gogogadgetearl . drew's thoughts

2008.04.10

  • I haven't heard from you guys in forever...what's going on these days?        [0 comments]

2008.01.24

  • SO, I'm not big on 4chan, or this group "Anonymous", and while I hope they aren't serious, I wouldn't shed a tear either. Anonymous        [5 comments]

2007.09.10

  • Ever heard the line "Well, in my day _____" from someone older than you?  Ever said it to someone younger then you and they look at you like you are nuts?

    Normally, the stuff I read on this site, (blog, forum, whatever it is), merely gets me through the next ten minutes until I decide it is time to do something with my workday.

    Today, however, I found this gem at Cracked.com and I must say, it is making me seriously consider my current social and career situation.  This list is probably the culmination of everything I have been thinking over the last 6 months, and it all usually starts with, "why is everything in the world so wrong?"  or "why does moving to Canada seem like a good idea?"

    It's sad to think that this is what the world is, and it will never get any better as long as some of this mess exists.  Mess, that I am sorry to say, helps pay my bills.        [2 comments]

2007.06.18

  • OK, so with all of my posts leaning towards Microsoft in some for or fashion, I think you can call me sort of a fanboy, even though I am caring less and less about the eternal strife between Windows and whatever feline Apple rolls out with.

    But my question is this, does anyone have a clue as to how Microsoft MediaRoom will be implemented on Media PC's?  Hopefully this will be some kind of an update for the Media Center, which will include the handy dandy UI updates and features.  Along those same lines I hope that they also launch it with an update to the 360 dashboard.  Above all else, I hope it works with MCE2005.  PS, I think it is reminiscent of Ubuntu Orange.  Anyone else feeling that?  Maybe it's just eh fact that it's orange

    I guess I am also wondering if anyone else is as excited as I am about IPTV.  I mean the thought of no longer having to worry about fuzzy cable signals alone is enough to get me hyped.  And before people go on and bring up satellite or digital cable, bear in mind these are still affected by adverse weather conditions.  IPTV will be sent over the intertubes  with Bellsouth here in this region paving the way under AT&T through a 24Mpbs DSL connection, and in some cases a 40Mpbs connection.  Now are we excited?        [3 comments]

2007.06.14

  • OK, I just got my Pentium D 940 and Gigabyte GA-8i865GME-775 RH motherboard in.  So last night I tried installing Vista on it.  When I first start the install, booting from the cd took 3 minutes before the first screens even show up.  Then I am waiting almost 20 seconds for each consecutive screen, until it starts expanding files, which I suppose is the "copying files" process for XP.  After 10 minutes of expanding files, it reboots and begins the actual install process.  Total running time at this point is 13-15 minutes.

    This is where it gets hairy.  on the reboot, it picks up the drive without problems and says that Windows is preparing to start for the first time.  A minute or so later it is back to the install screen saying it is completing the installation.  After 5 minutes or so, when it gets about 70% finished, it Blue Screens and reboots!  After POST I get a prompt asking me which way I need to start windows, whether normally, with safe mode, etc.  It doesn't matter which one I pick, it will bring up the same window saying that the installation was interrupted and I need to start over.

    Three tries later, it does the exact same thing, and I even used a totally different disc.

    I picked around in forums for a bit this morning but the closest thing to comfort I found is that someone had a similar problem with it crashing slightly after install so they pulled a stick of RAM to see what the deal was.  I am running 1.5GB, (1GB x1 and 512MBx1, I only have two slots on a m-ATX board) so it is running in single channel mode.  Would that be causing the hang up?  I plan on trying again during lunch today, in which I plan to trade the 1GB stick for a matching 512MB stick to put the RAM in dual channel.

    P.S. it runs XP just fine, and the performance increase over my previous AMD64 +3200 is very well noted.        [8 comments]

2007.05.29

  • So I have this guy at work who is constantly blogging and such instead of actually coding.  We exist in a dark corner of the office so I am the only one who notices that he isn't typing out code.  But, while that's happening, as far as I know, he isn't saying anything about me reading digg and earl's page either. 

    Anyway, I made the comment to him the other day that I have noticed an increasing trend in Digg.com's homepage as it slides perilously towards the political left in all regards.  It's scary to me how quickly articles that are posted in an attempt to be fair and balanced are buried in an automatic tendency by the digg community.

