Garrulous Geek - Computing

I'll take a quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide

nospam@example.com (Peter Urquhart) — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:01:59 +0100

I only recently found out that the carbon monoxide in that lyric refers to suicide by way of vehicle fumes. It fits with the rest of the song, but it's still somewhat jarring to learn that, not least when it seems so obvious in retrospect.

I've been busy as all hell lately, with work and studying and family and trying to enjoy life at some point along the way. Work has been pretty dire lately, and I honestly don't know how much longer I'll be able to stick it out for before moving along. Likewise studying has been very hard work, though now that my exam is out of the way I feel I've got a bit more room to breathe. Family life is more enjoyable by orders of magnitude, but nevertheless hard work. And even "fun" seems a tremendous effort at the moment. It's much easier to just pass time without regard to whether I'm actually enjoying anything I'm doing.

I came across the video for No Surprises a couple of months back, having not seen it for a long time. The imagery seemed distressingly relevant at the time, and I watched the video several times in tears. It was rather reminiscent of my miserable teenage years, at which time The Bends was a mainstay in my music collection; a time when I felt sure I knew just what the man in the Just video had said, and knowing why he'd wanted to lie down in the pavement and stop...

I wish I could stop. Lie down. Rest.

Anyway...

Alison and I watched Control the other night - the documentary film about the life and death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. I can't claim to know much of Joy Division's music, beyond the marvellous Love Will Tear Us Apart and even that only due to it's presence on the Donnie Darko soundtrack. I did know what Joy Division meant prior to seeing the film, though that's more to do with my obsession with trivia than any interest in the band. Still, even without my having any real interest in the band, the film was engaging and interesting, and quite moving. The story was somewhat reminiscent of the much more well known Kurt Cobain, what with him being unable to deal with his fame and the pressures of performing. It was quite interesting because it was very difficult to sympathise with the lead character. It was much easier to pity him for his mental problems (depression, epilepsy) than to sympathise with him, as some of his actions - particularly with regard to his love life - were basically selfish and foolish. The suicide itself was well done, and very moving. Quite challenging to think of his situation and how he felt, and whether a person could ever be justified in killing themselves and leaving a wife and daughter behind like that.

Sticking with films, but on a decidedly lighter note, Alison and I are going to see the new Indiana Jones film on Saturday. It's getting some mixed reviews, but I'm sure it'll be good at what it does. I'm sure it won't be a searing critique of the work of archaeologists under the pressures of the cold war, as some critics apparently think it should be, but I'm certain that it will contain the following at a bare minimum:

A hat
A whip
A tomb/cave/other dark place
A car chase
A fight

which should be about enough to carry it really. I've no doubt that it won't be as good as Raiders, or even as good as Crusade, but with the dross that Hollywood gets by on these days, I'd even settle for anything as good as Temple. It'll be 2 hours of thud and blunder led by Harrison Ford, which will definitely do the job.

Alison and I are picking up the new Lego Indiana Jones game for the Wii too. It looks like good fun, and if it's anything like Lego Star Wars which we both had a great time playing, then it should be £30 very well spent. The Wii has been one of our best purchases of late, and I've been amazed at how much I've been able to get Alison playing it. Gaming has normally been my domain, and occasionally a mystery to her, so it's been quite good to find some games we can play together. Mario Kart and Mario Galaxy have been two recent surprises - I'd never have expected to have got her playing those two.

Right. More another time... I'll write about some films next time.

I tried to plug in it, I tried to turn it on, when I got home, it was a piece of crap

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 20:02:03 +0100

My webhosting got broken, but then it got fixed. As such, some comments are missing, facebook will list a couple of things twice (as I copied my recent posts from the notes there) and... that's about that.

Pestiferous computers.

So he just plays on his computer games...

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 16:18:21 +0100

What marvellous technological leaps and bounds we make! What a brave new world we live in, that I can sit on the toilet and beat some Japanese guy at Tetris on my DS over some magical wireless Internet thing!

It's all about the Pentiums baby

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 23:07:21 +0100

Ooh, look, another Weird Al Youtube linky... tres amusant if you're a computer geek like me.

