EricBall
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Blog Comments posted by EricBall
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Just keep an eye on your bandwidth usage versus your bandwidth caps.
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I installed Steam on my Aspire One netbook the other day. Portal crashes, but Half-Life works (although it gets a little stuttery with the flashlight on). And other than graphics, HL1 puts U3 to shame.
1. HL1 is just as linear, but doesn't feel that way. Maybe it's because you end up criss-crossing your own path.
2. HL1 is huge! The criss-crossing path helps this some along with the quick-load of new areas. But I bet if I time how long it takes to finish HL1 it would be at least double U3.
3. HL1 tells it's story better, and it does it without cut scenes or big chunks of dialog. Yes, you have to stop & listen to the NPCs to get the whole story, but that makes it more real.
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Got it working. I borrowed a USB DVD burner from work and made a Repair DVD, but it didn't fix the problem. But I noticed it seemed to be complaining about partitions, so I did what I should have done previously - used dd to copy the MBR & partition table. That did the trick. It booted into the repair partition on the drive, fixed something (probably undoing what the previous repair did) then booted into Windows. (Which had to install the driver for the SSD).
I've tweaked the Windows config slightly (disabling some of the indexing & prefetch / superfetch). Nothing too agressive, 'cause the system has low RAM and a moderate sized SSD. So disabling the pagefile & hibernation isn't necessary IMHO.
So now I get to road test it and see if my upgrade actually does anything noticable.
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So I've determined it's not the RAM by putting the HD back in. Windows 7 Starter Edition boots fine & sees all 4GB (although it will only use 2GB). It's happy with the resized partition too. So it's something with the SSD. I re-cloned all of the partitions and double checked the partition flags & UUIDs - all the same. Still no joy. I even set the BIOS to IDE without success.
I think the next step is to make a Windows Repair USB, boot from that and see what it says. Of course, this is tougher since it's a netbook so I can't just burn a DVD.
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I finished Uncharted 3 last night while waiting for GParted to resize & clone my HD. I guess it was better than average, but I still feel underwhelmed. Too much the action movie plot, I think.
So now I'm thinking about if I want to replay it. Sure, I could crank up the difficulty (from Normal) and spend my time trying to avoid being shot. But I did that for Goldeneye on the N64 and there's a point where the challenge becomes unfun. Because the game is so linear there's very little reason to go back and explore since I don't have a burning desire to get all of the meaningless treasures scattered just off the beaten path. (And in these days of YouTube walkthroughs there's little cred in doing it; unlike getting 101 stars in SM64.) I kinda want to go back and replay some of the battle sections & try some different tactics, but then I'd have to slog through the rest of the chapter filler.
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Eric 0 Murphy +1
Argh! I put in the RAM and SSD, cloned the HD to the SSD and now I've got a blank screen instead of Windows boot. Both are working 'cause my GParted USB boot works & sees the SSD. So now I have to pry into the netbook again & swap the HD back in to make sure that at least works.
The problem is getting into the netbook is harder than even the YouTube video shows. (You have to pry off the keyboard to get at the screws holding on the bottom access panel, then pry off the access panel. The actual RAM & SSD swap is trivial.) The problem is there's no good way to get leverage on the keyboard to start popping it out. I've already damaged the F4 key on the first go-round along with two on the access panel.
In hindsight I should have attached the SSD via the USB adapter and done the clone that way rather than putting in the SSD first. Then I would have found out GParted can't resize while cloning, which meant I had to resize then clone. I've resized NTFS partitions before, but Windows always needs a full chkdsk boot to resync afterwards and I would have preferred to do that before the clone. Then I could have also verified everything worked before putting it all back together. Sigh
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So after a bunch of online shopping, I'm going with a local B&M store (with an online presence) with lower prices than Newegg! Going local also means a) no shipping costs, b) I have it in my hands today, & c) easier to yell at someone in person if it's DOA.
I'm getting a SanDisk SSD and Corsair RAM. SanDisk has a Canadian RMA process in case it fails, and they make their own flash, which should balance out the SandForce controller.
I'll update when I've got it installed and see how it works.
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And what is probably the easiest racer in the world to create in the game, but he's still cool:
Now you need to do the other three goofs.
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... is going to own television... until you hit the download cap on your broadband ISP.
