Obsession Knows No Bounds

The centre of fixation

1. Seriously, this is bordering on creepy, some dude has put up a blog dedicated solely to the one of the actresses on the Pepsi/iTunes song giveaway ad. I mean, she’s cute and all, but, c’mon!

2. (Mind you, she apparently likes comics. Cute girl, likes comics! If she’s also a gamer she’d be every geeks’ wet dream.)

WordPress 1.5 is Out

1. I’ve had a quick look at it, looks pretty nice. Not an easy transition though, so this will have to stay on 1.2 for a while longer. Need to sort out the specifics of how the new Themes system works, and check out whether my old workarounds are necessary/will still work. From what I seen so far, WordPress has matured big time and bridges the gap between blog software and a full-on CMS software. Fine work by all involved, cheers for building such a kick arse app!

The Great PVR Debacle

1. Blame Apple.

2. I had always wanted a PVR, ever since I heard of TiVo. TiVo is barely still in business, so there’s not much chance of it coming to Australia, so if I wanted one I had to build me own. Then I found out proper HTPC cases are stupendously expensive (this was a while ago, they’ve come down in price but it’s still not cheap), and I dropped the whole idea because it was waaaay out of my budget (which, at little more than $400, barely covered the case at that time).

3. It wasn’t until the Mac mini came out that I started getting interested again. The idea of a headless Mac is a horse I’ve beaten to death on many occasions, so I was interested in one anyway. But there just isn’t any cheap, decent Digital TV options for the Mac platform, and the one that does exists requires a Dual G5 to play smoothly (don’t ask). So that was that, and I had to look elsewhere.

4. I then considered a chipped XBox — plenty of people are doing it, and it works pretty well. Except, I can’t record or watch TV, which is a huge reason for wanting a PVR in the first place. Scrap again.

5. Then a mate introduced me to his PVR, an Athlon 1800+ in a micro ATX box, all built for $450. Brilliant! Just couldn’t resist, went out and bought all the bits (For the geeks: AMD Semperon 2200+, ASUS A7V400-MX, 256mb of Generic RAM, Gigabyte Radeon 9000 with TV-out, 160Gb HD, VisionDTV HDTV card) and put it all together. I’m running Win2k, myHTPC, DigitalWatch for TV, DVB Webscheduler for recording, mPlayer and VLC for playing odd videos. It’s taken me about two weeks now massaging everything into place, and so far so good. Digital TV is spectacular, and I can finally enjoy all those episodes of the West Wing on my TV rather than the computer. And all those Anime fansubs. Ohhh, bliss…!

Broadband

My ADSL modem summary

1. Ohhh yeah, Telstra finally has a fight on their hands. iiNet (who I’ve been with for a while now) just overhauled their plans, and I’ve just switched to the $50/month for 8000/1000 ADSL — cable modem speeds. I pay $10 less a month now, but get five times the download speeds. Ace! The reason for this minor miracle is over the last couple of years iiNet has been installing their own DSL connection equipment at exchanges across the country, and now they can offer proper ADSL speeds and pricing. Goes to show how much Telstra has been screwing everybody with their Wholesale ADSL pricing. Telstra had better pull their finger out, or they’re gonna get smacked.

New PowerBooks

1. And guess what? No PowerBook G5. No Dual Core G4. Nice little bump up, same cash, more stuff (512mb RAM is standard across the line — finally). Of course, the idiotic fanboys are complaining, not surprisingly, but I think this post (#536) clearly illustrates their cluelessness and general delusional nature of these morons:

Ok, here is what we need.

Dual Core CPU capable of running dual oses at the same time. One runs Windows and one runs OS X. Its totally possible. If apple just used the new dual core Pentium Ms being released Q1 2006 it could do it just by releasing that OS X version they make for x86. They have it they just won’t sell it. Now that would be a kick ass computer period. I would buy 2 just for the hell of it. Next would be a quad core that runs dual cores per OS. YES!

Apple don’t be selfish. Release the cool stuff NOW!

2. Yeah Apple, release your nonexistent stuff now! I know I need psychiatric assistance, but the nurses here let me roam unsupervised on the internet, and I just know you have all that stuff locked up in Stevie’s office and he doesn’t wanna share! It’s not fair! MAMMA!