The plan is to go out riding just about every weekend this summer, with a different destination each time. I might just post pictures.
I’m putting this up here mostly for myself, so that I can easily find and download it in a myriad of places to avoid setting it up manually. Below is the .vssettings file containing my font and color settings for Visual Studio 2008. I adapted it from the “Vivid” scheme, which I am told was originally from Textmate. At any rate, if you are interested in trying something new, you might give it a shot. “Install” via Tools > Import and Export Settings. XP users, you’ll need the Consolas font, available here.
Download (VS2008): GruntisColorsForVS2008.vssettings
Download: (VS2010): GruntisColorsForVS2010.vssettings (Note: this is a complete export, and includes more than just colors. Be careful importing it.)
I got the AE86 back from the bodyshop on Friday. The damn thing looks so good now, I’m afraid to even drive it. As is my usual custom, I’m going to just dump a whole ton of images here. Click on any of these for larger versions.
For those of you not in the know, this is my 1985 Toyota Corolla GT-S.
But Fopedush! What about the inside of the car? Were you ever able to get those vomit stains out? Hell yes I was, here are some of the pictures I took last year after the new interior went in:
They just KEEP ADDING MORE
We don’t currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the
idealonly destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we’re encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We’re looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.
http://kotaku.com/5304113/no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii
Here is a quote from slashdot user CorporateSuit that pretty well sums up the truth of the matter:
“We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.”
How is connecting all the computers in the room to a server across the state going to ever be better than connecting all the computers in the room to each other? This man just told everyone that his bullshit is going to start tasting better than icecream. He just needs a neon sign over his head that says “Do not trust this man or anything he says.”
OnLive is Stupid
Mar 25
The entire concept behind OnLive is absolutely, unequivocally insane. These people have taken quite possibly the only aspect of personal computing that cannot be transferred to a distributed system, and attempted to do just that. They’re touting their amazing encoding algorithm because it only incurs (read: adds) one millisecond of latency to the process of streaming video to the user. Don’t worry about the other 150ms of latency while your commands are sent to the server, and another 150ms as the video makes its way back across the Internet to your screen, no problem there. Don’t these people remember the uproar several years ago when people found it impossible to play their Xbox games on early LCD screens, because of 15ms of latency? This ship is going to sink very, very quickly once people start actually trying it.
ICantLose.com
Feb 8
If you are here trying to get to ICantLose.com, then it means I fucked up and the domain name transfer is pointing at the wrong location. In the mean time you can find ICL at http://www.fopedush.com/icantlose.
Pinto 5
Feb 4
Wellp, Pinto 5 is done (and has been for a while). Here are the final specs:
- Intel Core i7 920 CPU 2.66Ghz
- GA-EX58-UD3R System Board
- 3GB G.Skill DDR32000 (PC16000)
- EVGA 896-P3-1258-AR Geforce GTX260 (216 “cores“, clock speed 675Mhz)
- Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750W, 60A@12v PSU
- Some kind of hard drive
- Lian Li PC-A71A case
I ended up with a stable overclock of 3.20Ghz (160Mhz * 20), with a ram speed of 1920Mhz (closest I could come to 2000 without going over). I initially bought a Thermaltake V1 CPU cooler, and was totally dissatisfied with it. I slapped it onto the Core 2 Duo in Pinto 4 and bought another PSU, the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme. The second HSF cooled much better than the thermaltake, for about the same price.
I had never overclocked before, so I had no idea what I was doing. I initially let the software bundled with the gigabyte system board overclock for me, but ended up with far too much heat. The application had upped the CPU voltage to 1.365. The Anandtech forums advised me that much overclocking is possible on the i7 without any voltage increase, so I reset everything and overclocked to 3.20Ghz without changing the voltage a bit from stock (1.20v). Much lower temperatures ensued, with no change in stability. The system stayed stable with maximum tempterature reaching 65C during a 15-hour prime95 test.
I benched Windows XP versus Vista once again, and once again XP won (though by a smaller margin this time around – only 6%). I’ll switch to Vista on my gaming rig once DirectX 10 becomes necessary, or Vista starts outperforming XP, whichever comes first (haw).
Now I’m pretty much just going to dump a bunch of pictures here and describe them. Click to enbiggen.
This is a Sandra CPU arithmatic comparison of Pinto 5, compared with the four previous pintos. As you can see, asses are being kicked left and right here.
Here is a comparison of my Core i7 920 with reference results for the other i7 processors. My $270 CPU seems to be outperforming a $1500 CPU. Neat.
Here is the obligatory shot of all the components before I started building. The Lian Li case is so large it has its own gravitational field.
Inside the monster. That vertical bar there is supposed to be for stabilizing PCI cards. I couldn’t figure out how it worked, so I just removed it.
This power supply came in a black faux-velvet bag, to appease that segment of the demographic that complained computer hardware ought to be formally dressed.
Intel’s sockets are getting downright weird looking.
So are the undersides of the CPUs. I guess this makes the motherboard the more fragile part, which is probably a good thing.
I don’t know if I was doing something wrong or what, but I had to apply an absolutely obscene amount of pressure to close down the socket cover. Look at the stress on that metal lever!
Everything on the system board, with the original V1 heatsink. Note how stupid looking the heat spreaders on the ram are.
Video card. About the same size as my old 8800GTS, actually.
Everything inside the case. So much hard drive space wasted on a gaming machine. I should get one of these and build a server.
Everything back out of the case, to install the new heatsink. I wouldn’t recommend installing this thing in a mid-tower case.
This ball-bearing latch on the case just struck me as a great example of the quality Lian Li puts into their cases. Almost any other manufacturer would probably have used some kind of tensioned plastic clip to hold the door shut. [citation needed]
Brushed aluminum is so fucking nice. You would have to work really hard to make a brushed aluminum case that looks ugly. (how did they do it??!)
Is it even possible to get a 6 on this thing?
Popping open the task manager and seeing 8 “cores” is kind of nice. We missed you, hyperthreading.
And I am spent. I was going to put some insightful comments down here, but it turns out I’ve got nothing.
God’s Chosen PC Case
Jan 9
…Is the Lian-Li PC-A71A.
This is the first time I have ever spent more than $100 on a computer case, but I think it was about time. This case ought to last me many years.
More to come once Pinto 5 has actually been built….
I Love GTK
Nov 26
Thanks, open source community. Truly only you could pull this off.
This is why cross-platform GUI packages are a terrible idea. This particular gem came from Gimp, but really you can see this kind of amazing behavior in just about any popular application that uses GTK.
Bleargh
Oct 16
For the life of me I just can’t decide which one of these I like more:
