Breezy the Impressive

I’m not crazy about their names or color schemes, but Ubuntu linux seriously has the whole linux usability thing figured out. I upgraded my Hoary laptop to Breezy last Wednesday, and just yesterday switched my desktop that has been running Gentoo for 5-6 years now over to Breezy. Why did I do that, you ask? Well even if you didn’t, it’s because qt failed to compile, and rather than figure it out like I always have to, I said to hell with it. Gentoo is awesome, but things often take more time and research than they should.

The new Gnome 2.12 is so frickin smooth. Nautilus doesn’t crash like it did in 2.10, and there are new usability features that really make it a comfy environment. Hooray for linux on the desktop! \o/

I’ve ordered a pile of Breezy discs from shipit.ubuntu.com. So I’ll be passing those out to anyone who’s interested.

This Week in Tech

Podcasts have recently become more popular. Now that iTunes supports podcast downloading (basic usage—no torrents) podcasts have come to the masses. TWiT is apparently #2 on the iTunes podcast roster! If you don’t know, it’s Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, and many others from the TechTV crew. It’s quite a nice show if you’re one who enjoyed their appearances on TechTV’s The Screen Savers and Call for Help.

I like listening to these shows with dnb in the background. Shit, I’ll listen to dnb whenver possible! Anyway, as I was playing some tunes alongside the podcast, I decided to fire up Audacity and add my last released set at lower volume to the podcast. I’m not going to post it, but if for some reason you’re actually interested, msg me on aim.

Oh, and my other favorite podcast is LugRadio.

Logitech v500 Mouse & UltraX Keyboard

First of all, happy July 4^th, everybody! (even non-Americans have a 4^th of July.) I hope everyone is enjoying good time spent with family and friends.

I just got a couple interesting input devices from Logitech, and I wanted to take a moment to tell you all how cool they are.

First is the relatively new Logitech v500 wireless optical mouse intended for use with a notebook. This thing is quite small, but still manages to feel nice in my hand thanks to some quite impressive engineering. An easy-to-release latch on the bottom of the mouse releases the chassis. The bottom side of the mouse comes up to fit better into the palm of your hand. This also exposes the slot hidden in the now-exposed surface to store the micro receiver. It also has a 4-way scroll pad (not a wheel!) making this one badass little mouse.

The other big selling point for me is the new technology. This is one of the first mice to incorporate a scroll pad like this one. It’s also at least one of the first to use 2.4 GHz wireless technology to provide super-low latency transmissions and a completely reworked all-terrain optical engine. The two of these things together mean that this mouse will be very quick and error free on about any surface you can think of for up to 30 meters!

Now for the bad news. I didn’t even realize this until I got the mouse, but it doesn’t have the ability to send a signal for a middle click. I guess the pad is designed only to allow the swiping motions to signify scrolling, and can’t distinguish a simple tap. This is annoying, but using xorg’s emulate3buttons (both buttons at the same time for 3rd mouse click) isn’t as annoying as I thought it would be. I thought it was odd, though, that I read a couple reviews and nothing I read hinted the fact that this mouse is missing a third button as though it wasn’t even a consideration.

Anyway, this mouse is otherwise perfect. I’d recommend it to anyone who is looking for a sleek and tiny mouse to use with their laptop, doesn’t mind the lack of middle mouse button, and has the moolah. The SRP is about $70, but I found mine on Newegg for $53.

The keyboard I just picked up is a IBM-Compatible keyboards. I actually stole this keyboard idea from my friend Dan who picked it up a few months ago. Having proper, full-sized keys along with the familiar layout make it very comfortable to type on. The media keys up top are few, but few is more than enough for me. Also, with this wrist rest I use, the keyboard ends up being a bit too low when my hands come over the rest because this keyboard is so thin. So, I’ve put a couple jewel cases under it to elevate it a bit. This is an okay temporary solution, though the keyboard does tend to drift around a bit.

My New TV

So I just got my new Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 yesterday, and after a few hours of tinkering with the complicated, but ever-so-cool MythTV, I manged to get it running. Now, I can use one of my two screens to not just watch TV, but have all the Tivo-like PVR functionality. That means I can pause, rewind, record, get an on-screen TV guide, and more. Since I already had two screens for my computer, instead of buying a TV, this was my solution. It was cheaper than a whole TV (just over $100) and also offers extra functionality. I don’t usually watch too much TV, but maybe that will change now that I have one.

Oh, I’m still working on those pictures. Maybe in the next few days I’ll put something online.

Doom 3 FPS issue resolved; More Gaming Followed

Last night, I finally beat Doom 3. I still think it’s one of the best games available for the PC right now. Totally captivating. The realism of the game along with the lack of opportunity to get distracted (solid gameplay) just sucks you right into the game. I’ve heard of people playing this game straight from beginning to end (about 20hrs?) in one sitting, and I can see why.

After I had beat the big guy at the end, it dawned on me that I had actually read somewhere already that there is some sort of bug in the nvidia drivers that causes doom3 to perform very poorly (fps) when dual screens is enabled. This page explains it all, but you need to either disable the second screen, or go into the advanced performance options and change the “acceleration mode” to single screen rather than the default setting of dual-head acceleration. This allowed me to still use the second head for aim/irc/web and still get full performance in doom3 on the first. After the fix, I was able to run at 1024×768 high detail at ~20 fps’ish. While it’s fun to play like this (BEAUTIFUL) it’s not as smooth, and that’s what REALLY matters. I’ve been playing at 800×600 low detail at about 60 fps. My GF FX 5600 128M is performing better than I thought it could.

