Archive for April, 2008

Encounter with Dr. DOOM

“WHat?? Dr. Doom is on the loose?” asked The Thing.

“Yes.” Mr Fantastic answered with a sigh.

The Fantastic 4 has been battling with Dr. Doom for more than a month now. The infamous Dr. Doom was constantly attacking the Fantastic 4’s hideout. But in the recent days, Dr. Doom was dealing with Mr. Fantastic directly.

It all started when the Fantastic 4’s experiment went haywire. The experiment was called ‘Project H’. When Dr. Doom heard that something has gone wrong with the project, he immediately took advantage of the situation.

“I thought we took care of him already?”

“It seems that he is getting his powers from an unknown source of energy. I was not able to contain him at all. As of now, his whereabouts are unknown.”

Invisible Woman and the Human Torch came crashing thru the door.

“We came as soon as we heard the news.” said Invisble Woman. The Human Torch nodded in agreement.

Suddenly, the phone rang. It was 9pm.

“Hello?”

“This is Dr. Doom. We need to talk.”

“What do you want?” Mr Fantastic puts the phone in speaker mode.

“I want you fo fix Project H ASAP. I also want to know why the V Project failed, tell me why right now!”

“Preposterous! That is impossible! Even I still do not know why the V Project failed. I need more than 24 hours!” Mr. Fantastic exclaimed.

The Thing banged his fists on the table, obviously angered by Dr. Doom’s demands. What does Dr. Doom think of us, super-computers? After a few moments though, the Thing came to his senses. He realized that Dr. Doom was heartless.

4 hours has passed since the phone rang and the discussion went in circles. It was 1 am of the next day. The 2 projects obviously were very important to Dr. Doom. It seemed that his life depended on it.

“I’ll be giving you another 48 hours. After that, I will call you back.” said the doctor. “But if you fail me, better be ready to face the consequences…”

Click. The phone was dropped.

“What do we do?” asked Human Torch.

“I guess we can’t do anything much. Let us meet up again at 9 am tomorrow.” said Invisible Woman.

to be continued…

Tags: Fiction

Battle of the Mini Laptops

Last night, Phaw went to Park Sqaure Makati to check out 4 different mini laptops that have hit the Philippine market both officially and unofficially. Here are the 4 mini-laptops he checked out:

Asus EEE PC
Neo Explore X1
Astone UMPC
Deep Blue H1

Here is a 4-way spec comparison of the 4:

Product	Asus EEE PC	Neo Explore X1	Astone UMPC	Deep Blue H1
Price	P19800	P16999	P19500	P16900
RAM	512 MB	512 MB	1 GB	1 GB
CPU	Celeron 900 Mhz	Celeron 900 Mhz	1.2GHz Via	1.0 GHz
Storage	4 GB	512 MB	30 GB	40 GB
Battery	4-cell 5200mAh	3-4 hrs	4-cell 2200mAh	4.5 hours
OS	Xandros	Windows XP Starter		Linpus
Wifi	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Card Reader	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Display	7″ (800×480)	7″ (800×480)	7″ (800×400)	7″ (800×480)
LAN	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
USB	3	2	2	2
Webcam	0.3 MP	No	0.3 MP	0.3 MP
Weight	0.89 kg	1.4 kg	0.97 kg	1.2 kg

Looking at the specs above, Deep Blue H1 is the clear winner. However, Phaw was able to try it and was mightily dissatisfied. Why? Because everything went slow, from opening a spreadsheet to browsing the internet to playing a game! Phaw asked the salesman why it was slow and he mentioned it might be because of the OS being Linpus. Phaw is not so sure about that but as of now, he won’t recommend it to anyone. It even looked fragile and was not at all attractive to the eye.

Right now, if Phaw were to buy a mini-laptop, he would buy the Asus EEE PC because of its durability and professional looks.

Tags: laptop

My Mini City

Phaw found this very cool game in the internet where you can create a virtual city online just by visiting the page. It works this way, Day 1 Phaw visits the page and the city gets +1 population. Each +1 population enhances the look of the city(houses will be erected, roads will be built, etc…). Day 2 Phaw visits again and the city gets another +1 population and that makes a total of 2. Now, phaw has 10 friends and asks all of them to visit. That adds a +10 and we now have a total population of 12!

Here is the city at population 73: