April 2008 Archives

April 30, 2008 6:37 AM

So apparently, this new game came out

A good number of people today have asked me whether or not I "got Grand Theft Auto 4". The answer is no, I wasn't actually aware that today was the exact release date. The fact that the gaming media has been covering it in saliva means that I'll be ignoring their judgments and checking it out for myself.

Forgive me for sounding so jaded, but it's simply because the last few Grand Theft Auto games I've been urged to play have, well, bored the shit out of me with their drab environments, unsuccessful attempts at excitement, and unsatisfying virtual violence. That said, I'll be the first to eat my hat if I'm wrong and admit that I'm enjoying something (or not), so I should probably give the game a rental.

Anyone else got it/played it?

April 27, 2008 4:07 AM

I shall call her, "Quadra"

The case design is probably going to get negative points in the originality department, the insides are nothing like as neatly designed, and the name "EZ COOL" isn't the sleekest around either, but I have a new computing machine. This is just a year after going the small form factor route with a nice system from Shuttle, and although I'm still surprised that SFF isn't the norm for your average home user, I've inevitably had to go back to full-size towers thanks to their potential for expansion (necessitated by changes in circumstances rather than unsuitability for purpose on Shuttle's part). That, and I discovered the fun of overclocking, something that's less practical (and safe) in a PC the size of a shoebox.

Anyway, here's a picture, if you're a hardcore Apple fan you'll probably either find it hilarious, or perhaps infuriating. Nevertheless, having a knockoff Apple case is a good option when you consider what many other PC cases look like.

More importantly, what's on the inside?

• ASUS P5K-E WiFi Motherboard
• Intel Q6600 Quad (specced at 2.4ghz, running at 3ghz 3.2ghz)...
• thanks to a humungous CoolerMaster heatsink/fan which was a complete pain in the ass to install
• 4gb of Corsair DDR2 800mhz RAM, which is partly for the future because my 32-bit OS can only address 3.3gb of it
A Gecube HD 2600Pro 512MB (ATI graphics card)
• ...and a bunch of hard disks and optical drives carried over from last time, with BD-R DL coming when it becomes practical/sort-of-affordable.

The building process took way, way, way longer than expected thanks to the design abomination that is the CoolerMaster Hyper TX 2. For the uninitiated, this cooling assembly bolts on to the processor and stays in tight, making sure the poor thing doesn't get fried by the intense heat buildup. The huge, fairly heavy heatsink assembly and plastic screws just wouldn't stay in place on the motherboard, but with the help of a few others, I was eventually up and running.

At first, I have to say I found the performance increase from my previous CPU (the E6600, the Dual-core version of what I'm using now) to be a little tricky to detect. That's nothing new, because Vista thrashes your disk constantly when it's first installed and finding its feet, creating a bottleneck, but even still, something seemed to be lacking. It turned out that the new, seemingly idiot-friendly version of AVG Free (virus scanner) was cacking everything up. Giving it the goodbye boot and installing the old version (too bad I couldn't do that easily with Movable Type, huh) fixed the problem and I am now enjoying the fantastic speed of an overclocked Quad Core CPU.

Anyway, I have some stuff to (re)install some more stuff, keep testing a DVD player, and write a review (it's the Toshiba 37XV505DB 1080p HDTV). Au reviour!

April 23, 2008 9:23 PM

Tower of Oppo

There's been a lot of talk about the Oppo DV-983H lately (it's the one at the top of that picture there, underneath the UglyStation 3). It's a $400 (US price) DVD player, which is something of a rarity these days, and has been the subject of much discussion thanks to the fact that it aced the HomeTheaterHifi.com DVD Benchmark tests.

Oppo's European division asked me to test this ultimate player, so naturally I said yes. My pre-sale version arrived yesterday and indeed, the 983 is capable of very lovely pictures. If you've read my review of the Oppo DV-980H, which is a cheap player that performs shockingly well all things considered, then you'll be in a good place to start understanding the 983.

The 983 is basically a pumped-up and refined 980. Whilst the 980 has a Mediatek MPEG decoder chip on its own, the 983 has this same chip but adds two others to the mix. It has the Anchor Bay ABT102 chip inside for Film Mode detection and Deinterlacing, and the Anchor Bay ABT1018 for Scaling and Aspect Ratio conversion. In theory, this combination means the 983 will be able to handle whatever you throw at it optimally.

Anyway, this is all I can say for now, stay tuned for a review of the 983 after it's been through my tweaking.

April 23, 2008 9:10 PM

Update your RSS feeds, people!

Thanks to the MovableType disaster, the URL to the RSS feed for this site has changed. If you're still using the old one (it ends in "lite.xml"), change it to this: http://www.lyris-lite.net/wp-rss2.php

Just to avoid irony, a message similar to this one has been placed on the OLD feed...

April 19, 2008 1:39 AM

Yep, it's a copy protected... book

I take copy protected Blu-ray Discs, DVDs and video games for granted, but this one is new. Last week, studying for a University exam, the nasty reality hit me that in order to get one of the articles I needed, I'd have to (gasp) pay money for it instead of going to the library and photocopying it.

So, after tracking it down online, I paid $24 for an e-book version, installed the necessary DRM crap in order to open the PDF file, and tried to print it, so I could highlight it easily and get the article to stick in my merry little head.

But oh no - no dice:

Yes, that's right, out of the book that I'd just paid $24 for, I was, apparently, not allowed to actually use it in any sort of form that was useful to me. Fortunately, the problem was solved with our good friend, the Print Screen button.

This made it nice and easy to make a Photoshop layer of each page, facilitating easy printing. Just for fun, I made another copy as well to take home.

April 19, 2008 1:22 AM

And we're back!

Sorry for the lack of updates - you can thank Six Apart and MovableType for that (and three weeks of non-stop work, essays, and exams, which are now over with). Really, the software is free, so I can't complain too much, but guys, why did you have to screw up a perfectly good blogging system with a needless update? Anyway, the site is running WordPress now. Forgive a few teething troubles (such as the Comments form looking a little ugly), it's not all tweaked yet. The important thing is that I'm rid of MovableType! Now let the news backlog begin...