Blog no more

I've moved this blog to this link: https://bruce-huang.squarespace.com/
There will be no more posts on this blog anymore. Later, I might get a redirect from this blog immediately to the new one. This post will also be on my photography blog.

Is Samsung the next Apple?

As apple slowly dies off, some of you may be wondering what the smartphone market will do in response. Again and again Samsung increases its sales and expands on its line of products, and as this happens I find myself thinking about the next big thing. Will Samsung dominate the Android market? As the presence of samsung slowly becomes more and more obvious, Samsung definitely poses a severe threat to all other makers of cell phones. Already, despite questionable market statistics, the Samsung Galaxy S4 sold more than 200 copies a minute in the first launch time. That statistic itself is already insane. Plus, Samsung's legendary S3 and S2 are still very relevant smartphones on the market. As Samsungs sales grow, other competing smartphone makers are losing grip on the market as well. HTC's ONE is an excellent phone, which I consider to be even better than the S4, but it only sold about 8 million units. Even Apple's iPhones are selling less and less, with its market share slowly falling along with it. At this rate, Samsung will slowly consume the market and dominate the smartphone industry... At least until the next big thing.

Another minecraft castle build + BALOOOBA NEEDS YOU!

 Since I have no social life as of yet, my new castle build!

 First stage, building frame and first tower

First tower done, cloned 4 times in MCedit and some WorldEdit

Second layer wall built, filling begun

So anyone want to help me with this build?

the Youtube "scout army"

I am one of them now...

How to prevent an HP laptop from overheating without buying an ice planet

So we own an HP envy M6, which is a reasonably new model from HP. We bought it last november, and have used it since. The problem with the M6 is that it overheats constantly, and shuts itself down when it does. This can occur about once every 20 minutes and after a month of this occurring, it shortened to once every 10 minutes. We were pretty desperate because we had a lot of crap on that computer, so we decided to improvise. Here is our method:

You will need:
- Ice block
- Cloth and/or towel
- two identical blocks of wood

1. Wrap your ice block in the cloth and or towel
2. Place under the rear heat vent
3. put the blocks of wood near the lower two corners as to suspend the front

Pictures here:

These are the blocks of wood. They work fine, but the front end of the laptop is quite sharp, so you will have to watch out for that.

here you can see the block of ice, wrapped in a towel.

Another view of the block of ice

Hopefully, this helps and under the right conditions, you will not have to buy an ice planet to maintain a reasonable temperature for your HP laptop.

Troubleshooting:

- If the right side block starts slipping (due to the fact that the HP envy M6 is ridiculously left weighted and weighs nothing on the right side) place your hand and or small animal there to hold it in place. If using a small animal, please do not keep it there for any longer than 5 minutes because you will end up with a fine, medium rare, small animal

- If the ice starts melting, then quickly run to your nearest fire station and alert them of the situation. They will deal with the ensuing explosion

Thank you for reading!

iOS 7 and how all of it's features are copied

Recently, iOS 7 was revealed at WWDC 2013. At the presentation, many "new" features were announced, such as the removal of skeumorphism and "improved" multitasking. When I watched the keynote for it, I realized how every single feature that Apple claims to have invented is copied. Here I will list them and state why.

Improved Multitasking:
The new multitasking feature includes a new "windows" system, that when summoned renders all tasks into rectangular windows that are proportionate to the screens aspect ratio. These tasks can be flipped through from left to right or vice versa. This feature also includes "quick access" icons at the bottom of the screen, which allow you to open some apps from the multitasking menu itself.

This feature is very old, and began with the good old Web OS system. One of the most popular tablets that ran Web OS was the Blackberry Playbook. Web OS on the playbook was just like the multitasking experience of iOS 7, but was always present. The tasks would be presented in separate moveable windows that were the same aspect ratio as the screen, and all tasks would run from those windows, so you could actually watch an HD movie from the homescreen through one of the windows. It also had that quick access bar, but when you dragged the bar up, you would have instant access to all of your apps, not just the select few that are selected in the quick access bar.

