Matts Blog

Wow – that was a hectic two weeks, and two especially hectic days. I have installed Windows 7 nearly two weeks ago now, pretty much got it to the state I want it in now, using RocketDock as a sort-of sidebar – hiding when I do not need it, appearing when I do – wonderful little application. I have realised one memory gobbler happens to be SpyBot S&D’s TeaTimer (the resident shield protecting my system) – shame really.

Only yesterday did I want to start getting into PHP but needed a local development environment – while I could have easily used XAMPP or WAMP servers, I wanted… if not insisted on getting my hands dirty and going with the full Apache, PHP and MySQL install each one being separate. Certainly an interesting experience – would have helped if I had read the PHP website instructions much earlier, that caused some tiny headaches. But all is well and it works wonderfully!

Then this morning I take a quick glance at my room (I normally avoid doing so), noticing piles of clothes, a rather dusty and crumb-scattered desk – plus paper which has been on my floor far too long. I end up cleaning the whole lot, not quite done but now its just an issue of putting stuff where it belongs.

I forgot to mention my wonderful new keyboard, the Saitek Eclipse II – being one of the cheaper and basic options for the Eclipse range, my z-board had broken (one key had stopped functioning, the connection on the membrane had broken). There are a few issues with it, such as the right-arrow key not working mid-press… I hardly use it anyway, and I just have to tap it harder if it doesn’t work.

So all-in-all a pretty busy time – looking forward to Left 4 Dead 2 later this month (I have been sceptical about it, but the preview demo has given me some assurances about characters and quality (and fun)). New computer case for Christmas, rearranging my desk for that and for a slight change – fun times!

I’m currently working on my own personal little library for PHP, I haven’t touched it in far too long amount of time – I’ve also had project ideas so going to be quite busy if gaming doesn’t have anything to say about that (and it probably will to some degree).

It has arrived faster than I was expecting, the release date for Windows 7 is so very close now – although our boxed copies are in the snail-mail now. Its a strange one, I have not been particularly over-hyped for it – and for a year now (thereabouts) I have been using Vista pretty much exclusively. I’ve had and still got the W7 release candidate 1 installed, though that had some problems in it to begin with. Plus I was so entrenched in Vista with various apps, games and settings I really didn’t want to clog my hard-drive up more.

So with W7 I plan to reformat my hard-drive and re-partition it, afterall I won’t need some of the multi-boot Operating Systems anymore. Although I may consider trying out a Linux distribution at some point. Starting pretty much fresh… now I just need to sift through the years-worth of junk and only take what I want I hate moving OS.

I find it less and less shocking these days, you see plenty of desktop threads and reports of a slow system it just gets dull to hear. So once again I am willing to take up the banner of cleanliness on your computer, all in the name of some better performance. I find it rare that many users keep a clean system, so there is a good chance you won’t be (apologies if you do, and well done).

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So we’ve just pre-ordered Windows 7 (W7), with news that the new shiny OS is flying off virtual shelves everywhere, I have to say it feels somewhat exciting. I spent some time with the Release Candidate earlier today and actually started to warm to it (more than I was before) as I came across options to bring back text and shrink the icon-size… I can actually see how it might function in my work-flow compared to Vista’s pointless file-cabinet scroll idea.

But it is too early to say whether I will truly fall in love with it, or whether I will be among many other thousands/millions of customers unhappy with their OS. But it hasn’t stopped me thinking about what I plan to do in October when it is released. I am already hatching a plan to ensure the safety of my current work and game-progress, both hobby and college/real work. Backups, browsers and even FTP programs are all going accounted for in this cunning plan of mine.

Its almost like getting the decorations out for Christmas, except in this case its packing everything away and moving home. But don’t worry — I’m just hatching the plan and making preparations, I have no plan to start doing everything now, I may have finished my blog-theme by then

My combat plan is to start with a fresh and clean hard disk, an empty canvas with no old and unused operating systems, no junk in its documents folders and no un-installed game remnants… I must really calm down. I am also thinking of splitting off another partition for a Linux Distro, perhaps as my primary web-development OS… I’m just not sure yet!

