Sunday, April 03, 2011
post://6353084424591360918/Stub for letter to ea games.
[there are the points - I shall flush out the letter henceforth to forthwith, vis a vie.]
So I was very excited for two new recent game releases for PC. Both happened to be sequels and both were Electronic Arts (EA). I have never been a fan of companies that get so large they depend on formulas, plans, and financials to fuel their game decisions rather then ideals. I had seen it happen before, but couldn't directly relate an actual example when prompted. No longer need I search -- Crysis 2 and NFS Shift 2 are both prime examples of what happens when money makes the decisions.
They are actually two very good examples of game play, the engines themselves control and function very well but I think I need to go back and make sure that Shift 2 is actually DX 10/11, as I know that Crysis 2 was not. My problem is not necessarily with what the games are, Crysis is quite fun and lays out a decent story with some additional twists, but before EA bought them, they put out a phenomenal first game, and Far Cry before that (now that I think of it, Far Cry 2 was probably a warning sign). While waiting for Crysis 2 I had purchased Crysis Warhead since I had never played through it. On the official games explorer icon you have the gamut of DX 9, 10, and 32 or 64 bit mode for each. That is how it should be. You write on graphic engine that renders X accordingly, with additional effects and / or acceleration if your system supports it.
The problem is that consoles were the driving force with these gMes. You can see where they developed textures in both games at 1920 x 1080 and called it a day (who plays anything above that? -- those with PCs worth a goddamn). I like to use GTA 4 as an example, though they did take almost a year to get IV to PC but it was well worth the wait. It has enough detail to keep systems going at max for another couple years. All the textures are 2560 x 1600 native, with lower quality versions of those textures making up the lower detail levels (texture quality low, med, etc). You can see the difference, and you can set it all anywhere in-between.
computer games is where it started
not going to include piracy in this letter - it's for another discussion
I have lately purchased both the limited edition for both Crysis 2 and NFS Shift 2
I believe both games cut corners to meet release date.
It appears as you developed for console and ported those textures to PC 1:1
You SHOULD have developed (graphically, talking just textures here) for PC 2560 x 1600 max and then saved them lower resolution for console / pc lower texture settings. Otherwise you get something that's developed blurry, vs something that's developed perfectly sharp and exactly how you want it, and then shrunk, maintaining the sharpness at a lower resolution. Even if you are only developing for console, you need to have the quality there before you shrink it, otherwise you're needlessly cheapening the presentation of your game.
Textures doesn't matter so much in NFS - you're supposedly flying by the background.
Look for Forza, and that's 360. They had a fabulous match of textures, near / far, cars, backgrounds. GT couldn't touch it console / console, but I digress - we're talking PC here. I don't care what else you develop it for. I WANT to buy it for PC, I want to give you money, I want to activate and register, and legally own my game for computer. I recognize the effort that the developers have put into it, and where I am never a fan of big business - I recognize it's the presence of a giant company like EA that allows these "big budget" games to be possible. However - take a little less money for the "talent" of big name drivers in video format telling me how they can see I have talent and give the developers an extra month or two to finish it... or at least let them patch it up after the release date you've branded into their foreheads.
neither of these titles are games for windows, what's the deal? x64? no time?
Labels: 2011, games, games for windows, technology
posted @ 00:30
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- I'm with you, although I'm a happy console gamer. I place a lot of blame on the developers that sell out. I can't imagine what would make them sell out other than greed.
Friday, December 18, 2009
post://4672237220726642051/Windows 7 Games Explorer Manual Customization How To
Windows 7 has removed the ability from Games Explorer to Customize out of the box.
It's not impossible to do, however - it just takes some finangling and registry knowledge.
All of your Games Explorer shortcuts are stored here:
%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\GameExplorer
If you have games installed you should see several folders with very long names that start with {######...
Each of these is the unique game ID used by Windows to synch the icons and commands that appear in the Games Explorer to the actual EXE that runs the game.
