Cheapest way to upgrade your laptop -- using USB!

I'm using an aging T41 IBM ThinkPad for work, I don't mind working with this dinosaur since it has proven to be robust enough to sustain my daily battering.

Since Windows is popular for crashing every once in a while, the T41 Leveno system installed make sure that Windows will not be corrupted. It just freezes everything and with just a reboot will bring back it to life -- even Windows doesn't seem to know it had crashed either thus it wont run all those recovery utilities that makes a simple crash worser.

But since this is a dino-laptop, finding peripherals for it are hard. That's where the USB devices comes in handy.

Disk space is one of my major concern, I use much of it for development especially when working with C# server applications so I bought a USB to IDE cable for 400 pesos and plugged-in a normal 80Gig SATA SeaGate HD for desktop.



As a bonus it can also 2.5 (laptop) HD, the only cons is you have to carry around the extra power strip since desktop PC eats up more power that what USB can usually provide -- but its cheap! So cheap that I afford to just buy another HD any day if it gets full or if it crashes. I also found out that you can plug this during boot up so you can install/run another OS into the desktop HD.

Here is a video (kinda blurry) where detects the HD on USD a physical HD with 3 partitions rather than as removable disks.



Here is a screen shot of My Computer window, I'm using Vista Drive Icons for a cooler effect ^_^



As I said, I use up a lot of HD so I still ran out of portable storage most of the time, so I also bought a 1Gig USB MP3 player for emergency cases. This also comes with Voice recorder, Video Player, built-in Radio plus I can play basic hand-held games like Tetris and it only cost 1200 pesos. That beats iPod shuffle by folds -- plus I can add additional 2Gig via it's built-in micro SD slot!



With all these USB drives I quickly ran out of USB ports on my laptop but no worries, I just bought a 4 port USB Hub so I can fit in my USB mouse and bluetooth dongle at the same time and it only cost 150 pesos. There's a cheaper circular orange version which only cost 80 pesos but I fancied the neon yellow color ^_^



So what's next? I'm planning to buy a USB TV tuner (1300 pesos) so I can watch my favorite sport's program whenever I'm stuck at the office and it can also record or output my desktop into a normal TV during office film showing sessions. I can even plug an additional LCD monitor and upgrade my dual desktop into a 3 way view desktop! ^_^

PS: If you want to go this path with your laptop upgrades just visit first CDR-King, they have lot's of cheap USB devices where I also bought most of the stuff I featured here. If you're a USB fanatic like me, just blog it post a link under comments so I can link it with this post.

USB poweeeer! ^_^

iPhones unlocked for Philippines Globe and Smart

It must be the biggest cult phenomenon next to fans X-Files... The iPhone Unlockers Movement.

William Yu posted on his blog his experience in unlocking the iPhone and comparing it to the methods used 2 months ago, it's now purely software base. Visit William's blog It's hip2b2 for pictures and the full method on how to unlock your iPhone.

So what's next? Change the OS of course -- rip Mac OSX (the OS) apart to build a better iPhone!

4 Geeks and A Paradise

"All work and no play makes..." well if you're a workaholic like me then you know how the saying goes.


So Charlie, Rishi, Chris and me, the 4 geeks, took a weekend get away from work to 1 paradise. The nearest of course from Makati is Puerto Galera which is about 3-4 hours away depending on traffic conditions.

We decided to get most of the trip weekend so we packed early at 3:00am from Regenes Hotel where Charlie and Rishi had stayed during their visit here. It was a chilly morning and I had to take a jeepney from my house to the hotel to fetch them. I arrived to wake them up and Charlie struggled to get up from bed. Chris who spent the night also at the hotel was snugged comfortable at the sofa. "Guys we really have to go if we want to be there early as planned", I reminded them. In my mind, waking up early in the morning here is not much of a problem for me but when we were vising at Melbourne I couldn't possibly even get the blankets off me. Not to mention take a shower *shivers*.

After much effort packing while half asleep we got out the hotel and took a cab to MRT Pasay, from there we got into the first bus we spotted going to Batangas port. The bus was half empty, it was Saturday anyway, so each of us took a window seat so we could see the view on the way. It was close to 5am when the bus finally departed Pasay on our way to Batangas port.

The bus trip lasted over 3 hours due to some heavy road construction at SLEX past Alabang, we arrive approximately 8am where we waited an extra 30mins until the boat was ready to depart. Our destination is the White Beach resort which basically recommended by my friends. It has good rooms at the right price, we could have stayed at lavish resort but its not practical since we would be staying for just the night.

The boat trip took around about an hour because of the heavy waves and the boat couldn't dock near there so we ended disembarking on another port about 1km away from the resort.



Finally we arrived at our paradise, and about time too since were so hungry already. After settling into our rooms, we decided to have lunch at a pizza place, Rishi settled for a vegetarian pizza while the rest of us go with as much toppings as we can.

Time for the beach! We'll it took a lot of skill to get into water, the waves were outrageously high so we ended up getting dragged into the sands as you enter the water. By the time you pass the break point, the water becomes really deep and the waves are a feet high above our heads. In the end Charlie and I were the only ones who dared to venture into the waters and we kept going back to the shore to rest because we have to swim against the currents so we wouldn't be dragged by the waves back to the shore or pulled out into the deep parts. Overall it was a fun morning, even just watching Chris and Rishi as they attempt to enter the waters but gets knocked down and dragged by the waves. Hahaha.

Around 3pm we decided to go snorkeling by the reefs. We first explored the shallow ones, it was so shallow that when I jumped into the water my toes hit slightly one of the corrals. Chris was clever to bring some bread with him so I took a few crumbs and started luring the fishes.. wow, were they hungry -- I was virtually surrounded by them and even spotted two 'nemos'! On the second site, Chris and Rishi hired small boats to tow them around the entire stretch of reef while Charlie and I stayed much on the boat watching after being stung too many times by jelly fishes. After about 3 hours, we had enough and the jelly fishes stings are starting to increase anyway.



During dinner time, our resort hostess were kind to cook us anything we wanted which delighted Rishi since he has special requirements for the vegetarian dish he ordered. Charlie got a whole snapper while Chris and I went for Calamaris, it was awesome. Having to eat fresh seafoods is one of the major attraction why we chose to go here.

After dinner we went to a bar where an amateur bikini contest is being held, the contest hosts were making fun of the contestants and even the guest that i laughed so hard till my lungs hurts. Charlie and Rishi, although they couldn't understand much of Tagalog were equally amused by the awkward candidates they had -- which is actually staged to make people laugh.

We went back to the hotel past 1am, but Chris and I were looking for something else to put us fast into sleep and decided to hit the bar near by. Shortly Charlie followed and brought chips and nuts we bought earlier. We had a pitcher of God-knows-what but it was good anyway, we talked mostly of what we do outside of work and recounted the snorkeling experience we had earlier. It was around 3am when we finally had the pitcher hung to dry, on the way back we kept on yelling "here it comes!" as outrageously high waves smashes on to the shore and up to the hotel's front entrance.

By morning, were traveling back to the city -- dead tired. I was so tired that I actually slept till Monday, dreaming of all the wonderful stuff we saw on Paradise.