Category Archives: Software

I feel so fresh, so clean, clean…

Reinstalling your system from scratch is something I like to do every 6 months or so, mainly because I install so much crap I download, and pretty soon stuff gets unstable, as Windows is prone to do. I’ve done fresh installs so many times I’ve got the method down pat. I started the process last night at 9pm because for some reason, I couldn’t get Half-life 2 to even start, and it turned out it was Gtray, which is a nice bit of ware, except for some reason had bugged out on me. Oh well, I’ll just use the Firefox Gmail Notifier extension.

Anyway, doing a fresh install inevitebly wipes something you kick yourself about, but this is the territory.

I lost my iTunes database (which in retrospect I could probably have rescued from my iPod), and thus lost my star-ratings, playcounts, copy-to-iPod checkbox settings and smart playlists. The up side of this is my playlists page on my iPod aren’t so cluttered anymore, and my iPod tracks have rotated slightly, so my iPod feels fresh and clean clean on the inside 😀

I also lost my OPML of my RSS subscriptions for FeedDemon. This isn’t so bad, cos I’ve shared it with a few people recently, and hopefully they still have it… ^_^; If you’ve got my OPML, please give it back to me 🙂

Also, I’m taking a whole lot of leave for the christmas break… I’m planning on blowing a few days solely on Shoutbox…

Maybe I’ll get me a laptop or something so I can work on stuff while I’m in the Hawke’s Bay with my mum. Mmm… maybe I’ll get get a iBook or Powerbook or something… wanting to learn MacOS for a while 🙂

Life Software Comments are closed

Glutnix Hearts Half-life 2

I can’t believe how many frames I get on Half-Life 2! Well, not an earth-shattering frame-rate, but it’s higher than I expected 🙂 Here’s my box’s specs:

CPU Type: AMD Athlon XP, 1250 MHz (6.25 x 200)
Motherboard Name: Asus A7V333 (5 PCI, 1 AGP Pro, 3 DIMM)
Motherboard Chipset: VIA VT8367 Apollo KT333
System Memory: 512 MB (DDR SDRAM)
Video Adapter: nVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 (Leadtek WinFast A250 LE) (64 MB) (DirectX 8.1)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2
Game: Half-Life 2 Retail Collectors Edition

So the game suggested:
800×600
Model Detail: Medium
Texture Detail: Medium
Water: Simple Reflection
Shadow Detail: High
AA: None
Filtering: Trilinear
Shader Detail: High
Wait for Vertical Sync: Disabled

This game kicks serious ass. This is one game you will have to play! Kick ass! I know my setup isn’t the best around, but it’s extremely playable at recommended settings 🙂 And it’s mightily more playable than Doom 3 😀 I’ll try and run a benchmark sometime and see how I get on.

The story is great 🙂 The character animation is phenomenal! The gameplay so far has been exciting! And Headshots with the pistol! Headcrabs! Airboats! And so much more!

Yay!

Games Hardware Software 1 comment

Why being a righty rules.

If you’ve got more than one tab open in Firefox, and you’re closing the entire window: You move the mouse over the icon in the top left corner of the screen and double click it. Firefox says “Lotsa tabs… really close window?”, so then you move your thumb over to press the Enter key on the numpad. Window Closed. When this technique is perfected, you don’t even see the dialog box 😀

Software Comments are closed

Encrypto The Amazing

The ICT department at work (ie, Daniel and I) are using GnuPG to encrypt our emails that contain passwords to one-another. By a fluke of events, there was then a key-signing last week which we both attended. That was an interesting but important experience. My key is worth less to those who don’t know me personally because they don’t know if it is actually mine or one created by someone pretending to be me, hence why you get other people to sign it. You may trust one of those people who trust my key. So building your key’s web of trust is important.

Want to sign my key? Contact me and we’ll sort something out 🙂

Friends Software Work Comments are closed

Rant from Froot Salad

Here’s a tip for you when you are installing Windows XP on a new hard drive. Make sure it’s the only drive in the computer, otherwise XP will label your primary partition as E:. That’s whats happened to me, and there doesn’t seem to be any way for me to change it short of re-installing. Anyway, I recieved my new 120GB Seagate harddrive. It kicks. Can I interest anyone in a 6GB hard drive?

With my new hard drive installed, I’ve gone and installed Unreal Tournament 2003. If you haven’t played UT2k3 or it’s XBox counterpart Unreal Championship, you haven’t lived. And talking of 3D, UselessCreations has released a new version of their ever-so-popular Matrix Reloaded 3D screensaver. The new version is interactive; you can move the mouse to track around the code simulation. Also check out their Inside the Matrix screensaver,
featuring a low-polygon model of Neo flying round an infinite city of buildings which are dripping with the matrix code. Not as cool as the Matrix Reloaded 3D screensaver though.

Smileychris pointed me at Enhancer 017 for Winamp 2.x. As I had just installed Winamp and hadn’t yet turned on the Equaliser, installing this plugin instantly improved the quality of the sound output.

Audio Hardware Software Comments are closed