These numbers correspond to the values in the registry here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\GameUX\Games
By clicking on one of the IDs in the registry you can figure out which game is which:
IE {1396D271-A5F9-4F29-8D7D-767858558567} is Batman for me.
When I click the ID folder the config options are on the right including the full path so you should be able to find which ID corresponds to which game.
To modify the options for a game like change the path, or even add additional play or right click options, just modify or add a folder within PlayTasks for that game. I believe you are limited to 0 to 5 tasks, but try it. Batman's 0 task is Play and the 1 task is Support. So within PlayTask\0 (default) for Batman is a shortcut named "Play". Right click and choose properties as you would on any other shortcut and modify the files as you need to (run as admin, compatability mode, etc). To create a new play task you could make a folder named "3" and within that place a shortcut named as you'd like it to appear on the context menu.
Finally, you can also modify the box art shown in GamesExplorer or even add box art for games that don't have it by default by modifying the images in the
%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\GameExplorer folder.
Simply name the file (jpg) with the same ID as the game, voila - you have your game listed with special icon or box art in Games Explorer.
Labels: 2009, games for windows, howto, technology, Windows7
posted @ 16:59
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Saturday, September 12, 2009
post://2987336471837986745/6 installations later I have a working copy of Windows 7 with valid RAID, SATA, Chipset, Video, and Sound drivers. I was very careful this time, doing only one thing at a time and restarting after a change to confirm. I was a bit more cavileer when I was under the impression my errors could be undone. The restore feature was not able to handle the driver change for vital components so keep that in mind when you're upgrading. Vista had similar problems, I wasn't able to install it until SP1.
My first step once getting SLi working was to test the performace of games. I was able to test a couple DEMOs as is but GTA required a reinstall since it has so many background requirements. All in all I saw HUGE gains visually, everything ran better, something I'm not used to seeing from new (PC) OSs.
To further put this into perspective - in Vista my video cards are overclocked a good 40mhz higher, the video cards are running at stock speeds in Win 7.
Here are the numbers from GTA:
Windows 7 - GTA v1
Average FPS: 40.12
Duration: 37.37 sec
CPU Usage: 74%
System memory usage: 37%
Video memory usage: 50%
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 2560 x 1600 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 32
Detail Distance: 70
Windows 7 - GTA updated
Average FPS: 43.98
Duration: 37.45 sec
CPU Usage: 78%
System memory usage: 39%
Video memory usage: 53%
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 2560 x 1600 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filter Quality: High
View Distance: 32
Detail Distance: 70
Vista - GTA updated 1920 x 1200
Average FPS: 37.65
Duration: 37.61 sec
CPU Usage: 81%
System memory usage: 44%
Video memory usage: 57%
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filter Quality: High
View Distance: 75
Vista - GTA updated 2560 x 1600
Average FPS: 32.02
Duration: 37.72 sec
CPU Usage: 74%
System memory usage: 43%
Video memory usage: 59%
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 2560 x 1600 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filter Quality: Very High
View Distance: 100
Detail Distance: 50
*update* Futuremark Vantage Score: 14100!
Direct Link
Labels: 2009, games, games for windows, RAID, technology, Windows7
posted @ 09:54
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Thursday, September 10, 2009
post://4541716393206416641/Windows 7 - Don't Rush It.
That's a cautionary statement, a metaphor, and a realization. I had a LOT of issues with this installation and I'm not even at a point where I can benchmark. 3... maybe 4 installations at this point and I think I've finally got it. I put in another HD so I could avoid RAID issues and I still run into them.
My motherboard has 10 SATA ports 4 on one SATA controller, 6 on nVidia SATA RAID. I avoided trying to bring over the RAID right away, instead having a single HD on the ontroller but not actually in RAID mode and STILL ran into issues. 7 even played with my RAID 1 a bit and broke the mirror after I installed the drivers but I really think that's more nVidia since it was completely dependent on their drivers. If nVidia didn't try and break whatever BIOS RAID existed when they installed their Windows software I might have not been impacted, but instead they gave me a minor heart attack by breaking my mirror. I restored it by killing the secondary RAID mirror and reallocating it via a rebuild to the first but dang if it didn't make me fear for my data in the meanwhile. I've lost too much data, finally learned to go mirror vs striping and this is how I am taunted. Whatever - worked out ok in the end after rebuild.
