Itooooooons!!

Last night I downloaded the new version of Itunes (V7. whatever). Ive been using Itunes 6 for a while and I really like the way it organises and looks after my music. I also like being able to buy online relatively cheaply. Whatever the arguments against Apple and Itunes it does work and it is the best solution on the market - end of story.

Actually V6 was getting a little old - or at least the competition was meeting it. So along comes Itunes 7, and my god its pretty cool.

The flashiest addition was the new CD browse view - where you can flick through your album artwork like they were actually Cd's. It needs to be seen to understand what exactly this is but it is really really cool. There are some bugs but essentially it works good. As a sort of compliment to this you can now tell the software to download cover artwork for all your music (not just purchased ones) this does take a bit of fiddling to get right (and might mean renaming some albums) but again it essentially works.

Actually that second feature is really cool as it is a feature I have wanted for a while - and for the most part it finds them automatically.

Other new bits n bobs include movies and TV shows in the store (and sub folders for them in the software). I got all excited over this till I found out that currently only US customers can access this. I don't know if Apple plans a UK roll out but I really really hope so - I love movies and a download system as good as Itunes for my films would be brilliant (and cut down on shelf space in my room!!). As to the TV shows I was hoping to get Prison Break series one - but again no UK version.

Another neat new feature is an upgrade to the backing up tool. So now you can back your entire collection and playlists to CD/DVD(s) and restore them at a later date. You can also do incremental backups - which is really useful (I did it straight away!!).

Other than that it just looks nicer. SO well done Apple, another good Itunes release means I'll be sticking with you for the future :P

(In other news I am downloading Vista RC1 as we speak - actually it has been going on and off all day!! so some time next week you should get a review - if it doesn't destroy my PC)

Vista come vista go

So what exactly Will vista bring to us? Apart from a long beard after all the wait of course!

At inception Vista was meant to be the next big stepping stone in OS's, Microsoft's answer to its critics. And at the start the feature list proved it! Most prominently a new file structure to replace the current NFTS format. That sounded pretty useful - especially considering the features MS promised for it. Considering how going from FAT32 to NFTS format made XP an 'evolution' it was a promising start for Vista.

The best bit was we were getting an evolution in the next version of Windows! Something that has never happened before. Not only that but it was to be released soon after XP...

Then it got delayed - really delayed. You could argue for hours over whether that has been a marketting ploy to maximise sales of XP (Personally I suspect that played a part) but no one really knows. What is certain is that our amazing new OS to play with was not going to be around as soon as. Ah well we said - think of all the new features - it must take time to write them all!

Then of course news that most were being dropped or re-worked as add-on's for release after Vista (like the new directory format). So now what is Vista, as far as I can tell it is just XP with all the security patches applied (OK so totally rewritten but feature wise...) and a flashy new GUI.

And you know what my XP Corporate already looks like that thank you very much, that's what mods are for. And the mods improve all the time. So do I need Vista, no. Will I buy it. Yes because it will bring benefits in the future and will save me messing with shell upgrades to XP (plus I like to have the latest stuff. But I will be keeping my current XP on all my other PCs, Vistas will only go on my main rig.

Now when is that release date? Changed again?

(PS I'm now using Blogger Beta which is all very nice :D go google go)

Online Software

Is online software the next big thing? Maybe it is.

Sure the big software companies will be rubbing their hands with glee over the prospect of more easy money to be made but the impact may be much further ranging - and not quite what those companies expect. For the Linux and Open Source communities this will be a big step in trying to convince users to switch to 'free' products. Imagine a user who doesn't want to use OpenOffice becuase he finds the idea of getting something free just too overwhelming - or he just doesn't trust it to be safe. Or perhaps he is worried that it won't do what his copy of MS Office does.. Online software can change that

Creating an online version of OpenOffice is not as hard as it sounds - depending on the technology you can use, the new Web2.0 standard *spit* creates a much more user friendly environment in the browser. Now you can use AJAX (a mix of advanced javascript, xml and php) to, for example, save a document whilst the user is still working on it.

As to file formats that is easy to. OO documents are saved using the fairly new Open Document standard - which is essentially just all of the data stored in XML format. Handily PHP5 pretty good XML handlers.

So it is possible to create a convincing online word editor thats saves documents in a standard that a fully featured offline word editor can open and use - so why have the OpenOffice team not done it yet?

Well I cn't say for sure, certainly when I suggested it they were very dismissing and seemed almost scared of the idea. Maybe it is because it is a new thing and they are not yet used to the idea, or maybe they are afraid it will detract from the actual OO software. Whatever the reason I think they are missing out on a BIG opportunity - I am sure if they developed OO-Online and released it inside 6 month's (which they could do) then it would be a big blow to MS and other software companies. It is not too often that a free Open SOurce alternative gets the chance to be one major step ahead of commercial competition in the way this could be.

