AXIS Project

The AXIS Project is my documentry of everything technology related that I am intrested in. Expect how-to's, reviews, and opinions! Feel free to ask me questions or submit cool ideas for how-to's!

[axisproject]

Day 1: Creators’ update

//sysdump@2am. 

Creators’ update was officially released yesterday and I jumped to get on it as fast as I could. 

I’m happy to report that my experience so far has been very positive.

Installation:

There are a few ways to get the update. One, through the media creation tool to make an ISO or install directly. 

Two, through the upgrade advisor. 

Three, through Windows Update as starting next week when Microsoft will properly roll this update out to people over the next 3 months or so. This takes too long and I’m impatient so I went with the second option.

The installer downloaded quickly and ran similarly. Alas, the moment it popped up, it said I didn’t meet the requirements. 

8GB of free space needed in C: Drive.

Crud. I had 4GB. Que me opening WinDirStat and deleting/moving lots of stuff from my pitiful 120 GB SSD that Premiere (my prefered video editing software) likes to use as a cache drive even though I tell it not to. Urgh. Also dang those electron apps take up a lot of space. 

Alright. 8GB free. Happy now installer? 

*double click*

Yup. It’s happy. The downloading and installing process went by very quickly . It took less than 45 min to get from clicking restart to a working computer. Sweet!

Alright. Now, what did this update break this time? 

As far as I can see, only one small thing. My sound card comes with an effects software that I typically turn off due to it sounding weird. Somehow after the install: it reset itself, turned all its effects back on and starting driving me crazy. It confused me for quite a while as I thought it was some setting in the Windows Sound Panel or a driver issue. I took 30 min to figure out I need to click the stupid program in my tray and untick 3 options. Oops. Through all this little troubleshooting however, I started to discover some new things here and there about the Creators Update. Silver lining I guess.

Anyway. Opinion/Likes so far:

1. Settings looks gorgeous and has added functionality.

The columning in settings and the suggestions on the right are great. I love how settings that were missing or hard to find previously are easier to find now and look great at the same time (see Display especially). The troubleshooter in it is also fantastic (useful I guess considering how badly the AU update went for some). 

2. Being able to jump quickly into sound effects

 Apparently now you can right click the sound icon and jump straight to “spatial sound format”. Cool I guess. Oh hey Dolby Atmos support too woohoo.

3. Night Light works great.

Goodbye flux. Seriously, Night Light works really well and only lacks the “turn off for one hour” feature of flux and the brightness options. Otherwise, it doesn’t kill my frame rate as hard as flux when it triggers during game and it probably will remove all those weird bugs I was having due to having flux on. 

4. Disable Transparency option

Woo for old computers.

5.  Snipping tool has new icons

I love snipping tool and any update makes me happy. Even simple aesthetic ones.

6. Turning off wifi has now an option to turn it on after a while

YES. A fantastic Windows Phone feature made it on the PC :D

7. Automatic storage cleanup

Windows now can do cleanup automatically (supposedly will clear cache/recycle bin etc). Very useful for me with my small SSD space :P

That’s all I have right now. I haven’t tried Paint 3D yet (the only big “creator” thing I have seen currently), but so far it feels like a nice minor update. Not big like AU, but nice small touches here and there that make the experience better. I’ll report if I have more :)

2AM Adriel Out. 

[axisproject]

Galaxy J1 Mini First Impressions

WHAT? You bought a J1 Mini!?! 

(skip to the next bold text if you want to jump straight into the impressions.)

Yup. I am fully aware of the poor value, especially considering all the Chinese manufacturers who are producing fantastic phones at the same price. 

However all of them are 4.5 inches or bigger. My grandfather wanted an iPhone 5 sized phone.

I was seriously considering getting him a 2nd hand iPhone, but considering it was two to three times more expensive and contains a battery that has probably gone over a thousand cycles which is additionally not user-replaceable... I thought twice and ultimately drop the suggestion.

That left the J1 mini.

Specs look terrible... but, he doesn’t even know how to text and only needs it to make calls so we should be fine here.

OK. Enough talk. What do I think about this phone?

I have had around 24 hours with it to set it up and play with it, so do not take this as a review.

The Good:

-Design

This phone is tinnny tiny and fits nicely in the hand with its curved back. While the borders of this phone are slightly larger than I would like, it is not obvious with its “double border” design. The formerly mentioned double border design with the gold body and the black cut out for the screen looks quite aesthetically pleasing to my eyes.

-Storage

8GB+MicroSD is good. Not that much free space (around 4 GB) but still enough for a light user.