    Anyway, this guy at work asked me some time a couple weeks ago that if I am disgusted with sites like Digg and LiarsandCrooks.com that I should look into Newsbusters.org.  Needless to say, I think it is the exact same thing as Digg with the exception that it slants to a hard right instead of left.

    Reading two, IMO, blatently polarized accounts of some of the same topics leaves me a little bit confused.  OK, so it seems me pretty clueless on current events when it comes to things like this whole Rosie O'Donnell thing, global warming, ID vs. evolution and the apparently all-powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster, gas prices, and the benefits and pitfalls of the up and coming democratic agenda of an "expeditious" withdrawal of Iraq.  Personally, I think that while things haven't gone the way anyone initially expected in Iraq, withdrawing troops with a given deadline will only make things worse for everyone, not just the US or Iraq.

    I understand that by admitting I read user posts on Digg I am setting myself up to be confused as almost no one there has a coherent thought, but occasionally I find one or two that do read as pretty coherent, and enlightening even...

    I guess my real concern is, what are some of your current views on the above mentioned topics, especially in light of the upcoming presidential primaries?        [1 comment]

2007.05.16

  • So many new games.  So many fun things to do outside...

    On the one hand, I just joined a new small group at church not too long ago that does stuff actually worth getting involved in, a first for me.  Camping trips, amusement parks, Bible studies, road trips, volleyball, and other ways to work on my tan.  Fun times.

    On the other hand, Halo 3 Beta, Xbox Live Arcade just rolled out Double Dragon, Doom, Worms, Aegis Wing.  Then there is Crackdown, Gears of War, etc. and these are just on Xbox.  Then there is Wii...

    So I somehow have to fit all of this into night life due to the excruciating ordeal that is a career, while not giving any one thing in particular priority, since all of these things are important for a good balance in quality of life IMO.

    I will tell you this, the struggle will only get harder once Team Fortress 2 becomes available.  For those that don't know, Team Fortress Classic is what I still play in great quantities over games like Counterstrike: Source and WoW.

    Let me show you what I mean:

    HW Guy Interview

    Teaser Trailer 2        [1 comment]

2007.04.12

  • I understand this isn't ebay or anything, but I figured I would let regulars know that I am putting the Wii up for sale for those who haven't been able to find one.  It was the result of trying to get a girlfriend into video games, and now she isn't a girlfriend anymore.

    Console, 2 wiimotes, 2 nunchuks, 2 classic controllers, Need for Speed Carbon, Zelda, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Far Cry Vengeance, Wii Sports, 2000 Wii Points, component video cable, and a handy little organizer/stand.  $475 + shipping for all of it.

    You can find my email around here somewhere, maybe right here.
            [0 comments]

2007.03.12

  • So, over the weekend I gave Vista a go.  I called Casey and asked whether or not the eyecandy was worth it, and he said goof around with it to see for yourself, cuz he has only been screwing with it for a couple of days himself.  So I went to the local Busted Buy and picked up the upgrade kit for Home Premium.  Consider this my mini-review.

    I got the upgrade for two reasons: the first and most important was the fact that I am not going to spend $250+ on something I am gonna try out.  The second reason is equally important in that I didn't have the $250 anyway.  I had a rebate card from Cingular burning a hole in my pocket and I couldn't get cash to deposit it back to my checking account.

    I get home and spend about 3 minutes trying to figure out how to open the box until I find the shockingly invisible invisible tape on the side holding the box together.  Once I pulled that apart it fell open and wouldn't close again.

    Reading very carefully through the Quick start guide, which I didn't know operating systems had since I have always used an OEM, I noticed it recommended a clean install of your current OS before you apply the upgrade.  Problem #1, (in a large series), I didn't have a floppy drive anymore for my XP SATA drivers.  So I scoured the house looking for computers that had spare drives that weren't in use, (cuz in our house, spare machines exist, oh the joy of living with WKU tech support.)  I didn't find one.  :(

    Then I thought to myself that if it was just looking for a existing OS, why couldn't I use Vista and reinstall over it?  At least Vista recognizes USB drives and the Upgrade is done in Windows anyway.  So I tried it and it actually worked.

