340. For me the most important characteristics for a new notebook was (1) Size and (2) Multimedia (HD) capability.  I have other...
    Posted to Alex Parker by alex on 05-29-2009
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  • Weekend Reading #5

    It's a big one today as I'm still getting caught up on a backlog from my treatment weeks. General/Business: The Wisdom of Crowds and the Importance of Diversity Parenting Advice Needed (an interesting story about incentive systems) Writing Decisions: Anticipating readers' objections Forget the Fail Whale: Twitter Jumps the Shark Customer Development: The definitive resource Leaving Amazon: What I learned over the last four years Getting PR coverage - Identifying blogs Venture Hacks - What is the minimum viable product? 7 Reasons CEOs Fail Startup: Has Your Startup Hit a Dead End? Dead-End? Spin-off a derivative business Don't Launch Don't Launch? But the New York Times is on the phone! How to build companies that matter Advice on Equity Entrepreneur's Report by Brad Feld   Analytics for Startups: What should I track?   Pivoting: Yogi Berra wisdom for startups   Firefox is missing the point (Seth Godin on why users recommend something) Startups: Overnight...
    Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled by Tim on 04-24-2009
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  • TIVO HD issues on Verizon FIOS - Resolved

    After getting FIOS for my Internet and TV, I have nothing to say nothing but good things.  There was big issue issue with pixilation.  Since I used to have DirectTV I was used to some pixilation due to a storm, or something flying in front of the dish, but for FIOS, this was an un welcome problem. It took me a little time to speak to an support representative to get someone to come out and take a look.  But when the technician was out what he told me was interesting.  Verizon was pushing too much signal through the wires in my house.  I previously had ComCast internet and we had to run a direct homerun cable to the point on entry so that I had enough signal for a reasonable connection.  Go figure. In any case the tech installed an 6db attenuator on both my TIVO boxes and HD is not giving me any more issues.
    Posted to Alex Parker by alex on 04-22-2009
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