I finally have my nVidia control panel as I remember it, SLi and all. I can finally do some performance testing, and that's what I'm after.
PhysX off the onboard 780a SLI chip
Enabled SLi for the 2 x 285 2G EVGA cards
clicked apply... and... we have liftoff!
A system rating shows they've gone past the 5.9 max rating and I now get 7.9s on everything except the hard drives. However, Windows 7 is not running off my striping array so it's not really expected I'd get the best performance. It's all awaiting my theory of 2 x 120G SSD drives in Striping. I can't think of anything that could be faster. I don't know what that might drive to game performance but if previous experience is any indication - that's a sure cause to make me drop a hard earned dollar.
Labels: 2009, crash, desktop, RAID, review, SLi, technology, Windows7
posted @ 23:20
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Saturday, April 18, 2009
post://3466609533750886962/Oh... so nice.
I just re-downloaded much of the old music I had purchased off iTunes. iTunes finally went full DRM free - 256k, not the best but almost. 320k is the most you can get normally and most pop tunes won't fill that bandwidth on VBR (variable bit rate - adjusts the size to fit how complicated the music is).
In any case there were a lot of tracks I had lost when the mac harddrive originally went - I had backed it up but I hadn't gotten them all. At the time Pepsi was doing their promotion. 1 in 5 caps had a free code for an iTunes download. On a hunch and a curiosity trip I bought 5 one day. I won a free iTunes download on 4 out of 5 and was hooked. For the rest of the summer I never bought fewer then 5 pepsi's at a time. By the end of that summer I believe I garnered over 130 songs before that promotion was through. Free songs, free soda - however you want to look at it.
I was just presented the opportunity to purchase my previously purchased songs. Granted, it's a little bit backwards sounding - I've already paid for these, why do I need to re-buy them? Well, it used to be that you had to do your entire library - an all or nothing sort of thing. A lot of those for me were free tracks or tracks I found sucked after I downloaded the whole thing and got to listen to more then 30 seconds. There was no way I was paying $235 for all the tracks I had ever downloaded. I've now gone through and cherry picked the best ones. I can now use these AAC files with my XSession Pro for mixing without having to record a playing iTunes DRM'd file and make an MP3 of it. It's worth the effort to pay an extra 30 cents for that.
In any case check it out and see what you can do for upgrades.
Labels: consumerism, music, technology
posted @ 00:54
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Wednesday, April 15, 2009
post://219228377295947926/iTunes has added a new feature:
Your guests with an iPhone (and the remote app) can request songs to the now playing list.
Labels: music, technology
posted @ 18:42
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Tuesday, April 07, 2009
post://7853510666201610976/more to follow, teaser:
Labels: 2009, consumerism, games, games for windows, hardware, technology
posted @ 21:05
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
post://6837641428007151744/This year's birthday spoils:
- iPod Nano
- Novint Falcon
- NFS Undercover
- BF2142 Deluxe (for the living room PC)
I ended up working half a day today, spent the 2nd half being productive and hanging out with the dog.
I went and got my winter tires off the car, I think we're safe for snow. If it comes now I just won't go anywhere :)
I spent that time waiting listening to my iPod - I was totally that guy in the store with the iPod on. I meandered around Home Depot, looking at some bathroom stuff, and I found a fence I liked. I picked up a rake, and walked back to pick up my car. I didn't really think that much of it, but people look at you funny when you walk into a waiting area with a rake.
It wasn't too long, though I noticed something odd about the iPod touch. Even if you have video in your audio playlist it won't make it to your iPod unless you add the playlist under the video section. I have this thing about rating. I love rating my music, and now that I've perfected moving my whole Library (album art, comments, ratings, along with all the files themselves) I've gotten more serious about it.
