Categories
Guides Other Reviews

Toyota Prius: something you don’t want above 50 KM/h

The Prius is a green, environment friendly, small car. Because you can use electricity under 50 KM/h, you can save a lot of money. But what if you must travel 500 KM to your best friend needing help?

You could drive that easily, according to Toyota with gasoline. And that’s where the trouble begins, because you aren’t going to use electricity on the freeway (usually 100 KM/h+).  And you may think you are ‘driving green’, but the gasoline consumption is very high, and so is the Co2 emission.  The manufacturer only lists the gasoline consumption on their website without the electricity installation, which makes no sense at all.

Toyota, and several other manufactures of electric-hybrid cars (take the Opel Insignia for example), are not so green if they aren’t driving in a city. This is known for a longer time, and why are several governments still giving bonuses on the cars (Netherlands, Germany)? The answer is simple: the government trusts the fake information given by the manufacturers. But why are they still believing it after all the criticism?

That isn’t known, and it may be true that oil companies bribe car manufacturers to make cars non-efficient.

 

Categories
Linux Other OS Reviews Software Ubuntu Windows

Ubuntu1 – Useful for multiboot – Less for Windows

Ubuntu One, a cloud service by Canonical which servers you 5GB free ‘cloud’ storage. This isn’t very new, but Ubuntu One can be used on almost any OS, such as Mac OS, Linux/Ubuntu, Windows, Android and i-Devices (iPod, iPhone etc.). Very straightforward, and the server speeds are pretty high, and it’s a useful way to (automatically) sync your files.

Even though the advertising is great, the website works great, but the sync-daemon for Windows is pretty unstable. Sometimes it uploads files, sometimes it doesn’t (at the time of writing).  This was the first thing I noticed on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 Pro.

Ubuntu One works like a charm, and supports any operating system. 5GB doesn’t look much, but they have a pretty nice referral program for extra storage. Of course, the version for Android and Ubuntu work great. I didn’t tested the Mac OS X version, but I hope it doesn’t fail like the Windows version. It’s pretty nice when you realize this was once upon a time some small scale project (Ubuntu) and grew just like Apple or Microsoft. Combine it with some Wine and you will have a pretty OS with many, many options.

Ubuntu One in Windows
Ubuntu One in Windows

 

Most people think that 5GB is worthless and too low. Well that’s true if you synchronize your Documents folder. But even when you want it free, use the referral program. Or pay just $3/month. It’s worth it — let’s hope they’ll develop the Windows version to something more stable.

Well, it’s plain and simple and anyone should be able to use it. Because that’s their goal eventually: ease of use and free to anyone.

Also check out the new Thunderbird integration for Ubuntu One included in the lastest versions. It automatically uploads attachments that are above the file limit for your mail server.

Categories
Bitcoin Litecoin

Litecoin: The new Bitcoin?

I just checked the price for 250 LTC, which is worth 1.65 BTC. Wait… what?! Just in one week, the price of 250 LTC went to ~0.90BTC to.. well… 1.65BTC. Which is a huge price increase. I think this is caused by the Bitcoin block reward, which is going from 50 BTC to 25 BTC, and people searching alternatives. The huge difference though, is that Bitcoin uses the GPU for mining. Litecoin uses the processing power of the CPU (there are programs like Reaper that use the GPU for mining Litecoins, though. But it is very instable on many cards at the moment.). I don’t recommend buying Litecoins, though. This is because it isn’t sure if the price is going to rise any more or not.

So, this is was a good week for Litecoin, and the (Litecoin) community. Well, this was all for today, because I have a tight schedule (work+a study).

~ Until next time!

Categories
Marlon.ws Other Updates and Backups

Planned maintenance on server #2

I’m very busy with server #2, which needs updating and upgrading. This means that some sections of the site may not work correctly or not work at all(such as the search engine). The maintenance is set for 10:00 AM to 5:59 PM (GMT +1 Amsterdam).

This is only a notice, and yes, I’m reviewing Ubuntu One. Have a nice Sunday, and don’t forget your hardware on the street.

 

Update: Back online. Some server hiccups may occur.

Update 10 Oct.: Server crashed completely. No money for repairs (broken hard disk). This means the search engine will be dead for a long period.

Categories
Linux Other OS Reviews Software Updates and Backups Windows

Ubuntu One – Just another cloud?

Open Field - Clouds

Ubuntu One, or just Ubuntu1, is a cloud storage with 5GB of storage. Sounds familiar? Yes, that was my first thought too. And 5GB isn’t very much nowadays. It seems that you get 20GB extra for 3$/month, which isn’t expensive. A small quote from the homepage:

Sync & 5GB storage free

Keep your content safe, access it anywhere, and share it with friends, family and colleagues. You can also earn up to 20GB extra free cloud storage by inviting family and friends with the Ubuntu One referrals program.

