Ξ July 28th, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Technology |
I just spent the last 4 hours ripping apart my entertainment center, tearing out obsolete wire runs, re-running wires I realized were originally poorly run, and running new lines. Originally, the entertainment center was pretty well designed, but where I thought the configuration was going to last 5 or more years, at least, ended up lasting less than 3 years. I’ve just replaced everything other than the Tivo and the TV, with the upgrade to the receiver, replacing my Pioneer VSX-516 with an Onkyo TX-SR606. It cost more than I spent on the Pioneer, but at under $400, shipped, I think it was a good deal – especially considering that it takes 4 HDMI signals and does 720p upconversion.
HDMI is the way to go, I’ve come to realize. It cuts the number of wires needed to run by at least 1/2, as you get a digital video AND audio signal along a single wire. Now I have my HTPC and my PS3 both going into the receiver, and an S-Video signal from the Tivo getting upconverted to 720p, and all sent to the TV via a single HDMI cable, as well as having the 5.1 speakers available.
I did encounter a problem with one of the speakers, who’s wall mounting came loose. Unfortunately, it didn’t want to cooperate and now there is a sizeable hole in the wall. My father thinks a longer screw could reach the wall in the back and would make a suitable mounting point, so hopefully it won’t turn into too much of a disaster.
Messing around with the speaker took at least half an hour, and by the time I had finished cleaning up, I was too tired to actually turn anything on and do any configuration. I guess that’s the task for tomorrow. Thank goodness for Logitech’s Harmony – should make the whole process easier. Can’t wait to give the whole thing a go.
Ξ July 22nd, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Technology |
I’ve encountered a number of computers recently that have had their Internet connect stop working recently. I tracked the problem down to ZoneAlarm, but when one of the computers at work also broke due to ZoneAlarm, I looked a little bit deeper. It turns out that a Microsoft Update pushed in mid-July that was designed to fix a DNS exploit is the culprit. The ZoneAlarm folks turned out an updated version pretty quickly, and all is well with your high-security settings again.
Ξ June 10th, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Politics, Technology |
I was watching Special Report with Brit Hume, and there was a piece on Jim Johnson, the controversial member of Obama’s VP search committee. The McCain camp’s attempt to highlight the issues surrounding Johnson came from the RNC’s liason to the McCain campaign, Carly Fiorina. I was floored. I hadn’t heard from her since she was booted from HP for driving the company into the ground. What the heck are the Republicans and McCain thinking?
Ξ June 8th, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Games, Technology |
I finally got around to loading up Mass Effect, and right off the bat a couple annoyances crept up that I think others that are playing the game on the PC would be interested in. First off, if you encounter problems with saved games, and your “My Documents” folder is pointed to a non-standard location, you’ll need to go into the <My Documents>\BioWare\Mass Effect directory and create a “Save” folder. For some reason the installer didn’t create one, and the the game wasn’t programmed to create one on the fly. Create that and you’ll be able to save games.
Next was the buggy shadows in the game, and the reason I like computer games over console games – the ability to tweak settings you normally aren’t suppose to be able to. The dithered shadows always drove me nuts when I saw it on the XBox360 version, and was one of the first things I looked for when I installed the game and saw they were still there. Turns out it’s a known problem with the Unreal 3 engine, and that a work-around was already discovered for it. User homerdog came up with the following solution that worked for me:
- Open <My Documents>\BioWare\Mass Effect\Config\BIOEngine.ini
- Alternately, you can edit <Program Files>\Mass Effect\Engine\Config\BaseEngine.ini
- Search for “DepthBias=0.012″ or something to that effect (there might be trailing 0′s)
- Change to “DepthBias=0.03″
- Save and Exit
Additionally, if you feel your card can handle it:
- Find “MaxShadowResolution=512″
- Change to “MaxShadowResolution=2048″ or higher – I upped it to 8192. Be sure that it’s a power of 2.
- Find “MinShadowResolution=32″
- Change to “MinShadowResolution=128″
- Find “MaxAnisotropy=4″
- Change to “MaxAnisotropy=16″
Lastly, I always disliked the fake movie grain they put into the game. You get that grain with a crummy transfer to high-def – it’s not a selling point and I have no idea why you’d want to actually *add* it. Luckily, that’s an easy fix. It’s in the Options -> Graphics menu selection of the game.
FYI, I currently have the settings on the game maxed out, and I’m not noticing any appreciable lag on my 8800GT. Your mileage may vary.