1 star - don't like it, don't like it at all - I'll probably delete later
2 star - I appreciate it, but I don't like it enough to have it be played in my background music
3 star - background music
4 star - really good
5 star - makes me stammer when attempting to describe, tear up, or jump up and down
Armin Van Buuren - Shivers (Rising Star Mix) is a good example of what I'd give a 5.
I set up a running playlist of only non-rated files listing the newest out of whatever size, or number of files I restrict it to - but never put much of a dent in it, at least not until I got Jamie's old iPod. It was kinda broken, had synching issues - but she gave it to me for helping with her computer and I got it to mostly work. Doing things very patiently I could reload it ever 5 synchs or so and I'd get about 4 days worth of ratings at a time before I'd have to reload the firmware on it. With an iPod I could now rate the music during the day in the car or at work - I got a lot done.
It eventually frustrated me to the point of crushing it, so of course I took it apart to check it out. I've been non-rating MP3 playering since, at least I had a backup. Now I'm back in the groove. I also had to get a new case because the neoprene DLO case I had for the 1st gen nano covered the bottom 40% of the wheel on the new model - bastards, change it juuuuuust enough.
So I got BF2142 all working for the weekend - coupld of the guys are coming out and we'll have a multi-computery dethmatch of deth, so wanted to make sure all was in tip top shape. I also just installed NFS - I know it's going to be corny, but lets go see what they did with the graphics and this new "Heroic driving engine".
Labels: 2009, birthday, games for windows, hardware, music, technology, update
posted @ 10:09
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Friday, March 20, 2009
post://1044381229610060318/If you were talking about a "car" 3 years ago, you might have had referred to the resurgence of the muscle car, with larger, more powerful engines with hardly a mention of fuel economy. After the fuel crisis of the past summer though, everyone was looking at cars in a whole new light. They wanted fuel economy, and hybrid technology in their cars.
I believe we would have gone much further and faster too, if it weren't for the economic slowdown that inevitably followed. No one wanted to buy cars, even the specialty hybrids. Before the downturn the demand for hybrids was so high that Toyota had slated a plant in the US designed especially for their Prius line alone but by December of 2008 - they had halted construction (1).
The idea of a hybrid car is certainly not new, and neither is an entirely electric car. In the early 1900s electric and petroleum based cars were large rivals, but after some major technological breakthroughs - petroleum based vehicles became a more economically sound option. Where petroleum cars were roughly $650, electric cars sold for about $1750 (2).
In 1990 California passed a revolutionary new law, the zero-emission mandate which would require 10 percent of new vehicles sales in the state to be all electric by 2003. It based this on a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80% of the 1990 level by 2050, so in order to reach this goal they would need to have at least 400,000 zero emission vehicles on the road by 2020 (3).
This early push "sparked" a major electric offering by all the major car companies, and especially by GM with the EV1. An all electric vehicle - it required a charging station placed in the home or garage. In addition, there were several public charge locations set up with taxpayer dollars throughout the state. The goal was to start creating the infrastructure to support this new automotive model. It would have succeeded, if not for a push by the car companies to declare the law unconstitutional. They said they could not do it and remain profitable in the state, proposing a lack of vehicles being available and with that, a lack of new car sales, and new car sales taxes.
The push worked, CA caved on their requirements and all the companies began taking back their vehicles from consumers. Offered only on limited 3 year leases, and not for purchase, there was not one person who owned their EV1 - they were all repossessed, in some cases by force. The EV1s (along with the other company models) were carted off to large lots behind the company headquarters, or hidden in fenced in areas. There they sat for years, with vigilant watch by many electric car proponents. When the cars were finally moved to their final resting place and crushed, police were called to escort the car carriers full of revolutionary cars to protect the trucks from the activists, many who protested by laying down in front of or blocking the trucks. (4)
We could have gotten to this place much faster, but the environment was never as much on the table as our hard earned cash.