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Yeah, it's not uncommon for sub-channels (especially those not controlled by the primary broadcaster) to come & go. Although it's strange they shifted RTV into a different sub-channel. Maybe a kind of free advertising so people notice the channel exists.
Guide data updates depends on where you're getting it from. Part of each ATSC datastream is the PSIP which can include guide data. Many TVs will show this automatically when you change channels. It's generally accurate, although it typically only provides data for a day or two in advance. (Unfortunately, it's not mandatory in Canada so isn't as useful to me.) Set top boxes & TVs which have a free guide typically use this data.
The other major source is a service provider which you may subscribe to (e.g. TiVo, schedulesdirect.org) or was included in the price of the software/device (e.g. Microsoft). In many cases the actual source of the data is Tribune Media Services. In this case there's sometimes a way to notify your provider of the change. How long before the change trickles down can be days or weeks.
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MOD is typically 4 channels as that's what the Amiga would support. MIDI & MOD have some similarities, but have just as many differences. However, I suspect there's other MIDI to MOD converters out there which might do a better job.
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What's your target? All the colors in the rainbow & screen resolution won't help if your target is sprites for the 2600. Also pay attention to the output file formats the tools support. GIF is great for paletted graphics, and PNG for 24 bit, but neither is of much use if you have to go through too many conversions to get to your final output.
If you're doing animation then you will want a tool which supports that.
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I was going to say that typically the flat side of the antenna is pointed at the broadcast antennas. (Unless it's one of those "unidirectional" antennas.)
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Heh, I also bought a PS3 this weekend. I didn't get quite the deal you did, IIRC it was C$240 for the 250GB Uncharted 3 bundle.
If you're into racers, you should pick up a GT5 & a compatible wheel. (I had a wheel which wasn't quite compatible so it mostly worked most of the time.)
I also enjoyed Portal (from Orange Box) & Portal 2 (co-op), Little Big Planet (co-op), & Rock Band (1,2 & Beatles).
It's also fun downloading the free demos from the online store. "Plus" also lets you download some games for free or reduced cost. However, if you let your Plus expire the free games go back to being demos.
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I got a 3DS XL along with the new Paper Mario for my son for Black Friday (although the 3DS wasn't on sale until Saturday).
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Cleaning old coins typically reduces their resale value.
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@RevEng Thanks for the info on the GC compatibility, I had an original Wii so I didn't pay attention. I was leaning towards getting the Wii U (on sale if possible, or at least when some must-have games come out) anyway.
We were fortunate that a family we knew if the neighbourhood was temporarily moving to the US at the same time as the fire so we have been able to rent their house during the rebuild. We should be getting a cheque for the cash value of the contents and then we can file claims against the replacement value for each line in the statement of loss.
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No, I mean original Wii games like Skyward Sword played on the Wii U.
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How do Wii games look?
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One problem I've seen with external drives is the connectors (power & USB). These get loose over time, causing data errors. If a scandisk doesn't improve things, I'd say get a replacement and copy everything to the new drive.
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In most cases the BASIC interpreter of that generation didn't have floating point hardware and was written to be memory efficient. So BASIC may not have actually implemented true floating point, and certainly not to the IEEE specifications.
But let's look at the question in terms of what a typical floating point (using 32 bit mantissas) would do:
682.80 - 587.34
682.80 = $1.55666666 * 2^9
587.34 = $1.25AB851F * 2^9
difference = $0.2FBAE147 * 2^9 = 95.45999991893768310546875
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You can pretty much assume the Wii U will not have any homebrew for the foreseeable future.
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According to http://houstondtv.wordpress.com/dial and http://houstondtv.wordpress.com/tag/airbox the encrypted channels on 49 are part of the AirBox subscription service.
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New Sega Console Ideas!
in My Ideas/Rants
A blog by SSG
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Right now is about the worst time to create a new console. There are too many new consoles out (Wii+WiiU, PS3, Xbox360, NDS+3DS, PSP+Vita, GP2 Wiz), and coming out (XBox 720, PS4, Ouya, Piston, Shield, Gamestick). Not to mention PCs and iOS & Android phones, tablets & other devices. A fragmented market is bad news for hardware makers as they end up chasing a small sliver of the total market. It's a little better for software makers (especially ones with recognizable franchises like SEGA), especially if they can release across multiple platforms.