[ P H E N Y L A L A N I N E |:. ------- .:|:. Stage 3.5 .:|00000011.00000101|:. -------- ]

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

post://4635925369993455624/

2006 Legacy GT - 3 good, 1 leaky struts w/ 30,000 - Best Offer
2006 Legacy GT - stock shift knob - Best Offer
Numark DJ Mixer DM1050 - $50
AMDFX-55 2.6ghz Media Center PC - $300
MAudio Keystation 49e USB/Midi Keyboard - $60
2 x nVidia GTX 280s 1G (for SLi) - pair for $300 OBO
New ASUS 19" LCD in Box - $125
30" Dell Dual DVI Monitor (2560 x 1600) (no usb/flash drives) - $750
iMac 1ghz G4 (desklamp) - needs new power supply - $100 (1 copy OSX, 1 copy OSX 10.3)
Full size (2.5ft") Computer Case, black with front slide panel - $20
Atari 800XL computer with Atari slot, built in keyboard, 5 1/4" disk drive - Best Offer
Game Cube w/ 4 controllers, standard & HD hookups, 6 games Mario Party, Mario Party, and some others - $75

Labels: 2009, consumerism

posted @ 08:36

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

post://4306510762466182006/

I received my EVGA 295 GTX Co-Op today and here are the results!

17:45 - Card installed, powered on
18:00 - Drivers Updated, restarted
21:06 - done with benchmarking

Initial observations:
Compared to the 280 GTX:
- same length
- feels heavier
- a tad thinner

Hardware installation included 2 devices (GTX 295)
I left a 280 in there for strictly PhysX for now but going to do try benchmarks both with and without it on both cards.

Test: -/+ for decreased / increased performance

3DMark Vantage (Ambient Occlusion: ON | PhysX: ON): +
Score: 16209
CPU: 33477
Graphics: 13831

3DMark 2006 (Ambient Occlusion: ON | PhysX: ON): =
Score: 13260
SM 2.0: 4953
SM 3.0: 6965
CPU: 3268

3DMark Vantage (Ambient Occlusion: OFF | PhysX: OFF): +
Score: 12415
CPU: 8610
Graphics: 14560

3DMark 2006 (Ambient Occlusion: OFF | PhysX: OFF): -
Score: 13126
SM 2.0: 4830
SM 3.0: 6935
CPU: 3263

GTA IV: -
Benchark @ 1920 x 1200
Texture Quality High
Texture Filter Quality: Very High
View Distance: 25
Detail Distance: 30

Previous (2 x 280 GTX):
Average FPS: 52.01
Duration: 37.55 Sec
CPU Usage: 77%
System Memory Usage: 36%
Video Memory usage 92%

Current (1 x 295 GTX Co-Op):
Average FPS: 48.96
Duration: 37.72 sec
CPU Usage: 78%
System Memory Usage: 38%
Video Memory Usage: 99%

Crysis: -
I was a custom mix of Very High and High with a lower view distance with the previous cards but durring hectic battles I'd notice everything getting really choppy.

With the new card autodetect chose all High
1920 x 1200 was too much for it at first, but after it settled in and had the textures loaded it went relatively smooth and playable. I turned down to 1280 x 800, the next lowest 16:10 resolution in the list but the quality wasn't worth it. The text was way too blocky, and the trees all had squares where light shone in-between the leaves. I turned it up to 2560 x 1600 and it looked really good but and still had similar performance as the other resolutions. Overall I'd say this is an improvement as I can eek up the shaders and the physics with little to no impact in framerate... too bad said framerate is a steady 30 fps or so. I have the latest version and drivers but I remember a past bug in Crysis where it would run worse if you changed the resolution in game so I'll try this one again tomorrow.

NFS Undercover: +
I had it at 1920 x 1200 previously - with medium world effects (I hate the motion blur) all detail set to highest and 6x AA. I had turned off VSynch previously because it was pulling it down to 30 when I was probably getting about 40 or so, but I HAD to enable it with the new card. I was getting at least 60fps easy and even when I turned it up to 2560 x 1600 I had to turn on VSynch to make it not look like everything was in Fast Forward.