1.) http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/12/17/toyota-halts-construction-on-us-prius-plant/
2.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car
3.) http://www.hybridcars.com/news/california-air-cuts-electric-car-goal-again.html
4.) Who Killed the Electric Car?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA2u_KbCs6A
Netflix: http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car/70052424
Labels: school, science, technology
posted @ 22:37
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Friday, March 13, 2009
post://3876978030638891391/I start school on Monday - already hopped online to get a peek at the workload. I stuck with 1 major class and 1 short class this semester to start out. I would like to have an idea of the workload so I can plan for the following semesters.
I'm taking Science and Technology in Western Culture as well as Planning and Finalizing the Degree. I can also get college credit for real world experience which ought to start me off with about 16 credits + the 12 from the bit of college I started. I really can't say how long it might take to get my degree this way but that puts me a little ahead of the game.
I'm nervous about the obligatory math class. I can program a computer to do many complicated things and can wrap my head around writing an application that considers what our work load would have looked like last week and speculates future need but give me a basic trig or calculus problem and I get a little overwealmed. I get the concept, but it needs to be tied to something tangible for me to understand.
Of course History has never been my strong suit either, I'm interested by it, but I can't remember it - and they test you by asking really specific information. I get the general concepts but can't remeber the names and dates very well. I also never saw the purpose in memorizing those things just for the test. I always felt the point was to get the idea, know where we came from and learn from the past.
There's a fair ammount of reading, quite a few DVDs to watch, and a lot of discussion with this history class. You're also supposed to post everything online in the forums and respond to at least 2 other posts by other people. Maybe being able to write out my answers will work better then vocalizing my thoughts. I was never very good at speaking in front of the rest of the class.
Labels: 2009, history, science, technology, update
posted @ 11:42
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Sunday, January 25, 2009
post://6816059569584533463/So I've spent the weekend... well, I guess that could be extended to the past month, doing computer stuff. I placed the hardware order on December 31st (so I could include it in the business costs for 2008) and received them on the 7th or so.
From there on it's been computers, computers, computers. I upgrade my own to free up a power supply and memory for my new Media PC for the living room. I took all the old stuff I had and got a brand new media pc case for it all. It's about the size (amazingly close in size) to my receiver and now have it all nicely arranged in the new entertainment center.
The original order started with Jamie. Her computer was up to the gill in spyware and antivirus and she was looking for a way to record TV. Since the existing setup couldn't quite pull that off I came up with a solution for her - a Media PC / desktop. That got me thinking about an actual media PC for myself and lead to me ordering the new case and replacement parts for my desktop so those old parts would be available for the Media PC.
In any case I came up with a really nice Thermaltake box case (like a shuttle case on steriods) and TV card arrangement. I waited on the TV card for myself until I could confirm if Comcast is QAM in my area. Per my experience with Jamie's PC being plugged into my cabe I can confirm it is not. They give me one digital channel in high quality off the line and it's always an add for a Wrestling PPV. So the only channels on my network are analog and most of those have that little known property that Comcast actually just got fined for - many of the channels say "this channel is still available on the digital teir" to try and entice the $13 a month-ers.
So I was working on 3 computers, more upgrading 1, making another from old parts in a new case and building a new system. Then Joe from Finishline called me. I haven't done business with him in a while - over a year in fact. It got where I was spending a lot of time supporting him over the phone with questions and the like and not getting anything from it. I finally started charging him for phone support and he didn't pay those invoices. I took the loss and moved on but he recently started calling me again when "his computer got stolen". He had taken it to a local shop for repair and they closed up and took his computer with them. They didn't return it and wouldn't return his calls. He ended up getting it back but it had been in the middle of a system refresh and was apart all over the place. He was in a bind and I'm planning on charging full price, so I agreed - that made the 4th.
So here I am in the office all weekend, with multiple computers on a KVM going back and forth between them, installing, downloading drivers, tweaking, and loving it. Of course, my ADD (or so the pamphlets would have me believe) never lets me focus for very long so I'm in and out of the office as things format and download so I'm not completely holed up the whole time. As a matter of fact I even had dinner with my wife last night, then we watched the office (had to resort to Hulu due to the cable issues) and then caught up on the Kyle XY finale from last year (we'll probably check out this season tonight). I then had Nicole try out Civ on the PS3. It's a pretty good game, and she didn't experience anywhere near the performance problems I had. She won via domination but to be fair she was building the United Nations... it just happened that Abraham Lincoln got his panties in a bunch before it could get completed.
