the self-discovery adventure of brett taylor
I’m a geek. I care about geeky things. So you wouldn’t blame me if I walk down the street and notice people with iPods. Or notice people with bags from Telecom or Vodafone stores or carrying boxes containing new cellphones. Or Dick Smiths. Or even from photocopy stores.
Or notice crashed ATMs, crazy licence plates, logic in madness, patterns, the things between the lines.
Cos I do. What weird things do you notice that you think others wouldn’t?
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!
Yay! My filing cabinet arrived today! It’s a Precision Classic 2-drawer in Kashmir Blue, with lock. It’s part of my whole Getting Things Done regime that I hope to kick off when I get a free day to just get onto sorting all my loose crap sitting in my new In-tray 🙂
You gotta focus on the positive sides of things. My Podcast on Webfroot is going really well. You should tune in, listen to it, and send me your feedback! If you send in a recording of your comments on the show, I’ll play it on the next episode! If you’ve got content and/or music that you think I should play, send that in to me too! Come party together on the show 😀 It’s all about having fun!
Oh, and don’t forget the Wellington Firefox Party!
After an e-mail was forwarded to me containing a copy paste of an earlier revision of USA average IQ’s by state, the results were too good to be true. So I fact-checked the email’s ass. Here’s my reply. Names were removed to protect the guilty.
States and their average IQ and who they voted for.
The IQ numbers were originally attributed to the book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”, though they do not appear in the current edition. The tests and data were administered via the Raven’s APT, and the The Test Agency, one of the UK’s leading publishers and distributors of psychometric tests. This data has been published in the Economist and the St. Petersburg Times
(name removed) wrote:
This is so funny and indeed REAL
While indeed funny and a somewhat uplifting prospect, I wanted to be sure…
I couldn’t find any validating proof on www.economist.com or www.sptimes.com for this years election.
However, I did find a similar study done in May 2004 for the 2000 election, here:
http://tinyurl.com/3kreqAfter that, I googled for ‘IQ election‘ (sans quotes) and found the original source of the email you posted.
http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm
It turns out the reason I couldn’t find anything on economist.com is because they retracted the article on the basis of it was ‘unable to be verified and possibly a hoax’.
==
In the future, I ask that if anyone want to send stuff they percieve as true, that they *provide links to trustworthy sources that back it up*.
Linking to the page that provided the article is also a smart idea, because it could be updated with newer, more enlightening information…
This is so funny and indeed REAL
…Especially before claiming it’s REAL. Proof makes it real 😉 Do your part to keep it real 🙂 Be responsible. Thank you 🙂
Cheers 🙂
This is a sneak warning for all you Webfrooters who read my personal blog. Webfroot’s gonna have it’s own podcast. A podcast is basically a radioshow recorded and made available online as an MP3. Technology is so cheap and easy to use that now anyone can publish stuff like this.
People can listen to the MP3 by downloading it themselves, or automatically. An RSS feed is then made available, and using enclosures, special RSS feedreaders can download the MP3 over http or BitTorrent. The feed reader then inserts the MP3 into your iTunes and when you update your iPod in the morning, you have radio to listen to!
But after listening to some podcasts, it seems people are concerned about podcasters talking about podcasting on their podcasts, claiming “it’s all they ever talk about”. David Slusher says “fuck off, too bad, it’s only been around for about 6 weeks!” on his Evil Genius Chronicles audioblog/podcast.
Which brings me to my point (and I’m borrowing some of this from Slusher): People judge new mediums like blogging and podcasting by the content. “Blogs suck because they’re either geeks talking tech or goths whining about their life”. “Podcasts suck because they’re unprofessional and it’s just geeks in their basements”. I could say back at the birth of TV “Television sucks — it mostly has test-patterns on it”.
While yes, the majority of blogs are by geeks and people whining about their life, and the current majority of podcasts have podcasters raving about the new medium, this doesn’t mean that the medium sucks! It’s just you think the people podcasting suck! Which is fine, it’s your opinion — Judge the content, not the medium. These people who have picked up the podcasting stick and are running with it are pushing the medium.
Yes, current podcast content appeals to geeks, but that’s because it’s a new medium invented by geeks! Who invented the TV? Who invented the Internet? Damn right… it was geeks. But just like there are now more non-geek sites on the internet, and there are more non-geek blogs springing up, there will be more non-geek podcasts in the near future.