Benchmarks really don't gain much over my 2 x 280s and even go down in the game test. That's partly because the new card actually reduces my available video RAM. The RAM is what I had originally targeted as my bottleneck for draw distance in GTA and this isn't going to help at all, I even need to bring it down a little.

I'm not super impressed, especially since I could get the same performance and even better high resolution performance from my 2 (and now much cheaper) 280s. All in all I'm sure if you're running lower resolution you could kick some ass running 2 of these, but good luck with that.

Rendering is faster due to the increased clocks and there is a noticebly higher quality to the image but as far as sheer frame rates go - this card isn't going to cut it for anyone running higher then 1920 x 1200.

My recommendation is that if you're looking for high performance AND high resolution - stick with the 295 GTX 1g+ cards. I'll be waiting for the higher memory cards to come out, and praying my 90 days for the step up program is enough time.

Labels: 2009, 3dmark, consumerism, games, games for windows, hardware, materialism, video

posted @ 18:03

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

post://6427700829808250218/

You may have played "Peggle" on PopCap before, but now you can get it on your iPod - I just found Peggle on iTunes for $4.99

Labels: 2009, consumerism, download, games

posted @ 09:43

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

post://3466609533750886962/

Oh... so nice.

I just re-downloaded much of the old music I had purchased off iTunes. iTunes finally went full DRM free - 256k, not the best but almost. 320k is the most you can get normally and most pop tunes won't fill that bandwidth on VBR (variable bit rate - adjusts the size to fit how complicated the music is).

In any case there were a lot of tracks I had lost when the mac harddrive originally went - I had backed it up but I hadn't gotten them all. At the time Pepsi was doing their promotion. 1 in 5 caps had a free code for an iTunes download. On a hunch and a curiosity trip I bought 5 one day. I won a free iTunes download on 4 out of 5 and was hooked. For the rest of the summer I never bought fewer then 5 pepsi's at a time. By the end of that summer I believe I garnered over 130 songs before that promotion was through. Free songs, free soda - however you want to look at it.

I was just presented the opportunity to purchase my previously purchased songs. Granted, it's a little bit backwards sounding - I've already paid for these, why do I need to re-buy them? Well, it used to be that you had to do your entire library - an all or nothing sort of thing. A lot of those for me were free tracks or tracks I found sucked after I downloaded the whole thing and got to listen to more then 30 seconds. There was no way I was paying $235 for all the tracks I had ever downloaded. I've now gone through and cherry picked the best ones. I can now use these AAC files with my XSession Pro for mixing without having to record a playing iTunes DRM'd file and make an MP3 of it. It's worth the effort to pay an extra 30 cents for that.

In any case check it out and see what you can do for upgrades.

Labels: consumerism, music, technology

posted @ 00:54

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Tuesday, April 07, 2009

post://7853510666201610976/

more to follow, teaser:

Labels: 2009, consumerism, games, games for windows, hardware, technology

posted @ 21:05

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Saturday, February 14, 2009

post://5313472958211376515/

I just downloaded the largest demo ever: 2.9 gigs, and it turns out that's because it also has the full game in it. When you go to install it you are presented with 2 buttons: Install Trial or Install Full Game, naturally I chose Install Full Game where it presented me with a spot to put in a registration code from EA. I didn't have one but I did see that it's $39 at the EA store so you can download the demo and turn it into the full game.

I thought game companies did away with this sort of thing. Isn't it a little too tantalizing to have a carrot dangled in front of a hackers face of being able to download the full game right out the box or are they confident that their downloadable game technology is safe?

In either case it's kinda cool to be able to download the demo, figure out if you like it and then click a button and input a code to get the full thing. Also cool if you know how to crack I suppose. If it's good I might just consider paying them the $39 though, I like to support good ventures and there's a shortage of racing games in the PC world that don't have hokey dialog (now that they've turned NFS into a bad 2Fast movie).

[Buy the Game]
[Download the Demo & See Screenshots]

Labels: consumerism, games, games for windows, graphics, SLi

posted @ 08:16

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Sunday, January 04, 2009

post://6159892700569416999/

Peapod has taken forever to come to the area... it sucks because I would love to order my groceries online and then have them delivered. The next best thing to that is ordering online and picking them up. Well the time has come for online grocery shopping as Big Y has BigY2Go in Greenfield and Springfield (Walpole too but that's all Boston-y).

