PawEng » Entertainment

70 Dual-Screen Wallpapers

PawEng — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:37:03 +0000

SmashingMagazine (via Lifehacker) has collected 70 beautiful wallpapers for dual-screen desktops. The wallpapers are from a variety of places. If you use a dual-monitor desktop, then this is a good place to start looking for stunning wallpapers.

Watching Podcasts on a Windows Mobile Cellphone

PawEng — Sun, 24 May 2009 19:51:02 +0000

I have an old Samsung i730 cellphone running Windows Mobile 2005. I have long wanted to watch podcasts on it, but I have never really found a good way of doing so. But now I finally have something that seems to work.

I have downloaded Apple’s iTunes software for my Windows XP PC. In iTunes I have subscribed to a series of podcasts, and iTunes automatically downloads new episodes for me.

I also tried the Juice podcast receiver. It lets you download podcasts automatically from rss feeds.

I use MobSync to copy the podcasts to my cellphone. It detects when I connect my cellphone to the computer, and then it automatically uploads the podcasts. The current version of MobSync is 2.0.3, and it has a 30 day trial period. I found an old version (MobSync 0.94) on the web, and it looks like it is freeware. It works fine for me.

On the cellphone, I use TCPMP to play the podcasts. I downloaded version 0.72RC1 and installed it. I also needed to install a few plugins. I downloaded and installed the ffmpeg plugin. It is available from the download page of TCPMP. In order to play AAC files, I needed the AAC plugin for TCPMP. It is unfortunately not available from the TCPMP page, but I found it at RareWares.org. (Yes, it says it is for version 0.66, but it works fine in version 0.72RC1.)

I added a 4GB memory card to my cellphone, and now I have plenty of space to store podcasts.

The Hunt For Gollum

PawEng — Sun, 10 May 2009 14:21:31 +0000

On May 3, 2009 Independent Online Cinema released The Hunt For Gollum. It is a 40 minute film inspired by Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings, and by Peter Jackson’s filmatization of it. The actors in The Hunt For Gollum even look like the ones in Peter Jackson’s movies. In The Hunt For Gollum we follow the Heir of Isildur on his quest to find the creature Gollum, who must be found to discover the truth about the Ring.

I found the movie very enjoyable, and I can only recommend it to all fans of Middle Earth.

View The Hunt For Gollum for free online.

If you like Tolkien’s Middle Earth world, you will want to keep an eye out for Born of Hope. It is another free, online movie set in Middle Earth. It releases in the Fall of 2009.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

PawEng — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:59:25 +0000

On September 18, 2007, Carnegie Mellon professor and alumnus Randy Pausch gave a lecture at Carnegie Mellon titled “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. Despite being diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer, Randy gave an amazingly upbeat and inspiring lecture. He described his childhood dreams including being in zero gravity and playing in the NFL, and then proceeds to describe how he achieved all of them. Sadly, Randy died on July 25, 2008 at the age of 47 of pancreatic cancer.

Watch the one hour and 16 minute long lecture on youtube, or visit the Last Lecture website.

The lecture was so popular that it is now available both as a book and as a DVD.

Best Super Bowl Commercials

PawEng — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 21:13:10 +0000

Mashable has collected a list of the 15 best Super Bowl commercials of all times. It includes the 1984 commercial that launched the Apple Macintosh, and the never-aired 2005 “GoDaddy Girl” commercial.

Simple Flash Games

PawEng — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:37:08 +0000

Remember the good old days of computer games where we had Pac Man and Space Invaders? Call me old fashioned, but I find there is something nice about a simple game that doesn’t require the latest graphic card or fastest processor. Albino Blacksheep has a list of games like that. They are written in Flash, so they run directly in your browser. They have (of course) Pac Man and Space Invaders, but my personal favorite is Run, where you goal is to guide a small, cute space alien through a space tunnel that has multiple holes in it.

Albino Blacksheep Flash games