• Thursday, December 30th, 2004
Got called up by work this morning as a customer had run into some problem requiring urgent attention. I didn’t really mind as I’m happy to do what I can to make sure people get paid (yes, it was that serious) but it would be nice if such things didn’t occur when I’m on holiday. Still working on the remaining problem (waiting for results to be returned right now) but I think I’m about to call it quits for the night. Hopefully when this test finishes I’ll have something to tell them tomorrow.
I did forget to mention yesterday that I’d also been playing Lord of the Rings, Battle for Middle Earth. It’s an interesting RTS game based on the Command and Conquer Generals engine. Reviews were good and it certainly plays very nicely. Ran into a big crashing issue with it though that turned out to be a problem with the way Windows XP SP2 handles it’s swap file and after much time and many crashes, I found setting a large fixed size swap file almost eliminated it (yes, just almost). With issues like this I really wonder if a Windows box is worth even using as a games console.
I made the huge mistake earlier, while waiting for queries to run, of pulling apart my iBook to replace the hard drive. I’d managed to easily resist doing this for months as the 10GB size difference didn’t seem worth bothering with but I decided today that it was worth doing. I really wish I hadn’t. It’s all okay now, in fact I’m using it to type this, but it took hours and my fingers are raw from using small screwdrivers. I had taken out the best part of 30 screws before even catching a glimpse of the hard drive buried deep within the nest of metal and plastic cages and getting the thing back together again was a nightmare. Once I had it back together I realised the trackpad wasn’t working (I hadn’t spotted the small connector that had come undone) so I had to pull it to bits again so I could reassemble it correctly. Gah, what a waste of time. I’m almost tempted to buy a new bigger drive for it just to make this whole effort seem worthwhile. :-/
Had some great retro enjoyment today which almost makes up for the other stuff. You can see it right here. Best flash file I’ve seen in a while, but then again, I’ve played almost all of these games and owned over half the computers listed. Catchy tune too! It reminds me how cool the Lords of Midnight was (and it’s sequel Doomdark’s Revenge). Ah, those were the days.
• Tuesday, December 28th, 2004
Well Christmas was fun. Had a good time. Plenty of good food and got some nice stuff. Haven’t been home much in the last three days, I’ve been over at my brother’s place most of that time watching movies, playing games and just generally hanging out. Definitely a lot of fun! No real plans today although I’m thinking I should head off into town and have a look around, maybe pick up some specials. I think I’ve caught up on my sleep again, haven’t been out of bed before 11am since the 26th. 
Played even more Morrowind. I do like the game a lot. Taking a bit of a break from it now though, it seems I’ve got lots of seafaring to do. I got “Port Royale 2″ as a gift for Christmas and picked up a few other games cheap with my nephew on boxing day in a “buy two, get one free deal”, “Patrician 2″ (with LAN play) and “Sea Dogs” (Built by Bethesda of Morrowind fame). My copy of “Call of Duty United Offensive” for the Mac which I pre-ordered a while back also arrived so I’ve got plenty of games to play. I think I’m really starting to look forward to the followup to Morrowind, i.e. Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion.
I’d been thinking for a while that I should start learning OpenGL. I downloaded some docs off the OpenGL site and some sample 3D code from Apple (Yeah, I may have a Windows machine these days but I have no intention of developing on there, especially since Visual C++/C# costs a fortune). Started playing around on my iBook last night while watching the extended edition of “Return of the King” at my brother’s place. Didn’t actually get any 3D running but considering it’s been so long since I wrote any C and MacOS apps (pre-MacOS X even), I was happy just to see my code compile and get a window up with an OpenGL context in it. I’d like to get my own 3D engine up and running although I feel I am quite a long way off that. No hurry though. 
Speaking of Lord of the Rings, I’ve largely avoided all the hype where possible so unlike many people, I’m not totally sick of the whole thing already. I have for quite a long time been interested in the back story but didn’t think there was anything official on it. I have though recently found a book called “The Silmarillion” which was an unfinished history of middle earth written by Tolken himself. Put an order in for a copy last night from Amazon. Should be interesting. I’ve also been training Amazon for quite a few months so that it’s recommendations are actually sensible. I really think I’m getting there although it still needs some work. Much of what it is suggesting now though are things that I am at least interesting in, although not necessarily things I’d buy.