I was able to go through our entire grocery list and order. You can search, or go through by category and choose what you want in your order. The best part was that it not only shows you the sales, but you can sort by unit price so you can see which is the cheapest method of buying each thing. I saw poptarts, an 8 count and a 12 count and I could see the 12 count was quite a beat cheaper per unit.

That may seem obvious, but there are other foods where it's not so obvious, and even when I'm curious I don't want to look all over multiple shelves comparing the tomatoes... and what happens when you see that thing you want in an odd part of the grocery store, do you go look for the best deal where it's home is, or do you just pick it up? That's what they're counting on!

Shopping this way allows me to see all the raisins available, and judge whether it's really worth the 6 cents a unit or 30 cents a package for the better tasting ones. The issue can't really be made for saving money, however - because if you were really looking to save all this money you wouldn't be paying them $10 to go grab your list of items off the shelves for you.

$10 for an entire order of groceries (translates to $3 an hour the way I food shop) is well worth it, and I feel quite a reasonable price. So if you live in Springfield or Greenfield MA - give it a shot, it sounds like this could be the feature and I'm loving the potential.

Labels: consumerism, cool, technology, web

posted @ 21:42

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Saturday, January 03, 2009

post://6990541718987691637/

I beat Fallout 3 today - tried it ever which way to survive. Unfortunately the ending comes out almost the same, with a few changes here and there. I did it right the first time and then reloaded and went back to it. I reached level 20 and Max XP well before I got involved in the last battles of the game. All told it was great, story got even better and though it was slightly more linear towards the end I still really enjoyed it.

I just heard the latest on the DLC which is coming out for both the 360 and PC. 3 installments, they'll be coming out one a month for January - March 2009. The first installment "Battle of Anchorage" lets you play the first battle of the war via simulation, much like "Tranquility Lane". The second installment "The Pitt" is a morality quest into a slave town in Pittsburg. The third and final DLC is the big one, it lets you use all you've gained in the main plot and resumes from where you left off (and lets you advance past level 20).

The first 2 DLCs don't seem like they'd do much good to me from a character expansion point until the third one is out. I may just wait for the multipack to come out in March as I'm sure they'll package them in a disc version once they're all released.

Labels: consumerism, download, games, games for windows

posted @ 14:40

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Thursday, January 01, 2009

post://6164516219882452047/

I wanted to note that I'm feeling pretty good now. A weekend of relaxing and eating did me wonders and I've been careful to posture properly at work to reduce undue need for a backeeotomy.

We spent almost new years at Jen and Matt's, ate some ribs, played some wii and then got home in time to see the big sparkly thing... forget what it was but it was sponsored by Nivea.

Labels: consumerism, holidays, new years, status

posted @ 10:20

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Sunday, December 07, 2008

post://6314627219298098290/

Here's the same progression in GTA benchmarks. I didn't have to do much work for this because GTA writes each benchmark to a separate txt file automatically. I pasted into Google Docs and made a graph of it all.

The details are here but this is the graph:

Labels: 3dmark, consumerism, games for windows, hardware, materialism, SLi, technology

posted @ 11:37

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Saturday, December 06, 2008

post://8239767402186441602/

Ok, so after the dust has settled I've completed the Hard Drive externalization (technical prototype) and here are the past couple benchmarks:

2 x New Graphics Card + CPU

New Graphics Card + CPU

New Graphics Card

New Motherboard

Original

Read em and weep.

Labels: 3dmark, consumerism, games for windows, hardware, materialism, SLi, technology

posted @ 22:51

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Tuesday, December 02, 2008

post://441443711170341468/

Yeah... I got it.

I couldn't help myself. I looked at the screenshots, I pondered, and after finding there was no demo to quench my thirst, I ventured to go get it before the stores closed.

It's installing now, and I'm enjoying the extra items in the box. I've got plenty of time to read it all - the game is 18g over 2 DVDs. I wonder if they're dual layer. I guess they'd have to be, even compressed it would be at least 12 to 16g and that's more then 2 4g DVDs could handle.

The new social club feature is kind of odd. Apparently someone had already taken my handle?? I don't quite understand but now my PS3 Social Club, PC Social Club, and XBOX Live (Windows) is now all linked up. I've enjoyed the achievements in Fallout 3, and I guess that was another reason I was eager to get this version. I know I've seen most of the missions already, but I can play it really down and dirty and probably get pretty far.

I was all about the DLC, wondering if it will be out for PC too - and I guess I'll get my answer, but if Fallout can do it (coming in January for both XBOX & PC users) I at least know it's possible, and since it's all LIVE - it ought to come to fruition soon enough.

[update 21:44] Apparently there is a newer version of Games for Windows LIVE. I was just playing Fallout 3 yesterday on LIVE so I expected I'd have the latest release. I didn't play it today though, so there must be a new version just for GTA's release. So on the upside to it still not being installed completely - coolness. Also, because I has x64 VISTA I needed to install x64 specific video encoding engine for the game to start, I guess the video editor and encoding is integral.

Labels: consumerism, games, games for windows

posted @ 21:10

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

post://1286577185651811615/

GOG.com has gone live, you can purchase Good Old Games for 5.99 or 9.99 depending.
Descent 1 & 2 (or 3 & Expansion), Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics, Kingpin, Messiah, and Redneck Rampage - remember that one? I also found this little gem: Castles 2

No more trying to get Win95/Win98 working with your new hardware, or break out the old Pentium II in order to play these old gems - they're all certified to play on XP and Vista (including x64!).

Awesome.

Labels: consumerism, games, games for windows, nostalgia

posted @ 20:49

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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

post://8616507402771462167/

Nicole got her G1 yesterday - the first and foremost "Google phone"
It runs android - the open source phone OS developed by Google.

At first glance it's about the side of an iPhone (and that's the exact demographic this phone is going for) though no where near as sleek. The screen swings out from the base and pops into place when going into landscape mode.

The home screen has a clock widget with 4 basic icons at the bottom. It appears you can fill up the whole screen with up to 16 icons, if you didn't have the clock there. You're not limited however, because if you slide your finger to the left or the right you have an additional screen on either side for other program icons or widgets. If your application icons aren't on the desktop, they're in the application window. Touch and slide the application tab at the bottom upwards and you'll see all your program icons but I didn't see a way to organize them such as folders or sorting. I'm awaiting more widgets, such as weather or RSS, but with Android being open source - it's only a matter of time (and it'll probably be free).

Making a call is pretty quick and the contact list imports your Gmail address book as soon as you add your info. It's a very detailed set of information and it's easy to add to it when you have a new number - just hold your finger on the number and you can choose new or add to existing.

The camera supports embedded GPS information, for those who like to add to Google earth.
There's no brightness/contrast that I could find, nor a zoom feature but it's pretty high quality with good autofocus. I'd also like to see video capture, but that's probably on the way.

Trackball is great - I'd compare it to an IBM laptop intellistick, similar texture but I still can't say for sure whether it's actually rolling or inferring based on the direction I'm moving my finger over the textured surface. In either case it's really sensitive and great for more accurate movements.

The google maps is pretty good, and uses mylocation over gps by default, so you have a large circle that is your general proximity rather then a precise dot. You can see streetview, which brings attention to one of the coolest features: Compass mode. If you're in streetview and turn on Compass mode whichever direction you turn (even up and down), the phone will indicate the corresponding street view. It's fancy and impressive, but I couldn't see a need for this at first until I realized this was "compass mode" - ie: which way is NESW. The image is good just for verification but not much else other then cool factor and I can't see it working without streetview at your location.

Setting up email was pretty quick, and we were able to get to both web based email as well as import an IMAP (also supports pop3) account without issue. It inferred the servers from the email address, just provided the password and boom - all set.

The data transfer was acceptible, but nowhere near "high speed" as it took over 45 minutes for a 20mb video file. Speaking of which: there's no standard video player. You can view YouTube but individual movies don't play.

When checking voicemail, it was neceesary to pull up the phone keys, press the button to delete, and then put the phone keys away, otherwise I'd accidently hit the keys when I put the phone back up to my ear. So it can be cumbersome to go through several voicemails at a time.

The touch on the screen isn't overly accurate, and dragging can get tricky. You also can't drag an icon from one section of the screen to another. For example: move an icon from the middle screen to the right or left when your main screen gets full. To do so you have to drag the icon to the apps tab to remove it, and re-add it to the screen where you want it. It's not that big of a deal, easy enough to do, but a seemingly needless limitation.

