I’ve not really been keeping up with comings and goings here lately. Mostly just been distracted or busy with other things, but I do want to get back to more regular posting and commenting. I don’t say that in the sense of it being a chore; I’ve always done so because it was something I wanted to do and there’s no change on that front.

I mentioned in my last post the slow cleanup after the Hamilton 400 street race. I had assumed within 2-3 weeks it would be all cleaned up and all would be well. Last week though the Hamilton City council apparently aiming for new lows in cost cutting and laziness announced in a local paper that they planned to leave most of the concrete barriers along the pit lane in place until next year. The article also mentioned that only one day remained for submissions to be made. I got a submission in on time, but utlimately I can’t comprehend what would make them think this is a good idea. These things are a complete hazard to vehicles and pedestrians alike and while thankfully the metal cages are gone the place looks like it’s in a state of perpetual road works. I think it’s safe to say that none of the councillors live in the area.

I’ve been considering a full update of my gaming PC for a while, but looking around much of what’s available is very old technology at this point. I figured something new must be around the corner that would be incompatible with any parts I buy today. To my surprise it seems AMD’s Fusion platform is still years away, but Intel is bringing out a new “Nehalem” micro architecture in the second half of this year. It’s unfortunate, and the CPU design geek in me doesn’t like Intel’s work,  but buying AMD processors currently simply doesn’t make much sense and it looks to stay that way for the time being. Buying AMD only seems a good choice if you want to build a cheap PC (even for basic gaming) or a very low power (under 45 Watt) media PC with a 780g motherboard and 4850e processor. But I digress. So anyway Intel’s Nehalem architecture has an on-chip memory controller (one of the few benefits AMD has left) and as such will introduce a new processor socket (LGA 1366) making it incompatible with everything that came before. Makes me glad I didn’t pick up any of the Intel LGA775 parts today. Of course these new CPUs and motherboards are substantially better in other ways too, but this isn’t a tech blog.  ^_^;  Suffice to say short of the unexpected I intend to build a system around this platform when it becomes available.

Gaming-wise I’ve mostly been playing Persona 3 FES and the latest MMORPG Age of Conan. I talked in detail regarding the original Persona 3 elsewhere, and the FES variant just enhances it and adds more making a great game even better. Age of Conan is kind of cool too in many ways and is the first game I’ve seen to give World of Warcraft a run for it’s money, but at the same time I’m not feeling the urge to play it much at this point despite levelling four characters of various classes out of the newbie areas. The game seems to have it’s fair share of glitches and some issues around level/class balance, but no doubt they’ll patch those problems. It does suceed though in ways that others of it’s ilk have failed. Graphically it’s a step up from the rest, the mythos of the universe is rich and the narritive works well. Even the voice acting is surprisingly decent. The combat mechanics work well too. Magic-based classes seem to play much as they do in World of Warcraft, but the melee classes have a more varied system and is simply more satisfying and visceral.