I've just built a new computer. Dear goodness, it was a faff. I now have two very nice shiny PCs, one of which will hopefully soon be taking up it's station as my media center PC, sitting in pride of place in my living room to record TV shows, play DVDs and music, and generally be useful. I hope. The other is my general use and gaming rig, which proved to be quite an arse to get working for various reasons. Just about justifiable as I now have a pretty fast computer that should play just about any game that comes out this year (Bioshock... oooh!) and last a bit longer besides.

That being said, I think I'm tiring of PC gaming, not least because of the enormous hassle that building computers can be. It was all well and good when I was footloose and fancy free, with few commitments, and a reasonable chunk of disposable income. I could spend money on hardware, build my own computers, and it was actually quite fun to puzzle over why part X wouldn't work with part Y, and figure out a way to get everything working and have a wicked PC to play my games on. These days, I'm rather busier, and I'd rather spend my copious free time after work doing other things, not least the rather pressing issue of maintaining a family. I don't really have time to worry about why I can't get any VGA output from the PCI Express slot, or why that wireless card will work but the other won't, and just how much of this hardware will work in Linux anyway?

No... I don't really have time for this anymore. These days I want to sit down at a computer, read my e-mails, surf the net, then turn it off and play Mario on my DS. I suddenly understand the appeal of consoles... They. Just. Work. You put your game in, turn it on, play, then turn it off. No faffing about building your console from scratch, upgrading it every year, troubleshooting, fiddling with Windows trying to figure out what the hell it's playing it, or any of that hassle.

So, I think this might just be my last serious hardware upgrade. Next time I get a decent chunk of change, I think I'll be spending it on a Nintendo Wii, rather than putting myself through all this hassle again.

In other news, for those of you who care little for computers, here's an opinion of mine: American Idiot by Green Day is one of the greatest albums ever recorded.

This is my Vietnam, I'm at war

nospam@example.com (admin) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 19:43:08 +0000

Platoon was on TV the other night. I watched it while trying to fix my computer, which decided to take a nosedive last week. I'm not sure which was the bloodier battle, to be honest. I didn't succeed with fixing the PC, so I'm now forced to pick up some new bits and bobs. Curses. On the plus side, the film was damn good, if you like war films, which I rather do.

I've not written for a while, largely due to the aforementioned PC death. I've got a post planned which should provide significant amusement, but again it is contingent on getting my home PC up and running again, so for now you'll have to make do with a generic news type update. News follows:

I'm not dead, in spite of two weeks of not blogging

Beth can now pull herself up into a standing position. If you leave her sat next to the sofa, she'll stand up and lean on it. She did it like three times in the bath yesterday. She's also got about a million teeth (or maybe it's closer to six) which is pretty cool.

Work is OK. It's pretty busy, and pretty crazy at times. I feel out of my depth quite a lot, and I'm often having to learn stuff on the fly with no real clue what I'm doing. I usually get the hang of it OK though, so that's a mercy.

I played through Zelda: Link's Awakening again the other week. For a game that's about 15 years old, it's awesome. I'm also trying to play A Link To The Past on my DS, and failing to see what all the fuss is about, even though it's supposed to the best Zelda game ever in the world, bar none. It's too hard and it makes no sense. Or perhaps I suck at it. Hmm.

I'm selling a whole bunch of junk on ebay. Someone buy it. Go on. Please.

I still suck at Fantasy Football, but not as much as the 5 people below me in the league. Unlucky.

Life On Mars is back on the TV, and this is a good thing because it is awesome. Now, if I could just muster one computer in this house that works, I could set up my magical TV recording box and record it, on account of how I will be out at Bible study this week. Bible study good. Missing Life On Mars not so good.

That's about all I can think of right now. I haven't bought anything exciting lately, so I can't witter on about music or films or whatever. The most exciting thing I've bought lately was a hard disk which caught fire, which is not a good thing. Anything that runs the risk of burning my house down is generally deemed to be crap, so I wasn't too impressed with that. On the whole, 3/10 for surprise value alone. Even The Killers album was better than that.
Right. It's supper time, so I'm off. Bye!