-Screen

480p is plenty for this size, and it has decent vertical viewing angles but poor horizontal viewing angles (which is fine honestly). It is also decently bright. Touch responsiveness/accuracy is also great which makes typing complex words and sentences surprisingly easy on such a small screen.

-Earpiece

Fantastic. Three words: Loud and clear.

-Others

Dual SIM support, Double-click home to bring up camera. Touch sounds are disabled by default (none of those nature sounding nonsense). A lot of unwanted built-in apps can be disabled. Charger with fixed microUSB end is included, as well as a spare microUSB cable and earphones.

The meh:

-Software

TouchWiz is not intrusive in the slightest here, in fact it’s quite nice and light. There is no easy mode however (queer considering the market for this phone), so I had to resort to using Nova Launcher and customize it to an “easy” layout. It also has an interesting “Outdoor” brightness mode which changes the colors and contrast to make it easier to see outside.

-Internals

768MB of RAM + Android Lollipop is not a good combination. Don’t install too many apps or risk bringing this phone to a halt. The CPU seems to perform OK with simple tasks like messaging apps though.

-Camera

Yay for 5MP back. Yay for decently wide front camera. Yay for the option of double click to launch camera. Boo for no auto-focus. Boo for no flash. Boo for VGA front camera. Meh for 720p video recording.

In all seriousness, I don’t think anyone expects much from the cameras here. Just good enough for video calling.  

The Bad:

- No ambient sensor

Enjoy manually changing brightness settings. Enjoy needing to double tap the screen in a call to unlock the screen and hang up.

- Speaker

It’s not very loud... at all : (

- Home button

It’s only been a few hours and somehow this home button looks scratched like a kitten’s playhouse. I cannot understand my analogies and why Samsung used such a soft plastic or rubber for their front button. I’ll insert a pic later, but I am seriously shocked at how scratched up this has been in the last few hours and can’t imagine how a year’s usage will affect it.

- Charging

It’s sooo slow. For a 1500mah battery, it really is slow. The built in charger is rated for 3.75W and a faster charger does nothing!

To Be Discovered: Battery life.

Overall? Not as bad as I expected, but I still don’t think it is a good value. Better phones are out there for roughly the same price (Xiaomi, ZTE, Asus, Huawei) but if you do need a small sized phone, your choices are limited.   

[axisproject]

Booting into a USB on Lenovo laptop even it have been disabled through Hibernation

Welcome to Adriel’s SYSDUMP, these little short, seemingly random notes are things that I discovered and publish here hoping it might help someone else. Enjoy :)

So on the Lenovo Z460, there is a feature in the BIOS where you are not allowed to enter the BIOS Setup or the boot menu if the system has detected that the OS was previously in hibernation. This could be dangerous as if something happened to your OS and the system had been hibernated, you would not be able to boot into a USB or disc to repair or reinstall windows.

Worse still, fast boot, a feature enabled by default in windows 8 makes the system hibernate when “shut down” is selected.

Here’s how to bypass this issue.

First, remove your hard drive. Yes, this is the only way I know to fix this issue :( . Lenovo, like many other PC manufacturers, has repair guides available on their website. For the Lenovo Z460 link, click here

Secondly, insert a bootable disc and start your computer. USB Thumbdrives do not work and unfortunately I am not sure if non-windows discs will work as I did not get to test it. In this case, I used a Windows 8 disc I had lying around.

Lastly, once it’s booted into, shutdown the machine through the OS. Now you should be able to enter back into the BIOS settings. 

[axisproject]

Tab Discarding? What? 

It makes Chrome run better. Have I got your attention now?

Today we talk about how Tab Discarding Works :)

[axisproject]

NEW VIDEO! Editing 1080p video on an atom processor. Torture or a decent experience?

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FShZ9aVxLCY)

[axisproject]

Android Tip : Force update Google Play!

You can force an update for Google Play by going into Google Play’s Settings and double tapping Build Number!

[axisproject]

Solution to "Compressed Zip Folder Error"

Welcome to Adriel's SYSDUMP, these little short, seemingly random notes are things that I discovered and publish here hoping it might help someone else. Enjoy :)

Symptoms (at least that I experienced) :

Annoying pop ups that says “Please Insert the last disk of the Multi-Volume set and click OK to continue” come up when a certain flash drive or folder is being opened. Clicking OK and cancel does nothing as it comes back up again. Pop-ups can annoyingly stack.

Explanation :

In this case, the issue was that there was a “corrupted” zip folder in the root(or basically home) of the drive. Most likely (at least in my case) it was created when inserted into a Mac (which it should not do, but nevertheless), as Mac OSX creates hidden files for each file on a FAT32 formatted drive. These files store data like icon data, indexing data, and whatever stuff Finder feels like storing in there. Annoyingly, the file extension remains the same, and thus it looks like a corrupted .zip to Windows which it then can’t open because it’s not in a proper zip format.