Could they develop it in 6 months though? Well yes I think so. Built into the grand scheme of things for my LIVE! project is to have an online office suite based on OpenOffice, so I decided to look into the idea in more depth. As a result I think that I personally could develop and online version in 8 months - so for a team of developers 6 months is easy.

Regardless I have begun to play around with ideas for an online version, there is still at least 2 to 3 months of primary LIVE! development to do as yet so it wll be at least 12 months yet before I could release anything like a working copy of LIVE!OpenOffice (or more likely OpenOffice!Live). So it really is a shame that they wont do it themsleves...

Web 2.0 - 2 standard??

Is the web becoming too standard. Ok let me rephrase that - is the web becoming too HIGH standard.

You see the first 'version' of the web was a collection of arbitary, badly supported technologies. Then we got some standard and everything ran nicely - almost anyway could make a website and stic it online. Ok so it wouldnt have been flashy (probably was pretty crap) but at least it was there.

No we get the phrase 'Web 2.0' bandied around - which basically means 'lets make it a bit more complicated'. A prime example is CSS, nowadays a table based site is frowned upon. Now I understand CSS and it's positioning coding but does the average Joe? Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG programs can create CSS driven sites but you still have to have some basic knowledge to get it right - and even then the code the produce is hardly the best and cetainly not cross-browser.

Then we have PAS-78 which is a good idea to some extent but will end up stifling cretivity on the web, not a good thing.

The result of this is a bland boring looking web that takes twice as much effort to code, looks exactly like it did at the start and requires a degree in CSS to build.

We have come a long way in terms of creativity, desing and accessibility on the net - I hope that it now doesn't get screwed up by people trying to make it all too standard.

Well what a farce!

Well the England match was pretty bollox, Joe cole had a great game and it all started well but Owens injury and Sven's poor subs made it an abysmal ending. Ah well...

And some more

Ive been busy playing ablivion this week and am really getting into it! Im at level 10 already and it's now beginning to get difficult. I think it's time to move on to Episode 1 though (which I still have hardly played). I have way too many games I never play!!

England Expects

Original name huh? Well Im in a rush so we will have to live with corny for now! I meant to post this before the first game, then before the second - funny how time runs away with you :D, anyway I think the 2 games we have seen so far back up what I am saying (or at least I hope so)

England expects alot from the world cup this year. I mean there is much at stake but also much in our favour. 40 years exactly since our last triumph and were in Germany again. As long as the group stage placements work out we may well meet them in the final.

So far the 2 games we have seen have been less than average, compared to argentina we are rubbish. BUT, and it's a big but, Sven actually made good substitutes in the last match. With proper wingers (as oppose wing-backs) we absolutely anhialated T&T.

Tonight I believe we will finally play to standard, and hopefuully thrash Sweden. We can do it, and we will.
I still believe in them and I hope that is enough..

In anticipation.....

A time for reflection

So tomorrow I start the long road home for the summer. It's wierd it hardly seems like yesterday I started university, time has flown, I have seen and done many things and not done many more. But one of the overidding memories for me of this first year will be tonight; all my friends have left (or are just about to) so I am essentially "on my own". I should be panicked - desperately trying to make use of the super fast internet I will be losing tomorrow - but I cant. I just want to chill.

Ive been staring at the pile of crap in my room for ages, really really don't want to have to pack it up. Mostly because it's a chore but partly because then it will mean I am truly finished.

Year 1 has been great, I dont think that I would change very much of it at all. Regrets? one major one, and of course it is 'women' related but maybe thats just for me (you never know she might read this sometime). Apart from that probably that I didnt get to know my 'neighbours' better. I hardly know anyone in Barbier house (my accommodation) as most of my friends live elsewhere and I am sure they regard me as a bit of a wierdo.

On the other hand I cant wait to get home for the summer and see my family properly again (although I will probably be fed up of them within a week - guaranteed). It feels like a new beginning, a chance to refresh, with plenty of new challenges ahead. Hoping for adminship on Wikipedia, maybe write some articles for Micro Mart, expand my business and start my new project. And thats just the main things! All in all it's gonna be a great summer.

Hopefully I will be keeping up these posts. So far it's been kind of fun trying to get into the habit of writing (something I love) and slowly I'm getting there. Just hoping that a summer or sporadic posting will not break this newly formed obsession.

AM2

I was reading the Toms Hardware report about AM2 and it had a really short
section on NF5 from Nvidia.

This
looks really exciting. Especially as they have taken the plunge and got
rid of one ATA connector - now you can only connect 2 ata devices! Im
not sure but I seriously suspect Nvidia would have done away with them
entirely except that most DVD drives are still ATA. NF6 will almost
certainly see the death of ATA connectors.