    The first thing I did was just overlay Vista on top of XP, not a clean install, just the upgrade.  This gave me the opportunity to back out if something happened.  Thankfully, 45 minutes later, nothing went wrong.  The process was completely automated and I just watched from the sidelines, (actually it was more like power-napped, there wasn't anything to look at on screen besides a progress meter which wasn't animated and a generic "What's New" gif that kept fading in and out).

    On it's initial boot, it took 4 minutes of the little Windows progress bar.  I thought it hung up, but I let it run anyway.  After that was another 5 minutes of black screen, I only let it go because I have a worn HDD that I heard clicking away.  Finally, it led me to the welcome screen where it said I had to create a user profile.  (There was no way around this, I had to create a profile and give it a password, which sucks, I'm not big on home security, I have nothing to hide and have pretty competent and non-malicious roommates.  Then the Wow started.  The Welcome screen literally melted away, no fading or transitioning.  It melted.  I thought it was so cool.  Aero Glass was in full swing on my little AGP system, which I was seriously doubtful about.  Thankfully my 512MB X1600Pro was up to the challenge, and not once did my screen flicker or stall on desktop animations, not a single one.  Not on the icons animations, not on the transparencies, the genie affects, the Flip 3D, the disappearing windows, it was all magnificent.  Microsoft definitely put their time in the UI.  I put the DVD back in and did a clean install over the current Vista.  Another 45 minutes passed.  At least it was kinda consistent.

    Then I actually dug in and became less and less impressed.  See, while my Video card was gleefully playing around with all the new toys, my audio card told me to cram it, it wasn't doing anything.  I remembered hearing something about Creative getting a little laggy on Vista drivers for its Sound Blaster cards, but I thought at least there was a software solution in Windows that would soft-generate some sounds till I got hardware running.  Not at all.  Not only that, Vista didn't even detect my big flash Audigy 2 ZS Platinum.  That piece of kit is still $180 on Newegg, I thought it would at least have some type of generic detection in Vista.  Nuh uh.  I hopped into IE7, which was freaking quick in Vista, and jumped over to Creatives page to download what they called their final release Vista 32 drivers.  After a quick install and not so quick (3minute) reboot, still nothing, no detection or nothing.  So I went back to Creative's page and hit up their forums to read that the final drivers from Creative were actually rebundled beta drivers, and that the beta's were better, so I got them instead.  They actually gave me audio, kinda.  Every second I hear popping and whirring and skipping and cracking.  At first I thought my audio was tied to my mouse, cuz it seemed every time I moved it, it would crackle and pop.  That wasn't the case. I read on the forums that Windows is actually capable of generating the audio signal faster than the Audigy, and the crackling was the result of the audio card catching up.  Bummer.  I thought that with the delay I put into it, surely within a couple of days a new batch would be released and the problem solved.  Then I saw the release date on the fresh drivers.   They were released March 9, the day before I installed Vista.  Things weren't looking so good.  But I pressed on.

    I loaded up Counterstrike: Source.  When it finished copying over from my backup drive, I fired it up and joined a server.  It was awful.  Frame rates were up, but I was getting packet loss up in the 20s and choke between 50-100, and then the audio stalls.  It stalled so hard at times I would hang for seconds at a time.  The normals in the server were kind enough to ask if I was having troubles today before they knifed me in the back.  I told them I was testing Vista.  What sounds I heard after that were nothing but laughs and "Vista sucks #$&^@#$!!!"  I told them I was still working on it and I'd be back later.

    I dropped out of CS:S and brought up the task manager.  Much to my joy I thought I had found the answer to my stalling troubles.  It seems that even though I had closed out counterstrike Windows still had 956MB of my 1GB of RAM cached up.  I heard rumors of it being a memory hog, but c'mon, 934MB/1024 and all I have running is the OS?  I decided the next step for me was to get a memory, which I had been so longing to do for a while anyway to increase the buffer on my Lightwave renderings.