Reduced Skeumorphism (not really a feature, but wanted to include anyways):
Because Apple didn't have anything good to add, by reducing skeumorphism they could pass it off as special. There really isn't anything to mention about this. They just made everything flat. Also, some added transparency.

Well, paper was invented 2th century B.C. by Chinese people, so for once they're copying chinese people. Funny how things go around...

New notifications bar:
The new notifications bar/quick access settings bar drags up from the bottom of the screen. It is a transparent layer over the actually iOS 7 interface and allows quick access to various options such as WIFI control, screen brightness adjustment, and so on.

This is a blindingly obvious copy of Android. Even Android Ice Cream Sandwich on tablets had a notifications shade that came up from the bottom right. It allows access to all the features that the Apple copy has, and gives you notifications from apps such as facebook posts and instant messaging. The only downside is that it's not shiny and transparent, but does that really matter?

Since I can't really think of anything else that Apple added, I will leave it at that. I might do more if Apple decides to add something to iOS 7. If anyone manages to find something that Apple added to iOS 7 that you think is "new", put it in the comments. I will prove you wrong. Thanks for reading.

Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag rant

Assassin's Creed has always been a great game series. Even though the first game was much worse than any other one in the series, it still introduced the basic idea of in-game Parkour (my apologies to Prince of Persia). It was an entirely revolutionary game at the time, and spawned huge amounts of fans and eager gamers wanting more. The second game was perfect as well. The game fixed about every single bug and/or glitch found in the first game and introduced an entirely new Assassin to the series, Ezio. Ezio has had 3 games made for him now, and he holds a place in many gamer's hearts as the best Assassin to live. Ever single game since that has gotten progressively better, and with newer games comes better graphics and more fluid gameplay, but Assassin's Creed has never really been about that. Assassin's creed is simply a great storyline coupled with an excellent exploration element and beautiful cities that you can explore. Even with Assassin's Creed 3, the graphics have only gotten better and now even more parkour elements have been implemented, such as climbing trees (which may sound pathetic, but is a great experience). Assassin's Creed is a great series of games, and no other 3rd person parkour game barely reaches the high bar that the Assassin's Creed series has set for that genre of video games.

Recently, rumors of a newer game named Assassin's Creed Black Flag have been circulating. This is good, since everyone loves Assassin's Creed and it will probably be a huge hit right? Well, AC3 was only released last year, does that mean Ubisoft is hopping onto the one release/year bandwagon and rely on returning fans/customers for revenue? Are the games still going to be better than the last or will it change? Take Treyarch and their Call of Duty franchise for example. At first, it was a revolutionary game introducing cutting edge graphics quality coupled with great gameplay, but now that there are yearly releases, it has become a lot less interesting. Every Call of Duty game since MW2 has seemed like a cheap re-skin or just a remake of the older one, but with different characters and/or levels. Also, the in-game engine has even remained the same throughout several games, with not a significant increase in graphics quality or gameplay experience. In truth, after playing just a few Call of Duty games, it seems like everything is just the same, but slightly different. Yet Call of Duty is a billion dollar franchise. Why? Because of their returning customers and their huge fan base. Even their expansion packs/map packs are cheap. Treyarch retextures a few guns and makes a very good looking cube and calls it a map, then publishes it as a $20 pack. I would not pay for that, but loyal fans will.

I may have strayed on a very wild tangent there, but the point is, if the Assassin's Creed franchise hops onto the "yearly release" bandwagon, they better nail every single game, or risk losing an extremely loyal fan base, a great reputation for providing the best games, and huge amounts of potential revenue.

Plus, I hate ship combat, and that is what Black Flag will centralize around...

New separate photography blog!

Since this one is so cluttered with junk that is incomprehensible, I have decided to launch a new blog that is dedicated strictly to my photography. Here is the link: http://brucethephotographer.blogspot.com/

Also, an awesome image I managed to grab of my sister:

We caught a skunk!

Well not actually. He was hiding between the drywall and the outer wall of our garage.

And my awesome trap (it's a banana):

Some light photography (preview)

Incomplete of course. Couldn't afford an ND filter so I used sunglasses.