New Year Jan 8 2006
So the start to 2006 has been an odd one for me. I came down with some kind of stomach bug on the 30th December, so was in bed ill most of New Years Eve. I celebrated New Years with my girlfriend which was wonderful, but was still under the weather most of this week. Only now am I really fully fit again, and so it feels like 2006 is just starting for me :-)
Anyway so having not posted for a while, I have a few various things I want to post and comment on, so watch this space, but for now, let me say a belated Happy New Year to anyone and everyone that frequents this blog! May 2006 be a superb year for all!
For the people, by the people Jan 8 2006
Newsvine. An example of an exemplary idea, backed up by a superb implementation. Currently in private beta, which I and another 7000 or so people are taking part in (which will expand I’m sure as time goes on - those invited are allowed to further invite others), it really is a great service, and something that has redefined how I read news online. This is because aswell as reading news off-the-wire, I can read news from other users. And I can also write news, and articles, for others to read. If you have a chance to try it, then do it, for those that are signed up, you can see my articles here, with an RSS feed available here. Awesome.
CommentsDual core goodness Jan 8 2006
I got bored with my old machine (an AMD 64 3200+ running inside a Shuttle box) restarting itself because of ‘heat issues’ every half an hour while playing the superb City of Villains, so ordered the bits to build a new box. All new parts, except my hard-drive (bought a 300GB Maxtor SATA drive late last year anyway, more on that later), and my CD-RW/DVD combo drive. It’s a dual-core AMD 64 X2 3800+, 2GB RAM on an nForce4 SLI board, with a 256MB PCI-E nVidia 6800 GS graphics card. I plan on getting a second 6800 GS card, probably next month, and finding out what the SLI fuss is all about, but for now the machine still flies along. I’m really pleased with the results (I’m most pleased when playing F.E.A.R at full-res, with all the graphics and performance options on full :-), but getting here was a royal pain-in-the-ass. Turns out compatibility between the Maxtor DiamondMax drives, and the nForce4 chipset isn’t great when using SATA drives, and upon reading some of the reports of flashing drive firmware, and data corruption, I’m actually kind of pleased that my incompatibility problem seems to have been limited to the nForce chipset drivers. Once I had the machine up and running, I started installing drivers, but by the time I got around to the Windows SP2 upgrade, I was getting random lockups, and hangs. Anyway, bored of this, I started the diagnostic process. Two days later, and embarking on a rigorous routine of testing each individual driver I was installing (I’d tested all of the hardware components already), I finally was getting somewhere. Convinced it was SP2 itself that was screwing things up, I hit some forums. Turns out the Maxtor DiamondMax 10, perhaps just the 300GB SATA model, doesn’t get on with the nForce chipset IDE SW drivers that are an optional part of the forceware installation. Simply saying 'no’ when asked whether you’d like to install them fully resolved my issue (at least, so far so good - not sure when I can stop saying that, but 36 hours and counting…), and so here I am with the machine that I first had up and running four days ago. Anyway, I care not, its a beast, and after a second graphics card, perhaps a dedicated sound card, and maybe a second hard-drive gets added, it’ll truly be a 'sweet rig’. Or something.
Comments64-bit goodness Dec 23 2005
Here is some excellent news, some decent support for 64-bit at long last! I logged into Steam this morning, and was informed that it will detect when you are running a 64-bit native OS, and execute the appropriate version of the Source engine. Pretty cool stuff - I’m running an AMD64, but using the Win32 version of XP because of a lack of 64-bit Wireless drivers. If this gets resolved, I’ll be a 64-bit convert I think, and HL2 will be the first app to take full advantage of my CPU ;-)
Comments'Happy Holidays', or 'Merry Christmas'? Dec 23 2005
I don’t want to get involved in what has to be the stupidest debate of the year, however I do want to point people to this site, because its hilarious. I haven’t blogged as much as I want last few weeks, as I’ve been working on lots of things, all while preparing for the festive season, and so it’s been rather hectic. However I’d like to take this opportunity to wish anyone reading this a Merry Christmas, or perhaps a Happy Holidays, or whatever floats your boat :-) Ho ho ho!
CommentsTabloids Dec 14 2005
Couldn’t agree more with this excellent post. I’ve learnt to take The Register with a pinch of salt - it’s like the tabloid paper of the tech world.
CommentsThis rant - sponsored by MasterCard Dec 13 2005
This really gets on my nerves - the third sales phase for FIFA World Cup 2006 tickets went live today, my interest peaked by Fridays draw for the group stages. It seems like a fair way to distribute tickets - between now and 15 January 2006, you can sign up and ‘order’ which tickets you want. Since demand will outweigh availability, at the end of January, a lottery will take place to decide who gets tickets. So far so good. However, besides the crazy amount of detail you need to make a ticket application (full details of each person that you are buying tickets for, including their passport ID’s - why not ask for this only after you’ve been selected for tickets after January’s lottery?), the thing that pisses me off most is the payment options. To make a payment by credit card, it appears you can only use a MasterCard. Why? Because MasterCard are of course the exclusive credit card sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2006. Its a sponsorship world gone mad. The only option left for me is going to be an undoubtedly laborius bank transfer, with alsorts of room for error. And I still can’t help but feel that payment details should be entered in an online control panel that shows after January, for those that were pulled out of the hat. Set a deadline, e-mail the winners, those that don’t plug in their details within a certain timeframe lose the tickets, and some new names are drawn. Keep going til all seats are filled. As it stands - 2006 may or may not involve a holiday to Germany for me.
CommentsDashboard Dec 13 2005
Not quite sure how I have only just found this now, but dashboard is an excellent tool that tries to display information accrued from multiple sources (e-mails, documents on your computer, browser history etc) that is pertinent to what your doing on your computer. If you are chatting on IM about something, then it’ll try to locate and display information about that topic. Pretty clever stuff, and I think it’s where the desktop needs to go in order to take productivity to the next level. Not sure how active development is, but I’m on the mailing list, and I’m about to give it a go.
CommentsSunday Dec 12 2005
Caught the news at various times throughout the day, which dealt mainly with the huge fire at the oil depot in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, a place not all that far from me. In fact, accounts from people living in my home town are that the noise woke many up here, and that there was a definite rumble felt at the time of the first explosion at 6am. I must admit I slept right through it, didn’t hear or feel a thing. I had actually gone to bed just over an hour before, after spending Saturday evening/early Sunday morning at a dinner party with my parents, some family friends, and my wonderful girlfriend, and I think I quite possibly could have slept through a nuclear war…
The best news to come out of all this today was of course that no-one has been critically injured or killed, thanks both to the timing (6am on a Sunday morning), and of course to the excellent reaction and organisation of the fire services. And what’s truly amazing, is some of these pictures. Described as ‘the largest fire seen in peacetime Europe’, some of these photo’s (and numerous others seen throughout the day) do give it an almost apocalyptic feel. Unreal.
Damn write Dec 12 2005
This service is awesome. In terms of innovation, it’s right up there. Should that be write up there? ;-) It’s called Writely, it’s still in beta, and it’s superb. It’s an online word processing package, sporting rich text formatting of documents, collaboration features, document revisioning by the looks of things, and the ability to import/export Microsoft Word documents. It’s a total class act, makes document writing and maintaining (which is usually laborious) a sinch, and of course allows access to your documents through your user account from any internet-connected computer in the world. It employs AJAX to get the job done, and the presentation is fantastic. Innovative, clever stuff. TechCrunch has the full lowdown on this, and it seems like this little gem has in fact been around for at least a few months now, with the feature set expanding rapidly. One to keep a close eye on!
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