Seems an odd title, aye… its come from my experiences with customising Windows Vista with all sorts of little features which just seem to gobble up extra processing time for something I already do to some extent, i.e. a gimmick.

After reading a recent SmashingMagazine article (and not to pee on their fire, it was pretty good) I decided to explore some seemingly good ideas to bring Mac features to the hulking Vista OS – its safe to say most of these additions where promptly uninstalled.

Albeit I already had some of them such as the ever wonderful Notepad++, but among other features was a number of Vista themes, and while perfectly fine looks and style wise, just would not have been practical for long term use – I am still after all this time finding the simplistic Vista Aero theme the perfect style for me.

They also forgot the completely free IIS (built into Windows XP, and can be installed with Vista) which now has more support with the PHP plug-in and ability to work with a local database server such as MySQL. I won’t deny it often feels cumbersome even when used locally – but its a smidge easier to set up. Mind, I do use WAMP too and that works just as well – if not much more quicker than IIS.

The article also covers object-docks and various other Mac features which have been recreated by third-parties for Vista – safe to say I wouldn’t waste my time with them; though no-doubt they could be useful, I have just got into the rythm of Windows.

I should point out the article stems from an earlier Mac-supporting article on SM, so it was another answer to this. I’ll give it one thing, it does prove that there is yet again another alternative to Mac for web-design tasks.

In other news of my own – I’ve had an idea, but ssshhh… its my precious

I’ve noticed this recently as I aim to do research for one of my college tasks, I’m searching for a number of reviews for varying products – particularly Adobe Macromedia/Flash/Dreamweaver. Along my travels – brief I might add – I fail to find a review that seems to be for complete newcomers to these products, they all reference past products and features within said products as benchmarks for the current product.

Now, I don’t particularly have a huge problem with this, but it highlights a trend for reviewers and why they often aren’t reliable for someone after indepth information; they just don’t do so, its like reading heiroglyphs when you’ve never had training/eduction on them. Perhaps I’ve done something similar in the past, in which case its probably warranted that I go back and make changes. But then, surely people looking for reviews of a new product aren’t new to the product-line? Experts or long-time hobbyists?

Either way, its certainly making it hard to find something solid to base my own work upon when most of it focuses on one or two features of a much larger and more capable application. Anyone who reviews something should bare in mind who their target audience just might be, not what they think/hope they are.

And I have updated the front-page again, its a design that may just stay put – but that is never guaranteed.

Yup, well… it seems the strangest of times, where I have been neither here nor there in my emotions – but certainly at no happy median. Its been an interesting couple of weeks, if not weekend – with some discoveries in my family and surprises folks have had, not necessarily welcome, but not unwelcome either.

Personally, I’m now enjoying the sound coming from my PCI Express (x1) Creative X-Fi Audio card; and I suspect those on teamspeak are enjoying a huge amount of reduced noise coming from my open channel. Onboard sound cards are certainly never as good as a true extension card, I’m hearing sounds I never heard before in Guild Wars – and being newly deafened by games I have not had the chance to re-tune the volume for.

It now looks like I might be back into Guild Wars, I feel it won’t last terribly long – so far I’ve spent some time bored only healing occasionally, the damage-dealing-triple-minion-master-build-of-doom seems to support the team well enough both in the damage department and support department. My services where required occasionally though, low damage over time is fine for that build – but once there is any heavy damage be it spike or elemental then something a bit more powerful is needed.

I’d love to have a Zen-like feeling right about now, just sit down, relax and do some work or something truly fun – but nothing is hitting me right now – zombie bashing while is all fun and in good sport, isn’t quite filling in that blank slot right now. News and information is slow on all fronts currently – gaming, web-style, artistic talent, inspiration, etcetera… all of them, piffle.

