Saturday, December 26, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Do you have confidence in your SATA controller?
I certainly don't in my J-Micron SATA controller which is the secondary SATA controller on my ASUS P5K motherboard. The screen shot below shows a CRC check done on a bunch of files. The CRC's were generated on the same drive and then verified back as soon as they were calculated.
Yes, in between taking the CRC's and reading them back, there are now 194 CRC mismatches. Maybe J-Micron consider that acceptable, but I certainly don't, the words "epic" and "fail" spring to mind.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Weekly auto blog post (weekly)
PCSX2 is a working PS2 emulator that can play many PS2 games some even at full speed and with graphical enhancements
Wireless Performance Issues with Vista and the ReadyNAS | The Bott Blog
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Weekly auto blog post (weekly)
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Weekly auto blog post (weekly)
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Microsoft and excessive packaging
So I ordered some Microsoft points from Play.com because they were cheaper than buying them directly with the credit card on Xbox Live. I expected them to show up stuck to a small piece of cardboard a bit like the iTunes vouchers you see at the supermarket checkout, instead I got this:-
Yes, that is a whole DVD sized case for one credit card sized points card that is useless when its been used once. To compound this example of excessive packaging madness, I actually ordered two 2100 points cards, which both came in their own box, because it was almost £1 cheaper to order two 2100 points cards than one 4200 points card. Of course, both were cheaper than actually buying the points from Microsoft themselves through Xbox live. Next time I buy points over live instead of mail order, I am tempted to phone Microsoft customer services and ask for my free DVD case.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Linden Scripting
I've been dab
bling in Second Life a little recently. I always wanted to see what was out there on the Second Life grid, since I'm fascinated with video games of all kinds (though my friend insists "second life is not a videogame!" ). When people talk informally about second life, they usually tell you about seedy virtual strip bars and walls covered in phallic imagery. While Second Life is probably the only game where you can buy a fully functional avatar "Penis with HUD" in actual fact the main "grid" has much more interesting content, like the Chernobyl exhibit and Lost Gardens of Appolo and one of my personal favourites, Da Vinci Isle. Second life does look dated compared to the beautiful graphics in more modern video games, but that's kinda missing the point. The whole game is organic, user created content. If you enjoyed exploration games like Metroid or Tomb Raider, you can certainly waste plenty of time exploring around Second Life.
What really caught my interest was the Linden Scripting Language. Objects in Second Life can be manipulated by attaching scripts to them. The language is C like in its syntax, but obviously without things like pointers and suchlike. Bizarrely there's no arrays either, instead it's possible to create type agnostic lists, which can store any kind of variables (except other lists). Though the syntax for working with them is a little fiddly. What it does give is the sort of instant gratification that you used to get when you programmed in BASIC on the old 8-bit machines. Being able to instantly see an object react to your code is much more rewarding than a boring old console window that most beginners start with. It makes me wonder if anyone has studied how effective LSL or something similar is at getting people interested in programming. Certainly I've heard lots of people put off just by loading something like Visual Studio. Any barriers we can dissolve that prevent people getting into programming are good. Yes I know, LSL is far from perfect, especially when we get onto bigger projects. Then again you could hardly describe C, C++ and Java as perfect either.
What Second Life also encourages is the kind of cooperation and teamwork amongst people with different talents. Those who can forge the shapes and scenery often need people who are skilled in scripting to bring their visions to life. This kind of cooperation is of course vital on larger software projects, particularly games.
Second Life is certainly an interesting community and though the games interface can seem a little clumsy at times it's easily mastered. I'm not sure at the moment if I'll be bored with looking around on there in another couple of weeks or if I'll be going back more often than that, but it's certainly worth a look.
bling in Second Life a little recently. I always wanted to see what was out there on the Second Life grid, since I'm fascinated with video games of all kinds (though my friend insists "second life is not a videogame!" ). When people talk informally about second life, they usually tell you about seedy virtual strip bars and walls covered in phallic imagery. While Second Life is probably the only game where you can buy a fully functional avatar "Penis with HUD" in actual fact the main "grid" has much more interesting content, like the Chernobyl exhibit and Lost Gardens of Appolo and one of my personal favourites, Da Vinci Isle. Second life does look dated compared to the beautiful graphics in more modern video games, but that's kinda missing the point. The whole game is organic, user created content. If you enjoyed exploration games like Metroid or Tomb Raider, you can certainly waste plenty of time exploring around Second Life.What really caught my interest was the Linden Scripting Language. Objects in Second Life can be manipulated by attaching scripts to them. The language is C like in its syntax, but obviously without things like pointers and suchlike. Bizarrely there's no arrays either, instead it's possible to create type agnostic lists, which can store any kind of variables (except other lists). Though the syntax for working with them is a little fiddly. What it does give is the sort of instant gratification that you used to get when you programmed in BASIC on the old 8-bit machines. Being able to instantly see an object react to your code is much more rewarding than a boring old console window that most beginners start with. It makes me wonder if anyone has studied how effective LSL or something similar is at getting people interested in programming. Certainly I've heard lots of people put off just by loading something like Visual Studio. Any barriers we can dissolve that prevent people getting into programming are good. Yes I know, LSL is far from perfect, especially when we get onto bigger projects. Then again you could hardly describe C, C++ and Java as perfect either.
What Second Life also encourages is the kind of cooperation and teamwork amongst people with different talents. Those who can forge the shapes and scenery often need people who are skilled in scripting to bring their visions to life. This kind of cooperation is of course vital on larger software projects, particularly games.
Second Life is certainly an interesting community and though the games interface can seem a little clumsy at times it's easily mastered. I'm not sure at the moment if I'll be bored with looking around on there in another couple of weeks or if I'll be going back more often than that, but it's certainly worth a look.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Weekly auto blog post (weekly)
We need to repeal 12 years of vile laws attacking our liberty
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Weekly auto blog post (weekly)
YouTube - Microsoft BOB - A tour of Microsoft's forgotten desktop "enhancement"
What is Microsoft BOB? In this Youtube exclusive I'll show you one of Microsoft's failed experiments with alternative user interfaces.
WirelessKeyView: Recover lost WEP/WPA key/password stored by Wireless Zero Configuration service
Recover lost WEP/WPA keys stored by Wireless Zero Configuration service
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Weekly auto blog post (weekly)
Good simulation of the old Amiga Workbench, and free chip tunes too!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
