The hit TV show Prison Break has some very awsome background music in the various episodes. Until recently I haven't been able to find these tunes but thanks to a blog I recently found I managed to find most of the songs. The Prison Break music is composed by Ramin Djawadi and can be found on CD on Amazon.com and iTunes.

Just a small rant about the countless talent shows we have on TV these days. Idols for example or (Fill in your country here)'s got talent.

The basis of these talent shows is to find new and fresh talent for the music and entertainment industry. To filter out all the idiots and other wastes of flesh there is a jury who decides who goes on to the next round. This jury consists of carefully picked people who have experience in music and entertainment and can make a valid judgment of these people most of the time. They know what a good artist needs and if someone has potential.

So what's the problem I'm having? We all enjoy the pre-rounds of course. The rounds where every idiot in the world can come up and do his thing just to be laughed at by everyone watching TV and sometimes even the jury. But to be quite fair, most of us can roughly separate the morons from the talented potential, we wouldn't really need a jury for it but it obviously makes the show a lot easier. No, the role you'd expect the jury to fill is to give the artists feedback in the more serious part of the show, to pick who goes on to the final round and, in the end, determine who wins the show. These people are qualified to do this, they know what they are talking about and have the experience. But instead what happens? The viewers are asked to make a judgment over who is the better artist. Us, the general public who generally don't know shit about the entertainment industry!! There's a fucking jury full of experienced artists sitting right there and you're asking the morons in the audience to pick our next pop idol!! Am I the only one who sees the stupidity here or what?!

There, just had to vent that. It's been bothering me for a while now :).

Tiger

A funny conversation between George Bush and Condoleezza Rice.



Enjoy!

Tiger

In my previous entry I talked about the Asus R1E. After having spend some time with it I'm now ready to pass my final judgment on this fine piece of hardware.

When it comes to computers I'm set on brands for some reason. Some brands I like for quality, like Nvidia and Enermax, others because I've been using that brand for an eternity and never had a problem. Asus falls in that last category, I have been using the Asus brand for years now in most of the desktop computers I have built over the years. Motherboard and video card both tend to be of the Asus brand simply because they are often the first with new gadgets and functionality and, like I said, have never ever failed on me.

When I started looking for a tablet PC specifically I quickly found that although a fairly wide variety of brands and models is available, most of them seem to be an ordinary laptop with a touchscreen slapped onto it. Obviously when you're looking for a laptop for an advanced piece of hardware on it you can expect the laptop to be modified for it here and there. And while not all manufacturers live up to this expectation, some do stand out. Among which is the R1E.

Going tablet, yes or no?
Before we dive into anything else about this laptop I want to cover a small issue I have with tablet PC's in general and if you're the right person to buy one.

Tablet PC's were originally (and 95% of them still are) aimed for the traveling business man. They are supposedly a great replacement for a notepad, you can bring it with you where ever you go without having a bulky looking laptop on your lap. The argument for a tablet PC in the office is that taking notes (during a meeting for example) becomes so much easier. However you need to consider if writing on a screen is really that much of an improvement over writing in a notebook and typing it in Word later. Especially since you won't be using the tablet function of the laptop for anything else, is it worth the extra cash? I'm not a business man, but I'd be inclined to say no.

I have no statistics to back up the following claim, but I think that tablet PC's are more popular in the art community than anywhere else. Being able to draw on the screen is much more significant then being able to write on the screen and it might be worth the extra cash for an artist as opposed to a business man who can just as easily grab a notepad. For artists, it's a very big leap forward if they are able to sketch in their favorite graphics software.

Before I bought the R1E I read the blog of a business man (which unfortunately I lost the link of) who tried out working on a tablet PC during meetings and such. He came to the conclusion that the process of learning the laptop your handwriting and having a bulky machine with you all the time did not come in as handy as you would at first believe. Of course it had it's benefits, like being able to check your e-mail on the spot and quick access to notes, but he found that when he was in a meeting he rarely referred to his e-mail and hardly ever had to look at previous notes. Eventually he got rid of the thing and went back to a good old notepad. Moral of the story: think very hard about why you want to get a tablet PC and how you will be using it. The touch screen alone makes any tablet PC about 50% more expensive then their normal counterparts so be sure you will be using it when you decide to get it.

The basics
Let's get some of the basic stuff out of the way first, such as the R1E's specifications.

