Aah, I’ve felt really busy the past month or so! First was work, where we released three times in January. We normally do once a month, but there was some infrastructure changes we had to get in. I’ve also been helping with recruiting at the college I graduated from. Just a few days ago, I was at their career fair, and it was pretty fun! I talked to a lot of people, and even got to see college friends, both ones that were there for their company and ones that were looking for a job. We ended up with 75 resumes, some for internships and others for full time jobs.

I’ve also been somewhat productive this weekend. I cleaned up our apartment, which was kind of a mess after the holidays. We still had gift wrap and empty boxes laying around XD;; I realized I’ve mentioned several times that I’d post pictures of our place but still haven’t done it. So… here’s a few pics this time!

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I’ve been putting off something for a while, which is upgrading my home computer to Windows 7. Due to my previous absolutely awful experience with Vista, I was skeptical of Win7. But, I finally did it over the weekend. I’ve done reformats several times in the past so it was quick to get my computer back as before. 2 tips before reformatting:

1. Get an external hard drive and make a back up. Definitely back up your personal files like pictures and music, but also don’t forget stuff from programs (favorites in browsers, custom patterns/brushes in Photoshop, game config and save files, etc). My Documents and your Fonts folder are also good things to back up.

2. Look through your programs, and make a list of what you’ll need to reinstall. It’ll be quicker to get it all back when you know exactly what you need. Don’t forget that you also need to reinstall some drivers, like printer and graphics drivers.

Anyway, Win7 is like this Penny Arcade comic. It’s not bad. I haven’t had any major grievances yet, though I did edit a lot of the options right away. For example, I turned off UAC and all of the snapping features (snapping to the sides is not useful when you use dual monitors). I also installed my programs to a custom folder I made instead of Program Files (because it’s no longer writeable) and changed the taskbar to be similar to how I had it on XP:

Before, I was on the 32bit version of XP, so it didn’t recognize all of my memory, only about 3GB of it. I decided to use the 64bit version of Win7 this time, and TADA!

It now recognizes all 6GB! Win7 seems to run smoother in some areas, like showing a list of programs or thumbnails of a folder with large images. The new look for Windows Explorer took a bit to get used to, but I think I like it. I also like that Run in the Start menu is replaced with a Search and the new Show Desktop button is nifty. Though I haven’t been on Win7 long, so far it’s alright in my books.

I decided to update my Rubik’s Cube collection page with not only the new cubes I got recently but new pictures! I’ve realized that my collection has grown to 21 cubes now. Of those, 16 were gifts, so I guess I really have my friends to thank for most of my collection =) My newest addition to the collection was bought just yesterday. I got the Rubik’s TouchCube!

This is an electronic Rubik’s Cube. Each side is a touch screen that you can swipe to rotate. Here is a video review of it to give an idea of how it works. The cube can also give you hints, and it’s able to solve itself from where ever you left off.

Ever since I saw it a couple months ago, I’ve wanted one so bad! Everywhere I looked online had it for $150 though. However, I found out Best Buy had it for only $50, so I immediately went out to buy it!

Solving it actually takes longer than when I solve a normal Rubik’s Cube. It doesn’t swipe as fast as I can turn a normal cube. A side only works if it’s facing up, so that’s a little weird. I’ve also realized how much muscle memory goes into solving a cube. When solving a normal cube, I feel like I do a lot of moves without thinking about it and sometimes not even looking. Working with this one makes me stop and think about what I’m about to do XD;;

I’m also happy with the pictures of it! I put it against a black fabric back drop and turned off all the lights in the room. It took a few tries with my DSLR before I was satisfied with how they looked. Anyway, the TouchCube is a really cool toy to have if you’re a fan of Rubik’s cubes. I wonder what I’ll get next =D