Ξ June 5th, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Odd, Technology |
I don’t know why, but apparently my WordPress blog layout just plain breaks which it comes to YouTube videos being displayed on Firefox running under Vista. I’ll have to get around to fixing it, but it doesn’t appear to affect LiveJournal too much. Weird thing was that it worked just fine under XP – and Opera and IE don’t have a problem with it. Hrm.
UPDATE: Turns out it was a corrupt HTML embed of the Pachebel video. It is now fixed.
Ξ May 19th, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Humor, Technology |
Managing to fuse the company that ushers in the end of civilization from the Terminator series with the homicidal AI from 2001, a Japanese robotic company has created a robotic augmentation suit. I present HAL by Cyberdyne.
Ξ May 10th, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Games, Technology |
I was looking forward to the PC release of Mass Effect this month, then I read about the draconian DRM present with the game. Oh well, I guess I’m going to download the game rather than buy it. Turns out, however, that EA isn’t nearly as tone-deaf as I thought they were, and reversed course, limiting the copy protection to authentication-at-install style. Great, so I hopped over to Amazon (which, BTW, is giving $10 off if you pre-register for the title, making it $40, as opposed to the XBox 360 version, which is $60) and ordered it.
I was sort of interested in the story, so I poked around a few threads on the matter, and eventually someone brought up reference to Stardock and their no-DRM policy. Stardock has released two very successful games, Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire. When SoaSE was released, Stardock posted a very eloquent explaination of their marketing philosophy – they design products around the consumer base they’re targeting, not the user base. They know very well that their products are going to be pirated – but pirates don’t enter in to their calculations. They are interested only in the people who are willing to pay for their products, and design products for them.
When you make a game for a target market, you have to look at how many people will actually buy your game combined with how much it will cost to make a game for that target market. What good is a large number of users if they’re not going to buy your game? And what good is a market where the minimal commitment to make a game for it is $10 million if the target audience isn’t likely to pay for the game?
If the target demographic for your game is full of pirates who won’t buy your game, then why support them? That’s one of the things I have a hard time understanding. It’s irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you’re in the business of selling games that is). It’s only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game.
Stardock doesn’t make games targeting the Chinese market. If we spent $10 million on a PC game explicitly for the Chinese market and we lost our shirts, would you really feel that much sympathy for us? Or would you think “Duh.”
Interesting thoughts.
Ξ April 21st, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Technology |
This guy is my hero.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=353954
Seriously, I’d love to have a half-rack for my computers. It’d make everything so much neater, but it’d get a lot louder, as I’d need to have some hefty fans to keep it cool. Just with this 80-degree heat, my Raptor HD is hovering around 100-degrees, even with the three 120mm fans up at full speed.
What I need is some way to isolate the whole thing in an air-conditioned, sound-dampened box, with just cables sticking out the back.
I was reading The Corner and came across a post about the future of nuclear waste management in the US. A quick bit of history first: Currently, the United States has something like 100 nuclear power plants in the US, almost all at least 30 years old. While there is now a surge of interest in building of new plants, after the Three-Mile accident in 1979 growth in the nuclear industry ground to a halt. With a peak in public concern about hazard of nuclear waste following the accident, in 1982 the government passed legislation creating a plan for the disposal of nuclear waste of the existing sites – a plan that has (almost) culminated with Yucca Mountain over twenty-five years later. With nuclear power seemingly having reached a plateau (and even seemingly in the decline) when the legislation passed, the plans were drawn up with a fairly certain ceiling on the amount of waste being produced. Once the predetermined amount of waste had accumulated, the vault would be filled in and sealed to prevent possible contamination thousands (in actuality, the legislation called for protection for a million) years in the future.
However, twenty-five years, billions of dollars and 30 possible new reactors in our lifetime, the plan seems to be in a slow-motion train-wreck. We have nothing for the money and time spent, and the current plan could result in filling up the facility in just three years. But there is a hope to salvage a decent system from this boondoggle. (more…)
Ξ March 13th, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ Technology |
Just discovered this – Apache 2.2 includes a mechanism for storing authentication information in *any* database – mod_auth_db. Drivers are compiled at the same time as the rest of Apache. I’ve always worried about race-conditions with the Apache password file, and having a database backend will be great.
UPDATE: I’ve been using this for a little while now, and it’s been great. All you do is give it a query that needs to return (so you can search by name and group if you want to restrict access to a group of people). The problem was actually compiling the darned drivers. You had to go into srclibs/apr-utils and compile them separately.
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