Jonty's blog

I haven't bought a console since my trusty Playstation, unless the Game Boy Colour counts.
If I was to buy a new one, which may be entirely possible now I have income of my own (last time a new generation came out I had to rely on my parents, which is never a good thing, and I never got any of them. :(), it'd be the Wii, simply because it's such great fun to play. That, and my cousin put his Wiimote through their TV.

I wouldn't mind any of them though, as I could install Linux on the PS3 and play Halo 3 on the 360. You can't win 'em all, though.

Vote for which is your favourite right here! If you're looking from planet.tt-f, I had to remove the poll from the main bit because it was screwing up my XHTML compliance for some reason. Just come to the website and look down the left-hand side. }:)

I still wish I had a Mac.
Until I save up enough money to buy one, which will be in approximately 357.9 years, I'm back to using Windows XP.

My copy of C&C3 arrived two weeks ago today; at first I played it on Vista, but then in pretty rash moment I decided to reinstall XP to see how it ran. On Vista, I got about 20fps (OK, that's just a guess, but it was hardly snappy) at 1280x1024 with everything except VFX and AA on medium (the VFX seems to murder my graphics card, but I'm hardly surprised). When I reinstalled it in XP, I got almost full speed with everything except VFX and AA on high/ultra-high, same resolution.

I rest my case. :D

The RAM I ordered from dabs.com on the 19th of February has just arrived!
Apart from the fact it took a month to get it in stock, they went quite quickly. They sent me a dispatch e-mail on Friday and now here it is, on Saturday morning.
And it was delivered by Royal Mail.

However, there's one thing that's bugging me that I have to address before I plonk it in the spare DIMM slot: The packaging.
I'm sure pictures speak louder than words, so here are some rubbish mobile phone pictures (OK, I did resize them from 2MP) to illustrate my point.

The box it arrived in, about 30cm x 20cm x 8cm.
The actual package, about 10cm x 5cm x 0.5cm.
Now if that isn't pointless, I don't know what is. :O

I still haven't got my modem to work, and this USB thing disconnects all the time. :(
I have ordered 1Gb of extra RAM though, giving me 1.5Gb in total. :D
I shalt report back when it arrives, as I am posting from school right now. :P

It seems that everyone I know nowadays either loves the new OS from Microsoft, or hates it. People who know me can probably guess I'm one of the latter. }:)
I decided to make a little log of my experiences with it so far...

• Use GParted to clear my XP partition and make it a bit bigger, so it can easily accommodate Vista.
• Reboot from Ubuntu, put in the Vista DVD, seems to install OK. Currently thinking: "Hmm, this seems to be going nicely"
• Vista loads fine, I set up some things
• I decide that the partition doesn't need to be as big as it is, and use GParted in Linux to tear 5Gb off it.
• Vista refuses to boot.
• Vista DVD appears to load system files from the hard drive "to make it faster," which therefore also refuses to boot. Currently thinking: "That's just typical, it works fine to start with, then goes kaput as soon as you've set everything up"
• Spend about an hour searching TechNet forums to find out the solution is to use the XP Recovery Console. Not do anything in it, just log in to it and then reboot.
• Problem fixed. I decide to see how fast Internet Explorer 7 runs. Internet doesn't work.
• Spend another hour in Linux searching TechNet forums to find the new TCP/IP stack is to blame, and that it is very unlikely I will be able to get the internet to work that way. Currently thinking: "What the hell was wrong with the old TCP/IP stack?"

So, I'm not best pleased. Until my parents get around to buying a wireless kit (:P) I either have to have no internet, or use the awful USB modem that I bought the Ethernet modem to avoid.

Apart from that, Vista seems about as good as XP. They did reasonably well with the new Aero interface, but I keep finding rough edges (The windows fade and wobble and all that, but the Start menu still just appears?) and it doesn't particularly impress someone who has been using AIGLX-enhanced Beryl for a few months. :D
That "You need to grant administrative privileges to this program" thing is really annoying, but at least you can turn it off, and most other things seem just too user-friendly. I want to be able to tweak and change, not be stuck with a Welcome Centre all the time!

And thus ends my Vista rant/saga.
Or does it?