| Shiny = Good (sometimes) |
[Apr. 9th, 2009|10:22 pm] |
Picked up a new toy for myself - an 8GB media player (with sd-card slot capable of storing up to another 4gb). Very nice, and works well with bog-standard 350mb tv episodes saved as AVIs.
About to engage Malygos on WoW, so back to raiding. |
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| Oh my... |
[Jan. 30th, 2009|01:44 pm] |
My shiny new 22" monitor arrived today. And shiny doesn't do the bezel justice - they weren't kidding when they refered to it as "Piano Finish". But it runs great, looks great (although I need to tweak some settings a little, as WoW looks a tad too dark), and makes the monitors sitting on either side look pale by comparison. (I have to decide what I want to do about my setup now, as three monitors makes for a slightly crowded desktop - might be time to retire the old 15") |
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| Realism in the most unexpected places. |
[Sep. 3rd, 2008|02:12 am] |
Having managed to get a new gamepad (an Xbox 360 wired controller), I finally met the preconditions I'd set in order to give Lego Indiana Jones a try, and I was quite surprised at what I saw; with the graphics turned up to their respective maximum settings, it looked remarkably like real animated lego running around inside my screen (and the game's fun as well). I think I might be investing in a copy (and possibly getting Lego Batman as well, once it shows up at EB).
I also had a play of the WALL-E tie-in, and it was blandly absorbing (and technically not bad), but falling understandably short of the film. (Still not bad though, just paled beside Indy's exploits)
Still, it's only 3 sleeps until Spore, and I suspect that could suck away my gaming time quite comprehensively (barring raiding in WoW). It'll be something to distract me from the discomfort of my bruised little toe, from accidentally kicking a chair... |
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| Travel, physical and virtual. |
[Jun. 13th, 2008|12:43 am] |
Yesterday I paid for tickets to fly up to Auckland next month to visit family. (Personally I'd rather stay home, but i've been nagged to go back up for quite a while, so I figured it's time for another duty visit) Hopefully I'll be able to convince my mum to get broadband while I'm there - dialup is painful, and Xnet is actually pretty good (and cheap).
And the latest version of Opera has been released (v9.5, which I'm about to install).
I have to admit, given the choice between physical travel and virtual communication I prefer staying at home and sending the occasional email. But sometimes you just have to make sacrifices to reset the familial nag-o-meter. |
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| Surrounded. |
[May. 28th, 2008|10:28 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | hardware, upgrade | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  geeky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | WoW - Background music in Mount Hyjal | ] |
I was supposed to start saving for my planned trip up to Auckland in July to visit my family for a week, but yet again plans fail to keep up with opportunity. So I now I have a shiny new set of 5.1 speakers (admittedly with the bass turned down so I don't annoy the neighbours) gracing the desktop.
I can start saving next week. Again. |
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| Embiggened rememberancering. |
[Apr. 23rd, 2008|11:19 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | pc, upgrade, vista | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  content | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Buddy Holly - Everyday | ] |
Picked up some more memory for my vista-laden pc, which kept crashing until I worked out that I had to update the bios on the motherboard to make it play nice with more than 2gb of memory... Now 64-bit vista runs like a dream with 6gb (oddly enough, memory-hungry beast that it is).
Pity it's a rice-and-noodle week as a result of my spending. |
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| A picture's worth a thousand words. |
[Apr. 18th, 2008|02:13 pm] |
Atm most of them (in my case) are 'Hairy'. (Didn't realise how thick my beard has become)
I bought a webcam to try out when chatting with a good friend in Oz. It's surprising how good the picture quality is (especially in less-than-optimal lighting) compared to the old one it's replacing (due to a lack of drivers for Vista64).
Don't suppose anyone needs a webcam for use with XP? |
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| Shiny good. |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|01:22 pm] |
I've upgraded my video card to a Gigabyte 9600GT, which will hopefully put an end to some graphical glitches I've been experiencing in games. I've only tried out WoW with it so far, but it's running at 1440x900 with 8x antialiasing at about 40fps, which is pretty nice. (I'm tempted to give Vista another try, with SP1 out for it and drivers a lot more mature than my last attempt)
And, a video: ( Working Class British Brothers - Star Wars Edition ) |
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| Upgrades and stuff. |
[Jan. 19th, 2008|08:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | quiz, upgrade, wow | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | geeky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Fiona Apple - Love Ridden | ] |
Almost finished my current series of computer upgrades - installed a new cpu on Weds (AMD X2-5200, substantial improvement over the X2-3600 previously resident), with a replacement video card probably next on the cards. (It's made quite a difference; converting 3 hours of avi to dvd took a tad over an hour, where previously it took almost twice that)
WoW is soaking up quite a bit of my time, as I've changed guilds again and are currently trialing in the endgame raiding guild of Tempest (and doing a pretty good job, if I do say so myself). Only problem I'm having is getting into groups on my rogue, who needs to run instances to complete quests, when ppl in-guild just want me to bring my tank so they can run instances to complete quests... Still, completing 5/6 of SSC over two nights is nothing to sneeze about.