OS: Windows Vista Business Edition
Harddisk: 160GB
Internal RAM: 2GB
CPU: Intel dual core 2200MHZ
Screen size: 13,3" (widescreen)
Wireless: Built in wireless network connector and bluetooth connector.

Other than those specs it has what you would expect on a laptop. Audio plugs, a DVD rewriter, VGA output and a nifty fingerprint scanner which I will talk about shortly.
Another cool part about this laptop is the swappable drive bay which originaly houses your DVD rewriter but can be swapped for a second battery (included) or a second hard disk (not included). The drive is apparently hot swappable (though I have not yet tested this) so you can just switch things around while you are working.
Just one other thing that is worth noting is the e-SATA port you can use to hook up all your external SATA devices.

User experience.
One thing that immediately came to mind when looking at the specs for this laptop was that 2GB of memory seemed rather low, especially since it was running Vista Business. On top of that you also get a trail version of Norton Internet Security 2008 which isn't exactly memory friendly. So after installing most of the programs I used I was kind of expecting a significant drop in performance, especially when working on Photoshop but I was pleasantly surprised when the laptop seemed to hold it's own against the large memory strain. I experience little to no lag when the laptop is booted up completely although I must say that the actual boot process can take quite long. If you need your laptop in quick bursts every now and again I would avoid shutting it down completely and just let it hibernate when you don't use it.

Safe for the long boot time the rest of the laptop seems to work pretty smooth. As with any laptop these days you get a shitload of free programs and trails pre-installed on your system which you can then decide to keep or not. Internet surfing is not a hassle at all and the built in wireless connector does it's job just fine at finding and connecting to the right networks. This laptop also has the ability to manually turn the wireless options on and off with the switch of a button. The response time of this switch is excellent and turns your internet connection on or off pretty much directly (depending on circumstances of course).

One slight issue that caught my attention was that the power LED on the laptop blinks softly when the laptop is in sleep mode. Normally there wouldn't be a problem with this but the various blue LED's on the laptop are rather bright. You won't notice this at all during the day but for those of you who keep their laptop in sleep mode during the night will suddenly see a blue glow in their room fading in and out. This can be quickly fixed by just putting something on the LED's, like a book, but it's an annoying little detail non the less.

Tablet Style!
On to the important part! The Asus R1E has the awesome ability to flip the screen 180 degrees and then close the screen backwards, this leaves you with something that resembles an oversized PDA. When the laptop is in this mode you will lose your keyboard and touch pad but gain the ability to use your pen to select, click and write. When you flip the screen around the image on the screen automatically turns 90 degrees, forcing you to hold the tablet in a 'standing' position. Luckily, for those not so keen on this little feature, you can flip the image back to normal with the push of a button and start working.

Because you lose your keyboard and touch pad when you're in tablet mode, everything you need to do is done by using the included pen (which is nicely hidden in one of the corners of the laptop). Clicking is done by tapping and writing is done by writing on a little magical post-it note that will make an attempt at reading your poor handwriting. Especially at first it will have trouble but the more you use it the faster it will learn that those hieroglyphs are actually letters and numbers.

Using the pen to draw is remarkably accurate. The R1E is a Penabled tablet PC, meaning it implements the famous Wacom tablet technology and makes it one of the few tablet PC's out there that supports pressure sensitivity (although you do need to download the drivers from Wacom.com first to enable the pressure sensitivity). Artists will be very glad to hear this I'm sure.
As far as actual drawing goes, to be honest I first expected a tablet PC to be a little off, sorta speak. Especially the small space between the pen and the actual 'paper' had me worried that I'd have to learn to use it properly. It surprised me that when I did some test drawings, the results were about as accurate as when I would do it on real paper. Another plus for the artist tablet user!

Last but not least a small detail our dear Asus friends didn't forget (this is why I like them). As most tablet users know, the tip of a tablet pen will wear off in time and will need replacing. Asus is nice enough to supply you with 5 replacement tips and a nice tool to get the old one out. That should keep you drawing for years to come.

Fingerprint scanner
Biometric security measures are slowly being integrated in everyday life and are no longer a thing for top secret government buildings and James Bond movies. Today you can even get your front door to open with your fingerprint if you really wanted to.
In computers this development has been mostly reserved for government agencies but in the past few years we have seen fingerprint scanners popping up on USB sticks and phones for example.

