04.30.07
Our booth at GTS
Here’s a horrible cell phone picture of our booth at the trade show in vegas last week:
The picture on the left banner has apparently been accepted into Spectrum, which (I’m told) is a book of very good art.
04.28.07
Computar
I’m going to buy a new computer.
Ingredients:
Antec Performance One P180 Case – pretty case to keep everything cool
ASUS P5N32-E Intel Motherboard – apparently easy to overclock with, which I want to try on the CPU
ASUS EN8800GTS/HTDP/640M GeForce 8800GTS Video Card ^____^
CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX 520W Power Supply – decent power supply is important!
ICY DOCK MB453SPF-B Multi-Bay Backplane Module – so I can plug drives in easily
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz CPU
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 Memory – leaves 2 slots free so I can upgrade to 3 or 4gb later
3x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive – two will be RAIDed, one for the OS
Pioneer 18X DVD Burner – random sucky DVD writer
Scythe SCNJ-1100P 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooler – For overclocking
Logitech X-140 5 watts 2.0 Speaker – random sucky speaker
Ordering tomorrow.
04.18.07
Amazon dot com~
I’ve just ordered a boatload of stuff from amazon.com, which reminded me to post about this.
I’ve decided that it’s important to read and/or experience things that aren’t necessarily your main focus of interest. For example, here’s my general approach to selecting books:
if (fantasy OR science-fiction OR computer-related) buy();
else dont_buy();
As a result my bookshelves look like a library for nerds. So I’ve decided to start checking out other stuff that I find interesting but wouldn’t necessarily buy. 3 examples:
Riddled with Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are
I just ordered this, it looks interesting.
God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It
Very interesting book by a chap who’s a reverend or runs a Christian magazine or newspaper or something. In it he complains that the only religious people that get coverage are the idiots who want to blow things up. Plus some other stuff.
Ever wanted to know why it was the Spanish (or maybe the French, or the Canadians… I’m not too hot on history) that took over the Aztecs (or Incas, etc) and not the other way around? This book explains it. (Yes, the title is a bit of a spoiler, but it goes into more detail, really.) It’s pretty good, 5 Scorponoks out of 5.
Also, Amazon seem to be offering grocery shopping now. I was going to make a sarcastic comment here but it might actually be useful, seeing as I can’t be bothered to leave the house. To the internets!
04.17.07
Shamed!
So Colin tells me that he put together a new computer for six pounds and a bean (core 2 duo something, 6100 graphics card, some memory, I don’t know – it was pretty cheap) and it got about a 2600 3dmark score.
I downloaded and tried it myself (on my 2 year old computer) and only got 1697. :( My computer has dishonoured itself and its ancestors! I think my X2 3800+ CPU is holding me back – the CPU tests were dead slow, and my graphics card (6800 GTS) is pretty reasonable. Time to upgrade.
On a related note, I took some hard disk benchmarks from this article and put them into a table to decide which one to get. I was choosing between the WD 320GB, WD 150GB Raptor and the Seagate 7200.10 320GB.
Here are the results. Summarised, the Raptor is much hotter and louder, the Seagate is slightly hotter and louder; the Raptor is about 45% “better” than the standard WD, and the Seagate is 10% “better”. Given that the Raptor is over twice the price, and much louder / hotter, and only 150gb, I think I’ll skip it for now. Seagate, ho!
04.11.07
lmao Sony
“[Sony] Officially Discontinues 20GB Model PS3″
“[A Sony Spokesman] said the decision to discontinue the model was “based purely on consumer and retailer demand, which favored the 60GB model 10 to 1,” and that the current “very limited inventory” of the models still in the retail channels would be sold at its standard price until depleted.”
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t there more 60GB models available at launch than 20GB models? Maybe, oh let’s pull a number out of the air, 10 times more? And now that the console is out, they don’t need to be able to compare it to the price of the 360 so badly?
Even more cynically, one could say that there’s a “very limited inventory” because the 20GB model sold very well.
But I don’t know, maybe what they say is 100% true. Decide for yourself.
04.09.07
New Computer
So I’ve decided that now would be a good time to get a new computer. Within the next month or so, Intel are going to be cutting their prices on the Core 2 Duo line, AMD are going to be releasing their quad-core CPU line, and ATI are going to be releasing their directx 10 graphics cards, so I don’t think there’ll be a better time for a while.
I was thinking of upgrading my current work machine (X2 3800+), but it turns out that socket 939 is obsolete and you can’t get processors for it any more! Thanks AMD. Oh well, I didn’t want to open it up anyway.
So for my next machine I was thinking of doing something different (as usual). I’m going to put in a fast 80GB SATA drive for the OS (dual-booting between XP and Vista) and get something like this so that I can connect two external drives as if they’re internal ones. Plus a 640mb geforce 8 or something.
Now I just need to work how to RAID them…
04.04.07
Important Update
Several weeks ago I began attempting to grow a beard, with frankly terrible consequences. However, these last weeks of horror and nightmares have finally paid off. Gentlemen! Behold!