Oh, and a quiz to finish on.
( Quizzle me this ) |
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| Prognosis: Less stressful |
[Dec. 13th, 2007|08:42 pm] |
I've installed the new motherboard in my pc (the right one, this time), and all is going surprisingly smoothly (which is to say, it's going smoothly and I'm surprised). XP has been installed, and most of my usual programs have been nailed into position (in a manner of speaking) with the XP updates under way atm. (I'm giving the new XP service pack release candidate a try, being insanely curious about such things - not to mention the fact I need to find new things to go wrong with the computer, and this looks like the easiest way to sort it out).
I finished watching Life a couple of days ago, and it was quite unexpected to actually have them not only give the brief season a solid end, but also to have them introduce a believeable hook for a second season if by some miracle they're able to proceed with one (considering the writer's strike in the US, and the tendancy of US networks to kill off shows that perform the miracle of being both entertaining and intelligent). |
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| Money makes the world go round. |
[Dec. 13th, 2007|01:18 am] |
Or in my case, sound better.
I've received a backpayment of my accomodation supplement from Winz, and I've decided it's finally time to replace my doddering Live! soundcard with a more modern X-Fi XtremeGamer. (I'm also getting a new memory card for my DS, so I can put the one from my DS in my mp4 player which I'll finally be able to put more than 512mb of mp3s on - Oh, and I almost splurged on a 4gb ipod nano, but fortunately I came to my senses before I made what would likely have been a regretable purchase)
(And yes, I should still get my washing machine fixed. But I'm able to work around the non-functional valve, so it's not topping my list of things to spend money on atm)
Still haven't gotten my replacement motherboard, but I'm hoping to get it tomorrow or at the latest on Friday. I think if it's not here on Friday, I'll be looking for a refund and somewhere else to purchase one.
I'm also a little more shorn than usual, having finally been able to see the dermatologist at the hospital, and am now dealing with various creams and ointments while I wait to get my appointment to start UV treatment for my psoriasis. While I'm certainly not fond of the coal tar and sulphur one I use on my scalp (and on my pallid, stubbled face), I just hope it all works this time. (And I think I need to have a haircut)
I also came across what looks to be a very interesting resource called Freecycle. (They even have a Christchurch group) |
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| Suddenly it all makes sense. |
[Dec. 6th, 2007|12:43 pm] |
Found out why I was having such trouble installing XP and Vista on my new motherboard. Basically instead of the M2A-VM DH I was expecting, I was given an M2N-VM DH. So I now know that the reason the ATI drivers weren't working was because I needed Nvidia drivers that I hadn't downloaded. (And not having a manual or driver cd didn't help things any)
I've phoned the supplier and complained (politely, as is my way) and I'll be taking it back next week in order to exchange it for the correct one (which they have to order in).
So now I can download the correct drivers and install XP - while Vista does have some nice points, it runs like a dog when you have more than a couple of programs open (which is pretty much the way it is most of the time when I'm busy).
Bah. |
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| Hmmmm. |
[Dec. 5th, 2007|10:41 pm] |
Well, I've replaced the motherboard in my machine with something a little less bargain-basement. Unfortunately, due to a comedy of errors (well, it has traces of amusement in hindsight), I've had to put 64-bit Vista on the machine, due to the driver cd not being in the box with the motherboard, and the shop being unable to find it. Of course XP wouldn't recognise the onboard sound or the network adapter, but Vista did. So I'm gritting my teeth against my irrational dislike for shiny slow Vista, and giving it a try - at least until I can get a copy of the driver cd to give XP another try.
Also visited a specialist at the hospital to see about getting my psoriasis seen to again - hopefully I'll be starting a course of UV treatment before too long.
Time to catch up on WoW though - spending so much of the day either out and about or muttering at the computer under my breath has cut into my 'quality time' quite a bit. |
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| One less worry... |
[Jun. 12th, 2007|01:14 am] |
My old Logitech cordless mouse has been showing its age, so I was relieved to find it's still covered by it's warranty (with a year of the 3 year cover still remaining). So I was happy to bring home a shiny new MX1000 this afternoon - with luck I'll get at least another two years of use out of it (although the temptation to replace it with a Revolution MX is quite strong).