I'm lazy...

nospam@example.com (admin) — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:51:35 +0000

Well, considering one of my New Year's Resolutions was to blog more often, I'm so far doing a pretty shocking job. Still, on the off chance that anyone's still reading, hello! I've just paid my subscription for my web hosting for the coming year, so I guess I'd better make the most of it.
Christmas was good, New Year was OK, that's about all there is to say about that. Beth got oodles of presents, all of which had to be unwrapped for her as she is too little to have a clue what's going on. Still, we all had fun. I spent a couple of nights with my parents to give Ali a break from Beth, which went OK. Kinda better than expected, given that it's the first time I've looked after her on my own. It meant I could go and see some friends on the Wirral, which was good as I'd not seen them in ages and most of them hadn't seen Beth before. The manager of the coffee shop where we met, where I used to work, didn't believe Beth was my baby. Perhaps I don't seem the type to be married with a baby. Still, there you go. That being said, one of Alison's mum's friends future son-in-laws who incidentally works at the estate agents that have just sold my house (small world, etc) was amazed that I've managed to get through uni, get a job, get married and have a baby by the age of 24. Anyway.

So... what's happening? Well, work is going well. I've not been away to London in ages, so I've had a good run at things in the office, rather than just the usual 3 week gaps between training. I'm feeling pretty settled in the office, and I think I'm doing OK at stuff, though I've got an appraisal coming up soon, so I'm sure I'll find out how I'm really getting on when that happens! I'm looking forward to the next trip to London, as I've not been in ages, and I do quite like it. It'll be good to see everyone again, and hopefully we can go out and have fun and all the rest of it. It's kinda weird having to cram the bulk of my social activities and going out into one week a month with people I don't see the rest of the time, but that's the way it goes.
Alison and I are in the midst of arranging a summer holiday. We're going to Finland, as I've not been in years and Ali has never been, and my relatives over there haven't seen Beth yet. We've got flights and my parents (who we're going with) have sorted a big cottage for us to stay in. Apparently my brother and sister and their respective significant others might be coming too, so it'd be a big crazy multi-generational family holiday. Now that I think about it, it could almost be the premise for some trashy comedy film, the blurb of which would no doubt tout the "hilarious consequences" that ensue, but hopefully all will go according to plan and we'll have a good time. Roll on... uh... August.

What else is happening...

My Fantasy Football team is languishing near the bottom of the league. Rubbish.

I'm trying to build a media center PC. So far this involves selling anything I can find to buy computer components.

Beth can sit up for hours. She can't crawl, because she seems to be stuck in reverse. She is learning to eat, but it's slow, and often it boils down to her painting her face with Weetabix or inadvertently sticking bits of carrot up her nose or whatever.

My Nintendo DS Lite is probably the best thing I have ever bought and I love it. I'd buy a Nintendo Wii as well if I had the money.

We put curtains and wall hangings up in our bedroom the other day, which makes it look a whole lot better.

We watched Big on DVD last night. It's a great film.

We've just finished season 5 of 24 on DVD. It was great. Far superior to season 4, and easily up to the standard of seasons 1 and 2. I wish we had Sky so we could watch season 6, but I guess that will have to wait.

I've read Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham. It was brilliant. Quite scary and haunting, which is kinda weird as most books and films don't really bother me. This genuinely unnerved me, to the point that I was scared walking around the house in the dark at night. Really well written, and clearly inspirational to swathes of horror film makers. I had a nightmare about it last night too. Weird.

Right. My lunch hour is nearly over, so I figure I'll just submit this and be done with it. No links today. Shocking, I know.

See you soon.

Our hopes and expectations...

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 19:17:29 +0000

Right then. It's about time I blogged properly, so here goes. I'm going to waffle about what I'm up to at the moment, and then post pics of Beth at the end, so if you're just here for the baby pictures, skip ahead.

So... life then. Work is going well. It's really quite busy. I've got lots of work to be getting on with, which is pretty cool. It's at a pretty good pace which means I'm always under enough pressure to be motivated, without it feeling too overwhelming. This is a good thing. I've been hearing some horror stories of some of my fellow trainees in other offices not having anything to do. One guy told me he'd spent the afternoon practising how fast he could say "Peter Piper". He got it down to 5.2 seconds, apparently. Impressive, but not exactly what he's there for. I might be off to visit a client sometime this coming week, which would be my first, and I might have a business trip to London a week or so later to learn something complicated. Exciting stuff. I am, as tragic as it may seem, really enjoying this job. For all my concerns about spending my life as an accountant, it's actually pretty good so far. Good stuff.

