New PC build

The parts for my new PC should be incoming within the next few days, so I thought I'd share what I ordered:

Case	Fractal Design Define R3 (Black Pearl) (link). I wanted to like the Titanium Grey variant, but for some reason I just couldn't.
Motherboard	MSI P67A-GD53 (B3) (link).
CPU	Intel Core i5 2500K (link). Who would buy something different? Except for Benny of course.
Cooler	Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced (link).
RAM	Corsair Vengeance DDR3 4GB (2x2GB) (link). It also comes in blue, which may have blended in with my motherboard better, but it just seemed a little tacky.
GPU	MSI GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II/OC (link).
PSU	Antec TruePower New TP-650 (link). A nice solid 650W supply. I could have gone for an 850W, but I don't think I'll be straining this one at all.
Hard drive	2TB Samsung HD204UI/Z4 Spinpoint F4EG (link). I've found Samsung Spinpoint drives to be very reliable (and quiet).
Optical drive	Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP (Blu-Ray) (link).

The total cost was £809.42 after VAT. I set myself a limit of £1000, so I think I did well on part selection. I may end up ordering more RAM (4GB is getting a little tight these days), but other than that I'm quite happy with the selection.


Update:
I have now switched the RAM for the following:

RAM	Corsair Vengeance DDR3 8GB (2x4GB) (link).

Scan responded admirably quickly to my request (the order was updated within an hour, I'm not sure exactly how long as I forgot to note the time I sent the request).

Delivery Scoring: The System

Description	Points
Each day prior to the estimated date	+10 *
Friendly staff	+10 *
Providing a delivery estimate to a higher resolution than a day	+10 *

Description	Points
Each day after the estimated date	-10 *
Loading onto the van but not attempting delivery	-5 *
Lying about attempting delivery (verbally or by leaving a card without attempting)	-10
False information on a card	-5
Leaving a parcel in an inappropriate place	-50
Apathetic staff	-10
Rude staff	-20
Losing a parcel	-100
Providing a delivery estimate to a higher resolution than a day and not hitting that time	-20 *

* Halved (for negative scores) or doubled (for positive scores) between 1st December and 15th January.

Note that the expected score for a company that delivers parcels on time with staff that are neither overly friendly or bad mannered will be zero. This is not a bad thing. Negative scores are bad, positive scores are for companies that do the extra something.

I reserve the right to update this at random. All posted scores for individual deliveries and the companies overall will be updated in this case.

Delivery Scoring (HDN 040711)

I currently have a delivery coming from Amazon. Credit to them, they got it posted out much quicker than I expected. Unfortunately they chose to send it with HDN, and a quick Google search will show you why this is a bad idea (this thread, for example, has posts from 2006 to 2011 all telling a similar story). I have thus decided to start scoring the performance of the companies that deliver to me. The scoring system is described in this other post.

Expected date: 4th July 2011.

Date	Events	Points
4th July 2011	Loaded onto van, no delivery attempt made.	-5
5th July 2011	(One day late.) Loaded onto van, no delivery attempt made.	-15
6th July 2011	(Two days late.) Loaded onto van. Delivered.	-10
Total		-30

Removing the Ubuntu 11.04 launcher bar

In Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal):

• Click the far top-left button to bring up the search dialog.
• Type "login" without the quotes and click on "Login Screen".
• Change "Select Ubuntu as default session" to "Select Ubuntu Classic as default session".
• Log out and back in.

Congratulation, you have removed the abomination. Prepare for 11.10 where they will no doubt remove Ubuntu Classic as an option.

Sex on TV (and economic collapse)

A few random thoughts for your consideration.

1) Why is it that all new shows based in the past or in a fantasy world are required to show ridiculous amounts of nudity and sex? There are three running at the moment that I've seen at least the pilot of (Borgias, Camelot, and Game of Thrones), and in each case the plot just seemed to be a way of moving from one sex scene to the next. Personally, I blame Rome. That was the first one I noticed that just threw you in with the naked action. I wonder if there's a critical number of breasts per square meter of film after which they have to give in and say "You know what? This is porn."

2) Related to the above: Borgias drags on too much and Camelot is frustrating. Game of Thrones may make it as a decent series if the characters can keep it in their pants for more than one scene.

3) Greggs chicken bakes are still awesome.

4) We might still be doomed.

WizzAir blatantly conning customers

Linky. I have no idea how companies can get away with this.

New iPhone features

The new iPhone OS upgrade is coming, let's take a look and compare the features against my own (over a year old) phone.

Multitasking
I have it, the iPhone will receive a crippled version of it.

Organise icons into folders
I have it. My even older phone had it.

SMS character count
Telling you how many characters you're using is a feature these days? My first ever mobile phone did that.