The remainder of my upgrade has gone comparatively painlessly (after the purchase of a pci USB card to get my keyboard working properly) - my system is now an Athlon64 x2-3600 with 2gb of ddr2-800 (in single-channel mode) and a 256mb Radeon X1950 Pro. I'm tempted to replace the power supply with one from a more trustworthy brand, and to replace my non-Vista-compatible Soundblaster Live! soundcard with something more recent in lineage, but other than that things are going well. (Stalker runs nicely with that 2nd gig of memory, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance is fun. I've also managed to get a surprising distance into the WoW endgame as well, but the need to group with other players keeps surfacing with often expensive results.) |
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| Dual cores of happiness. |
[Apr. 27th, 2007|02:14 am] |
I've started assembling the bits and pieces for my next upgrade, and now have a shiny new dual-core athlon64 sitting atop my pc in its shiny new unopened box. Just need the memory (thinking of 2x 1gb ddr2-667 or -800, depending on prices), an AM2 motherboard, and the confidence to gut my pc again.
I've been busy with WoW as well, having found myself in charge of a new guild after a mass defection from an underperforming guild. And I've redone my UI, which looks more like this.
( Click here to see the big picture. ) |
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| Busy busy busy... |
[Mar. 30th, 2007|04:03 am] |
I probably should get to bed, but I want to convert a couple more episodes of Primeval to add to my dvd of stuff-to-watch-up-north (along with the rest of Torchwood, some Stargate Atlantis, a couple of episodes of The Dresden Files, and The Iron Giant. I know I won't have time to watch all of it, it's just nice to have the option available.
So far this evening (well, technically 'this morning') I've already updated my toolkit dvd with latest K-Lite codec pack and latest build of AVG before burning it to dvd, as well as updated my file archives with my latest downloaded 'stuff'. Needless to say, I'm probably going to be doing a little tech-support with my mum's computer while I'm there, and possibly my sister's family's machine, so it's best to have this stuff on hand.
Oh, I've kind of been involved in some drama on WoW, having left the guild I'd been with for a few months with a group of disgruntled fellow guildies, and am now the guildmaster of a shiny new guild which will hopefully get into endgame content sometime soon (with my main having reached the level 70 plateau a little while back, and my primary alt nearing 50). All in all, my timing with this trip isn't the best but I'm sure there will at least be the smoking, charred framework of the new guild remaining when I get back.
I've been enjoying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well - the new patch appears to fix some of the annoying little glitches that I wrote off as either, a) "We didn't have time to polish off the annoying rough edges" or b) "The publisher didn't let us fix these issues - wait for the first patch". Needless to say, I'm looking forward to spending more time hunting mutants and avoiding the Russian military when I get back home. Oh, and I've been enjoying some more of Oblivion - the x1950 is proving itself a powerful little beastie.
[later]
Well, all converted, and will be burnt onto dvd+rw while I sneak off to bed. Busy day tomorrow, and I think I'll have to make a dentist appointment to make once I get back home next week. [sigh] |
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| Aha, toy time! |
[Mar. 28th, 2007|05:24 pm] |
(Ok, the video quality is better than this little image portrays, it's just the only picture I've been able to find of it online)
In honor of my upcoming expedition to Auckland over the weekend I've splashed out on a shiny new mp4 player to supplement my not-so-shiny old mp3 player. It's really quite nifty (and will be much more useful once I can afford to buy a memory card or two to supplement its meagre 512mb of capacity), and I was surprised at how watchable the 2.2" 220x176 display is. (I've also been exploring other handheld media players that they make, and I have to say some of them look more appealing than an ipod does)
Unfortunately there wasn't a paper manual in the box with the player, so I had to install MS's Word viewer to read the electronic version on the utility mini-cd. Fortunately it's not an awful engrish number (well, not awful engrish), and gets across enough for the device to be usable.
Anyway, as far as features go there's the FM radio (ick), mp3 playback, avi playback (albeit a specifically formatted/configured avi which may be xvid), picture viewer (jpgs), text file display (unfortunately the text is too big to really be useable for ebooks), voice and line-in recording, and Tetris. Yes, I have my own colour handheld version of tetris. It rocks (although it's kind of tricky with those awful controls), and will have to tide me over until I give in and buy myself a DS sometime down the track. Oh, it also has its own internal speaker but it's mostly useful when there's little ambient noise, and is basically useless the rest of the time. But it gets points for having it at all.
Now that I've got it in my sweaty little paws I'm having a hard time deciding what to put on it to watch on my way up north - I converted an episode of Battlestar Galactica to see what kind of compression the conversion utility gives, and it turned the 350mb dsrip into a much more palatable 130mb .avi that was eminently watchable and gives space for maybe 3-4 episodes, which would be less than the quoted 4 hours battery life when watching video. Maybe I'll finally finish off season one of Torchwood? Some MST3K? Stargate Atlantis? Ah, the possibilities... |
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| Mmmmm, more pixels |
[Mar. 27th, 2007|01:11 am] |
Another day, another upgrade. This morning my shiny new Radeon X1950 Pro arrived (a couple of days late - it was supposed to arrive on Friday as a b'day gift), and some 20 minutes later it was installed and up and running. It's certainly a promising match with my 19" widescreen (although the near-complete lack of support for correct aspect ratio for 4:3 resolutions is not only disappointing, it's also one of the few things that it does worse than my old 7600GS).