Depending on the application it's difficult to tell when you should hold your finger down, slide it, or tap. I had to try it several different ways for most applications to figure out which was necessary for the particular application. I think this is mostly standardization at this point, and will probably get better as developers get to use the device more.

The battery life doesn't appear to be stellar. I charged it to full in about 3 - 3.5 hours, then used it to download and perform nonstop data transmission for about 3 hours before it was down to 50% battery. I charged it overnight so we'll see how it does after a normal day in standby.

I'm a bit worried about the application store. Granted - each application tells you what permissions it requires from your phone before you download - but that alone can scare you. I'm worried about the rogue program that does what it promises but is actually phoning home and sending your info while you're using it. A lot of the applications require "full internet access", "gps positioning", and some even "access to contact information" such as the Weather Channel's application. That's pretty scary and I'm concerned what they might do with it - some people never read the fine print for free programs.

All in all it's a pretty powerful phone with a lot of potential. It's fairly slim, fairly light and the keyboard is handy and with the trackball you can do everything but type when the keyboard is away. It didn't do much without a data plan, but it does work. It can use wifi, and even with no data* or wifi I was still able to pull down GMail but no web or Pop3/IMAP. There's also no proxy settings like in Windows Mobile so looks like you'll need that $30 data plan.

*-I have Voicestream 2.99 unlimited wap internet on my account

Labels: consumerism, cool, linux, materialism, review, technology

posted @ 11:36

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...I'll proofread later :)

By Josh, at Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:06:00 PM

Sunday, June 15, 2008

post://7579065082664969228/

I picked up another card to do SLi this weekend. I wanted more, I wanted 2560x1600. I priced out what it would cost me to get a 9800GX2 including the trade-in from EVGA and it was going to be like $350+, so I instead spent $170 for another 8800 GTS - which were getting scarce so I moved on it.

I tested using 3D Mark Vantage (for VISTA) as my existing 3D Mark 2006 is not working in VISTAx64 because it says OpenAL32.dll is not present (which it is).
I'd rather use 3DMark 06 as it's a more accurate guage given my past configurations were also based in 2006 but with Creative software not installing for some weird error they can't solve I'm just working with what's working for me.

In any case, you'll see the difference with the score of 1 8800GTS vs 2 in SLi
1 x 8800GTS 640mb
Score: 4383
- CPU: 4228
- GPU: 4437

2 x 8800GTS 640mb in SLi
Score: 6642
- CPU: 4275
- GPU: 8145

I might post another score if I try some overclocking. It's nowhere near the 20,000 score reached by an individual with a QuadCore, 9850GX2, and PhysX card but I figured it out and I'm 118260 out of 155217 total, so that's a decent standing with a 76%.

Labels: consumerism, games, games for windows, hardware, SLi, technology

posted @ 21:43

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Sunday, August 05, 2007

post://8681203176590360302/

Apparently 3D gaming glasses went byebye with the CRT. I found out after cruizing a bit, my interest sparked by a detail line in the nVidia drivers readme. I had a pair of glasses built into my old GeForce3. It was pretty cool, it could turn any 3D game into 3D. Of course it worked better with some games then others. Sometimes you could tell that they only made a sprite where a 3D shape should be, and that just sent things all askew.

I'm sure the technology is about where it used to be, but with my 30" monitor - I have a renewed interest in having things pop out at me. I also have the wheel again, so driving games would be interesting.

I kept seeing "CRT support only" as I looked around, until finally I searched for 3D glasses LCD and found that one company ("first and only") was supporting LCDs with their glasses. They recommend 70hz or better - so it still may not look all that great (my monitor goes 60hz max).

So if you've got an nVidia card (and apparently ATI supports it too?) and $100: Check out these 3D Glasses for LCDs from EDimensional.

Labels: consumerism, games, hardware

posted @ 11:40

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Wednesday, May 30, 2007

post://1186957820696725862/

Just in case anyone is looking for more tangible gifts:
In-wall Drawer Unit
Corner China Cabinet [pic]

I'm posting them mainly so I can easily find them later, but bonus if we get them as a gift.=)

Labels: consumerism

posted @ 20:09

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