SMS search
I have the ability to search in a couple of ways, nothing fancy. The API existed from the start though and there are a load of (free) apps to give much more fancy SMS inbox features.

Digital camera zoom
No reason for this to have been excluded in the initial release. It's a basic feature of a camera. Please tell me they already have optical zoom, otherwise this is just pathetic.

Customisable wallpapers
I can't remember having a phone that has a background that wasn't customisable.

So really. These features are what everyone's getting so rabidly excited about? They're finally catching up with several year old technology. Though I suppose if you buy something as restricted as the iPhone you probably haven't looked at alternatives in any real detail.

QFT - LICD "A Religious Rage"

Quoted for truth. Originally from a LICD news post.

Events such as this only goes to reinforce my negative attitude towards organized religion.

Let it be said that I take no issue what so every with faith. Rather the opposite, I believe in every one’s right to the faith of their choice, or none at all. Organized religion however, seems more of a business these days to me, or to some extremes, a cult.

Why do religious groups revel in their conformity?

You want to show me a progressive organization? Show me how inclusive you can be, how you reach out to your community beyond the people who pay their yearly dues and share your beliefs. Preach to be kind to thy neighbor by being kinder to thy neighbor, no matter where they come from.

Open your doors, don’t close them.

Then maybe, just maybe, I’ll change my mind about organized religion.

Google Buzz Fails

Wholeheartedly agreed.

Pokemon Economics

Bad priorities, Pokemon, satire (for some definition of satire), and a Now Show reference, all in one quote block.

Kemp: but you need a lot of other things before a kid
Kemp: like an eee box
Overlord: XD
Kemp: or a job and a house
Kemp: I forget which
Kemp: best to get them all
Kemp: to be sure
Overlord: Gotta catch 'em all?
Kemp: Investment in a Sustainable Economic Portfolio, I choose you
Kemp: use your Inflation Tracking attack
Overlord: XD
Overlord: It's not very effective...
Kemp: enemy Banker uses Retard attack
Kemp: Portfolio has been incapacitated
Kemp: and that, for the last time, is why you can't have an Xbox 360
Overlord: LOL

Acekard 2i

I recently acquired an Acekard 2i for use with my DS Lite. I ordered the Acekard from r4i.co.uk (who are actually quite cheap for a lot of accessories) and got a 2GB microSD card for an extra £1 in the bundle. They also have other bundles with larger cards (or no card). The microSD card is needed because it's where you put all your precious files. There is meant to be a microSD reader in the bundle but I didn't receive one, I'm waiting for a response from them on that. Below is my quick guide to getting yourself up and running if you decide to get one for yourself. It's quite easy really.

Some features of the Acekard 2i in brief:

• No DS flashing or passkey/passme/passwhatever device needed.
• Supports all current DS variants (right now that's DSi, DSL, IDSL, DS and IDS).
• Supports any brand of microSD card (unlike some older devices which had timing constraints). There is a size limit, but I can't seem to find it on the site, I believe it was around 32GB.
• Older devices required software to be recompiled or patched for each different device it was run on, the Acekard handles this automatically.
• Can be used as a passkey in order to boot slot-2 flashcarts (for GBA experimentation), including the 3in1 cart. No need to worry about manually flashing your image to the slot-2 cart because the Acekard does this automatically when you boot a GBA ROM.
• Supports soft-reset, Download Play, and Wifi.

In terms of ethics, I know what you're thinking: "But Kemp, surely you don't condone playing pirated ROMs of DS games?" And no, no I don't. Sure, the Acekard has that capability, but this is one of those things I buy just to mess around with homebrew, and usually try to write a bit of my own at some point. The DS has a lot of nice features including two screens, one of which is a touchscreen, and wifi capability. Who wouldn't want to have a poke around on that? If you want help using it to play pirated games then you need to go find help somewhere else.

Setting up the Acekard 2i

The first thing you need to do is go and buy yourself a microSD card if you didn't order one along with the Acekard itself. It requires one for its own software, and you can't really do much without your own files anyway.

You should download either the official OSMenu software, or the alternative AKAIO software (which is a branch of the official software and widely regarded to be superior). This should be placed in the root of your microSD card. At this point insert the microSD into the Acekard and the Acekard into your DS, boot it, and check it works. If it hangs at the "Loading" screen then you didn't copy the software correctly.

That's basically it for the system software. Check out the options available, and make sure to change the options restricting the file types shown (you want the "All files" option).

Adding homebrew

I created a folder called "homebrew" in the root of the microSD card for this purpose. To get going you simply have to copy the .nds file for the program to this folder, boot up AKAIO, navigate to the homebrew folder, and click the file. It should be launched and (hopefully) work nicely. In general you can ignore any instructions to use DLDI to patch the software, as the Acekard handles this automatically for you.