Time for a British topic, the weather has been up and down too – not helping one bit, there has been some nice changes, almost feeling like a Japanese martial arts film, whereby you see the hero walking down a forest path, blossom falling from every tree. Just without the hero and in a very British suburb, complete with dark clouds and rain! Guess its just those April showers.

It seems I am cursed when playing Left 4 Dead, the first time round saw my Power Supply Unit blow up in my face… ish. Causing me to hurriedly find a replacement over the following day, this was during No Mercy in a versus match.

Surprise, surprise I’m back in No Mercy and my sound locks up (I feared the worst), but my computer takes control and turns off without so much as a bang or whimper. I’ve had a rather warm graphics card over the past few days so I figured it was a safety measure kicking in – to make sure no further damage is done.

I proceed to do the sensible thing, and instead of rush back to the game I open up the case and take out the PCI sound card, do a little dusting and find it is rather chock-a-block… I expected it in all honesty. So I go back to my game using the onboard sound making sure to use HWMonitor to keep an eye on temps, and all seems pretty darn good.

Once the match is over I proceed to put the sound card back in, boot up my computer and Vista is complaining of no sound output device… uh oh. I think my GPU temps must have slowly damaged my sound card, though still unconfirmed – I’ll have to place it in another computer to make double sure.

In the meantime, I’m using a fairly decent onboard sound card, at least for output – input sound through a mic and its darn terrible. We shall see, but I’d rather have a slim-line card or better yet a PCI-E sound card if it can manage the same quality as my Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music (I’m probably an audiophile in denial… hehe, poet and don’t know it).

*dies for the night*

This is just a general rant or opinion on this, considering I have an online identity that spreads to just about to every corner (that isn’t sordid). I find it more and more difficult to devote a minute of my time to new sites that I sign up to; plus my interest in some of them is generally limited.

For example I have a small number of art sites which I am registered to, these make for casual browsing. I also have a larger collection of game related websites, be it for specific games or for overall news – less casual browsing more for recent news. I also visit a number of general news and technology websites. Chuck in the time I spend gaming or working on new layouts for my website/in general, and I soon have very little time to spend on any other sites or even services.

For example I am always logged into xfire, I rarely log into MSN and I rarely spend any time looking at facebook or similar sites. I’ve read a number of articles in the newspaper or on sites which try to shout down facebook, and claim its the end of our new generation’s “true” social lives – I step with trepidation here, as I do similar things already but not in the same community; and I’m never 100% sure as to the validity of either sides arguments.

But its safe to say I rarely have any interest in developing my online – private presence, be it upload photos, join groups, take quizzes or whatever. Perhaps I’ve become one of the veterans of the internet, much like those of Usenet, and CB Radio – when the general public masses flood in (although admittedly I was one of those) making a significant change to the structure or ways of the web.

On another note, I am never sure where to draw the line; do I want to try and integrate my current online links/acquaintances with my private life through sites such as facebook, or do I try and keep the two completely divided? Or instead of trying to force anything just let it go with the flow?

It has been one of the first weekend where I haven’t had a deadline to meet, or something that I’ve been rushing to do. Furthermore there has been some fairly “heavy” (2inch) snowfall; which has been pretty much re-iterated and hammered into our heads that the United Kingdom isn’t capable of handling.

So I’ve had the chance to really enjoy Fallout 3, which I have now finished – read up on news, even play some Guild Wars, and muck about with the websites I help run. I’ve also had plenty of time to get back into Sacred 2, with the inclusion of the sacred2.net and its almost creepy ability to display an image of your character with their correct armour set on.

I’ve heard some decent news recently, that Unreal Tournmanet 3 (UT3) will be getting a new “uber patch”, as well as 2 free expansions/addons. And if that wasn’t enough, players can now register their retail CD key on Steam; which will be including 50 achievements for the game (presumably when the patch finally arrives).

Now I’m just awaiting news on Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect 2 and the Left 4 Dead maps. That would top the start of this month off nicely.