'Tis the season for new toys

So I bought the "new"* Jawbone Prime...

*Jawbone Prime, the third iteration of Aliph's Bluetooth headset with noise-canceling technology, was released seven months ago, while the second iteration was released last year, and the first a year prior to that, so at this point, Prime is likely to become the older version in five months, making its "new" status somewhat dubious.

There are several reasons why I decided to retire my Jawbone I.

1. The ear loop kept on breaking. Now, because the original Jawbone I bought broke on the first day and Aliph sent me a replacement, I had twice as many sets of ear loops as one would normally have. But even those supplies are running low.
2. The noise-canceling functions of the replacement doesn't seem to work as well as the original I bought. This was most likely a quality control issue, but based on my phone conversations with other people on both headsets, it seems most people still heard the noise in the background with the replacement unit, whereas with the original I bought, most background noise were not audible.
3. The Bluetooth connection between JB1 and my phone has recently been dropping and reconnecting. Although infrequent, it has still happened enough times for me to take notice, and each time the phone was less than a quarter inch away from the headset.
4. The price of the Jawbone Prime has been lowered enough online that it's within a range that I can accept. There's no way I would spend the full price of $130 (+possible shipping and/or tax) for a Bluetooth headset.
   

All of which contributed to my decision. As you can see, JB Prime is significantly smaller than JB1. That's not saying much, however, as JB1 was massive. Aesthetically, it's also a slight improvement, though I'm still of the apparently minority opinion that it's an ugly piece of hardware.

More importantly, Aliph has added the function of reducing wind noise to the unit, something sorely missing in the first two versions (though I hear that foam windscreens work much better). One also hopes that they've improved upon their noise-canceling technology, and reviews I've read suggest that while it wasn't true of JB2, it is with Prime.

Having learned their lesson regarding the charger being too tight and causing damage to many Jawbone units, the new proprietary charger uses magnets, and retains the ability to connect to an USB port for charging purposes. Still, many people suggest that a standard USB to mini-USB cable would have been much better and more convenient.

Prime now gives you many more ear gel options than JB1 (don't know how it compares to JB2), and the new ear gels are much softer, and thus more capable to providing a more comfortable fit. My ears are somewhat sensitive, and still itches slightly after prolonged wear, so your mileage may vary on this particular front.

Aliph claims to have an 8-day standby time battery life, and since I only just received the new unit in the mail on Thursday afternoon, I'll have to wait a few more days to see if it lives up to that claim.


Edit: Well, that was quick. I just noticed at around 1:00PM today that the battery indicator was now blinking red, and that was the first time I checked it after waking up. Who knows how long it had been doing that? At any rate, that means the standby time is actually less than 3 days... and I'm a very light phone user. I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a smaller headset when the much larger Jawbone could only be on standby for less than 5 days...

Edit 2: I did a bit of searching regarding Jawbone Prime's typical battery life, and found Aliph's tech saying that if it's using multipoint (meaning if it's paired to multiple devices--Jawbone Prime can be paired with up to 8 to switch between, and active on 2 simultaneously), and you accidentally press the "talk" button, you may cause it to look for other paired devices, which would drain the battery. I did try to pair it with other things (my laptop, the PS3), just to test out that function, so as per their recommendation, I performed a reset on the Jawbone Prime, and this time the battery lasted about 5 days, with some very light usage. Much better.

Jillian

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #270

Jillian had a urinary tract infection... again.

That sentence appeared in my head a few days ago, just as you see it above. I have no idea what it means, other than the obvious, and I don't know anyone named Jillian. Regardless, I thought it'd be interesting to begin a vanity card with it and just see where it goes.

Jillian had a urinary tract infection... again. Her doctor liked to abbreviate the condition to UTI. She liked to abbreviate it to TMH - Too Much Humping. Regardless, the road back to vaginal happiness was always the same: cranberry juice and abstinence. Thankfully, her boyfriend, Dudley, was always very understanding. He'd just smile, hold her in his arms and say, "Well, babe, when one door closes, another one opens up." She'd always giggle and blush when he'd say that, but deep down she wished she had the courage to cover his mouth and nose with a chloroform-soaked rag, and then, while he was unconscious, snip off his testicles with the little scissors she uses to groom her schnauzer.

All of which explains why the next sentence popped into my head recently.

Nobody sang Bee Gees songs on karaoke night like Dudley.

You just got slapped... across the face my friend

You just got slapped. Yes, that really just happened.
Everybody saw it. Everybody laughed and clapped.
'Cause it was awesome the way you just got slapped.


