Sanyo Katanna II Review

With my old phone on its way out, I headed to the store to pick up a new cell phone. I went with the Sanyo Katanna II. Big mistake.

The pros:
The internal display on the phone is absolutely beautiful. The standard for sprint phones looks liek 176x220, and the Katanna II is 240x320, and crystal clear. The external display is more standard, and looks the same as the one on my Sanyo 8100.
While I'm not a big fan of the body of the phone, it's better than a lot of the options today.
The 1.3Mp camera is pretty clear on the display. It would be neat to see how those pictures look on my computer... but... lets get to the cons...

The cons:
The killer, and the reason it's going back, is that while the phone has bluetooth, it does NOT work with my macbook, and I assume won't work with other computers. It's just for sending vCards and using a headset, two things I'm not going to do.
As mentioned, the phone looks a little cheap. The big problem with the body is that the outer 'U' piece of plastic on the front of the phone is not a flat material. It's ridged, and every time I pull it out of my pocket, it has lint stuck to it. Brilliant.
The power port is hidden behind a cheap rubber flap on the side, which makes the phone impossible to talk on while it's charging, and the flap is going to get destroyed in no time.
While I don't want the phone just for music, it is the same price as music phones, and offers no sd card. Internal memory is 20MB, which is fine for photos and apps, but not music.

All in all, a mistake, but one I had to try to realize. I think my next attempt will be a Samsung M510. I'm done with Sanyo for now.

Overclocking The GeForce FX 5700LE

So I'm in sad shape for a gamer, and have been for a while. Back in the day, I spent the cash and got an aweome graphics card: an nVidia Ti4600. I think I spent about $300 on it, and at the time, I could max out the settings on any game I had, and it cut through them like buddah. However, that was a long time ago. That card died, and my uncle sent me his old 6800GT, which was awesome, but eventaully died as well. I've been using a GeForce Fx 5700LE for a while now, and it does the job, but nothing fancy. I pull an aquamark score of about 13800.

So today, I looked at my options. I actually have enough computers with AGP slots that I can invest in another good AGP card, and it would get used enough to justify it, however, I don't have the cash to do that. I could put about $75 into a mid-range card, and use that, but then I'm at the point where I'm blowing money for results that aren't going to be much better than what I have. Lastly...I could overclock.

Guess what I picked.
Here are my results. They've been tested, and found reliable:
5.08%10.5%14.9%18.3%21.3%23.6%

Core(MHz)	Memory(MHz)	Aquamark3	Gain
250	400	13791	Default
250	450	14492
275	450	15237
300	450	15847
325	450	16311
350	450	16728
375	450	16728

3DMark 2003 also showed an increase, a 21.9% gain in score from the cards default config to the last overclock (2028 from 1663). I don't bother testing on the newer benchmarks (3DMark 2004, 2007) since neither my hardware, nor my games are exactly cutting-edge.

In conclusion, I spent about 2 hours, and improved my performance by about 22%. That should keep me happy, hopefully until the next round of iMac's come out, and I talk everyone into giving me one for graduation. 4 cores, and the high-end graphics, people. Chop-chop.

UPDATE: So after about 4 hours of being pushed, the driver bluescreened my system. I've dropped back down to 350/450.

Portable GPS System

Portable GPS System

Amber: Thank god it's a portable GPS system, otherwise I'd be fucked.

Pyramid Hill Bluegrass Concert

Me: I don't even know what the hell bluegrass is, except I think it's like... I dunno. Banjos and shit.

Pat: I think its the music they play when you see hillbillies on TV

Yo-Yo Bob

I met this man in Chicago back when I was in highschool. He is the greatest Yo-Yo master ever to live. If the force were real, and had to do with yoyos instead of... whatever the hell it has to do with, this guy would be the head of the jedi council.

Cop shoots himself

This is the only way to teach kids about guns.

4th of July

Hope everyone had a fun 4th of July. Here's something for you. A 100 ton explosion.

My first chem exam

Ok, so this is a little random, and not very globally pertinent, but here goes...

I had my first Chem exam for this summer class I'm taking. 80 points were multiple choice, 20 were like...chem problems.

So I take the test, and while I'm taking it, I'm like, "Yeah! Only 2 I don't know!" and it's going well. Then I turn my test in. And the test I set mine on top of has like, completely different answers.

And I looked at my grade online tonight, and I'm a full 8 points below the average. I have a D. If I do really well on the second part, which isn't graded yet, I can get a C.

Anyway, it was just funny, because I felt so good during the test, and apparently I bombed it. Hey...now that I think about it...it's not funny at all...

The Flaw In My System

I don't watch the news on TV, I don't listen to NPR or any news radio, I keep headlines on my homepage, but they're mostly science, and I rarely click on them. That's the way I want things. The news media today is at least half made up, and the other half is exaggerated or extrapolated and interpolated to the point where it's no better than a picture and a caption. But... every now and then, something happens in world news, and I don't know what's going on well enough to understand the situation.

So from where I'm standing, it looks like half the population of the UK is car bombers.