Richard's Rant

Technorati!!

Well,

I have finally created a Technorati profile. I have been resisting it for ages, but I finally caved in.

 Below is the claim link.

New PC – Finally after 4 years!

So I *Finally* bit the bullet and bought a new PC to replace the 4 year old one. I settled on t he following:

·         Asus P5B Wi-Fi Deluxe

o   Not too bad, but the Wi-Fi was a mistake. It is really sucky

·         4 GB 800 MHZ RAM

·         Intel 6700 Core 2 Duo

·         2 x 320 GB Western Digital Hard Drive

·         Thermaltake Soprano glossy black case and PSU with 3 case fans

·         Pioneer DVD writer

·         16 in 1 Card reader

·         BENQ FP222W widescreen 22 inch monitor (very sweet)

·         BFG NVidia 7950 GT (512 MB DDR 3)

Vista runs like a dream, and has a vista score of 5.4

I really am a lazy bugger (Part II)

Well,

How long has it been since I posted? (apart from the others I have done today?) Oh yes, that’s right – just before I went on holiday to the UK. Well, that has been and gone, and I have been back for a couple of months now. It has been the most hectic 3 months that I can remember.

UK Holiday

Well, the holiday started with me flying to London on 9^th of September. The first leg of the flight was Brisbane to Singapore, with a 4 hour stopover. The plane was an airbus, and was a very nice plane. Unfortunately, the in-flight entertainment system was not working properly, but was still a large leap above any others that I have seen. Kudos to Qantas for an awesome entertainment system.

The next leg of the flight would have to be one of the worst that I have ever had. British Airways is truly a sucky airline. I am not a large person, and I had trouble sitting in the seat like a sardine.  The entertainment system sucked a huge amount (think 6 channels with the same 3 hour program revolving over a 14 hour flight period – really really really sucky), and the airline staff were obnoxious, rude, and terribly inefficient.  My advice? If it costs an extra $200 to fly with someone else, make the effort. British Airways suck for international.

 Anyway, more posts to come on the holiday

Work

The last 2 months I have been at a government department, porting VB 6 applications to C#.NET, and designing a web site. Not overly challenging, but interesting enough.

Garden

The last 2 weeks I have been on holiday from work, and have been finishing the paving around the house. I initially had a plan to only do around the back for now, and leave the side till winter. But since we have been having unusually mild summer weather (it has not really gotten above 30° Celsius, I decided to press on and do the side as well. All in all, around 50m². Also, my father decided that he was bored at home and gave me a hand.

There were a number of challenges in doing the paving.

Calculating the amount of road base (which I got horribly wrong and that is why I ended up doing the paving down the side as well),

Cutting off a 2 x 1 x .1 m ramp from the shed. The ramp was going to be right in the middle of the path, and would have looked very lame.

Vista Review – So far, so good

Well, I have been using Windows Vista Ultimate for a month now, and so far it has been pretty good, considering that it is a new OS. There have been a few niggles along the way though, and I have managed to BSoD it a number of times.

Media Centre Store Manager

This one really bugs me. When the PC has been running for a few minutes, the Media Centre Store Manager crashes. I have no idea what this is (and I have not looked into what it is), and is annoying in a “I was enjoying the stability until this”.

BSoD

I have traced this to WoW patch downloader. It seems that if I have any USB devices attached, it will BSoD after trying to download after 5 minutes. Pretty repeatable as well.

Drivers

This is my biggest annoyance. The board that I got (Asus P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi) drivers for Vista suck. Really suck. The Wi-Fi driver does not work at all (will not connect to a secured network), and I have had to revert to old XP drivers. Alas, there are no 64 bit drivers available that work, so that beautiful 4 GB of RAM is wasted so far. *sigh*

Thankfully, NVidia *finally* released the RTM drivers the other day. Woot!

Screen Flicker

When I run an application that requires administrative privileges, the screen darkens and shows the UAC authorisation screen. Why does it have to flicker? It is almost as if it is switching form 3D mode to 2D mode. Mind you, this appears to have disappeared since I installed the new NVidia drivers

I have been tagged by the meme challenge!!!!! ARGGGGHHHHH!!!

I have been dreading this for a while now. I was hoping that my silence and absence of postings would protect me from revealing some things that not many people know about me. Alas, I have been tagged in the Tech Meme challenge by a good friend of mine, VSTS Guru and all-round good guy, Anthony Borton in the meme challenge.

Seems as how I have had the “honour” of being tagged, here are a few tidbits of info that most would not know:

1.       I still play the guitar and once belonged to a garage band (though we were never very good. I failed the vocal audition which says a lot about my signing voice)

2.       I spent 2 months in Germany in 1989/1990 and saw the Berlin Wall come down on New Years Eve of 1989. Very awesome experience

3.       I have a Bachelor of Science in Genetics, Microbiology, and Biological Science from Griffith University which I got in 1991. (IT is my second career)

4.       My current conservative hair style was not always so conservative. I used to have really long hair, and used to “headbang” to heavy metal (AC/DC, Led Zeppelin)

5.       My favourite ever music artist is Duran Duran (very sad, I know. I even went to see them when they came out a few years ago)

There are other, even more embarrassing things, but those are only revealed over a lot of alcohol. So there you go. Some embarrassing, some interesting.