 Solution :

The solution thankfully is easy to solve. On Windows 8-10, open up File Explorer, click the "View" tab, and click the checkmark next to Hidden items.

Now open up your drive and you should see a bunch of semi-translucent files that has a file size of 5KB or less per file. Look for a .zip that is transparent looking and delete it.

 MAKE SURE IT’S THE RIGHT FILE. DON’T DELETE THE GOOD ZIP.

Click cancel on that annoying popup, and it should no longer show up again.

 This is the solution that worked for me. If it did not work for you, apologies! If you did find another solution, please share it in the comments and help others with this annoying problem.

[axisproject]

How to Turn Cassettes into MP3s!

Hey guys! Today we'll convert/turn a Cassette into a digital audio file which you can take anywhere!

Links and all extra info are on the YT Video!

[axisproject]

Quick Tip - Use a Lunchbox to store Batteries!

Lunchboxes are awesome for storing batteries. Here is why. Thanks for watching! Recharagable batteries tends to loose their charge over a period of time. According to Greenbatteries.com, storing them in the freezer can hold its capacity at 90% for a whole month. I'll leave the greenbatteries article down here if you are interested on learning more. http://www.greenbatteries.com/battery-myths-vs-battery-facts-1/ //LINKS:

YT Link: http://youtu.be/yEdeDHq1WEc Blog: axisproject.tumblr.com Personal YT: youtube.com/adrieltan1

//MUSIC:Running Away (Instrumental) by Tobu

[axisproject]

Flux Review - Orange for the sleep and eye strain

I use my computer all day and all night.

My homework is on my computer. My hobbies involve my computer. I relax by watching YouTube. I am literally staring at a screen almost 10 hours+ a day.

…

Probably not the best life for a teenager.

Nevertheless, eye strain is a problem for me, and so is sleeping.

I've have always heard about flux, but I never really tried it out because I was worried about the concept affecting my perception of color. 2 months ago however, I installed it on all my devices and has since never looked back.

How does Flux work?

Flux attempts to reduce eye strain and help sleep by overlaying a orange tint over your screen in attempt to block out blue light. According to the people over at Flux, blue light greatly reduces the chemical your brain produces that tells yourself to sleep and thus many people have problem sleeping at night.

The orange tint that Flux overcasts over one's screen is meant to match with one's lights at night. To my eyes, it doesn't look unnatural when reading text. It feels as if one is just looking at a book at night.

The orange overlay reduces eye strain for me. I don't really know the reason behind this, but I can feel the difference and that is awesome.

I won't go into the technical details of how Flux helps one's eyes and sleep as their website already does a fantastic job at that.

  Problems.

My concerns about color were true in some things however, photos looked colors looked slightly off every night, and so did video. It was not too off so that did not annoy me as much as I thought it would, in fact after a week I was completely fine with the color change. I even accidentally edited photos in LightRoom for about 1 and a half hour without realizing Flux was on (oops). With this in mind, I now prefer to edit photos and videos (only for color) in the day. Flux does have an option to disable for an hour if one is working on such projects, but I personally can't stand the color shift from the warm to the cool. Unlike the shift from cool to warm, the shift from warm to cool feels jarring.

I did not get a performance hit in games, but some people report otherwise (and also to be fair the games I play do not tax my computer too much).

  Availability

Flux is available on Windows, OSX, Linux, and iOS. An official Android app isn't available yet (it's coming soon!), but you can get many other options like Twilight which work just as well.

Comparing the flux version on Mac to Windows is like comparing ice cream to whipped cream. The mac version has a lot more features, and looks nicer too. To name a few things, there is a bedtime mode on the mac version which changes the color temperature to an even warmer color tone to encourage one to sleep. Location can be automatically detected, there are pre-sets, and flux can be disabled depending on what app is running.  Oh did I mention it looked cleaner too? (I did? Okay.)

I wished that the windows version had the same features as the mac version. Nevertheless the windows version still gets the job done.

I haven't got a chance to play with the Linux version or the iOS version.  It's important to note that the iOS version only works on jail broken iOS devices (understandable). Also there is no Windows Phone version too.

The Android Version (Twilight)

Twilight for Android works well but it has it's flaws. The color temperature range is different compared to Flux on the PC though thus its hard for me to get it to match up with my PC. However, it does add a screen darken feature which can bring your brightness lower than usual. This feature works OK, the colors shift oddly in order to have this happen and it looks weird. It's still nice for bedtime reading when 0% brightness is still too bright.

