Some people have their PS3 at home, they only use it for games and Bluray movie. But have you think of you are capable of playing HD video via the PS3? I have plenty of MKV format video in my computer (don’t ask me how do I obtain them), but then I only watch it on my PC. Now I realised that PS3 is a actually a media player too but unfortunately, it doesn’t support MKV file format. That’s the suckest thing to me.

Though, things don’t come to an end so fast. I have actually found guide on the net on how to watch MKV video on PS3. It’s pretty simple, convert it to a PS3 compatible format then transfer it to the PS3 then you are ready to go.

Some people are worried of video quality would be downgraded during the conversion but if you use the right software, it won’t. So the software is called mkv2vob, it’s a freeware, download it, convert it, transfer it.

Browse for your MKV file and select your destination directory which is also the output folder.

If your PS3 doesn’t connect to a amplifier via S/PDIF digital cable, you may not hear DTS surround sound, so you have to CHECK “Always Transcode DTS”.

On the other hand, if you want to transfer your file via a flash drive or portable HDD, you need to split your file. Sucks right? It’s because that PS3 only recognizes FAT32 format and the problem is you can’t transfer any file larger than 4GB into a FAT32 formatted HDD.

Unless that you have your PS3 connected into your network, you need not split it, you can just stream directly or just copy from your network.

As for me, my PS3 is not connected into my home network, my house runs wireless and it’s not capable for HD streaming. My method of watching MKV video without splitting is by burning the converted video into a dual layer 8.5GB DVD+/-R.

I went around PC Fair and I saw a lot of netbook at there. I am so not interested in netbook right not because I have got my lovely Aspire One, which I bought it last year when it first release. Buying a netbook right now is a headache because there’s so many brands are offering it, it’s not like last time when netbook, the word first came to us, it’s only Asus and Acer. Later then company compete to release their netbook and this competition sucks because everyone offers almost the same thing.

I thought Dell Mini 9 has discontinued? If you are looking for Dell, Dell Mini 12 is good, but the battery life not so good.

These are the new Lenovo S10 2.

Touch screen Asus EEE PC which doesn’t fancy me. I don’t like touch tablet unless the screen is very sensitive.

The one on the far right seems good.

Have to say sorry because I didn’t really hands-on and test drive all the netbook around, I just went around, look and take photos. Anyway, I got some guide for you for choosing netbook, do take note about these:

• Battery life (at least 6 hours)
• HDD Capacity (at least 120GB)
• RAM (at least 1.5GB)
• Screen size (at least 10.1 inch)
• Weight (less than 1.2kg)
• Preferably with 3G slot built in even if you don’t have 3G data, you may have one in the future.
• Bluetooth and card reader.

After looking around, Acer and Lenovo seem to have some nice model.

I have been using Windows 7 for quite some times and I am loving it. My external hard disk drive screwed up on me recently, some folder has turned into some stupid 32kb cluster file named File, not accessible at all. Tried to recover some of it but fail. So I need a new hard disk drive to dump whatever files that are still accessible in my external into it. Then I’m gonna do a fresh format of the external HDD.

I bought my 500GB SATA HDD from Gadget Zone at Prangin Mall for RM188 (US$56) and it’s a Western Digital. What do you think about the price? Have been using Western Digital for a long time, the HDD that was in my old PC, in the laptop, my external’s, my brother’s PC are all Western Digital. I don’t really know about how other brands like Maxtor, Seagate perform, but I tend to go for Western Digital.

What you are seeing is the Ikea’s halogen table lamp. I don’t have any torch at home so I took it for my lighting to shine my way around in the chassis because I didn’t want to unplug all the cables from the CPU, so I just  installed into the chassis right where the CPU is.

Slotted it in, plugged in SATA cable and power cable and all set.

It’s now a total of 750GB internal HDD capacity my PC has.

Every fresh install of HDD will not show up straight away in the My Computer because it needed to be format before it’s usable. I’ve forgotten about it but thanks to Google, problem solved in less than 5 minutes.

1. Press Start button, and
2. search Disk Management,
3. you will see “Create and format hard disk partitions“,
4. open it and

from there, you format your new HDD and you are all done.