A fake commercial from the TV show How I Met Your Mother...

V

ABC began airing their remake of "V" this week. I was just a little kid in Taiwan when the original aired, and I don't think I've ever watched its reruns after I came to the US, although I'm pretty sure I've watched some of it when they aired it in Taiwan.

I don't remember much of the original series, aside from the basics--Reptilian aliens arrive on earth, disguised to look like humans, with peaceful pretenses, but have sinister plans. Over time, there are some alien/human couples. I remember one scene where, after a kid spray-painted graffiti on a wall, an old man took his spray paint and made a "V," saying it's for "Victory."

I've downloaded the first two V miniseries, guess I'll be watching it over the weekends, for nostalgia's sake.

Joey Yung??

So I tried this celebrity look-alike morph thing, and the closest they got for me is Joey Yung? Hmm.

Two Whedon references in one

On tonight's Halloween episode of Castle, there were at least two references to former Joss Whedon shows.

First, we see Nathan Fillion's title character dress up in full Captain Mal Reynolds browncoat wardrobe, declaring to his daughter that he's a "space cowboy," exactly what what people would have consider Mal to be. And his daughter replies, "Didn't you wear that, like, five years ago?" (After her comment about there being no cows in space, of course.)

A fun little ribbing at the last time he donned the getup for the filming of Serenity, the movie followup to canned TV series Firefly. (The Halloween theme was the perfect chance for Firefly fans to see Nathan Fillion as Mal Reynolds again, so why not?)

Then, with the episode having to deal with vampires... or at least people who like to dress up like vampires, it was the perfect opportunity to get in a Buffy reference, which Castle did upon seeing a man with a stake rammed through his heart.


...There might have been a reference to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, as well, what with Castle mock laughing as a mad scientist, but as I have not watched it, I cannot comment.

Who has ever used Windows 2?

So, Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7, was officially released yesterday. And Apple was quick on its heels to release its latest Windows-bashing commercial.

In it, John Hodgman, portraying "PC," is seen claiming over and over again about a new iteration of Windows would be better than its previous version, starting, of course, with Windows 7, to Windows Vista, Windows XP, Window Me, Windows 98, Windows 95, and finally, Windows 2.

Windows 2?? WTF? Why didn't they just go with what everyone actually used, namely Windows 3.1? Nobody used Windows 2... at least, not the general public. I was using computers before Windows 3.0 was released, and I never used Windows 2--I was using DOS 4.0 at the time.

And it's almost a certainty that, of the few people who did use Windows 2, none of them would have upgraded their computers from Windows 2 to Windows 95--whatever hardware was running Windows 2 could never be powerful enough for Windows 95.


Please, someone tell me, why did Apple decide to use Windows 2 instead of Windows 3?

I don't need you poking me

My cousin Rickie posted this song to Facebook about a week after an ex sent her a friend request. She didn't want to add him, but wanted to reconnect with some mutual friends. The singer's name is Kate Miller-Heidke.

Why won't you call me back?

So this video has been making the rounds for the past couple of days.

Cliffs Notes version: Guy tells girlfriend he's going on vacation for two weeks, keeps phone off to avoid roaming charges, girlfriend forgets/never listened, so doesn't know guy is gone. She then proceeds to leave various email messages as the days go by, escalating in level of insanity.

Original blog posting here (moved, new site here).

Some people are saying the story's fake, I think it's plausible.

It probably wasn't a very healthy relationship, anyway...

• She never listened enough to him to know he's going to be gone.


• He didn't even bothered to call her to let her know he landed safely.


• At no point did she wonder about his safety, like maybe he couldn't respond to her because he was injured, hospitalized, etc.--That would have been my first thought, if I were in her position.


• That she jumped to only one conclusion (that he dumped her) meant one of three possible things, in my estimation:
  
  1. She was too insecure.
  
  
  2. She was too self-centered.
  
  
  3. The relationship was in a bad enough place that she believed he would dump her at any time.

Ultimately, they are both better off that the relationship ended. Some people wonder, as do I, if she really slept with someone else, or if she only said that to spite him... but it doesn't really matter.

Some people have also been wondering about the songs used in the video. I recognize two of them from the soundtrack of the movie Snatch. Anyway, I'll embed them below:

By the way, if you haven't seen Snatch, you totally should.

25 Random Things

If you're on Facebook, then you've probably been tagged by one or more of your friends with one of these... If you haven't, the concept is this: You write a "Note" about yourself, which has "25 random facts" about yourself. You then "tag" a bunch of your friends, and ask them to also write 25 random things about themselves, tag you (along with their own friends) in their notes, and so on.