So though I've been busy this weekend, but all in all it's been fairly enjoyable. The only thing I might like more is if the office was clean, but I can get around to that once I'm not using it to build. I so need to sort through my stuff and throw out the old parts(PIII and under). As it is I could never receive purely professional customers.
Side note - found this while browsing: The Unwanted Blog
It's got a lot of very cool general interest stuff as well as technological and historical items. A great blend of all things I'm interested in.
Labels: 3dmark, games for windows, graphics, hardware, link, technology, vista
posted @ 13:35
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- side note about the link - of course nothing is perfect and though this blog is great otherwise, he does seem a bit bitter about Obama. Just have a little hope, give it some time, and I'll welcome your point of view in a couple years.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
post://6159892700569416999/Peapod has taken forever to come to the area... it sucks because I would love to order my groceries online and then have them delivered. The next best thing to that is ordering online and picking them up. Well the time has come for online grocery shopping as Big Y has BigY2Go in Greenfield and Springfield (Walpole too but that's all Boston-y).
I was able to go through our entire grocery list and order. You can search, or go through by category and choose what you want in your order. The best part was that it not only shows you the sales, but you can sort by unit price so you can see which is the cheapest method of buying each thing. I saw poptarts, an 8 count and a 12 count and I could see the 12 count was quite a beat cheaper per unit.
That may seem obvious, but there are other foods where it's not so obvious, and even when I'm curious I don't want to look all over multiple shelves comparing the tomatoes... and what happens when you see that thing you want in an odd part of the grocery store, do you go look for the best deal where it's home is, or do you just pick it up? That's what they're counting on!
Shopping this way allows me to see all the raisins available, and judge whether it's really worth the 6 cents a unit or 30 cents a package for the better tasting ones. The issue can't really be made for saving money, however - because if you were really looking to save all this money you wouldn't be paying them $10 to go grab your list of items off the shelves for you.
$10 for an entire order of groceries (translates to $3 an hour the way I food shop) is well worth it, and I feel quite a reasonable price. So if you live in Springfield or Greenfield MA - give it a shot, it sounds like this could be the feature and I'm loving the potential.
Labels: consumerism, cool, technology, web
posted @ 21:42
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Sunday, December 07, 2008
post://6314627219298098290/Here's the same progression in GTA benchmarks. I didn't have to do much work for this because GTA writes each benchmark to a separate txt file automatically. I pasted into Google Docs and made a graph of it all.
The details are here but this is the graph:
Labels: 3dmark, consumerism, games for windows, hardware, materialism, SLi, technology
posted @ 11:37
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Saturday, December 06, 2008
post://8239767402186441602/Ok, so after the dust has settled I've completed the Hard Drive externalization (technical prototype) and here are the past couple benchmarks:
2 x New Graphics Card + CPU
New Graphics Card + CPU
New Graphics Card
New Motherboard
Original
Read em and weep.
Labels: 3dmark, consumerism, games for windows, hardware, materialism, SLi, technology
posted @ 22:51
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post://7178261761764014228/
I think I've thought of all that though being short on material and the means to create something like this, I'm a bit unsure how I'm going to work it all through.
For now maybe I'll use some metal "gutter mesh" I have left over from my bumper screen I made for my Legacy. I had taken a rock directly through the intake area of the bumper the first few months I had the car - took out the whole A/C grate so I made a guard for those rogue CT highway rocks.
In any case it's about 2 feet long and 6 to 8 inches high, originally meant to keep the leaves out of gutters. It's got small enough holes where screws ought to hold and it's bendable while still being (somewhat) strong enough to hold the hard drives.
The "prototype" if you will, is actually just 2 3.5" bays of 3 slots each from 2 old computer cases. My plan is to put them side by side but there's actually no room for that with my current setup. In order for the SATA cords to reach outside the tower, the whole arrangement needs to be pretty close.