That also means we will be getting 5 SATA slots instead of 4!

To be perfectly honest
thats the most exciting part of the article for me. At the moment AM2
looks fairly generic, ok so it has potential but all AMD have done
(with the exeption of the FX-62) is port all of their current catalogue
to AM2. So we have all of that potential and the last gen technology
just doesnt fill the shoes.

Maybe Im being a little harsh but I
cant help feeling AMD have introduced this new socket way too soon,
unless they can pull out some good FX or A64 chips in the next few
months people are going to start to feel that this is a little bit like
a gimmick, K8L isn't going to be around for a good while yet!

I
see AMD's strategy, getting punters to upgrade to AM2 now so that when
K8L chips appear they will be an 'easy' upgrade but I really dont think
thats going to work. AM2 MB now will not make full useof the potential
of the socket. NF5 is a great example, sure they have dropped one ATA
socket but by this time next year I fully expect ATA to be real legacy
with DVD drives mostly using SATA. Thats especially likely considering
we should have Vista by then
which will bring full native SATA support.

All of this asks an interesting question. What can AMD do to meet the
threat of Conroe. And is Conroe even a threat. People talk about the last 5 or 6 years being AMD's golden era beating Intel of at every post. In a way thats true, AMD did produce some excellent chips for a ,uch lower price than Intel . They also pulled of some technically brilliant feats, but there is another side to that. The lasy few years havn't been so good to AMD. Really they hit a dark era - one that is peaking now with the premature release of AM2. Ok so Athlons, Athlon Xps and Durons were excellent chips and A64 looked set to follow nucely in their footstpes. But then we had the move to S754 (which AMD openly admitted was a transition socket) and S939 - which they claimed to be sticking with for years to come. Unfortunately it seems 939 just did not have enough potential for AMD so now we get another new socket. Thats all very well - we want progression but there has been so many changes in such a short time punters don't know which way to turn. Do they go for chaep 939 chips now when chances are that it will become less and less supported or do they cut their losses and hit AM2, meaning an entire new rig! I sympathise with AMD, it was never going to be an easy transition.

Conroe is going to be AM2's big competition (in a way). So far tests show that Intels new chip is pretty good - much faster than anything currently produced by either company. It's also a great technical acheivment with some new tweaks and enhancements. On the other hand when you consider that Intel have named this a next generation chip the performance margin doesnt looks so good. Compared to the current generation of chips you would expect Conroe's to speed ahead of them (well I would anyway). I just don't understand that. The GHz wars are over but speed is still king and these operating systmes are getting more and more hungry (ahem).

The other thing is that K8L (AMD's next gen chip) is looking much better. Ok so it doesn't bring much technically (except for L3 chche which will be useful and Double Floating Point Operation) but it is a real redesign with potential for expansion. As far as I can see with conroe Intel have sacrificed alot of space for the huge L2 cache at the expense of upgradibility. Conroe will last a good long time but when it comes to the next next generation Intel may have to go back to the drawing board. I hope Im wrong, I wont pretend to fully understand how the Conroe architecture works but I get the feeling it is a case of: "good now but the future; well....".

Again I hope I'm wrong and Conroe doies go from strength to strength, Intel deserve it, they have put a hell of a lot of effort into this chip and it's failure would hurt them badly.

Similarily I hope AMD can deliver in K8L and AM2. If both sides had excellent chips on offer we could see some great leaps in chip design.

One final thing. L3 cache is an interesting and probably important idea, but despite AMD mentioning it in an IET (then IEE) and an IEEE journal interview a year or more ago Intle havn't incorporated it into the Conroe design. Again I see no spac to add it on the designs either - which is very odd!

Episode1 (damn steam) and Kata's

I bought Episode1 on Tuesday FROM A SHOP, seeing as steam only accepts credit cards!! Something that keeps annoying me (If anyone knows where i can buy Darwinia from then tlet me know I will be very happy). So far i have managed to avoid playing on it for very long (a quick half hour when I installed and thats it), seeing as next week I will lose my net connection for 3 months I have been trying to get as many CSS hours in as possible - so I will save it for next week.

First impressions says it's good though. I really like some the opening sequence and the bit where dog practices his shotputting *ahme* well I'll let you find all that out.

Another game I got the other day is Hitman:Blood money - its crud. TYhe other games were good, apart from their clumnky movement and interface the gameplay was good and made up for it. In the latest game we still get the clunky way opf movement and a shoddy game. I may be biased as i have only played the training mission so far but it is way to nit pickerty, and the weapon selection is abysmal (as is the inventory). Its not that they have done it badly just completely different to any other game I have played - and it's hard to get used to.

