Posted September 12th, 2008 by Chris Clarke
Filled under: Life, Site
Well, on Sunday (7th September) I had some of my family and darkthorn over for my birthday. That went alright, there was cake. Cake was yum. Felt kind of sick during and after party but that finally disappeared as it approached bed time. For presents, money was what I received and that totalled about $100 to which I’ve put to good use. 
So on Tueday, I went to the computer shop and purchased a graphics card with virtually no direction other then that I wanted composite out and it had to be under $85. The first place I went to, the shop keeper had no idea what I was talking about and then went on to tell me that I’ve got an S-Video port on my VCR which I know for a fact that I don’t and then tried selling me a card for $120 when it met neither of the parameters I set. I headed over to the other shop and came with home with a NVIDIA GeForce 7300GS 256MB which met the composite out and the price requirements. I’m fairly certain I could’ve done a lot better online, but it does what I want, and I’m not really a gamer at all, so aslong as it run’s Aero and Compiz-fusion I’m happy. I’ll take the price premium for the convenience off not having to wait, deal with money transfers, and wait.
Today, I went and purchased The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion for $35 at Dick Smith Electronics. It runs pretty well, more then playable, even more so once you consider that the card I’m running it on is ultra budget and not even this card iterations budget offering. I haven’t played much of it yet. My monitor is pretty dark even when maxed out and Vista doesn’t play nicely with the NVIDIA brightness adjustments when it comes to gaming, so even though the desktop could be as bright as a flash light, in-game still is dark as hell. No-one seems to have a fix, thus I went and tried installing Windows XP but my CD for that is borked again. So, I’m fixing that.
Today, I also went about attempting to install Mac OS X. It was a failure, even though people have claimed on the OS X 86 project’s wiki that my hardware should be compatible. I’m stuck behind the dreaded Still waiting for root device error message, the suggested fixes of using an IDE hard disk didn’t work. I tried two of them. Trying inside VirtualBox didn’t do much better, thus I’ve now got another coaster. Can we ever have enough? I mean I didn’t expect it to work, but it’s disappointing all the same.
Earlier in the week I created and uploaded a better browse and submission page to Muse’s Success. I’ll be so glad once I get rid of WordPress.
For the moment, I’m tired. Bed!
Posted September 6th, 2008 by Chris Clarke
Filled under: Web
I’ve been using Google Chrome since Wednesday, and it’s been a pretty good experience.
The User Interface is aesthetically pleasing, I was unsure how I would adapt to the tabs being in place of the title bar but the change has been surprisingly seamless. I can see this browser being my default browser, but for the moment it’s missing a few key features that I liked within Firefox, Features which I didn’t realise I relied on so much.
- View Selection Source
- Fullscreen Browser Mode
- Speed Dial - yes, Chrome has a speed dial but I liked being able to choose whats on it like I can in Mozilla Firefox and Opera.
These are not deal breakers, I can certainly live without them and until recently actually did. Google’s Chrome is most undoubtedly better then even the latest beta of the Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and generally on par with the others. It would be nice to be able to extend the browser but that’s not something which I require. It does fall short in a few areas, but makes up for them in others. So yeah, it works and it works well.
If your still using Internet Explorer upgrade, if not you won’t have much reason to upgrade or switch rather but it’s still worth a look. It’s great to have more competition within the browser market.
Posted September 6th, 2008 by Chris Clarke
Filled under: Japanese
I haven’t touched my Japanese lessons for the last three weeks. Two of those were spent on assignments (or avoiding those assignments) and the last recovering from those assignments and setting up Muse’s Success. Beginning Monday, I’m going to resume the lessons from JapanesePod101, retest myself on the 20 something Hiragana I had memorised when I had to leave it, begin on the remaining Hiragana and hopefully begin getting somewhere again. It’s a long road, but it will be worth it.
Posted September 4th, 2008 by Chris Clarke
Filled under: Web
Muse’s Success is joint project between myself and darkthorn to create a searchable database of fiction that has been published online as it’s primary medium. The site has been launched in an alpha-state, but its generally usable and thus we have proceeded with an unofficial launch.