I spent some of my hard earned cash on a Nintendo DS Lite. It's easily one of the best things I've ever bought. I picked it up on ebay and it came with Nintendogs and that Brain Training game that you've probably seen people playing on the train/bus/plane/helicopter to work. Those two are pretty cool, especially Nintendogs. The whole stylus and touch screen thing is cool, even if it is just a contrived way of getting a mouse onto a handheld console. It's pretty neat to be able to talk to the dog with the mic and teach it tricks, and stroke it to say well done. Nifty. I've since picked up a few more games, including Phoenix Wright, a mad little visual novel type game about a lawyer, which Marilyn Manson, of all people, loves. So there you go. I like it so much I sold a bunch of stuff and bought one for Alison as well. Admittedly there is the ulterior motive that I need someone to play Mario Kart against, but she's been getting into it for herself, especially this mad little game called Cooking Mama which is, as the name suggests, all about cooking. Cooking Japanese meals. As you do. So, that's pretty cool. Heartily recommended. Buy a DS Lite. Or buy me loads of games for mine. I'm not too fussed which.

I picked up the new Muse album too. It's taking a bit of a time to get into, as it's a bit more obscure than Absolution. It's good, just a bit crazy. I think it'll grow on me. It's certainly very musically accomplished, to say the least.

We watched Good Night And Good Luck last night, George Clooney's film about the news reporting on McCarthyism in the 50s. It was very good, well written and well acted. It was quite concise, which bothered me slightly, as I could have watched a lot more of it. The subject matter was certainly very interesting, and I like the sentiment that TV and journalism should be honest and challenging. I found the closing line of the film very strong:

"This instrument [television] can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."

I don't know if I mentioned it at the time, but I remember thinking that sort of thing when I watched Gunther von Hagens autopsy programmes on Channel 4. It was astounding to me that TV could be so educational, when primarily it's just utterly forgettable crap, if I can be frank. As sci fi author Sturgeon noted, 90% of everything is crud. Now, autopsies are certainly different to political awareness, but I think the point stands. It would be nice if TV could actually challenge us once in a while. Anyway. It was a good film.

Things with Ali and Beth are good. Beth has been a bit ill, which has been hard work for Ali. She had some kind of bug or something that was making her sick, which was pretty gross and fairly distressing for her. She's come through that now, and is back to being cheerful, which is good. Ali and Beth are having fun, so that's cool. Beth is getting pretty good at sitting up, as well as picking things up and holding them, and putting everything in her mouth! She's trying to feed herself when Ali gives her pureed fruit and veg, which is entertaining if extremely messy. So... here's some photos!

This is back when Ali first started giving Beth some solid food, nearly two months ago. She's just had some passion fruit and was very pleased with it!

Here's Ali holding Beth, who's wearing a little snowsuit that my sister bought for her. It's really cute. It has a giraffe on it, which you can't see in the photo, and it's really snuggly and warm.

Here's me with Beth who's in a little dress that Ali got for her for like £2 or something, thanks to a handy voucher. Nice.

Here's Beth in her door bouncer. It's a proper life saver - she loves bouncing up and down, and it can keep her entertained for quite a while, so you can get on with something in the meantime. It also helps with getting the burps out of her!

Here's Beth on a swing. She has to be kinda wedged in (hence the blanket) but she really likes it. She starts giggling and grinning. Very cute.

Ali has found that Beth can be quite easily entertained by giving her random items to play with and look at. So, here's Beth having a look at the whisk. Tasty...

Lastly, here's me and Beth out on a walk just this afternoon. We went out to a place called Pennington Flash, which is a nature reserve type place with a big lake, and saw all the ducks and geese and suchlike. I carried Beth round in a little harness on my front and she had a great time looking at everything.

So... there you go. That's about enough for now! See you again soon.