So, needless to say, I had to play some more doom with my newfound performance boost. I took a few more screenshots, but I didn’t have enough really cool ones to bother posting them all. I started playing with some cheat codes and stuff, too. I turned on ‘notarget’ which makes the monsters play like they don’t see you at all. So I was able to shine my flashlight in this demon’s face and get a nice screenshot of him, which I cropped and resized in the gizzimp. (Original screenshot at 1024×768 medium detail.)

Doom 3 and Screenshots

So I don’t know how far I am through this game right now, but I’m having a great time with it. There’s just so much “content” in this game, it just boggles. All of the people, and most of the items and computer consoles are interactive. You can push crates around by running into them (to somtimes gain enough height from a jump to get secret items). And there are lots of secrets and items hidden in shady corners.

The story is about UAC—some big corporation doing all sorts of cutting edge experimental stuff in their facilities on Mars. They have people working in labs and stuff, but as the story goes, they soon clear out to make way for you. Soon, things go very wrong, and aliens come to make your life ugly.

It’s your job to single-handedly run through a bunch of super exciting and fun levels, killing all the monsters in sight. The gameplay reminds me a lot of Halflife where there were fairly relaistic human interactions and story line. And also how you can sometimes get lost—not knowing where to go next, only to eventually find that switch in some room you’ve already been in several times. They do a pretty good job of making it obvious, though, just remember to look at all the computer screens. When you put your crosshair on some of them, your weapon lowers and your crosshair becomes a cursor. You can then interact with the screen, usually causing something to happen to the environment allowing you to advance to the next area…. where there are more bad dudes to waste!

All in all, this game is a freaking great time. With so much interactivity, engaging plot, and combat, one could stay interested in this game for quite some time. I just can’t wait until the linux binaries come out so I don’t have to keep rebooting into windows.

I took some screenshots for you all to check out if you haven’t seen this game yet. I know a quick search on Google will turn up plenty more than this, but I thought it appropriate to provide a few. :) Enjoy!

The Bourne Supremacy

I don’t know how many of you follow the story of The Bourne Identity, but it has been around for a while. It was first written in the form of a book, then a movie that came out some time ago that my dad says he’s seen, and now they’re redoing them all over again in modern Hollywood.

And it’s a good thing, too, because there’s a lot of potential in the story. Matt Daemon plays “Jason Bourne”, a dude who, in the first movie, loses all his memory and only through a series of encounters and clues does he come to realize that he’s some sort of government agent involved in more than he thought.

What makes Jason Bourne’s story so interesting and exciting is how he is able to consistantly defy his adversaries through trickery so sick, it boggles. For instance, there was one point where he was being held by some police/government dudes in Berlin (I think it was Berlin), and he’s being questioned. Bourne responds with silence and only stares away from the questioner. Just then, the officer’s cell rings, and the person on the other end is telling him that he has a serious badass on his hands. He goes, “I understand,” and just as he goes for his gun, Bourne already had knocked out him and the other guard, opened up his cell phone, bugged it, and left the building in a matter of seconds. In the next moment, Bourne is in his car gathering more intelligence as he listens in on the guard’s phone call.

Anyway, it’s a seriously action packed story with scenes cutting back and forth between locations enough to make your head spin, not to mention the shakey camera style filming job. I recommend it to anyone who likes a good action film.

Digital Camera Purchasing Woes and Fedora

I decided to get a digital camera so I can add pictures to my website, among other things. I chose Minolta DiMAGE Xt for the camera (here and here are cool reviews) and Overstock.com as the seller. This would have worked out fine if one of the following conditions were met: 1) I hadn’t messed up my order, or 2) Overstock.com had a decent functioning infrastructure. Basically what happened was that I ordered the camera with a SmartMedia card, but I later found out that it took SD ram—they’re different. Since I was paying with PayPal, when I called them and had them cancel my order, the money wasn’t put back in my PayPal account. So I ended up spending money I didn’t mean to, and still haven’t gotten my refund from Overstock.. apparently it is going to take them “2-4 business days” for their customer service people to get their “paypal team” back at the corporate office to initiate the refund. Oh well, I’ll probably not be completing my order with them at this point, once I get my refund. They don’t even have SD ram cards there. (I thought that was going to be a convenience at first.) So yeah, I thought it would be cool to start putting pictures of stuff on my blog… and maybe post more often, too.

In other news, I put Fedora Core 2 Test 2 on my laptop. Fedora is a really great distribution; it has the user friendliness of Redhat with the (supposedly) easy package management tools like “yum” (a port of Debian’s “apt” to rpm). It’s a good pick for my laptop since my laptop doesn’t take so kindly to compiling for long hours all the time (it overheats and shuts off). I love Gentoo on my desktop, though, that will be there to stay. :)

Update: After 2 days of waiting, Overstock.com finally refunded my PayPal account, so I went ahead and ordered the camera. At the same time, I won an ebay auction for a 128MB SD card for it. Yay! I hate waiting for packages…

Why the iHP-120 beats out the iPod

The iRiver iHP-120 is a VERY impressive piece of equipment, and with this brainbit, I’ll attempt to explain why. The moment I saw this player announced on Slashdot, I was mostly sure that was the portable music player I was going to be getting. (It plays ogg!) After a month or two, they finally started shipping to the US, and shortly after, I received mine. Apparently there was some serious demand for these things because they were on backorder after the first batch went out. (I was in the first batch :) Why was I so excited to get this thing? Well, it’s true.. I’m a music guy, and I would have had an mp3 player a long time ago, except I had to wait for one that included 1) 20G or more hard drive, 2) ogg vorbis support, and 3) nice asthetics. Yeah, the Neuros was almost there, but it’s sort of chunky.

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