And the Kata bit? A reference to Equlibrium, Ive watched this a few times now in the last week and all I can say is wow. I love the Matrix but tis is actualy better. Ok so the story drags at times but it doesn't get too holed up in the emotional side, then again it doesn't go too action heavy either. In reality it's as bland and unemotional as it's storyline (about a 1984 style world with peoples emotions suppressed and matrix style gun kata's to control the masses) and yet somehow it works. I think  the movie is really made by the excellent acting, I mean when you consider thet Christian Bale went on to make the superb Batman begins you get the idea of the caliberin this.

Most cool of all is the final scene where Christian Bale's hero character confronts 'The Father' in a brilliant hand to hand gun battle - it really is hard to describe how cool that looks till you see it!

My rating: 9.5/10, really worth a watch.

(This post was a day late because I ams a lazy bastard and forgot to hit send, I might post some more later on today but things are busy at the moment, only 3 more days of living Leeds then 3 months back home!)

Caffeine pisses me right off

Caffeine does ood things to you, well no caffeine mints (Foosh to be precise) do very odd things to you - but essentially it is the caffeine. One of them is to make you not able to sleep, which is I suppose the whole point. The really annoying thing (from where I am sitting anyway) is that they don't actually WAKE you up or give you energy. So I am popping these mints in an effort to stay focused on my coding and all that happens is I sit here and cant be arsed, and now i cant sleep either.

So henceforth I am sworn off caffeine mints and possibly even black coffee late at night (or early in the morning)  - at least till tomorrow anyway.

The reuslt5 of all this? I am sat here very pissed off, trying to play ogame (www.ogame.org) badly and wondering how I am going to get past 6 sleeping people to my door so I can get breakfast (dont ask I would tell but they might wake up and see me ;) ).

Oh and the coding I was trying to stay awake for? Can I make a PHP script create a directory? Can I fuck - 3hrs of my life wasted on shit......

So yes I am pissed off and annoyed, partly at the caffeine but mostly at myself. I need coffee....

Izzy Wizzy, Lets get Busy!

Phew a manic phew days here. I had the Summer Ball on friday and it rocked. It wasn't as posh as we'd hoped but still pretty good. And it felt good to be dressed up in a dinner suit! The let down was really the music. Well actually most of it was pretty good; we saw my friend Rob in the LUU dance band which was quite cool. Then they were followed by some sort of rock band from the met (I think) who played some awesome tunes (The Who's Pinball Wizzard and Robbie Williams's Angels to name 2). But then we got Rachel Stevens - to start off with she was almost certainly not singing live and then she left after just 5 songs, good riddance tbh because her music is crap (it makes me wnat ot suicide!)

Hmm anyway, Those DVD's I got the other day (Batman Begins, Equilibrium and The Island)? I finally watched them all and they were pretty good! Reviews on their way next post but Im off out in a sec so I cant be bothered now. Oh and Blood Money is pretty crap - im already stuck on lvl 1!!! Again short review to follow.

Finally, HL2 Episode 1 was released the other day - it sounds really good and I would love to play it, but unfortunately I don't have a credit card that Steam will accept (argh) so Im gonna have to wait till tomorrow to buy it from the shops. It looks really promising though with some cool plot developments!

Till tomorrow then....

Blood Money

Yay, last exam went off ok so I treated myself to Hitman - Blood Money and a few DVD's. I'll let you know howe i find them all but i just had to post to say Hitman looks AWESOME - and I havent even installed it yet....

Sigh, addict

(ooh and I got my 1st comment today - yo Viper!)

One long pause, one long post and many things to say.

Phew! Where do I start? A question which is only caused by my constant insistence on not posting regularly - so when there is something to say It all gets jumbled togeher! ah well...

Last exam today, which is great. Although probably not for my bank balance which WILL take a hit tonight and on friday when I am going t the Leeds Summer Ball. That in itself will be awesome (better be i's already cost me the better part of £200!), me and 2 mates bought dinner suits together from Burtons, £115 but well worth it. We look really smart together and I get this insatiable urge to ask for a 'Martini shaken not stirred' when I wear it.

Oh yeah to add to the 'Bond' feel there is also going to be a casino at this ball - I see this being VERY expensive , but hey you only live once right?

Hopefull after this weekend I will be able to get back to normal and actually work on some of my online projects (and post here). Currently I am getting more and more into Wikipedia which is both fun and time consuming (revision takes a big hit I found).

I also hope to get time to finally finish my website (www.tomnrob.com) that has been in limbo and development for nearly a year. Although I now have a project called LIVE to build and promote - which could go the same way!

So as you can see life is busy at the moment but it's summertime now so my free time should escalate.

And the final piece of news, I may finally get round to asking put the girl I have fancied since the start of the year - that is if I manage to divorce my computers hmmmmm

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!!!!!

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

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....

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....