Probably more stuff to write but it’s eluding me right now, lots of things have been happening. Mabye I’ll post again later.
• Friday, December 24th, 2004
Well maybe that title is a tad overblown but it does feel a bit that way. It’s now Christmas eve and I’ve got a massively busy day ahead of me and some unexpected last minute rushing to do. Yay. Oh well, I’m sure there will be a bit of fun in there. I honestly think the thing I’m most looking forward too is a good sleep somewhere within the next two weeks.
Overall the last day or two have been very productive. I’ve got a lot of things done including many that have been on the back burner for a while. First time I’ve really felt that way since breaking my leg in March. After that it felt like I was just slowly getting loaded up with more and more. Getting this stuff out of the way feels good! ^-^
I went to do some maintenance on my site only to find my hosting account had been significantly upgraded since last time I looked. I believe originally I was getting 250MB of webspace and 1.5GB of traffic per month with the additonal option of PERL scripting (costing US$1 extra). I noticed quite a while back they added PHP support (used by this Blog for one) but just noticed that the other limits have got much higher too. Now I’ve got 2000MB of webspace and can do 100GB of traffic each month. I’m nowhere near to hitting either of these limits right now of course, (I only did 30MB over the last seven days and 2.8GB over the lifetime of this site from early 2002) but I was a little worried that I might have hit them soon with some of the plans I have for this domain. Based on these new limits though, I think I really don’t need to worry about it at all.
In a rather amazing move last night, (well it was technically last night, even though it was only a few hours ago) I managed to sell my copy of Half Life 2. I ended up just giving away my Steam account with it since I have no intention of ever using Steam again. Amusingly Steam threw one last spanner in the works by refusing to let me change the password on the account despite me typing the old password in perfectly around a dozen times. It also seems that you can’t use your Steam account login to access the Steam support site, you actually need a separate id with a separate password. This last piece of complete stupidity on the part of Valve just boggles my mind. I mean isn’t that the whole point of Steam? Isn’t it meant to be a one-stop-shop for everthing related to Half Life 2? This is one of the few occasions I’d almost consider using the word “retarded” but I feel I’d be insulting people for which this term is usually reserved for. Honestly I’m glad to see the back of this game but I can’t help but feel bad for inflicting it on someone else. Matt did seem to like the game and knew what he was getting into and I certainly hope he does enjoy it. I just feel a little “dirty”…
• Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004
Bought the last of the Christmas presents on my list today. I’d left one to last and while I had a good idea of what I wanted to get, I was a little worried I wouldn’t find what I was after. In the end though I got pretty much exactly what I wanted and I think the recipient will be quite happy. Also got most of the presents wrapped tonight so I can take things a bit easier in the last three days before Christmas. Might even get to play some more Morrowind. Had a lot of other things to occupy my time in the last few days though so I’m not going to start counting my chickens just yet.
My new Western Digital Raptor hard drive arrived all safe and fine yesterday so I installed it in my Powermac G5 and made it the boot drive. It’s definitely quicker than the 160GB Segate that came with the Mac but that’s to be expected with the Raptors being super fast 10,000 RPM drives. Overall a very nice performance boost.
• Sunday, December 19th, 2004
Almost there with my Christmas present buying, knocked a big one off my list today. Another one is pretty much decided too but I’ve yet to just buy it. Tomorrow maybe if I have time, I’d hate to leave it to the last minute only to find it’s sold out. I’ve probably spent a bit much overall this year but I can live with it once a year. Doesn’t help that I ended up ordering a WD Raptor hard drive, but I was really starting to run out of drive space. All going well that should arrive tomorrow.
Been playing quite a bit of Morrowind whenever I’ve had pieces of time to spare. I’m still not really sure what I think of it overall but it is slowly pulling me in. I certainly can understand how it was so highly rated back when it came out. It does crash a bit for me though. I’m slowly trying to track down the cause. I did install two mod packs and disabling one of these certainly reduced the crashing frequency but the other seems to make no difference. It’s definitely not Windows, my video card drivers or my CPU speed. Just tried downclocking the speed of my RAM (now using 333Mhz down from 400) so I’ll see what difference that makes. I just don’t trust that Kingmax stuff after all the trouble I’ve had with it.