So here is what I've got so far and in concept it works. I jumped a 250W power supply according to this ATX Power schematic. So it's switched off the power supply itself and otherwise "always on".
After speaking with my electrician friend at lunch he said that I had to be careful because without a load on the other end, running a "jumped" power supply would overheat if it couldn't offload it's power. The other thing to note is that a jumped power supply will also always run at full load, so that's a constant 250W. Still better then a variable (with new energy star 80-rated) 1.3 Kilowatt power supply.
So here's some pics, I'll post more as it evolves/burns up.
Labels: pics, project, technology
posted @ 16:45
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Wednesday, November 05, 2008
post://601768146272237493/I was surprised to hear that Michael Crichton died today.
He's probably my favorite author, followed closely by Douglas Adams who died just a few years ago. I think I need some new authors, but I'm afraid they might die on me. At the very least there are a still of Michael Crichton's books that I have not read and remain on my bookshelf. There's just so much I loved about how he created a picture with his words that my mind just ran off with. I was able to picture them much more vivid then any movie could convey, and in the case of Timeline actors could portray.
I was actually inspired to write my first computer program based on Jurassic Park. With my TI80, a black and white TV, and book in hand - I set out to recreate the computer system in the book. From the main menu and submenus you could do an array of things from jump-starting the generators (to get the fences back online) to recycling the door locks. I also made it into a game by creating different scenarios and error messages based on what you had already done, and with certain dependencies that had to be met before you were allowed to proceed.
I'm really sad to see him go, one of the only people that could get me reading like you hear about - nonstop until it's done. He touched on cancer quite a bit in his novels and even in ER - which ironically enough even with his money and knowledge, he was still unable to overcome.
Labels: books, death, games, nostalgia, programming, technology
posted @ 20:46
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Wednesday, October 22, 2008
post://8616507402771462167/Nicole got her G1 yesterday - the first and foremost "Google phone"
It runs android - the open source phone OS developed by Google.
At first glance it's about the side of an iPhone (and that's the exact demographic this phone is going for) though no where near as sleek. The screen swings out from the base and pops into place when going into landscape mode.
The home screen has a clock widget with 4 basic icons at the bottom. It appears you can fill up the whole screen with up to 16 icons, if you didn't have the clock there. You're not limited however, because if you slide your finger to the left or the right you have an additional screen on either side for other program icons or widgets. If your application icons aren't on the desktop, they're in the application window. Touch and slide the application tab at the bottom upwards and you'll see all your program icons but I didn't see a way to organize them such as folders or sorting. I'm awaiting more widgets, such as weather or RSS, but with Android being open source - it's only a matter of time (and it'll probably be free).
Making a call is pretty quick and the contact list imports your Gmail address book as soon as you add your info. It's a very detailed set of information and it's easy to add to it when you have a new number - just hold your finger on the number and you can choose new or add to existing.
The camera supports embedded GPS information, for those who like to add to Google earth.
There's no brightness/contrast that I could find, nor a zoom feature but it's pretty high quality with good autofocus. I'd also like to see video capture, but that's probably on the way.
Trackball is great - I'd compare it to an IBM laptop intellistick, similar texture but I still can't say for sure whether it's actually rolling or inferring based on the direction I'm moving my finger over the textured surface. In either case it's really sensitive and great for more accurate movements.
The google maps is pretty good, and uses mylocation over gps by default, so you have a large circle that is your general proximity rather then a precise dot. You can see streetview, which brings attention to one of the coolest features: Compass mode. If you're in streetview and turn on Compass mode whichever direction you turn (even up and down), the phone will indicate the corresponding street view. It's fancy and impressive, but I couldn't see a need for this at first until I realized this was "compass mode" - ie: which way is NESW. The image is good just for verification but not much else other then cool factor and I can't see it working without streetview at your location.
Setting up email was pretty quick, and we were able to get to both web based email as well as import an IMAP (also supports pop3) account without issue. It inferred the servers from the email address, just provided the password and boom - all set.