Minor complaints aside, it's almost all I hoped it would be. Oblivion and Stalker look awesome (and run noticeably faster). And Nvidia's drivers look embarrassing by comparison. (Mind you, I'm not using ATI's vanilla driver - Omega's modded drivers still have an edge)
I've also been exploring the latest iteration of iTunes, and I have to say Cover Flow is really quite impressive. It's just a pity it's attached to iTunes, which runs like a three-legged dog with sore feet. (Well, maybe it's not quite that bad, but it still looks bloated and sublimely unimpressive next to Foobar, or ever compared to Winamp. Just don't get me started on the pitiful native visualisation.)
And I've been reading the Belgariad and Mallorean series by David Eddings for the first time in over a decade (along with the accompanying volumes, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress). It's amazing how much I missed, first time around. I'm also reading the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is marginally more understandable this time round, but still heavy going. Next up after that are the first two books in the Split Infinity series by Piers Anthony, which I'm pretty sure will also be improved from what I remember of them.
For now though, it's time to get back to my games. |
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| Upgrade or downgrade? |
[Mar. 10th, 2007|04:20 am] |
I've had an entertaining couple of days (in a complete-waste-of-time manner).
First I spend yesterday installing Vista Premium (x86 version) to give it another try with my old Live! 5.1SE soundcard (which worked surprisingly well despite the necessity of using the old XP driver, thanks to Creative not supporting the card under Vista). I have to say, it really is a nice looking OS - it's hard to believe it's from the same company who brought us Clippy. Provided you have at least 2gb of ram and a dual-core cpu, which I don't. I did disable UAC though, as it hobbles application compatibility like crazy.
Today I reinstalled XP, along with some very nice little extras (such as the Vista Sidebar, assorted Vista APIs converted to XP and a bunch of slipstreamed extras - the cursors here are particularly nifty). It's the same hardware, but it's just so much faster (and 1.5gb of ram is much better than 1gb was).
Of course, I had Windowblinds on them both, so they were both using the same skin so the look was almost identical. But the feel of the Vista desktop was somehow smoother than XP. Unfortunately the polish of the desktop doesn't transfer to game performance - WoW was going from 50fps in XP down to maybe 30fps under Vista in the same location, and some casual games weren't running at all. But the 3d-task-switching was very nicely done and watching video playing in MPC while I win-tabbed between apps was nifty (if fundamentally useless eyecandy).
That leaves me back with XP as my OS of choice (until I get around to the major system upgrade necessary to make Vista viable, which probably won't happen before Microsoft releases the first service pack). All the same, I can live with shiny-deprivation - XP may not be quite as polished (although some little extras help compensate), but it works for me (and indeed, 'just works' in a way the Vista will likely not approach for some time yet).
I've also finally caught up with Heroes, which brings me to episode 18. Unfortunately it'll be another 7 weeks before they screen the remaining 5 episodes of the season, which is kind of frustrating considering the space in which our heroes have been left in. Still, at least we've been spared alien nazi time-travelers. |
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| Little slice of not much happening. |
[Feb. 20th, 2007|11:57 pm] |
Having seen off my mum after she returned home on Sat after visiting for a couple of weeks, I'm now trying to get back into my old groove (and back onto the diet, which didn't survive the exhaustive (for me) end of her visit).
It was nice seeing her again, but I think we both agreed that a fortnight was a tad too long; next time (whenever that will be) she's looking at just staying for a week, which should be a lot easier on me. Still, amongst quite a bit of walking places we managed to get completely up-to-date with NCIS (from mid-season 3 up to the latest in season 4 from the states) and even threw a couple of movies into the mix ("The Emperor's New Groove" went down quite favourably with her).
She also gave me an early b'day present by helping me purchase some more memory for my PC (which now is a (admittedly, by current standards, low-end) 1.5gb system), as well as several bundles of new socks (which were almost as good a gift as the money towards the memory).
In other news... Well, my life is basically as interesting as mud, but it's had some entertaining distractions.- Supreme Commander runs nicely on my machine although I don't think the dual-monitor setup is my cup of tea.
- WoW still has the ability to suck up free time most effectively, the expansion doesn't suck, and I have to decide what to do with my up-opened TBC Collectors Edition.
- Jewel Quest 2 looks to be almost as addictive as the original.
- Mr. Robot looks like one of the better independant games I've seen in ages.
- I've been watching the thoroughly excellent Ergo Proxy - that's what I call a good Anime.
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