These are a few of my favourite things

nospam@example.com (admin) — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:55:47 +0100

Not written for a while. Been very busy with house hunting and work and generally being stressed. Am on pills from doctor for minor stomach problems. Yay. Anyway. Here's a list of things I'm loving at the moment:

Being married. Alison is away at the moment and it always makes me think of how much I like having her around and having the company. I go nuts on my own, and stop doing much anything useful.

My friend, Laura. Things are mental at the moment, so it's nice to have a friend I've known for ages. Provides a much needed bit of stability.

My parents. I'm figuring if I ever turn out to be any good at being a parent it'll be because I had good examples. I'm also very grateful to have my dad to help with stuff, especially with looking for a house at the moment. He seems to know an awful lot about an awful lot, which is handy.

24. I borrowed the DVD set of series 2 and have watched it all this week. I'd never seen it before. I remember Colin watching it fanatically at uni, but I never got into it. It's amazing! Really well made and well shot. They pack in so much for something that happens over the course of one day. It's like reading a novel, but in film form, except it actually takes as long to watch as it would to read because of the sheer amount of detail. It's great stuff.

Radio 1. I have a lot of time for the BBC, and I have absolutely no complaints about the licence fee. Radio 1 is probably worth it on it's own, never mind all the other radio stations, the TV stations, the news, the web presence... Anyway. They've got as good a mix of music as you can hope for when trying to cater to everyone, no adverts, and some very good DJs (with the exception of Sara Cox, and some of Moyles' more egocentric moments). Jo Whiley is a legend. Tangent - is the new Muse single any good? I don't know. I heard it once and thought it was awful, then heard it again and quite liked it. Maybe it's a grower. Oh, and the Pink single is great.

Cheap computer parts. In between buying and selling on ebay and picking stuff up second hand from people, it's nice to get the high spec parts of yesteryear at minimal cost. I'm looking forward to setting up my TV recording box with some of the kit.

Talking of which... free software. Never mind your warezed copy of XP Pro, I'm talking properly free stuff. No cost, and I can do anything I like with it. I'm looking forward to getting gentoo and Mythtv set up so I can record TV and do all that Tivo business. Quite a fun project for someone like me who's into all that stuff.

X Men 3. Amazing film - highly recommended. The plot rolls along nicely and it looks stunning. Dark Phoenix makes a great enemy - genuinely terrifyingly dangerous, much like Doc Ock in Spiderman 2 - which really helps in adding to the urgency of the conflict. The special effects are awesome and the face offs between the mutants and their various powers are very cool. They did well with the trailer to barely reveal any of the final conflict, so it was all fresh and new when you saw it.

Talking of trailers, we saw new ones for James Bond, Superman and Pirates Of The Caribbean 2, all of which look good. It'll be fun and games getting babysitters so we can go see them, but we'll manage!

In other film news, I must admit I've been slightly pleased to hear that the Da Vinci Code is getting awful reviews. I thought the book was pretty bland, and the ending diabolical, so I was glad to hear that the deus ex machina was laughed at in Cannes. There we go.

Right. Bit of life news... House hunting is going OK. It's very hard work trying to balance price against what the house is like against where it is against what the schools are like etc etc. It's tough stuff. The web makes it a lot easier to dig up info about what the areas and schools and so on are like, so that's good, but it's still tough stuff. We've got 6 viewings arranged for this saturday, so it'll be a busy day. Let's hope Ali copes OK with all that, as she'll only be two weeks of her expected due date by then! That's also quite scary. I'm going to be a father in, at most, a month. It doesn't feel real yet. I'll bet it'll feel all too real when it happens!

Anyway. That's about it for now. I'll try to write again soon, though it may wind up being about computer games, so I apologise to the uninterested among you! Alternatively I might write about books. Who knows. See you soon.

Two princes kneel before you

nospam@example.com (admin) — Tue, 09 May 2006 16:26:17 +0100

If you don't care about computer games you'll want to skip down till I start talking about Sigur Ros... If you do, then feel free to read on.

I finished playing through the Prince Of Persia series over the weekend. As I've mentioned in the past I love the first game in the series, so it made sense to pick up the following two when I had the money. Once again, I'm late getting round to playing them, but that's the way it goes when you have to buy all this stuff second hand on ebay...