The data transfer was acceptible, but nowhere near "high speed" as it took over 45 minutes for a 20mb video file. Speaking of which: there's no standard video player. You can view YouTube but individual movies don't play.
When checking voicemail, it was neceesary to pull up the phone keys, press the button to delete, and then put the phone keys away, otherwise I'd accidently hit the keys when I put the phone back up to my ear. So it can be cumbersome to go through several voicemails at a time.
The touch on the screen isn't overly accurate, and dragging can get tricky. You also can't drag an icon from one section of the screen to another. For example: move an icon from the middle screen to the right or left when your main screen gets full. To do so you have to drag the icon to the apps tab to remove it, and re-add it to the screen where you want it. It's not that big of a deal, easy enough to do, but a seemingly needless limitation.
Depending on the application it's difficult to tell when you should hold your finger down, slide it, or tap. I had to try it several different ways for most applications to figure out which was necessary for the particular application. I think this is mostly standardization at this point, and will probably get better as developers get to use the device more.
The battery life doesn't appear to be stellar. I charged it to full in about 3 - 3.5 hours, then used it to download and perform nonstop data transmission for about 3 hours before it was down to 50% battery. I charged it overnight so we'll see how it does after a normal day in standby.
I'm a bit worried about the application store. Granted - each application tells you what permissions it requires from your phone before you download - but that alone can scare you. I'm worried about the rogue program that does what it promises but is actually phoning home and sending your info while you're using it. A lot of the applications require "full internet access", "gps positioning", and some even "access to contact information" such as the Weather Channel's application. That's pretty scary and I'm concerned what they might do with it - some people never read the fine print for free programs.
All in all it's a pretty powerful phone with a lot of potential. It's fairly slim, fairly light and the keyboard is handy and with the trackball you can do everything but type when the keyboard is away. It didn't do much without a data plan, but it does work. It can use wifi, and even with no data* or wifi I was still able to pull down GMail but no web or Pop3/IMAP. There's also no proxy settings like in Windows Mobile so looks like you'll need that $30 data plan.
*-I have Voicestream 2.99 unlimited wap internet on my account
Labels: consumerism, cool, linux, materialism, review, technology
posted @ 11:36
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- ...I'll proofread later :)
Thursday, October 02, 2008
post://7950685253127620400/
Here's what I got with the MKZ Benchmark:
Labels: games for windows, technology
posted @ 21:05
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post://2317820311472832986/
This means towers that can be taken down, realistic wall destroying, and many other items only possible with a physics engine. Just like GPUs advanced the graphics, Physics processing will advance the gameplay and realworld feeling of video games.
Labels: games, games for windows, graphics, technology, video
posted @ 19:44
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Sunday, June 15, 2008
post://7579065082664969228/I picked up another card to do SLi this weekend. I wanted more, I wanted 2560x1600. I priced out what it would cost me to get a 9800GX2 including the trade-in from EVGA and it was going to be like $350+, so I instead spent $170 for another 8800 GTS - which were getting scarce so I moved on it.
I tested using 3D Mark Vantage (for VISTA) as my existing 3D Mark 2006 is not working in VISTAx64 because it says OpenAL32.dll is not present (which it is).
I'd rather use 3DMark 06 as it's a more accurate guage given my past configurations were also based in 2006 but with Creative software not installing for some weird error they can't solve I'm just working with what's working for me.
In any case, you'll see the difference with the score of 1 8800GTS vs 2 in SLi
1 x 8800GTS 640mb
Score: 4383
- CPU: 4228
- GPU: 4437
2 x 8800GTS 640mb in SLi
Score: 6642
- CPU: 4275
- GPU: 8145
I might post another score if I try some overclocking. It's nowhere near the 20,000 score reached by an individual with a QuadCore, 9850GX2, and PhysX card but I figured it out and I'm 118260 out of 155217 total, so that's a decent standing with a 76%.
Labels: consumerism, games, games for windows, hardware, SLi, technology
posted @ 21:43
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