Friday, April 28, 2006

The one good SIN

Big news today!! Th other night I finally got round to watching Sin City! And it's just as good as I'd hoped. I liked the whole super-noir black 'n' white effect they used - it added a rerally good edge, especially as the only colours they used were rerally vivid and impacting.

Some good performances too! Bruce willis played the OTT cop really well and Clive owen was as superb as usual. Oh and I loved the sword weilding Miho (?) who kicked some serious ass!! Great scene where she decimated a carful of guys! (I wonder wether that as one of the bits Tarantino directed).

Anyway, good film, great cast, excellent story and well worth the watch (and the wait!!) It just goes to show that hollywod films don't have to be a load of tosh!!!!!


Tuesday, April 25, 2006

At last!!

At last, I am back at leeds. The last few days have been chaos. First off it took all of 1 hour for me to break my new 'no drinking when theres work to do' rule. As a result I spent the last 2 night's getting spectacularly pissed! However Ive got that out of the system now so I will bo doing constructive things from now on.....

Other news? Well my CS:S team - the MMMugs - is getting off the ground, I'm sorting out a proper team roster for them at the moment.

On the website side I have to make a start on a new 'trainers' website - which I will actually be getting paid for. Oh and then theres my new project / scheme - LiveProject (working title) but more on that later I have work to do.

I might actually manage to post 2 days in a row tomorrow!! That would be a first

Saturday, April 22, 2006


Ebay, honestly what a great, easy idea! Except when sellers are so sloooooow with sending me emails. Ive just bought around £45 of stuff from one guy and the total postage really added up - so much so a discount was offered that I have to email and ask for before I can buy.

Of course has he replied yet? Has he hell. Im so annopyed I bought half of the stuff that had free p&p anyway simply because I couldn't be bothered to wait.
Maybe I am impatient, maybe I should have waited longer than 24 hrs but I bet when he replies he will expect me to pay up nice and quick.

So in conclusion I love Ebay, but I absolutely HATE people....

Friday, April 21, 2006

Graduate? please don't make me!

I don't believe I'm saying this but I am so glad I am getting back to Leeds on sunday!

Yes I know it means I have to go into Uni (and that I have exams and that I wil do the usual lot of not doing any work - playing too many games) but Leeds feels like home now! Plus of course I actually like my course - alot. I even don't mind the exams.

But the real reason I want to get back? Because I'm fed up of this damn 9 till 5 Job I have had over easter. It's so boring I have wasted the whole afternoon doing nothing.
And of course theres the super internet connection to look forward too! Ahh it will be good!

|But it set me thinking: I really am not looking forward to graduating now. 4 years of (almost) dossing at uni will almost certainly be replaced with what I am doing now, paper pushing. Or pixel pushing if you want to be literal. I mean I like working on the computer but this is just stupid. So I never want to graduate, and if I do I will definitely work freelance if i can.

At least then I can pixel push from the comfort of my own home...

4Ghz Reality

So I was reading today that IBM has broken 4Ghz with it's new Power6 porocessors.
Well in fact thats all Ive heard - no actual indication of the speeds reached, just that they broke a magic margin!!

Some techy stuff for those interested:
- IBM have reduced the power consumption of the chip when idle to help keep the temps lower at the higher speeds.
- The pipelines are not as deep as current Chips, deep pipelines = higher speeds but are innefficient. IBM have managed to use virtulization tech to reduce the size of the pipelines and make the chips run faster
- And then a load of guff about the execution units, a white paper that lasted 40+ pages and is of little interest to the sane 99.9% of the world :P

It got me thinking tho, the gap between commercial products (such a Intel and AMD cpu's) and less commercial tech (like IBM stuff) is reducing! We won't have to wait as long for commercial products to break 4Ghz as we have for previous milestones. Why though?

Maybe it's because development has slowed down - due to it approaching the speed 'limit' or is it because technology has taken different turns. Will we have to wait an age for quad core and octal core processors? Hopefully not, but I suspect so.

The lack of interest this speed milestone has actually generated just about confirms (for me) that the clock speed wars are over. So it's the core wars next - which could be even more fun....