Haven’t done much this weekend really but I still feel really tired. I’m looking forward to the upcoming holidays, only one more week of work for the year.
• Wednesday, December 15th, 2004
Yeah, the christmas rush is really setting in now. I’m actually getting places with presents, only three left to buy. So many queues and long delays though. I think all up this week I’ve spent about an hour waiting in queues. I’m also starting to see the downside of ADSL. Five phone calls this evening and I was on the phone for ages with one of them. At least I managed to take the time to carefully wrap a present up while on the phone (a handsfree headset was one of my better buys a few years back). It was in a fancy box which much to my surprise, made things much harder. It does look pretty good all done so I’m happy. Hopefully the recipient will be too! Still need to do more work on the cards though. These things are so time consuming.
The weekend was insane but it was expected to be so hence I didn’t feel annoyed about it. Pretty good really catching up with family I haven’t seen for quite a few months. I also have been quite a while getting back to updating here but every night this week I’ve either had visitors or been flat out doing something. I’m really looking forward to the holidays at this point.
Running out of hard disc space on my Powermac G5. Didn’t think that 160GB would dissappear so quickly. I’ve got a 120GB drive in a firewire bay I can use when necessary but I really want to get a new internal HDD. Doesn’t seem to be a good time really. The main thing I care about is speed since the current drive seems to be a bottleneck in my G5. Current options are the rather old now Western Digital Raptors (10,000 RPM) and the rather new Maxtor Diamond Max 10 (16MB cache). The Raptor does seem to have the edge in benchmarks and is cheaper, but is much smaller in size than the Maxtor (74GB vs 300GB). I’m tempted to wait for the next generation Raptor (surely it can’t be far away now) but whether my disc space lasts that long is another matter. Ideally I want to RAID two of these things but two drives and a RAID card is more than I want to spend. Sure I could get by without the RAID card but RAID off the onboard controllers is never as fast as a good, dedicated card and is, IMHO, a waste of money.
I picked up Morrowind for $10 yesterday, I’m quite looking forward to playing it a bit when I get a spare moment.
Finally got the bill from Telecom for my phone. It just seems so wrong that they let me walk out of the shop with it and then let me keep it for a good month or so before even asking me to pay.
• Friday, December 10th, 2004
Probably my last post for a couple of days, I’m going to be super busy this weekend. Work Chrismas party tonight, various birthday parties on Saturday and the christening of my brother’s new son on Sunday. I really picked a great time to stop taking Mondays off it seems. Oh well, at least next year I get a full extra week of holidays. Not really getting anywhere with my Christmas shopping (not really had a spare day) but some of my side Christmas related projects are showing promise. I want to play Sid Meier’s Pirates! again but still haven’t really got a chance. I wish there were more hours in the day.
• Wednesday, December 08th, 2004
Gah, super tired today! Didn’t sleep that well last night either. Don’t really know why. I was worried for a friend, but at this point I feel so tired that even the outbreak of World War 3 shouldn’t be enough to keep me awake. Quite physically tired too today as a had a long walk out in the sun without having much lunch first. Also had a bit of a hard out exercise session after dinner. Maybe this will be enough to make me sleep like a log tonight. I certainly hope so.
I’m starting to actually use the “Tasks” manager thing on my phone. Very useful for reminding myself of what I’m meant to be doing. I’ve never really been into that sort of thing but the way it works on my phone makes it simple enough to manage and having it all in one place and organised is very useful. Also got compilers and the SDK for the phone installed on my Windows box so I’ll have to tinker around with that sometime.
