Trevin Chow

My space is moving :)

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 04:38:05 GMT

My mirror of my blog is no longer kept here, but instead at http://trevinchow.spaces.live.com. Long story, don't ask :)

This shouldn't be affecting any of you since you should be subscribed to my new RSS feed and already got my new messenger request to add you to my buddy list for my new Live ID.

My portfolio is growing!

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 23:03:49 GMT

I’m nearly finished my customization of my photo portofolio and uploading a whack of images. I was previously using Flickr, but it didn’t give me a good way to sell my photos directly to people without having some wonky experience where the buyer would be kicked out to a third party website. Additionally, I couldn’t customize my page as much as I could with Smugmug so I could never achieve a really unique look and store-front.

The last 2 months have been filled with

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Instacalc Vista Sidebar gadget

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:33:43 GMT

I just noticed that the guy behind InstaCalc recently released a Vista
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6 hour outage?

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:08:05 GMT

You gotta love it when:

your blog server has a failure causing a complete outage
your webhosting company fixing it but coupling t
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Twitter. Why the hype?

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 01:35:41 GMT

Twitter launched over a year ago and has over 50,000 subscribers. I’ve signed up, tried it and discarded it along with dozens of other “web 2.0″ ideas that have sprung up in the last few years. To me, it didn’t provide any value that I didn’t already derive from IM, email, SMS and Dodgeball. I don’t have many connections on Dodgeball, but continue to check in on a semi-frquent basis because it has proved useful to know where hot spots for the

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It really leans!

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 02:49:47 GMT

It suffices to say that I thought Pisa was a dump when Colene and I went there on a day trip from Florence. A quick 1 hour train ride and we walked through one of the most pitiful cities on our
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B.C. goes green

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:42:12 GMT

It’s stuff like this that makes me proud to be both Canadian and from British Columbia.

The premier of British Columbia wanted to bring coal-burning plants and offshore oil rigs to this lush province, so environmental groups were ready for a fight as he prepared his government’s annual policy speech last month.

They were stunned when Premier Gordon Campbell delivered a list of green promise

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My next 10 movies

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:36:46 GMT

I’m a total modern movie nut so am frequently on Apple’s movie trailer site instead of sleeping at night.

Here’s a list of 10 movies that I want to see this year:

The Invisible – could be an exciting ride down a fairly typical storyline.
Slow Burn – Ray Liotta. ‘Nuff said.
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Answers that help you avoid relationship conflict

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:16:57 GMT

Fresh off the press from my pal Tony, on how to answer questions from your significant other:

“Without question.” - In response to, “Am I prettier than her?”
“No.”</s
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Chicago Hershey's store

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:16:33 GMT

I was in Chicago this past new year’s and did the obligatory walk down Michigan avenue. This street is a people watchers dream — all hours of the day the street is bustling with people of all ages and genders. The Chicago Hershey’s Store is a very popular tourist attraction and was just freaki

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Pearl Jam

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 01:32:34 GMT

Here’s a shot from a Pearl Jam concert when I was in Prague last September that I took hand-held with my
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I'm an Uncle!

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:46:53 GMT

I’m an uncle for the second time! My si

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Nightfall in Vernazza

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:29:17 GMT

I took this shot while traveling through the town of Vernazza in Cinque Terre, Italy. Since I was backpacking, I was really travel weight conscious so I took along the lightest tripod I had. This turned out to be a huge mistake. It was so flimsy that I had a ton of trouble c

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Admiral 1.1.1 released

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:09:47 GMT

The Mexircus.com guys just notified me that Admiral 1.1.1 was released. I discovered this neat app while I was previously hunting for a way to replicate the Mac Expose feature on Windows XP, and I’ve been using it read full story of "Admiral 1.1.1 released"»

Vista speech recognition

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 00:18:45 GMT

Prior to seeing this video, I thought Vista speech recognition was pretty good. Admittedly I didn’t use it for very long, but this user apparantly tried creating a perl sc

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The road soon to be frequently traveled

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:31:01 GMT

Over the holidays, one of the 2007 goals I set for myself was to complete the Seattle-to-Portland (STP) bike ride this summer over the July 14th weekend.

Last sunday, I took one step closer in my quest to complete this seemingly impossible task. I get tired driving 200 miles, and now I’m thinking of biking it?!

My training started the second week of January with spinning classes at my gym to increase my aerobic fitness level and to see if I liked biking enough to actually complete STP this year. It was far cheaper to buy a 10-class punch card for spinning classes than to buy a bike just to decide I hated biking :) Besides, I think I’m a glutton for punishment with all my coworkers ridiculing me due to the padded spandex shorts.

