Busyness

Well I'm going through an incredibly busy few weeks at the moment and with a million things going on its hard to even work out what your doing when your doing it, let alone what else you need to do.

The short list for me includes distributed systems assignment work from university, Open Card framework development in Java for a wireless information devices assignment. As usual theres exams rolling in soon so theres going to be lots of study for those.

But along with all that theres a few spare time things... with what little spare time i do have.

Ive recently started experimenting with the Psyc protocol and it seems very interesting.

Among my server fiddlings, Ive installed Apache 2 and Mod_Python on my server . They were fairly straitforward to do and run well. Though compiling apache with the Threads useflag does fill up the output of ps -aux a fair bit.

Along with the regular apache fiddling every other admin does, ive also been setting up and testing out Subversion with some success so far, and begun looking at setting up Trac to go with the subversion server.

And in a fit of insanity i attempted to install the Zope and Plone stack. users of this amazingly powerful software incluide SGI, NATO, and NASA. Well i got it installed after the 4th try. But the hassle didnt end there, once installed i had to contend with rather developer centric documentation that did little to explain what i could do with the stack without custom coding. As well as having reams of errors for various reasons as i waded through the issues. The final error that killed it for me was that after getting a fully configured and setup, i began recieving errors when trying to simply create new content for the site. What good is an amazingly powerful web application engine to me if i cant post a single thing to the website Im running on it?
...
None. So Zope + Plone have fallen from my favour as i begin exploring Pylons.

Along with the various software experiments underway Ive got my hardware experimenting in full swing and will post a list of the hardware later.

Read More...

Summary only...

E3 is dead

Well it was a long time coming but the news is official now. E3 as we know it is completely dead.

Now Invite only and dramaticaly different.

As for its replacement. This is looking promising.
http://www.go3.com.au/

Read More...

Summary only...

Frustration.

Im very interested in the possibility of claiming some kind of medical diagnosis for this. Its an ongoing problem of mine. Technical related Frustration and Depression.

Then again its probable just University related depression.

Moving on...

Read More...

Summary only...

Desktop Hijunks

Its an old habit of mine, once i get something set the way i like im loathe to change it.

But it has come time for me to change something i much apreciated.

My desktop setup has changed.

While i used to run differential resoloutions and divide my desktop i have been pushed over the edge by a recently aquired game. X2 the threat proviedes a bunch of advanced dual and tripple screen graphics modes for people running with extra screens and cards powerful enough to run them.

BUT, the catch is you have to have the horizontal span mode enabled for nvidia cards. So with my old "dual view" configuration i wasnt getting them.

The time had come for me to sacrifice my 1158 x 986 res primary mointor and drop to 1024x768 on both. Its a bit of an ajustment but so far im much happier and beginning to fiddle with my nview screen options and reaquaint myself with the way my desktop behaves.

Read More...

Summary only...

Tuneage

Well its finaly ticked over, a little while ago they hit the net, the new torrents from OCR and damn i cant wait to get them setup.

These guys have been legaly providing me the bulk of my music for years and i love em for it.

I highly encourage anyone who loved the music in any game theyve played to check this out and see if they can find some new life in an old favourite.

Major Props to the DJs behind it and Heres to many more releases in future!

Read More...

Summary only...

Updates

Well its been some time since ive updated... A number of things it seems.
This blog, my computer, my laptop, and a few chunks of my life too, have all gone in for major overhauls.

My desktop with its glorious new graphics card has left 2 smouldering relics of power supplies in its wake, and is at present running in a drasticaly reduced capacity, even with a second power supply modded in, Ive got issues to deal with. Ill make it blindingly obvious. Generic PSUs are becoming almost impossible to use for a gaming computer of any caliber and its most unfortunate that a few dollars of electrical parts difference seems to define a price gap between generic and name brand PSUs that is anywhere from dozens to more than a hundred dollars difference between a name brand psu and a generic one of equivalent wattage. The reason is that the total output of a machine is not climbing as it used to. the same 550W design that seemed ample years ago when it started manufacturing in some place in China, is today not suitable for the majority of people that need 550W or higher PSUs.

I Come Seeking Amperage! At the moment my Full tower is equiped with 2 power supplies, a sturdy 300W is powering all my drives at present leaving my CPU and GFX card alone on the far insufficent 250W psu i had spare after the 550W i payed for after the GFX card shot my 400W one, in turn died from unknown causes. The reason... Amps. The 550W is ample for the card to run. But it needs more current! modern cards can demand over 20A on the 12V and it seems only a handful of manufacturers are providing it.

Following my graphics card tribulations, ive mostly switched over to using linux on my laptop. I had a 2gb drive spare and decided to hell with it and i started installing gentoo. It has been an interesting experience. Ive noticed a number of things i didnt know previously and now have for the first time found a number of things where i know linux to be insufficent and inferior to windows. Alpha Channel Transparency and suspend to disk hibernation are both very far behind in linux.

I have fresh Xorg and a nice new kernel and yet i cannot have the same simple TRUE transparency i have on my laptop under win2k. I find it highly frustrating to have such a limitation on my laptop but have begun dealing with it as best i can with apps like Tilda and good WM setup helping offset the lack of transparency well enough im happy to continue using linux on it.

Leaving my life in the not enough room to talk about here category, i move on to some general updates. With various ideas stirring and a number of things ready to roll, just held up by some annoyingly troublesome required phases. Speaking of these, should an Electrical Engineer or someone very well versed with DC electronics read this, feel free to leave a comment and try and get in touch, ive got a pressing need for one i can discuss some issues with regarding a number of plans i have.

Read More...

Summary only...