    I tossed in another GB of Kingston DDR PC3200, (cuz I am still running a Clawhammer AMD64 and AGP) and fired it up.  But it was all for naught as I saw Vista eat 1635 MB of my newly acquired 2GB.  WHY?!  I did some research.  Turns out Vista handles memory a little differently than XP.  Vista caches a lot of instruction sets of all kinds of programs and files so that there is no waiting.  Some guy in a forum made the mention of him being glad he has no free memory, cuz its being wasted that way.  I started to understand and found a little relief in it.  I did notice that all my programs were starting almost instantly, including Photoshop CS2  which I put on after the RAM upgrade.  How awesome is it to see Photoshop CS2 start in 4 seconds?  Pretty sweet, lemme tell ya.  Sadly, everything else went pretty slowly.  working on a 800x600, 72 dpi background image left me waiting as I applied simple sharpen filters, almost 25 seconds.  So I quit that and began working up my next hypothesis to being draggy, which turned out to be true.

    I opened FutureMark 05 and gave it a run.  I kid you not, my CPU tests scored only a 325 in Vista.  I have a severely dated CPU, my lowly AMD 64 +3200 2.0Ghz, (not 2.2 like the ones you find now, and its single-core.) and it has finally found its limit.  Well, as long as my computer is sitting there silently browsing web pages, it is fine.  But in previous threads I have mentioned that my machine will be built for gaming and media, not coding or merely surfing, and to sit idle is simply unacceptable, not matter how pretty it is while it does that.  Thats why I have a cool case.

    That was a longer story than I thought.  Anyway, my computer is too slow to run Vista, paralyzed from the neck up I guess.  That's ok, I found a floppy drive in one of the little closets in the house that Brad left behind when he moved out, and it worked, so I have a fresh and squeaky clean XP install on my big black box, and it is happily booting in 24 seconds, running 85 fps on HDR maps like dust in Counterstrike, blasting my hard rock music and ripping my blockbuster collection till the cows come home, (should cows and counterstrike be in the same sentence?)

    One day, when I get the nerve to do some command line computing, I'll put Ubuntu on it and dual-boot to stay sane.

    *I am not a professional software reviewer, so I take no responsibility for the incompleteness of my review.  Feel free to comment.

    PS, I got my wish list box under $1K        [0 comments]

2007.02.16

  • there is never a reason to ever beat a child, but this would require a firm loving hand on that butt and a lesson in the usage of a stylus rather than a sharpie        [0 comments]

2007.02.15

2007.02.05

2007.02.01

  • I am a graphic artist, at this moment, I am a web designer, but not so much on the dev part as the UI part.  I put the pictures in front of the code.  My skills as an artist go largely untapped in this realm do to the lmitations of the tool sets I have available to me.  I have Photoshop, Lightwave, Maya, Bryce, and Flash at my disposal, which is a very expensive development arsenal I might add, but it's all software.  There for I am limited in my ability to use the software by the input devices I have available to me; namely my mouse and keyboard.  The mouse, while it is getting unimaginably precise, is also being used in my off hand, as I am a lefty, so I have a slight disadvantage at control when it comes to making precise movements.  This disadvantage isn't necessarily as bad as one might think, as I have always used a mouse in my right hand, mostly to play video games and move the cursor on the desktop.  But this drawing world requires finesse and extreme precision, unlike blazing speed and an autoaim boost as in video games.  I need something that can cater to my left hand.

    And then you will say "but digital tablets exist now, you can get one at ____.  They work very well."  While this may be true, the problem with a digital tablet is that there are sensitivity issues with them all and some, like the Intuos tablets from Wacom, have nothing to look at while you are drawing, and often times the tablet isn't the same size as the image or screen, so you have to scale your movements.  These sensitivity issues come from the way the pen reacts to the tablet.  Its magnetic, not actually touch sensitive, so there is a field of around a centimeter where the cursor will jitter around until you put the pen on the tablet.

    Life would be so much simpler if I can draw on my screen the way I wanted to.  If I could wave my finger across the monitor and suddenly a smudge is made.  Or grabbing my pencil and lightly brushing the surface of the monitor will reflect gentle wrinkles or shadows.  Life and work would be much cooler if we had computers like in Minority Report. Then there is this mess about Multitouch for the iPhone.  Jobs did his little happy dance with two fingers all over the gadget's little screen.  And it brought ooohs and aaahs from the crowd.  Could it be that a new technology has come out of Cupertino?  Hardly.  Click here

    Here is a clip of one of the lead designers at Perspective Pixel, Jeff Han, explaining the technology, and giving me a reason to look forward to going to work everyday.  Someday soon, I may get to play with this.        [0 comments]