Category Archives: technology

technology

I almost forgot…

Leave a comment

g5.jpg
Yes, it’s true. I’d say it’s looking a lot like Christmas, excpet for my religious affiliation. I have just received a brand-spanking new G5 dual-2.5gHz liquid cooled PowerMac at work. Oh, baby! I spent much of the last day of work before heading out on vacation getting this bad boy set up. It’s just amazing. First off, the Setup Assistant was able to seamlessly transfer my home directory and most of my applications from my old 1Ghz TiPB drive with little or no work on my part. It took a while – over 2 hours – but when it finished, the new machine rebooted and looked just like the old one. Same desktop, same dock configuration – everything. Except of course the incessant slowdowns whenever I tried to do much of anything. Gone are the days of the spinning beach ball in iPhoto. My current library has about 2,000 6MB+ photos. Even touching the thumbnail slider was enough to trigger a beach-ball wait of 15+ seconds. Scrolling was the same – each page took at least 10 seconds. Now, I can scroll from top to bottom of my collection in a blink of the eye.

The new G5 arrived only a day after I received a new Seagate 100GB 2.5″ 5400 RPM internal drive for my aging Titanium Powerbook. The enclosure I ordered was dead out of the box, causing some concern until I could confirm that it was not the new drive, and I have managed to migrate the old data onto the new one, and installing was easy-peasy.

Put simply, I am a very happy man.

technology

MCE Envy

Leave a comment

teatro_d1.jpg
It’s Italian. It has a built-in touchscreen. It’s freaking gorgeous. It’s the most lust-inducing Windows Media Center Edition PC I’ve seen to date. The specs – 7” 1280×720 VGA touchscreen, dual layer DVD burner and 500gbHD, dual SD tuners, plus FM and integrated Wi-Fi. I don’t speak Italian, but their web site is worth a look. Meanwhile, it’s been like six weeks since I ordered an Alienware DHS – and no sign of it yet.LINK to Oncinema web site (Italian).

technology

Fable Does NOT Suck

Leave a comment

Picture 1.jpg
So I’m pissed at Gamespot. In their annual wrap-up of the year in gaming, they have chosen Fable as the winner of the dubious ‘Most Disappointing’ category. Yeah, yeah – I know someone has to win, but Peter Molyneux’s outstanding game really didn’t deserve it. Sure, Molyneux has a big mouth – and led the gaming public on to expect all sorts of subtelty which wasn’t eventually in the game, leading to his public apology, but gimme a break. The game was *extremely* open-ended, and the way you could influence your character’s appearance via morality was unprecedented. And a hell of a lot of fun to play. Gamespot did get one thing right – Silent Storm is the best game of 2004 that nobody played.

technology

Future Media, 2014

Leave a comment

Robin Sloan has published a Flash ‘documentary’ describing the downfall of the fourth estate and their replacement by the rise of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Friendster (you had me until that last one). The vision is interesting, and potentially accurate on some points, but I think it underestimates the value and tenacity of ‘old media.’ The conclusion is that people get what they want – gossip and false trivia. To quote Ray Davies and the Kinks – Give the people what they want… We hope everybody gets what they deserve. Click here to see the animation – it’s a bit long (~8 minutes) – but well worth it.