Not a Blog

1. Explosions in the Sky - The Birth and the Death of the Day
2. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
3. Dredg - Ode to the Sun (Perspective 1)
4. Film School - Like You Know
5. Chicane - Leaving Town

posted by complex  # 1/01/2008 02:16:00 AM 1 Comments

So I bought an iPhone and I'm typing this post on it right now.

I'm not going to do a review or anything -- they've already been done -- but I certainly do like it.

posted by complex  # 7/17/2007 12:23:00 PM 4 Comments

Now that my PC is actually working again (long story short: new parts didn't want to play nice together), it's pretty sweet. The full list:

• EVGA nForce 680i: A really awesome motherboard. Too bad DFI doesn't have a version out yet.
• Core 2 Duo E6600: 2.4 GHz stock and currently running at 3.4 GHz with plenty of headroom left (I can boot into Windows at 3.8+ GHz but it gets a bit too hot for my current cooling).
• 2 GB OCZ Platinum Rev 2 DDR2-800: Running slightly underclocked because I've been too lazy to figure out stable timings/voltage for overclocking.
• EVGA 8800 GTX: A beast. I had to move a hard drive to fit it in my case. It rules.
• 74 GB WD Raptor: 10,000 RPM makes a pretty big difference sometimes, but I could really use the 150 GB version. Splinter Cell Double Agent takes up almost 10 GB installed, so I can't really keep many games installed at once anymore.
• Three 250 GB Seagates (RAID 5): Connected to a Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 PCI Express card. I'm going to expand this to a 1 TB array soon-ish.
• Chaintech AV710: $30 for an awesome Envy24-based sound card? Yes please.
• Two 20" Samsung 204Ts: Nice monitors but if I were buying again, I would probably get Dells.
• Logitech G15: Christmas gift. The LCD is actually more useful than I thought it would be. The Teamspeak and foobar2000 plugins are nice.
• Logitech G7: Best. Mouse. Ever.
• And some fancy headphones...

Zoom. I'll probably upgrade to a quad core processor next year, assuming Intel has some reasonably priced ones on the market. Too bad AMD isn't really keeping up with Intel these days, but prices actually haven't been too bad on the Intel side.

posted by complex  # 12/28/2006 01:39:00 PM 1 Comments

Still playing EVE (now with goons for extra flavor). Still not updating regularly or with anything actually interesting.

Oh, and it snowed a lot yesterday. It's still snowing now, but it looks like it's starting to let up.

posted by complex  # 12/21/2006 12:13:00 PM 0 Comments

Well, I'm still (sort of) playing EVE. More offline training and less actual playing.

But the important news today is that Logitech finally fixed the G7. Instead of the stupid glossy coating they had all over the first version, it now has the G5-style textured coating on the sides. It's still glossy on top but since you aren't gripping that region, it seems acceptable. I picked one up today and... Greatest mouse ever.

posted by complex  # 10/31/2006 12:28:00 PM 0 Comments

I've been playing EVE Online for almost a week now... It can be slow, tedious, boring, and annoying (for example: this morning I was ratting in 0.4 and a battleship came out of nowhere and slaughtered me for no apparent reason), but it can also be pretty fun if you're flying around with some friends. The amount of skills and the time it takes to train them is pretty daunting, but I like the depth and complexity of it.

Now if they would just add a training queue system...

posted by complex  # 7/21/2006 01:24:00 AM 0 Comments

Speaking of Mail...

I finally figured out how to get it to properly save my sent items/drafts/trash to the server. I blame shitty UI design for my initial failure: to mark a mail folder as the primary junk folder, for example, one has to select it and then use the "mailbox" menu (up top) to give it a function. One would think this would also be under the context menu when right-clicking on the folder, but no! Oh well. Perhaps this is just my crazy backwards Windows thinking at work. RDF save me!

I'm going to try using Mail and Safari (with Saft, SafariStand, and PithHelmet) for a while to see how they compare to Thunderbird and Firefox. But now, food and sleep.

posted by complex  # 7/13/2006 12:55:00 AM 0 Comments

Holy fuck. That show ruled.

Worst part: Having to wait through Dillinger Escape Plan.

Best part: Totalimmortal as the last song. I moshed my ass off.

They only played a few songs from the new album, which I was happy about — good songs, but the older ones are still better. They didn't play anything from their first three albums which was okay by me, although it would have been fun to hear just a little old school stuff.

posted by complex  # 7/11/2006 11:52:00 PM 0 Comments

I'm going to see AFI tonight. Should be an awesome show, I just hope they play a lot of older stuff. The new album is really good too, but it's definitely not my favorite. If I had to rate them, I think it would go like this:

1. The Art Of Drowning
2. All Hallows EP (just because of Totalimmortal, really)
3. Black Sails In The Sunset
4. Sing The Sorrow
5. Decemberunderground
6. Shut Your Mouth And Open Your Eyes
7. A Fire Inside EP
8. Answer That And Stay Fashionable
9. Very Proud Of Ya

But I'm pretty sure it's going to kick all ass no matter what they play.

posted by complex  # 7/11/2006 01:49:00 PM 0 Comments

I bought a MacBook Pro (15", 2.0 GHz, 2 GB, 80 GB) recently. I've been using it side-by-side with my Windows desktop via Synergy. My typical usage is something like this:

Windows

• IRC because mIRC is still the best client for any OS.
• Playing/managing music because nothing even comes close to Foobar.
• Photo editing because Adobe is too lazy to make a universal binary for Photoshop until CS3 next year, so it's approximately 800 times faster in Windows. Besides, my desktop is simply a faster machine.
• Downloading (torrents and usenet typically) because all my disk storage is in my desktop and it would be silly to download something just to have to transfer it across the network.
• Games (of course).

OS X

• Firefox because the other screen is already full and OS X's font antialiasing is nicer than ClearType.
• Thunderbird because the other screen is already full and the default theme for Mac is way better than the Windows one. I might use Apple's Mail if it worked better with IMAP (i.e. actually let me specify where to save drafts or sent items — and worked properly).
• SSH because a real terminal is easier/nicer than running PuTTY for each session.
• Instant messenging because Adium is pretty great.
• Coding/editing/writing to see if TextMate is really all it's cracked up to be. So far I think it's alright. It's also nice to have a built-in Apache server.
• Watching shows/movies since I can just hook the laptop up to the TV/receiver and use the remote.

I still think Macs are overpriced, but they've become much better machines since the Intel switch. OS X is nice, it's just a shame you have to buy a Mac to use it.

Oh, and i use this seems pretty nice. I set up my list of commonly used apps.

posted by complex  # 7/10/2006 03:14:00 PM 0 Comments