So, Warrior Within was OK. I got a bit hacked off with all the emphasis on the combat - sure, it looks fairly nifty to leap over a sand monsters head, steal his axe and then cut his head off with it in slow motion, but that's not really what I'm here for, you know? That's not really my thing. The combat actually put me off the game for a while, as I first tried playing it about 6 months ago, but laid off it until I got hold of a gamepad which actually made it feasible to play. So... the combat annoyed me somewhat. The gothic, dark, angsty setting was a bit too emo for my liking, and the improbably clad, large breasted women did rather make me wonder whether the focus group behind the game had an average age of above 13. On the plus side, behind all the drek the platforming, puzzle solving side of the game is still there. The time travel aspect works well and the level design is good. So on the whole the game probably scores about 7/10 for me, which surprised me somewhat given how negative some people are about it.

Then I moved on to play The Two Thrones. It's better than Warrior Within, but still not as good as Sands Of Time, sad to say. The setting is brighter, and the Prince is less of an angry bastard, so that's nice. The levels are still good, and the plot is far more engaging than WW, which brings things back into line with the quality of the original game. The challenging combat system is still there, but the addition of speed killing (a technique that allows you to stealthily kill enemies before they get a chance to react) means you can avoid much of the frustrating, button mashing combat that Warrior Within often descended into. The game wraps up the trilogy nicely, and ties everything together. I'd give it 8/10.

So, neither game is as good as the original (which I'd give a 10/10 rating to without hesitation) but they're certainly not bad. Perhaps it's just a pity that the series peaked so early - with such a fine start it was almost inevitable that any sequel would have to be truly masterful to live up to it.

Right... let's talk about something else...

I got the Sigur Ros album off ebay for the rather low price of... about Â£6 if I recall. I'd heard people go on about them, but it wasn't until I found out that the brilliant music on the BBC's excellent Planet Earth series was by them that I decided to splash out. It's a bit of a weird one to be honest... If I'm quite brutal with it, it's actually kind of like listening to a baby's mobile that's playing the original, full version of Radiohead's Treefingers. It's nice and relaxing, and it certainly makes a nice change, but I'm still not sure what I make of it overall.

The baby is due in 40 days. That's pretty soon, which is kinda scary. We have our first ante-natal class tonight, so I get to learn all about birth and such like. I'll try to post again tomorrow to let you know how it goes.

Thursday's crush is a Friday night rush and a Monday morning cry

nospam@example.com (admin) — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:01:47 +0100

Man... I'm busy. I'm tired too. I've been sleeping terribly just lately, so I'm knackered.

There's been a fair bit of stuff going on. I've got my BDO interview coming up on Tuesday, so I've been researching stuff for that, and I've got a hotel booked and so on. Should be an interesting experience. Hopefully that'll all go well. I'll be able to tell you by this time next week if I've got anywhere with it.

I saw The Constant Gardener last week. It was really good. Very well written and well acted. Ralph Fiennes was brilliant. The plot was good in a very yarny, rambling sort of way, but it all followed along very nicely and it was comprehensible, which was good. It was pretty challenging stuff too. On the whole, very good. Alison and I just want to see Walk The Line and Goodnight And Good Luck, and we'll have caught up on our Oscar film watching.

In other film news, I must have been quite bored last weekend as I watched The Scorpion King on the TV. It was pretty silly, and seemed a pretty blatant ripoff of Robin Hood to me. Still, it kept me amused for an hour and a half till CSI:NY came on, so it's all good.

In yet further film news, I honestly can't believe that a film like Snakes On A Plane can get made. For those of you in the dark, here's a plot summary: Samuel L. Jackson plays an FBI agent escorting a former mobster to a trial where he will testify, but someone doesn't want him to testify so they hire an assassin to kill the mobster, only for some reason the assassin attempts the kill by unleashing a whole load of poisonous snakes on the plane, and Samuel L. Jackson has to fend them off. Now, honestly, do they not have "What the hell are you talking about?" meetings in Hollywood? I mean, I despair of the films that Hollywood produces at the best of times, but this is just insane. What kind of a plot is that? The mind boggles, to be honest. All that being said, the odds are scarily good that I'll go and see it just out of some sort of crazed curiosity that someone would make such a film. More info at Wikipedia, of course.