I’ve been keeping a watchful eye on the new handhelds coming out from Nintendo and Sony. To be totally honest the Nintendo DS has never really appealed ot me. GBA copatibility is nice but I don’t really play the GBA games I have now with my GBA SP so I can’t see myself doing it with a bigger handheld. It also just seems to be lacking appealing games. Sure, it has all the usual Nintendo stuff but I don’t like many of them. I’m not anti Nintendo or anything, I own a GBA SP and a Gamecube and would happily argue the case of the Gamecube vs the competition, but the DS seems rather lacking to me. If it had come out two years ago it would have been revolutionary and it could have been done I’m sure, but today it’s just mediocre. This is not to say I think the Sony PSP is perfect either, but it’s a product for today and seems will be backed by a significant games library. Hardware-wise the PSP is rather powerful and to me seems to be the way to go. Actually considering a pre-order. Been ages since I last did that.
• Tuesday, December 07th, 2004
Super busy in town today. Not even school holidays yet as far as I’m aware but everywhere I went there were queues, people blocking the footpath and generally being slow and noisy. When you work in town, this sort of thing is a pain. Got to put up with it for a few weeks yet though I guess. Maybe I should just work during lunchtimes and do my shopping on the stores late nights.
I can see this Christmas is going to require quite a bit of effort this year. Most of the cards around are horrible and even the wrapping paper is ghastly. Going to have to do some hand made (or modified at least) stuff this year, at least it has some soul. Might even be fun.
The games talk around work today was largely related to Sid Meier’s Pirates!, it seems I’m not the only one who thinks well of this game. Even Daniel in the local games store was talking about it and saying how much fun it is. I must admit, after all this talk about it I’m hankering for another quick blast around the Carribean. I think I’d do better at playing the game this time around knowing what I know now. The recent first person shooter buzz is all gone it seems. Good riddance.
I’ve been wondering what’s up with Hewlett Packard recently. They really seem to be losing the plot. I’ve never been a big HP fan, but they made some good calculators, printers and engineering gear and I gave them some respect for that. Today though they seem to be trying to run out of business as fast as they can. The recent news that they’re recommendeding HP-UX on Itanium as a replacement for Tru64 Unix that came along with Compaq’s Alpha server server business (which they themselves aquired with DEC back in the day) is just ridiculous. Do they want to just hand customers to IBM and Sun? Do they seriously think IT departments are stupid enough to buy into an OS with lesser features on hardware that even Intel realises is dying? It doesn’t occur to them that if their customers have to port their software anyway as Tru64 is gone, then they might as well port to the cheaper and faster POWER based AIX servers from IBM? Many comments around the web are saying, “Soon they’ll only have the printer business” but I walked into the local Dick Smith’s Electronics store today and they only had one HP printer on the shelf. Is this a sign of things to come? I really have to wonder when the shareholders will start to get wise. Certainly their current advertising motto, “HP Invent” is a real insult to the HP engineers of yesteryear.
• Monday, December 06th, 2004
I haven’t been sleeping very well the last few nights and last night was the worst yet. I think I have a bit too much on my mind still. Didn’t get to sleep till about 4AM. Had to get ready quickly this morning as my car was booked in for a warrant of fitness test. I had been a little worried about it to be honest and spend most of yesterday doing what I could. The right reversing light had blown so I replaced that and a plastic side panel had come off with heat so I bought the proper special double sided tape and glue to stick it back on. Also was missing wheel covers on the driver’s side (was like this when I got it) so I bought a nice set of four six spoke ones. These aren’t things they’d fail a car on but I thought that if it looks good, they’re less likely to think they should be failing it. In the end it turned out that all was well and it passed with flying colours so I consider that money well spent.
Also finally got around to playing some Doom 3. To be honest I’m kind of tired of the whole game review thing I’ve been doing recently but I will say that I don’t see why there’s so much debate comparing Doom 3 to Half Life 2. To me, there’s no comparison, Doom 3 is vastly superior. It’s repetitve and linear of course but Half Life 2 is no different in that regard, these are both just generic first person shooters. Doom 3 though does excel in the graphics department and Half Life 2 isn’t even close. At this point I’m tired of Sid Meier’s Pirates too after 3-4 days of playing it hard out but it lasted very well considering my near 5-minute attention span for games these days. I’d certainly recommend it ahead of any of the big FPS titles.
Back to work tomorrow…*YAWN*. Hope I get a good night’s sleep tonight.