There is also another issue with Twilight, when it is enabled you can't do high-level activities. For example: You can't manually install a APK or connect to a VPN when the overlay is enabled. This is understandable as Twilight is transferring touches from the overlay to the actual android system and thus acting like a "buffer". Plus, you can easily disable/enable Twilight through the notification toggle.

However, it did give a performance hit to my old Sony Tablet S. The poor Tegra 2 in that tablet has a terrible enough time trying to deliver smooth 30fps scrolling, and enabling flux (in this case Twilight, more info bellow) on it brings down the animations smoothness by around two times.

To sum it up:

Flux is great if you are a nighttime owl who spends the whole day on the computer for it reduces eyestrain and helps you sleep better. While I personally cannot attest to sleeping better, I can definitely say that it has helped my eyestrain a lot.

I apologize for how late it took me to write this, as I have been busy with my mid-term finals. I only have 1 exam left!

[axisproject]

Xiaomi Piston Paperback ( or Basic version ) First Impressions/Unboxing

Timecodes on YT link!

For 29RMB, these sound decent for their price. However, I have been too spoiled by better headphones/earphones so I can't stand them. I expected them to sound somewhat better knowing how much their more expensive brothers have been praised. I am going to attempt to return them and get them instead. If you want to know more, I HIGHLY recommend this forum post that clears a lot of things up about the different variants of the Pistons: http://www.head-fi.org/t/735775/the-xiaomi-pistons-thread-2-0

[axisproject]

f.lux & Twilight Review!

Flux : Software to help you sleep & Prevent eye strain?

The app for Windows, OSX, iOS, and Android to help you sleep better and reduce eye strain!

Timecodes in the YT description.

Get it : justgetflux.com

[axisproject]

Get back Maximize on Mac OSX Yosemite!

//SKIP TO 0:36 to skip update. With the latest OSX update, what used to be the zoom button, or maximize has turned into a Full-Screen option! Thankfully, there is a keyboard shortcut that gets maximize back. //NOTE: I apologize for the rather poor quality. Sickness leaves me with no time (and voice) to film a good episode.

[axisproject]

Getting Back Maximize (or zoom) on Mac OSX 10.10 Yosemite

There are a lot of things I like about Yosemite, but there are a few things I don't like. One of those things in particular is changing the default behavior of the "zoom" key (or maximize) to fullscreen instead.

No, I don't need my Finder window fullscreen. I just want the window to grow vertically so I can see more of my list!

Here's a little tip if you are frustrated about it.

If you hold down the option key and hit the "green traffic light", it will maximize (or zoom. Call it whatever :P ) instead of fullscreening.

That's all!

(Though it would be nice if we could have the previous behavior back... plz Tim?)

What new behavior do you hate about something new? (doesn't need to be mac related at all)

[axisproject]

2 Months later- Pressy Clone Review (Video)

More detailed review (I cover the 360 software here) : http://axisproject.tumblr.com/post/106705519351/2-months-later-pressy-clone-review

[axisproject]

2 months later - Pressy Clone Review

Remember when smartphones back in the day had buttons galore? Even touch only smartphones back then had numerous hotkeys! (ahh Palm OS and Windows mobile). These days, the number of buttons we have on our smartphone have reduced to the bare minimum. We don't even have shutter keys on 90% of our smartphones now! For those who miss having a quick button, Pressy released a device that turned your headset jack on one's android phone into a button. Pressy started off as a crowd-funding project on kickstarter back in April 2013, and people embraced it. It was successfully funded within 24 hours. With options including the Pressy device itself starting at $17($15 if you take in account the early bird pricing), it was not exactly the cheapest accessory for a phone. It did not help that Pressy had multiple delays on bring Pressy to the market, which allowed other manufactures to create clones and release them before Pressy even shipped. Manufactures like XiaoMi, Klick, 360 released these "clones" with a price tag of less than $2 a piece. Compared to the final  $27 of Pressy, there was little reason to choose Pressy over the clones. At that price, I decided it was worth a shot, so I bought it (actually I bought two different ones). 

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS

  SOFTWARE

I installed 360's software and the first thing I noticed was all the permissions it stated it might use. This key is supposedly  able to do be many functions, so while I understand the need for the permissions, I feel that some people will be uncomfortable with this app being able to read almost everything on a device. Personally, I did not care much about these permissions. I trust 360 enough for all the permissions stated, plus my Huawei phone comes with a permission manager, so if I did not like it accessing something like my contacts, I can easily block it from doing so (It also prompts me if any program want to access something like contacts or my camera).  With the app installed, I plugged in my key. On my screen pops up a dialogue box, asking me if I plugged in an audio device or a key. I selected key. Up pops another window asking me to insert the device again and not hold down the button while doing so.