I’d encourage you to take a look if original web fiction is your cup-of-tea or even if its not, you might just find something that you like. The address http://muses-success.sorrowfulunfounded.com. We’ll probably get a proper domain eventually.
Posted September 3rd, 2008 by Chris Clarke
Filled under: Web
Google announced Monday that it was going to release a beta of it’s Web Browser yesterday, or today once we account for the time zones. It’s not out yet, but do expect a quick review once it is. Perhaps one of the interesting things is that they actually used a comic book to introduce it which can be found here - Google Chrome Comic.
The web browser entitled Google Chrome will be open source and will take elements from Mozilla’s Gecko / Firefox, Apples Safari / Web Kit and even Internet Explorer. It will have the usual features such as tabs, and I think we can assume it will have the Google-powered phishing filter and such that come built into Mozilla Firefox, and I also expect a Google Search box. The browser is also promising faster speed, better stability and more powerful JavaScript. It will have Gears built in. It will also take a feature from Internet Explorer by utilising sandboxing for each tab which should help in the fight against malware by limiting its access to the Operating System. (although I think Internet Explorer just sandboxes the entire process, and not the individual tabs)
Now, I’m happy to see Google enter the browser space. Diversity and choice can only help the web and if done right, it won’t affect coding process for the web designers / developers with bug after bug (like IE, grr). I do however have a few concerns / comments / questions.
- Will Google’s AdSense ads target based on browsing history now? Since its open-source, I guess if this happens, someone can just strip it out and release it fairly easily. It would be a privacy policy nightmare I’m sure.
- What does this mean with the inclusion of WebKit / KHTML in Android? Will the Google Browser replace this?
- Why now? It has been rumored and denied for years now that this was / wasn’t coming. Why now suddenly? What has changed?
- Will I have the option of mapping functions to non-Google services? Since Google has products and services in several common spaces, its possible that things like the Mail button will be tied to Gmail, the search engine tied to Google, the bookmarks tied to Google notebook?, the RSS functions tied to Google Reader and so on. Can I change these? (lets disregard that I use Google for all that besides the bookmarks which I don’t use anyway, except to manage the link page in this blog where I use Delicious)
- The browser promises better memory management but is 31 processes for 30 tabs really that much better? Or, am I more likely to run out of memory? I mean a process - doesn’t that load into memory more then just the page data? I guess I don’t know what I’m talking about here - I code in PHP afterall - I don’t have to worry about this.
- Google’s pages are not exactly known for their conformance to standards, I hope the browser does a better job. Considering they are apparently using WebKit, we are probably safe there.
- Will this work under Linux? What about Mac OS X? — seems its going to be available on both platforms eventually.
I think Google is in a good position to make a dent in Internet Explorer’s market share (and any browser is a good alternative - well the main ones), due to a combination of brand recognition, that almost everyone uses Google Search at least, and resources. I’m also hoping that this doesn’t hurt Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera but I guess it’s inevitable that some users will switch.
Giood luck, Google! I think we’ll be holding you to the “Don’t be evil!” policy though.
Yeah, I guess that’s all I had to say. Good night!
Posted September 2nd, 2008 by Chris Clarke
Filled under: University
The assignment I talked about in my last post was handed in yesterday morning. I met the word count after hours of sitting at the PC, and I eventually found myself desiring more words in which to write within. I had to leave the report incomplete and have a shorter conclusion / recommendation section then I would have wanted. I think about 600 - 1000 more words would have allowed me to cover the topic properly but I would have been penalised for it, and well I was to tired to write more by that point anyway.
I’ve started my new subjects, Internet: Cyberanalytics and Internet: Policy, Regulation and Governance. I think Cyberanalytics would be better taken before Internet: Media Business, so if your reading this and your choosing subjects, do Cyberanalytics first. I’m sure it would help with the research report assignment.
~ Chris