After some few clicks, the supported OSs are Linux/Ubuntu, Windows, Android and iPad/iPhone. It comes with an application that has the support to automatically synchronize files, and has low memory usage. But what does it make unique across cloud services like SkyDrive and Google Drive?

This is something  that got me in this week, so stay tuned for a review!

 

 

Categories
Software Windows

[Windows 8] Build-in VHD boot support?

It seems that ever since Windows Vista that VHD booting is supported natively, but in Windows 8, it seems when an item named in the BCD storage starting with [VHD] (including the square brackets), the icon is different as well: inside the “window” icon, the letters VHD are inside.

 

That concludes that Microsoft wants to go more to virtual workspaces. I did not find it on Google, so I’ll just went up posting it here as a reference.

Categories
Guides Other

10 steps to… get depressed

Here is my own list of ways how to get depressed fast. (I’m not really responsible for the things you do with it — just posted for fun)

  1. Never say ‘good morning’ and/or ‘hi’ when you go to work, do not smile and just do your job
  2. Stay alone all day, reading books and other boring stuff
  3. Play video games like Yume Nikki every day
  4. Listen to music which represent dramatic events and then think about it. For example: “I don’t like Mondays” by the Boomtown Rats. Listen this every Monday. You can also listen to Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 every Sunday.
  5. Stay focused and don’t bother other things
  6. Lock yourself up in a room
  7. Waste your money on eBay for depressing wallpapers. They cost around $0.02
  8. Do things slowly at work. “Non-Efficient”
  9. Make people pissed by the way you’re behaving. Answer like a creep. “You didn’t do anything today!”, “Yeah, okay, see you tomorrow”
  10. Only buy black stuff. Black mobile phone, black laptop, black suitcase, black wig, black clothes.
  11. Read my blog everyday.

I actually laughed while reading this, but you shouldn’t take things too serious.

If you’re offended, please click on About to send some e-mail. You will get a reply ASAP with pictures of happy cats.

Categories
Reviews Software

Review: Moonbase Alpha, a million dollar trolling nest?

Well, this game by NASA draw my attention yesterday, finding this video which demonstrates the  TTS(Text-to-Speech) feature in this sort of educational game. It seems there is many “aeiou” and “john madden” involved, but the goal remains unknown after you see that video.

After this video, I downloaded this “Moonbase Alpha”  and it was only available via Steam, which is a gaming marketplace, like Games for Windows Live. So, I installed Steam, the game, and launched the game. I selected a server, and quickly after I joined, I was immediately called “ghey nigar”. Funny, the TTS engine says it the ‘correct’ way, while typing “nigger” results in “******”. It was a huge mess in the chat box and decided to turn my sound off. It seems that the goal is to maintain the moon base, and keep enough oxygen running. But the teamplay in most rooms is like 0%, and most people download it for the TTS. Well, it’s fine, but this game was expensive, and it doesn’t seem to have support anymore. A million dollar trolling place.

But oh well, the security against hacks is zero, and with hacks for example, you can fly all around. I laughed when I saw the earth was flat in the game and never rotating.

The only thing well made about this game are the footsteps and the equipment, but the gameplay itself is terrible with all the trolls. But it’s fun if you just join the troll crew and say ‘99999999999999’ and ‘uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu’ all the time.

Categories
Bitcoin Hardware Marlon.ws Software Updates and Backups

Up and running!

Well, here it is. My website is up and running, and not everything is restored. It took a little longer than I expected, and my apologies for my readers.

Here is what happened last week, that caused delay:

–  Tweaked things up in the theme and the CMS

–  This caused my database to go nuts and a reinstall was imminent.

Luckily enough, I had a (local) backup, unlike previous time. Well, I made a backup one week before my old blog crashed out, but it was on the same server, that I couldn’t access anymore. So that went to point 0 after my old hard disk crashed with older backups.

So, I’m going to post anything from gadgets to Bitcoin, and well, I have got myself a new laptop so it will be lots easier to do this time. Well, I have to prepare things, make pages and stuff, so until the next post!

Categories
Marlon.ws

And… we’re back online!

Well, that was a rough ride of downtime and hosting issues. No backups, no old-posts, no nothing after a bug triggering sendmail. And then our host blocked us, and oh well. No reply to e-mails, and wasted server costs… But I hope I get started as soon as possible restoring everything to normal. A fresh start, new theme, new posts, and the good ol’ blogposters. So, let it burn down your mind for a while, and check out the links on the right until everything is back to normal!!

 

See you soon,

~Marlon