Blog

6 Months In

Well, Tuesday 20th July marked 6 months since we moved into the new house. Even though it’s been a bit of a slog, and financially it’s a lot more stretching, it is most defiantly the best thing we’ve done – the last 6 months have been great. Neighbours are very friendly and a total opposite to what we had before which on reflection wouldn’t be difficult. Seeing someone shoot-up on the landing outside the old house was the last straw. And I don’t miss the Friday and Saturday night drunks that used to annoy every week. And goodbye Orange Walks – never again will I have to put up with your bigot driven strolls down Argyle Street while the hangers on piss all over the pavements.

I’m even enjoying the garden 🙂

Picasa

Got lots of photo’s? Want to try and manage them? Don’t want to spend cash (Mr Lawrence jumps to the front of the queue)?. Try Picasa. Google have bought them and the software for the moment is free. It was linked off the front of Google but thats now gone – probably the number of downloads. Free software equals flies round shit.

It works pretty well and is nice on the eye. Abobe Photoshop Album 2 is nicer in my book with slightly better feature set…for the moment but it does cost…allegedly. Free edition of the Adobe product can be found here with slightly reduced features.

The Beast

dell
It’s superb.

The PC arrived on Thursday, although not without a wee mix-up. I got a Glasgow Uni machine and they got mine. But Dell and TNT got the mix-up sorted by mid-afternoon – bravo. I unpacked it and faced another little problem – it wouldn’t start. Boo. All was not lost – the Dell has four lights on the back – the first two were amber. Checked the manual – memory problem. Probably unseated slightly during transit so I opened the case. Wow. The case swings open on a hinge which is really smart – what got me was the size of the heatsink and chimney that the Intel uses. Massive. I removed and replaced the memory – pressed the power button and all was well – I took some photo’s while the case was open which can be found here. While the case was opened I fitted the firewire card from the old machine as the Dell comes with 8 USB2 ports but no firewire which the iPod needs. Clicked the case shut (no screws here thank you very much) and I was away. Got the Windows formalities out the way. Impressions – very fast.

Got the XP security downloads started and I thought I would need to dig out the Nortons disk before I did anything else but the Dell comes with a 90 day trial of McAfee which is a really good idea. No need for a firewall as I’ve got a hardware one on the router. Next was Firefox – don’t trust IE. Loading times were superb. The last test was gaming. Battlefield Vietnam looked amazing and didn’t stutter once. Joy!

Since then I’ve been installing all the hardware I’ve got and also some software – not too much. Trying to avoid the clutter that I had on the old machine but thats really delaying the inevitable. I’m also glad that I stayed away from a Creative Audigy card. The onboard sound is pucker 5.1 and all I need. There’s also a strong chance that it’s less buggy than the Creative drivers.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the Dell. Easy to maintain, fast and a tad less noisy than my old machine – it fair churns out some heat though. Last positive note – no blue screens….yet.

 

Psi-Ops

One of the most refreshing games in a while is Psi-Ops on the Xbox (& PS2 but you want to see it in all it’s glory, don’t you?). I’d heard nothing about this till I seen a review in Edge. A quick download later (overnight) and I was playing. What a game.

In some ways it looks like a derivative 3rd person/1st person shooter with a bit off plot. However the twist is the Psi powers that your character can use. Pick up and throw objects, enemies, see through walls, walls of fire, see objects that aren’t visible to the naked eye and mind control. Add to this a superb graphics engine and you’ve got some nice gameplay moments that haven’t really been seen before. The game uses a modified Havoc 2 engine and has physics to die for – a real taster for Half Life 2 later this year (I hope).

Definitely worth a buy although a couple of reviews say it plays quite short, although that is no bad thing – just not got the time to play games that I used to.

GTA San Andreas

Not confirmed, but the rumour is the following songs will feature in the game…

Salt’n’Pepa – Push it
Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby
Inner Circle – Bad Boys
KLF – 3am Eternal
Massive Attack – Unfinished Sympathy
Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit
Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing
Poison – Every Rose Has It’s Thorn
Guns’n’Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine
Smashing Pumpkins – Today
NWA – **** Tha Police / 100 Miles And Runnnin’
Snoop Doggy Dogg – Gin N’Juice / Ain’t No Fun
Warren G – Regulate
Fugees – Killing Me Softly
Coolio – Gangsta’s Paradise
Public Enemy – Rebel Without A Pause
The Stone Roses – Fools Gold
Happy Mondays – Step On
The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony
Radiohead – Creep

Ouch – what a line-up. Roll on October.

The Beast…part deux

opt316pic1
I’ve been after a new pc for the last few months. Picking up Battlefield Vietnam and watching it jerk (oo-er) while on it’s lowest settings was just too painful. I didn’t even pick up Far Cry as I knew it would be a pointless experience. I had resigned to getting a base unit only, probably from Evesham and probably costing around £1100 give or take a few pounds and features.

Then I got a tip off from King Arthur. He used the Dell Outlet Site to pick up a bargain pc. I stalked the site for the last week or so and on Friday finally bit the bullet and picked my new pc. 3.0Ghz Pentium, 160Gig Hard disk, I Gig of Ram and a 256 Meg Radeon 9800XT. £800. Class. Oh – Windows XP Professional as well. Hopefully should be here within the next fortnight. Now…what to do with the old one. I’ll probably use it as some sort of media storage/server. It’s a bit noisy so may have to try and quieten it a bit.

 

Firefox Vulnerability

So a flaw in Firefox has finally been found – get version 0.9.2 to fix that problem. At first glance it seems to dent the argument that Firefox is more secure and safer than good old IE. However, look a little deeepr and you’ll see just how quickly the issue was resolved. In just over a day and a half the new release of Firefox was posted for everyone to download – also the Mozilla team were quite open about the flaw. Microsoft have a lot to learn. For a timeline of the fix from first find to download available click here.