Asus is one of the few companies to bring this technology to a laptop, together with HP who is exploring the same path, and it's a good idea.
The fingerprint scanner on the R1E works exactly like it should without any major flaws. A pre-installed program lets you program your fingerprints into the system and from that moment on you can use your fingerprint to log into Windows, applications and websites. The only thing you have to look out for is how you swipe your finger when you're teaching the program. If you swipe your finger with a curve of some sort you'll have to duplicate that exact curve again to get a match in the future. It's best to take some time when programming the scanner so you get the easiest positions to scan. For most people this will be the left thumb and the right index finger but take some time and figure out what you like best.

Battery life
An issue with the R1F (the R1E's big brother) was it's crappy battery life. User complained about the battery running low way to fast and that it's durability only decreased after every charge. Unfortunately this problem was not fixed with the R1E as a closer inspection of the battery reveals that it's the exact same model (R1F model).
My experience is that a fully charged battery will last you about two hours on average and a mere 1 hour and 45 minutes after the first few recharges. Compared to any other laptop this is pathetic and it also makes it the single largest downside of this laptop. Some people I know draw on their laptop for hours on end and having it plugged in to a power socket all the time isn't nice for mobility. Luckily the previously mentioned hot swappable drive bay offers a solution as it can be used to store a second battery which offers an additional 1,5 hours of battery life bringing the total to 3,5 hours of battery life. That wouldn't be a problem except that you have to sacrifice your DVD rewriter for it.

So far I have not encountered a battery that can replace the crappy thing Asus put in there but I hope to find it somewhere at some point soon because the current rate of decay will leave the battery useless in a year or so.
Users in the United States apparently can contact Asus about the battery and have it replaced if they really want to.

Conclusion
The Asus R1E is a very decent tablet PC that has all the extras you would expect from a tablet PC. It can handle pretty much all the basic stuff you throw at it like Photoshop and Word without a glitch but mind you that it's not equiped for gaming.
The tablet part of the laptop works magnificent as does the nifty fingerprint scanner.

The only real downside to this laptop is the battery life and wear. You'd expect to be able to work for a few hours on a laptop without an electrical socket nearby but apparently 2 hours is all you're getting at most from the original battery which is kind of disappointing but not a huge disaster for most users I'm sure.

Non the less, the R1E is something I can personaly recommend for artists looking for something more then a normal tablet and happen to be looking for a new laptop at the same time. Also for those doubting between a Wacom Cintiq or a tablet PC, go with the tablet PC. Not only is it cheaper (in case of the more advanced Cintiq models), you also get a lot more worth for your money (tablet on screen: $2500,- / tablet on screen + laptop: $2000,-. I rest my case).

I hope this review was of use to you, if you have any questions feel free to contact me (though I can not promise you an instant reply) and I will try to answer your question.

Lately I've been getting back into the art scene a little. The past few weeks have been spent with a lot of sketching, looking at other peoples art to get together a style and asking for peoples help. It's amazing what you can do to your own skills with just a few weeks of practice. What took me ages to get right a few weeks ago is now something I do in an instant without any trouble.
So now that I got sketching somewhat handled, I wanted to take it up a notch and start perfecting my skills in the Photoshopping department. I already have a Wacom tablet which I have used with a lot of my digital drawings, but I felt that wasn't enough. You're still very focused on two things; the screen in front of you and the pen in your hand. It requires some patience to make the two work together and even then it just feels unnatural.

For the past six years I've also occasionally worked on a laptop which, at that time, was awsome because it was an Acer lappy with half a gig of RAM (OMG! :D) and a 60GB harddisk (OMG AGAIN! :D) and only cost a thousand euros which, at that time, was a bargain. But I also have a desktop computer which has seen some large upgrades over the years and I even rebuild it a year ago to fit my needs completely. My desktop has a good 3GB of memory and the disk space recently exceeded 1000GB (1TB ^_^). And believe it or not, I'm using a good 60% of it right now.

So needless to say, whenever I got behind my lappy I went from ZOMGSUPERFAST to OHDEARGODFUCKINGSLOW... and since my desktop desk is always cluttered with stuff and not very usefull for having a tablet laying around I decided to do all my art in my bedroom, since I have a desk there too. I would just put old lappy there, throw XP on it, throw Photoshop on there, install the tablet and by the time I'm 30 Photoshop will have finished loading and I can start doing my picture. Obviously old lappy would die under the strain of present day Photoshop versions, it already struggled with Photoshop 6 and later 7. I did not dare install 8 on there, let alone CS2.
Simple solution: Buy a new lappy. Of course I could just have gotten a decent lappy of any make, but as I wanted a new one I thought I might as well get a lappy that would fulfill my artistic needs as well. And that meant getting a Tablet PC. A tablet PC is basically a laptop in every aspect, except that it has a rotatable, pressure sensitive screen which you can then click back as if you closed it, only with the screen facing up. The result you then get is something that resembles a very oversized PDA. It is however ideal for artists as it lets you draw directly on the screen as you would on paper. It eliminates scanning sketches, faded out lines, erasing wrong things and all that crap. I can now sketch on my lappy, color on my lappy and save it on my lappy. It's that awsome.