Ok, so I have to insert the device without holding it down?

A little annoying, but it's not that hard thankfully to insert it so. 360's software is happy now, and I start exploring the software. 360 is a chinese company and the software was 50% in Chinese which was not a problem for me considering I can read Chinese. ( For those who don't understand English, it is still navigable in my opinion, but it might be a better idea to download an alternate app on the play store instead. I personally like KeyCut which I talk about later.)  Then I noticed that it started displaying a "quick launch dock" in my notifications tray, which allowed me to pin apps and actions in my notifications if I wanted to. I like a clean notification tray, so I disabled it immediately.

  Ok, let's start mapping keys. The app allows you to map one to four clicks, that's it. The things you can map it to include :

  Quick Capture (Which quietly captures a picture as fast as one can)

Quick Video (Same but video)

Flashlight,

ToolBox (Basically pops up a 2x2 grid where you can have more shortcuts)

Launch an app

Acceleration (Clear RAM by killing programs, which I do not like)

Record audio

SOS

Fake Call

Screen Lock

Home Key

Call

Evernote

and other random stuff that I don't know what they are and don't care about : P.

  Many of these don't work well however. Quick Capture tries to use the fastest shutter speed possible, which usually results in poorly exposed shots. Quick Video crashes my device. I rarely like "acceleration" functions which force closes apps and is bad for one's phone. Fake Call works, but the interface looks like something from the 2009 (aka the Éclair days).

  However, flashlight, screen lock, home key, call, toolbox, and audio recording work fantastically.

  I ended up mapping one click to Screen Lock. Two clicks to Flashlight. Three clicks to open up Toolbox with options for my commonly used apps. Four clicks to open my camera. Pretty simple. I could execute each action with ease, and the haptic feedback from each click was satisfying. There was a slight lag though, coming in around 400ms before the action started to execute. However, with the "quick" option in 360's settings, the lag was close to gone, but it only allowed a single action to be mapped. As much as I like laglessness (is that a word?), I want the multi-click feature so I disabled it.

  Design

When I use the device without a case on, it sticks out a little bit. It does not annoy me much when I hold my phone, for I don't touch anywhere near my top of my phone (where my headset jack is located). That being said, when I put my case on, it sits flush with my case.

  2 Months Later.

In my two months of having it, I found myself using the button to activate the flashlight and camera options the most. I almost never used the toolbox options because of one reason -- Lag. 80-90% of the time, the clicks will be registered, I  would get the vibration, and the action will begin to run about half a second later. The other 10-20% of the time, I would only get the vibration four seconds later, and the action starts after the vibration.

Annoying.

I don't mind the 500ms constant lag, but I DO mind long inconsistent lag. The point of these keys is to get to one's apps quickly, and the inconsistent performance of this app makes it frustrating at times, as in these cases it is faster to hit the home key and open the app I want. In order to try fix this issue, I tried another app called KeyCut (which I switched to because I found it more feature packed) and the result was better (lag happened only like 5% of the time), but not 100% fixed.

Then there was the problem of storing the key.

The carrier is supposedly able to attach to an earphone or headphone cable, but my headphone's cable is too thick and thus it cannot attach. While the carrier can also be attached to a keychain, it is still too inconvenient for me. This was a problem for me as I like enjoying all my media through headphones, and I ended up not using my phone as a multimedia device for about a month due to the hassle.

That was the tipping point.

In the end, I just took the key off and stored it in my closet.

  So. Do I recommend it?

If you are the type of guy who never uses your headphone jack, it is worth a shot at 2 bucks.

While there is the inconsistent lag, it is still convenient to be able to do actions quickly which just a few clicks wherever you are on your phone. Considering you can get Tasker (an automation app) to work with it too, the capabilities of this gadget will vastly increase.

However, for me the hassle of constantly plugging it in and unplugging it (with no real convenient place to store it) is too much and the cons outweigh the pros for me.

TLDR : Functional. Lags occasionally. Usefulness Varies for most. Hard to store.

Video Review (I cover KeyCut in this video) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO-ZC1NhbAI

[axisproject]

Welcome to the AXIS Blog.

YAY!

"But Adriel, you are never ever going to update this."

"No I will."

"No you won't. You forget about everything".

"...."

"See?"

My grammar is not great. Expect lots of mistakes.

But hey! If I write more, I should get better at it right?

RIGHT?

right.