Monthly Archives: January 2009

Photoshop Woes on Eee PC

I use my Eee PC 701 very often, possibly too often. I’m sure it’s not good for my eyes, but it’s portability really is second to none. In fact, I’m using it so often now that it’s practically becoming my primary machine, something that I would’ve thought impossible a year ago when I first purchased it.

The fact that I can do (almost) all of my work on it is damn useful. Before I’d carry my MacBook with me, and in my bag I’d have folders and books, weighing me down. My journey is also an hour each way, so it’s not very pleasant having to carry that type of weight. The Eee PC on the other hand weighs a fraction of the MacBook’s weight, and is so small that it fits into my bag as if it was a book itself. The charger too, is one piece rather than having some sort of transformers in the middle.

Software wise, I have (almost) everything. This is where my trouble with Photoshop comes in. In my project, I am beginning to require Photoshop more and more, and I’m skeptical about installing it on my Eee PC. I have it installed on my MacBook, so I try do as much work as I can on my Eee PC and then I’ll come home and use my MacBook for Photoshop. However, with deadlines approaching, I really would like to have Photoshop on my Eee PC.

So I looked into the different versions of Photoshop. Photoshop CS3 seems too modern and system intensive for me to use, plus I wouldn’t use the majority of features. Then I saw Photoshop Elements 7.0, and tried that but was thoroughly disappointed since it’s specifically marketed towards a home user with the sole purpose of editing photos rather than creating graphics. The interface was completely alien to me.

My last resort therefore is to somehow find an old version of Photoshop. I’m thinking about trying either Photoshop CS on its own, or maybe just about CS2 if I cannot find CS(1).

When it comes to other software, I have pretty much everything I need. I have Firefox for my web browser, Thunderbird for my mail client, Sunbird for my calendar, and OpenOffice for my word processing, spreadsheet and presentation needs.

For my programming, I have jEdit as a text editor and I also have EasyEclipse (a cut down version of normal Eclipse), which runs Java programs fine. I even have a few chat clients including Skype, as it has a webcam built-in. As you can see, the only thing I’m really lacking is Photoshop…

Calendar for Windows

I’ve been a Mac user for quite a number of years, but recently I’ve been using my Asus Eee PC 701 more and more, which has Windows XP installed on it. One of the great pieces of software that comes with Mac is iCal. I’ve been using that for years to manage my schedule, but there is no Windows version. However, I tip my hat to the folks at Mozilla, who have once again pulled out a great pieces of software.

Mozilla created two products, which are still in their early stages. One is called Lightning, and is an extension/add-on for Thunderbird, their mail client. It therefore makes Thunderbird more like Microsoft Outlook, by having a calendar built-in. It’s supposed to synchronise well between your calendar and e-mail, and allow you to mail tasks to make appointments and so on.

The other product is Sunbird. This is a stand alone calendar for Windows, with the ability to synchronise with online calendars. It works very well, and I was able to export the data from iCal and import it into Sunbird without any problems. The only issue I have had is that it runs a little slow – this could be for a number of reasons. Maybe the processor on my Eee PC isn’t fast enough (can’t be my RAM since I have 2GB), or maybe it’s still an early product and therefore not as smooth as a final release version.

So take away point, if you are a Windows user and are looking for a calendar, then check out Mozilla’s products!

Ouch ouch ouch

Seems like I’ve been plagued with a tonsil infection. It started about three days ago when my throat was very sore. Please also note that I’ve had a sore throat and cough for about a month now! Started with a flu and fever and developed very badly. Fortunately the flu and fever went away though.

So, I’ve had a sore throat for a while. Then it seems to have developed into infecting my tonsils. And overnight on Thursday, it became extremely bad to the extent where every time I swallow, my throat hurts. I paid a visit to the doctor on Friday and was diagnosed with the infected tonsil and have to take antibiotics for 10 days, 8 tablets per day!

I’m hoping the antiobiotics will do the job, otherwise I’ll have to have an operation on my tonsil to remove the infection. Yipee.

This means I’ve been without food for two days now. Yesterday I was just having hot drinks and water, and I managed to have a small pasta bowl. But after that, it seems to have become worse and now I haven’t eaten anything at all. Just milk and water.

Besides that, you can imagine I haven’t been motivated to do much. You’d think being ill might be the ideal time to catch up on games while you stay away from any work, but that’s pretty much not the case. I just don’t feel like doing anything at all. I even have Fallout 3 right here, beckoning me to turn on my 360 and sink some hefty hours in, but I feel that while I’m ill I just won’t be able to enjoy the game.

On a seperate note, I made a few changes to the website. I updated Home Made Mech’s promo ad banner, since they’ve redone their website design and forum template too. In fact, they were so nice that they made a Simple Gamer template for their forum. Please do go ahead and check out the website, and also join the forums. It’s a nice community and we’d love to have more regular users. :)

I also added a little box below the promo ad, which has my shared items from Google Reader. Google Reader is simply an online RSS viewer, but you can share items which creates your own personal feed of those shared items. So I thought I’d include the box there, since often the items I share at computing, technology or video gaming related anyway.

Happy New Year and so on

I hope everyone had a good new year, and I wish them all the best for this year. But for starters, I’d like to give a shout out to my good friends over at Home Made Mech since they’ve redone their site and forum design, and it’s looking awesome. So, head over there for anime, manga and video game reviews. Also take part in whatever discussion you wish to on their forums.

I haven’t really got much else to talk about. The only thing that I do have stuff to talk about is regarding Fallout 3, but I’m in the process of writing a kind of editorial piece for that, describing my experience for the first x number of hours into the game. In total, I’m about 10-11 hours in, however I haven’t decided how far I will talk about the game just yet, since it won’t be spoiler-free and I still don’t want to give too much away. I’ll have it done very soon, so keep checking back!