After deciding I liked biking enough, I started on a quest for researching road bikes. I’m usually a research nut when it comes to PCs and gadgets, but road bikes were a completely new world to me. What made it worse is that there wasn’t a ton of online references, so I had to resort to asking friends and visiting bike shops in person to understand

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ReadyBoost on a Sony Vaio SZ notebook

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 02:14:24 GMT

Recently, I was researching trying to find the best option for adding flash memory to my Sony VAIO VGN-SZ381p notebook to take advantage of the Vista ReadyBoost feature.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any good information on which flash memory options were best for the Sony SZ. With flash memory being so cheap these days, it’s conceivable to get a 2GB USB or SD card for ~$40 and ideally leave it in my notebook fulltime.

According to the ReadyBoost information, you need flash memory that has at least 2.5 MB/sec for 4kb random reads and 1.75 MB/sec for 512kb random writes.

The Sony SZ series notebook have a few different options for connection flash memory.

First it has the conventional USB 2.0 ports so you can use simple USB keys. I don’t like this option since all USB keys would potrude from my laptop forcing me to remove it every time I shut it it down.

Second connection option is through the ExpressCard slot through a 5-in-1 memory card adaptor which supports Memory stick, Memory stick Pro, SD, xD and MMC.

The third option is through a dedicated Memory Stick DUO port on the left side of the notebook.

To do my tests, I used the built in Vista tool winsat which can be run from the command-line as follows:

Read speed:

winsat disk –read –ran –ransize 4096 –drive <drive_letter>

Write speed:

winsat disk –write –ran –ransize 524288 –drive <drive

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Would you eat a dog if your life depended on it?

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 20:59:40 GMT

Or more accurately, would you eat your girlfriend’s dog if your life read full story of "Would you eat a dog if your life depended on it?"»

Bread making experiments

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 14:17:16 GMT

A few months ago I was obsessed with the idea of making my own bread and waking up to the smell of freshly baked goodness. I started researching the snot out of bread making options and settled on the crowd favorite, a Panasonic YP-250. Thanks to the Amazon Prime program (for which I still haven’t been charged yet after 1.5 years), the bread maker was waiting on my door step 2 days later.

I didn’t make any b

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Donate to charities by using Messenger

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 02:01:16 GMT

Microsoft and the Windows Live Messenger team are doing something very cool to help us all donate money to charity in a very easy, low impact way.

Donate money to charities by simply using Windows Live Messenger!

All you have to do is add a special emoticon tag to your “display name” in Messenger and from then on, Microsoft will donate a portion of the ad revenue generated by your usage of Windows Live Messenger.

You can choose from only from 9 different charities, but the charities they chose cover such a broad spectrum that I’d be surprised if everyone couldn’t find at least one that stands out to them.

What do you need to do?

Download and install
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Custom List: My blog has moved!

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:31:29 GMT

My blog has moved!

http://trevinchow.com/blog
I have moved over to a new self-hosted blog. Come check it out!

Custom List: Me...

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 21:30:06 GMT

Me...

Custom List: Buy me something!

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 08:17:27 GMT

Buy me something!

My wishlist

Custom List: Muzak

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:42:47 GMT

Muzak

Fugees
Ready or Not
Death Cab For Cutie
Title and Registration
Fray
How to save a life
Jay-Z
The City is Mine
Mandalay
Not seventeen
Minnie Driver
Hungry Heart
Guster
Satellite
Nirvana
Lithium
SIA
Breathe Me (Mylo Mix)
Seether
Fade Away
Snow Patrol
Run
Total
Can't you see

Custom List: Subscriptions

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:56:25 GMT

Subscriptions

Feedburner
Feedburner feed
Bloglines
Subscribe in Bloglines
MSN Alerts
Subscribe via email, SMS, and IM
Desktop Reader
Subscribe in RSS Bandit, FeedDemon, etc
RSS Feed
Direct link to my RSS feed

Book List: Book List

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 07:37:25 GMT

Custom List: Popular blog posts

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 07:14:02 GMT

Blog list: Blog roll

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 05:36:04 GMT

Blog roll

Engadget
one of my fav tech blogs
Tony
the tangmaster. nuff said.
Windows Live ID
Our team blog
Brandon
ski guru and smartass
Matt
chef jonesy
Dare
we intern'd together in 2001!
Colene
my sis
Cem
gator land native
Sanaz
live.com lead pm
Craig
best friend, former microsoftie
Greg
my secret santa

Custom List: Wishlist

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:27:26 GMT

Wishlist

Motorola Q
Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
Canon 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM
A new laptop.. not sure which one yet but it has to have 12"+ screen, <4lbs and more than 3 hrs battery life.
Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 Pro
Got em the other day!