It's kind of like chain-mail, except instead of trying to spread some false information for "good luck" or whatever, you get to know more about your friends.

So the song above is about that, as well as a parody of the Miley Cyrus song, "7 Things." They also do some things to mimic Miley's video, which you can watch below, if you haven't seen it.

X-Mouse in Windows Vista

This is really just for my own records, in case I need to do the same thing again at some point in the future, I probably won't remember all the details by then, and the resources I found with the information may no longer be around.

So I've been using Windows Vista for a while, and have gotten used to most of its functions. One of the things I missed the most from the previous version was the Power Toys/TweakUI. More specifically, an X-Mouse feature which made it possible for you to "switch" your "active window" from one to the other by simply moving your mouse cursor over to the window you want, without having to click on that other window.

Why is this useful, you ask?

Well, sometimes I might need to copy information from one window to another, and for whatever reason, copy & paste might not be an option. That means I need both windows visible to me, and I might not need to see the full window to which I'm copying the info...

Every once in a while, I would search for TweakUI and Vista, hoping that they've finally released a version for it. Today I realized that the only thing I really want from it was the X-Mouse function, so I searched for that specifically, and found my solution.

It turns out, Vista already has a version of it built-in. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't the exact version I wanted...

There are two different possible behaviors in X-Mouse:

1. Follow the mouse cursor to set the active window, and bring the active window to the front.
2. Follow the mouse cursor to set the active window, and leave the active window where it is (be it in the foreground, the background, or somewhere in between).

In Windows Vista, if you go to the Control Panel > Ease of Access Center > Make the mouse easier to use, you'll find a checkbox for "Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse"; checking the box will get you the first behavior--Move your mouse over to a window in the background, and (500 milliseconds later) that background window will be in the foreground.

Me, I want the second kind of behavior. But there's no setting to get that behavior. No graphical setting, anyway. Nope, to get that behavior, we'll have to edit the Windows registry.


So, fire up regedit, and get yourself to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]; but first, make sure that checkbox mentioned above is not checked--it makes what we're about to do easier.

Look for the REG_BINARY key of "UserPreferencesMask," and make note of its data values (Mine was "9e 3e 07 80 12 00 00 00").

To make Windows follow your mouse cursor, but not bring the window to the front, add 1(hex) to the first hexadecimal number (which in my case makes it "9f 3e 07 80 12 00 00 00"); to bring the active window to the foreground, on the other hand, requires that you add 41(hex) to the first hex number--for the curious, you can confirm this by using the setting in your Control Panel, then refreshing the display in the registry editor, and making the calculations for yourself.

Next, see if the REG_DWORD key of "ActiveWndTrkTimeout" exists. The value here is for "how long should windows wait before changing focus, in milliseconds." If it exists, the default value is probably "1f4" in Hex, or "500" milliseconds in the decimal system. You can edit this to be whatever value you want. If it doesn't exist, create it, and set it to the value you want.

That's it! Log off your current Windows user, then log back in, and it will take effect.



Oh, and the reason I said not checking the box would make it easier? Well, if the box was checked, then you'd have to subtract 40(hex) from the first hex number, instead of just adding 1(hex). I can add 1(hex) in my head, but subtracting by 40(hex)? I'd either need a piece of paper to work out the math, or a scientific calculator.

Path to Destruction

So NBC is airing their two-part mini-series called Meteor: Path to Destruction, which is about a large meteor that's on a collision course towards the earth, which, if unstopped, could cause global destruction...

Didn't we already see this movie... twice?!

In the Year 3000

On his new role as host of The Tonight Show, Conan has brought back one of his old bits, with an updated name.

Harry Pothead

So the sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, starts playing in theaters today. The latest title once again reminds me how easily some of the titles lend themselves to cannabis slang, to wit:

1. Harry Pothead and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stoned
2. Harry Pothead and the Cannabis of Secrets
3. Harry Pothead and the Prisoner of Azkabong
4. Harry Pothead and the Ganja of Fire
5. Harry Pothead and the Order of the Phillies Blunt
6. Harry Pothead and the Half-Baked Prince
7. Harry Pothead and the Doobie Hallows
   

Speaking of Super Mario...

Beginning in June, Conan took over for Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show on NBC. A few days later, the blog Serious Lunch posted about the resemblance between a backdrop of the set and the designs of Super Mario Bros., complete with edited background from the game (actually, it looks more like the design from Super Mario World). By the end of the week, the above clip aired.