uTorrent

I’ve officially switched from BitComet to uTorrent. The recent versions of BitComet had some really funky behavior changes which I didn’t like. First of all, before I could force start a torrent even though my global max for downloading torrents has been reached. Now pressing start just queues it up and waits. Second, the order in which torrents will start downloading is completely chaotic. Before, the torrents will start base on the order of the list. However now, it was based on when the “start” button was pushed or when the torrent was added. To in order to configure the order and give a particular torrent priority, I had to stop all downloading/queued torrents and start that torrent first before others.

These 2 problems were highly irritating and I had to go back like 10 versions before this behavior was back to what I was used to.

So I then decided to give uTorrent a try as it was recommended by a few other people. It’s exactly what I wished BitComet to be. By shifting the torrent up and down on the list, it automatically sets that as the download order. There’s a force start option, but what’s even more neat is if I don’t use force start and move a particular torrent to the top, the last downloading torrent will automatically drop back down to the queued list.

All in all, I’m really satisfied with my transition to uTorrent. They have a different extension which I had to manually rename some files to get them to resume properly from BitComet to uTorrent (.bc! to .!ut).

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Random Crap:

While You’re at It, Why Not Generate A Little Electricity (from Digg) – Like many of these projects, the California Fitness setup isn’t going to light up the Hong Kong skyline or even power the club’s own air conditioning. The gym chain has rigged up 13 machines at one of its clubs here. When all of them are in use, the power generated amounts to about 300 watts, roughly enough to run three 27-inch television sets, five 60-watt light bulbs or several hundred video iPods. If all the exercise machines were in use 10 hours a day for a year, the gym could generate roughly $183 worth of electricity. At that rate, it would take about 82 years to pay off the initial $15,000 investment. I need this hooked up to my TV. ;p

Shelving By Chromatic Spectrum (from Cari) – Look at Flickr user chotda’s bookshelves! A spectrum of beautiful colors arranged across a chromatic spectrum on the shelves. Pretty neat looking.

i’m Home (from Digg) – i’m is a new initiative from Windows Live™ Messenger. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program’s advertising revenue with some of the world’s most effective organizations dedicated to social causes. So any time you have an i’m™ conversation using Windows Live Messenger, you help address the issues you feel most passionate about, including poverty, child protection, disease, and environmental degradation. It’s simple. All you have to do is join and start an instant messaging conversation. We’ll handle the donation. There’s no charge, so join now and put our money where your mouth is. We’ve set no cap on the amount we’ll donate to each organization. The sky’s the limit. Interesting. At first I thought this was a hoax, like one of those forward this email to x number of friends and Bill Gates will give you $y. But this program is rather interesting…

No time like present to remove clocks – The Watson Post Office is one of the nation’s 37,000 post offices in which clocks have been removed from retail areas as part of a “retail standardization program” launched last year. The effort is designed to give the public-service areas a more uniform appearance, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in Thursday editions. “We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock,” said Stephen Seewoester, Dallas spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service. Haha! That’s another way of saying we don’t want people to focus on our slow service. ;p

The Perfect Desktop – Part 3: Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft (from Derek) – I didn’t really read the article, but the pictures were very pretty. Linux sure has a come a long way.

Lightsticks In The Toilet (from Digg) – One last image of the inside of the toilet with red and green cyalume lightsticks poured into it. Someone commented that it looked like galaxies in space. View more pictures from this album.

Graphics Card Rankings (from Digg) – A rather useful video card ranking guide that tells you where each video card stands in today’s chaotic graphics card naming world. Plus the fact it included everything up to Voodoo1 and Riva is rather amazing. It’s really a ranking of graphics card chipsets and not the graphics card themselves, which is enough for me. Like recently I wanted to know if the Radeon X1600Pro was better or if the GeForce 7600GS. What would be nice now would be how they came up with the rankings (based on what benchmark from which source).

ScreenVader (from Digg) – An interesting menu UI. The videos and music were rather interesting too.