Eposide 25 mark the end of Macross Frontier series run. Sure, the show wasn’t as flashy as Macross Zero, the story was so so, and there are lots of better show out there. But, the reason that I love the show so much is because it felt nostalgic. Somehow I felt that the show was made for us, fans of macross series, those who regards Lynn Minmay as a real life pop star, those that bob his/her head to the tune of Firebomber’s Holy Lonely Night and Try Again. There are abundant references to previous macross series. From the songs performed by both of the songtress (“Ai Oboete Imasu Ka?”, “Watashi no Kare Wa Pilot”, etc) from SDF Macross, Ozma Lee’s battle formations that are named based on Macross 7’s Firebomber song titles (“Geki! Ikuzo! Totsugeki Love Heart!”), the appearance of the unmanned Ghost V9 and AIF-7S drones, the Valkyrie slave control mode that use hand gesture similar to Macros Plus’s Isamu, to “Macross Attack” maneuver performed by the Macross Quarter battleship.
Original “Macross Attack”
Macross Quarter “Macross Attack”
One small grieve though… Somehow it felt like a harem anime toward the end 
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“Those with pride in their wings! Press forth alongside me!”
Jeffrey Wilder – Captain of Macross Quarter
Filed under: Go Go Gadget..Stuff!!, IRL, K100D, Pentax, Photography, time out | Tags: lens, limited, pancake, Pentax, prime, SMC DA70
Finally got my hand around this little neat thing.
SMC Pentax-DA 70mm F2.4 Limited
SMC Pentax-DA 70mm F2.4 Limited
Sibling to the DA40 pancake, the lens is pretty small. Built quality, just like the DA40 or any Pentax Limited lens, is superb. The all metal construction felt sturdy, with no wobbly parts that shake or rattle. The focus ring, -the best yet out of all of my autofocus lenses- is a lot better than the DA40 with a dampened feel that together with the Quick-Shift Focus System makes manual focusing a breeze.
Naturally, given it’s focal length, the use of this lens will be portrait photography. Such as these 
ISO800
ISO800
Tack sharp when stopped down.
ISO200, F9.0
ISO 200 F4.5
Photos of the lens were taken using SMC P-FA50
Filed under: *Nix, IRL, Ubuntu | Tags: *Nix, 3D, ati, intel, nvidia, Ubuntu
To put it simply, I’m currently in the market for a new notebook. As this notebook will be the replacement for my current notebook and desktop machine, one thing that it absolutely has to support is 3D Graphic Acceleration on Linux.
Turns out, it’s not a simple as I previously thought. Currently there are three major vendor in notebook graphic solution. Intel on the low range, and Nvidia and ATI on higher end. While Intel support on Linux is amazing, the performance is not something to write home about. Since the notebook will be my main computing machine, I’d like it to have more graphic power behind it’s lid, thus leaving me to choose between Nvidia and ATI.
ATI current lineup, the ATI HD4xxx series performs quite well. Sadly, it’s not the case with ATI linux driver. Yes, there were major leap in term of support from ATI, with them providing same day support on Linux driver and opening up their specs. But what’s keeping me from upgrading to Catalyst 8.4 and above (thus keeping me on Gutsy) was the mediocre support on xvideo/texture video. Playback of xvideo flickers, (even showing black screen on some case) whether Compiz is running or not. Even worst, on 8.4, 3D output is garbage, rendering Google Earth unusable. To get xvideo works, I have to resort to using XGL, and making an XGL disabled account for 3D applications, which was now dumped in favor of AIGLX on the ATI’s 8.4 (and above) version of Catalyst.
On the other hand, Nvidia has been praised for the quality of their binary driver. My ideal notebook will be the Benq Joybook S41, which is equipped with Nvidia 8600M GS chip. But the recent development on the faulty Nvidia chip story has me thinking twice.
Let’s hope that Intel next-in-the-line Larrabee graphic chip, is able to compete with ATI and Nvidia, so we won’t have to put up with the lack of choice that we are currently facing, as well as forcing ATI and Nvidia to get their act together, and stop releasing an half ass product for their customer.
As for now, I guess if I really need a new notebook, my best bet will be purchasing an ATI equipped platform, and pray to God that ATI will churn out better driver (or FOSS community comes up with better FOSS driver) sooner or later. Or I’ll just wait for Nvidia 6-month-cycle to phase out their current buggy chip line, and wait for their newer chip to be adopted by notebook manufacturers, plus a couple of more months to wait for the price to come down to be affordable by my pocket
Any suggestion?
Filed under: *Nix, IRL, Ubuntu, life on the wired | Tags: gutsy, Ubuntu, minbar, prayer
Keeping up with the Ramadhan theme, I decided to install Minbar on my Gutsy installation. Minbar is a gnome application for muslim prayer time notification. It was included with the Ubuntu Muslim Edition along with a bunch of other application such as zekr, etc.
The newest version of minbar is already available on ubuntu repositories (mine is Gutsy), so all you have to do to install it is by using apt-get
sudo apt-get install minbar
To manually install, download the ubuntu/debian package here. You can doubleclick the deb file to start automatic installation.. ok that’s not manual install hehe…
After Minbar is installed, test it by typing minbar on a terminal
surfer@M5Mobile:~$ minbar
Next is to add Minbar to your session (more…)