About a week ago I ordered the Asus R1E, because I <3 Asus and it was one of the few Tablet PC's that had a pressure sensitive screen that implemented Wacom technology instead of 'just a touchscreen'. For it's class it was also fairly prices in my opinion so that was nice as well.
Yesterday I finally got the package in the mail and at first sight I thought it was something else because the box was freaking huge. I really did order just a 13" screen laptop, it's not THAT big. The box was big enough to fit my 19" monitor O_o. But after unpacking it became clear why the box was so big. Next to getting a shitload of manuals, driver CD's, modules (oh yea, this laptop has a modular bay for the CD drive or a second battery), wires and a carrying bag that looked like it came straight from the 70's. On top of that, the laptop itself was packed in 5(!!!) layers of material: The outside box, the inside box, another box, another carrying bag (O_o) and a thin layer of protective coating. Eventually I got it out though and was very pleased with the results.

Next to the regular crap like ten thousand useless programs that are installed on a new lappy and the first startup which took ages, there's another fancy thing about this lappy. It has a fingerprint scanner which allows you to log in to Windows, applications and websites by a simple swipe of your finger. After your print has been accepted the program fills in your username and password and hits enter for you too.
While at first I thought the fingerprint scanner was just another one of those fancy gadgets, I overlooked a very obvious reason for it being there. When you're in tablet mode you have no keyboard. The only way of input is your pen which you can write stuff with on the screen and hope the computer translates your crappy handwriting to the right letters. But filling in a user name and password doing this is quite tedious after you've done it for 5 times and any more just gets annoying. Asus made a very wise choice to put that scanner there because it makes logging in so much easier once it's set up. Even if I do have my laptop in normal mode, a quick swipe of the finger is often faster or more convenient then typing the password manually. If you're really a security freak you can even set it up to ONLY accept fingerprint scans but that's just overkill for a simple home user like me.

In the end it's a very awesome laptop and I look forward to using it more and producing my art on there when I start getting used to the on screen drawing. It might feel more natural then a tablet but it's still a bit different.


The Flying Dutchman
Those remotely interested in sea, sailing and navy history will no doubt know the myth of the Flying Dutchman. Those not so keen on naval history will no doubt know it from Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3.
The tale is about a Dutch captain in the time of the VOC (The East Indian Trading Company, on of Holland's most glorious times) who sailes the fastest trading ship in the fleet. His success and fortune eventually go to his head and during his trading trips he starts pirating other vessels, only to keep the loot from those ships for him and his crew.
One day, when he and his crew want to set out for another pirating trip, they are prohibited to leave the harbor. No ships are to leave the harbor on easter and on top of that a violent storm was raging over the sea. The captain ignored these rules however and set sail for open sea.

"Storm or not, easter or not, prohibited or not, I will set sail, even to eternity!"

That same night, according to the myth, something terrible happened on board of the ship. Some stories say a plague broke out and the ship was not allowed to dock anywhere. Other stories say they were dragged to the bottom of the ocean by the devil himself, where he doomed the ship to sail until the end of time.
Several sightings of the old 17th century ship have been reported, some dating back as close as 1880. When the unknown ship is hailed, it tries to send messages to persons or ships long since dead and a sighting of The Flying Dutchman is generally believed to be a sign of bad luck, even to this day (although no-one ever saw the ship again after 1880).

I've always been a big 'fan' of the Flying Dutchman myth and was excited to see the myth in Pirates of the Caribbean. But I was even more excited when I learned that the biggest theme park here in Holland was building a ride based on the myth. I recently got to ride in it and I have to say it's very awesome. They fleshed out the story perfectly. They gave it their own little twist to fill in some of the missing details, but overall they did an awesome job bringing this myth to life. Check out some pictures and the onride video.

Thanks to everyone involved in building De Vliegende Hollander at De Efteling! You did an awsome job!