Well, I didn't mean to end up writing about films, but there you go. I'm due to go home now, so I think I will. I've been chilling out playing some old skool Amiga games just lately - Dizzy in particular. Who knew solving puzzles as a cartoon egg could be so much fun? See you all next week.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

nospam@example.com (admin) — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 16:41:30 +0000

I've upgraded the Wordpress backend that runs this site. If you can't tell the difference, then things are probably working just fine. If you can, let me know.

Overdose at Christmas, then give it up for lent

nospam@example.com (admin) — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 16:20:40 +0000

For lent, I have given up any computer games that involve killing people. I just barely managed to complete Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on Tuesday night. For the record, it was an awesome game. Anyway. It looks like all I'll be playing over lent will be my Rollercoaster Tycoon games. Good stuff, nonetheless.

My stomach hurts. I think my thermos is impregnated with poisonous death. Perhaps I should get a new one.

I'm currently working on my big long rant that I mentioned in my last post. It'll take me a few more days as it's getting quite long.

I may be thinking about this too much...

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:49:45 +0000

So, I'm visiting my parents. I'm back on the Wirral for the weekend, mostly to fix computers at my dad's church and possibly to help my parents unpack, as they have just moved house.

So, last night I drove up from Leicester to Pensby. While driving, I listened to the original radio shows of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy on tape. A thought occurred to me... A thought that is tremendously geeky. Disturbingly, a quick search at Google suggests that while I may not be the first person to ever conceive of such a thing, I am very possibly the first person to write about them on the web. I think this probably makes it doubly geeky.

So, here goes...

Some, all or none of you will know that part of the plot of Hitch-Hikers... centres around a quest to find the ultimate question to the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. It is necessary to discover the question after a fancy computer spends 7 1/2 million years figuring out the answer, only to come up with 42, which is unsatisfactory to say the least.

Hold up, let's go back a bit. The fancy computer spent 7 1/2 million years coming up with this answer? The thought that occurred to me was this:

What has happened to Moore's Law?

Broadly speaking, Moore's Law states that every 18 months the number of transistors in a computer chip doubles. This is a gross simplification, but it will serve for the purpose of this discussion. If we assume (inaccurately) that doubling the number of transistors in a computer doubles it's power and thereby halves the time needed to solve any given problem, then it should be obvious that to wait 7.5 million years for Deep Thought to arrive at the answer is foolish. It would be simpler to wait 18 months, from which point one would only have to wait 3.75 million years for the answer. Better still, wait for 3 years, and then you only have to wait for just under 2 million years for the answer. Better still, wait for... ah, you get the idea.

So, what is the optimum time to wait until building the computer, such that the time till the answer arrives is minimal? Well, if we let t be the time till the answer is produced and x be the number of iterations of Moore's Law, then we get this equation:

t = 1.5x + (7.5*10^6)/(2^x)

Yes, it would look better if I did it as an image or something, but I can't be bothered.

Differentiating with respect to x will allow us to find the lowest amount of time needed. This a bit hard to differentiate. I did it after midnight last night while very tired and slightly drunk after having a can of cider. As luck would have it my uni maths notes were in my room. Brilliant.

You get something like:

0 = 1.5 + (7.5*10^6)*ln(2^x)*ln2*e^(xln2)
^
EDIT: This is wrong. See Izz' comment below for correct answer.

Now, if anyone can figure out how to solve that without resorting to numerical methods then they're a better mathematician than I.

Anyway. A bit of scribbling on the back of an envelope suggests that the optimal number of iterations is somewhere around 22. In that case, you wait 33 years before building the computer, in which timeframe computing power has increased by a factor of 2^22 (=4194304) so the time taken to solve the problem is only 1.78 years. The total time to get the answer is then 34.78 years, rather than 7.5 million years.

So, they'd have been better off if they'd known about Moore's Law.

How's that for geeky
I commend anyone who has read this far. You are probably as much of a geek as me!

I wish it could be Christmas every day...

nospam@example.com (admin) — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 23:41:12 +0000

Of course, I don't really, but my penchant for using song lyrics as blog posts is too powerful to override, even in the interests of good musical taste and simple common sense.