After thinking for a while, I have decided to buy a domain for my Tumblr site so that my friend can remember my site easily.

I think 10 out of 10 among my friends never heard of the social blogging site, Tumblr, after launching my Tumblr site, AWAY FROM COMPUTER, introduced to them, they still can’t really remember the long URL of mine, so I bought a .com domain for it. Another reason is to make me look cool-er. Haha.

It’s Godaddy advertisement everywhere, most likely to see it in video podcast but I still decided to stick with my first domain registrar, Namecheap because of its fast and cheap service. My domains registrar are very spread out, some on Namecheap, some on Godaddy and there’s a few too on Mydomain. New domain on Namecheap is US$8.81 using the coupon for September 2009 (DREAMTIME).

It’s really fast, it took me less then 10 minutes to set everything up and running. Forgot to mention that another good about Namecheap is that it takes Paypal, but I believe a lot of domain registrar now takes Paypal as a form of payment.

Setting up the domain to work with Tumblr

Setting up is kinda easy afterall but I did google for how-to and here’s my how to. Just key in the Tumblr host address as above with record type set to A (Address). Click save.

Then you can test your domain with the Tumblr custom domain test page. As easy as one, two, three.

You can visit my Tumblr site @ www.awayfromcomputer.It’s a site where I share from my mobile device but not the PC.

I haven’t log out my Windows Live Messenger for quite some time until the recent Windows Update which forces me to restart my computer and so I restarted my computer and shutting off everything running. When I re-sign in the Windows Live Messenger, a window popped up. “Happy 10-Year Anniversary, Messenger”.

So now I know that the Live Messenger is now 10 years old, which means that I have uses the Messenger for 9 years. My first login to MSN Messenger was in 2000 and my first email was hotmail which created in 1999. At that time, I didn’t know about the messenger and IM yet, I only know how to email and MIRC chatroom, I was really young as I was only 7 years old in 1999. If I am not mistaken, the first few contact in my MSN Messenger were my brother’s, my cousin sister’s and a primary school friend. I thought him how to sign up for Hotmail and download MSN Messenger and we chatted online once in a while.

Till today, I don’t really chat a lot on Live Messenger (previously known as MSN Messenger). I more likely to stick with social networking. There’s like almost 1000 contacts in my Live Messenger right now and I guess I need to do some cleaning on the contact list to delete some unknown contacts. One problem of having so many contact is that I can hardly sign in my account on the iPod touch IM app.

Talking back to the Happy 10-Year Anniversary Messenger thing, they offered a free gift pack which is a theme pack for the latest Live Messenger. I was curious so I went to download it, then install it.

I kinda regret installing it, the theme is ugly and it changes your conversation window’s background and your display picture. I got no idea how to remove the theme pack.

Then I found out some solution, change back the scene to the original one, then change you display picture back to your own photo and lastly, change your backgroundand remember to click on Set Default on the down-right corner of the Backgrounds window. =)

I have recently bought a new phone, I have a Maxis and Digi line, but my primary line is still Maxis which is for calling and receiving calls from friends and family. Sometimes, I do blog on the go, post some tweets and check the mail with the phone.

However, somehow I can’t get the Internet and data to work on the N95 with my Maxis line. I have already activated by 3G and GPRS data connection, have all the settings but it says “Packet Data : Connection Not Allow” when I am trying to connect to the Internet with 3G or EDGE GPRS.

I went to the Maxis service center and the people are noob, they just download the setting agains and asked me to wait for a text message contain the data setting, then restart my phone. I wait, the setting came, restarted and it’s still not working.

I get frustrated and called Maxis up. After some guidance from the lady, I am now able to connect to the Internet again. It’s pretty easy to edit the setting, it’s something to do with the connection setting on your phone.

1. Press menu key.
2. Go to Tools > Setting > Connection
3. Scroll to the last one or just press up key. You will see APN control. A pop up message will appear “Connection restriction….”
4. Press Option > Deactivate Restriction.
5. PIN2 is 1234.
6. When it’s says deactivated/inactive, restart your phone.
7. Turn on again, surf the net now.

Pretty easy right? Try it now. If it does not work, call Maxis at 123. That’s what I always do.