Just a quick post to say that I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Here's a bullet pointed summary of mine:

Church on Christmas day was great, though a tad cramped as we had to meet in someone's front room! Still, a good service, and a good chance to celebrate the real business behind Christmas.

Bacon and egg sandwiches for Christmas lunch. Get in. We did, of course, have a proper roast for Christmas tea.

Visiting friends from church on Christmas day and boxing day and chilling. Nice.

Having the in laws round in the latter part of the week, including a full scale invasion of our house yesterday by both of our families including my grandma. We had a buffet type lunch and a good catch up and did all the present exchanging stuff and whatnot.

Present wise I got, among other things, a power drill (MORE POWER! ARR ARR ARR!), a digibox, some trousers and more biscuits than I can be bothered to count. I can only assume from the latter that my reputation as a biscuit dunking fanatic is well established.

We went out for a bit of sale shopping today and got a food processor worth £100 for £45. Now, obviously I have little to no idea why we need a food processor when we already have a food mixer, two things which I shall refer to as blenders as I can't think of any other names for them, and two juicers which I can only reliably tell apart because I know that one is only for citrus fruit. I imagine this is much the same situation Alison finds herself in when she is forced to consider that I have two computers running four different operating systems, and have a drawer full of miscellaneous computer parts just waiting to be put to use. Still, as far as the food processor goes I'm sure there'll be some nice food in it for me, so it's all good.

Finally, we have no plans for New Year, and may well end up staying in and entertaining ourselves.

That's about it really. Best get off the 'net now. Cursed dial up and it's pennies per minute.

nvtuner (not for the masses)

nospam@example.com (admin) — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 08:43:26 +0100

Disclaimer: Most readers will find this irrelevant and/or boring. Those coming from the Gentoo Forums are the target audience. Anyone else may as well ignore this!

Disclaimer 2: If you download this software from me, and wind up melting your graphics card, it's not my problem.

I've fixed the downloads - sorry for any inconvenience!

I've uploaded the source and an ebuild for the nvtuner package. nvtuner is a bit of software that is used to mask/unmask pixel pipelines and vertex shaders on nVidia 6800 series AGP cards. This means you can attempt to turn a 6800LE into a 6800NU/GT/U, or a 6800NU into a 6800GT/U. I can't take credit for writing the code, as someone over at guru3d was originally responsible. I've just added a bit of a bugfix (it's hacky, but my C knowledge is not up to much!) and packaged things together nicely. I've got a few ideas for other features I might add to it at some stage, if I learn enough C and get round to it, or I might just turn the code over to the guys at nvclock and let them incorporate it into the next release of their software.

Oh yeah, and I'm told it works for 6200 series cards too, though I've not got one so I can't confirm that.

Anyway. Here's some files, and for the Gentoo users, instructions on where to put them:

nvtuner-0.05_alpha.tar.gz - the source code. Put this in your /usr/portage/distfiles directory.

nvtuner-0.05_alpha.ebuild - put this in your portage overlay, I recommend putting it under media-video/nvtuner.

nvtuner.conf - put this in the files directory in whichever directory you put the ebuild in.

nvtuner.init - put this in the files directory in whichever directory you put the ebuild in. Also, this init script has a load of comments at the bottom from when I was figuring out how to do various things. I've left them in for my benefit if I come back to the code, you can all feel free to ignore them though.

nvtuner-0.05_alpha-everything.tar.bz2 - if you don't want to faff downloading 4 files, download this and untar it in your root directory. It will put all the files in the right places, assuming your distdir is /usr/portage/distfiles and your portdir overlay is /usr/local/portage.

After that, run this command:

ebuild $place_you_put_the_ebuild digest

to create digest and manifest, then emerge the software as normal. You may need to tweak the conf and init files to your liking. I expect you will definitely need to tweak the conf file, to get the appropriate mask and PCI memory location for your system.

If anyone needs a hand figuring out the hardware masks for their system, let me know and I can give instructions on how to do it, or you may be able to get help either here at the Gentoo forums or by searching at the Guru3d forums. I might write a bit of documentation on how to figure out the mask, or I might attempt to code it into the software, but for now you'll have to figure it out yourself.

I've put up a static page about this, to prevent it falling off the end of my blog.