Some nice software I've used:

• Moonshell (everyone knows this)
• DSNotes (I can't seem to find an "official" page)
• Pocket Physics

Writing homebrew

A good run-through for this is at CoderJoe.net. Surprisingly, this is one of the few times (the only time?) I've seen a cross-compiler toolchain that is easier to set up in Windows than in Linux. Well wonders never cease?

Adding Python

The good bit ;-) Download the dspython binary and copy it to your homebrew directory. This will automatically run the script at /python/main.py when it is executed, so create a "python" directory in the root of your microSD card and place a script there. As an example you can download the framebuffer demo given on the dspython site. At some point I will write a browser type script to place there that allows you to select another script to run.

There is a serious lack of documentation, but if you check out their svn tree then there are a some demos. In general though, the functions are named exactly the way they are in libnds (see above), so any documentation and demos for that should be fairly easily translatable into Python (within the constraints of what has been wrapped).

Final notes

As usual, GBATemp.net ran a good review of the device.

If anyone needs a picture for something I've mentioned then add a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Upcoming posts

So a lot of posts to come when I have time to make them neat.

• Google has decided "to hell with this" and is either uncensoring all search results in China, or (if they're not allowed) pulling google.cn and closing their Chinese offices.
• My visit to Boston and the various nice places to eat and so on that I liked.
• Reviews of various DS games that I've played recently.
• Related to the above: discussion of the Acekard 2i (added)
• Some other things (as there always is).

Stay tuned.

Christmas Number 1

Once again the Internet has developed a severe case of Epic Win. As I'm sure many of you know, the Christmas number 1 spot this year has been up for grabs with the winner of Strictly Come Pop Hero Talent Factor on one side with the same old drivel we get every year (before they vanish into obscurity), and Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name on the other side. Now, it's not a Christmassy song, but it's a song that took talent to produce and perform, it's a song that many people still enjoy, and (most importantly) it was made by a real band that didn't go under after one hit.

After rather a heated battle, which Simon Cowell called "stupid" and "cynical", Killing in the Name came out in front with 500,000 sales, to the competing song's 450,000. It also set the record for being the first song to reach Christmas number 1 on downloads alone. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we can achieve if we refuse to accept what we're force fed.

What are Rage Against the Machine going to do to celebrate this victory? Firstly they're planning a free concert in the UK to thank everyone, and secondly they're donating the earnings from the sales to charity. The same charity in fact that the original Facebook group which started this movement was providing links to. The group already raised £70,000 in donations for them. I think that counts as another layer on the growing pile of Win which the campaign created.

Thanks to everyone that supported this, and let's hope the right people got the message.

Pandemic Space

Last week EA closed the doors on Pandemic Studios (among many other groups of talented developers). I'm sure anyone who's seen Office Space knows what happens next. I wish all the guys and gals from Pandemic (and the other teams) the best of luck finding new jobs. Don't let EA break you like they seem to try to do with all their employees.

TV Licensing Fail

Today I received a letter from the TV Licensing people (the BBC basically). Let's break this letter down and see how much they fail.

THIS ADDRESS IS UNLICENSED

Yes, yes it is. Thank you for reminding me in block capitals.

YOUR DETAILS ARE BEING PASSED TO OUR ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS

Again with the block capitals. I assume by "enforcement officers" they mean some guy in a van who'll serve me a court notice if they tell him to. What have I done to deserve this I wonder? Let's read on.

We have contacted you before. However, there is still no TV Licence for this address.

Yep, because I don't need one. Remember how TV isn't mandatory? Means a TV licence isn't either. No TV == no TV licence. I like how the tone implies that it is mandatory though. I assume this line (along with the block capitals previously) are trying to make the receiver of the letter worried. They might be able to make a sale to someone who doesn't need a licence.

It may be that you have just moved in. In this case, you should get in touch to let us know. If you have a TV License for your old address, we can transfer it to your new home. Or you may need to buy a new licence.

Note that not needing a licence still hasn't been presented as an option yet.

If you watch or record TV programmes as they're being broadcast without a valid licence, you are breaking the law. If you're found doing so, you could be taken to court and fined up to £1,000.

Shocking. They finally admit there are cases where you don't need a licence. I assume they're required to do this by law to avoid charges of harrasment or somesuch. Either way, they managed to wrap it as much as possible in more text designed to worry you and make you think you've absolutely positively got to have a licence.

I'll stop there as it's just more of the same. There is one classic line though:

Every day we catch around 1,000 TV Licence evaders - you could be next.

No, no I couldn't. Also, that must be an inflated figure. That's 365,000 people a year, meaning that given how long they've been running, a sizeable portion of the UK must not be buying a licence.

For those of you wondering - yes it's true, I don't need a licence. I don't watch (or record) any live TV. It's honestly not worth £143 a year for 5 channels which have maybe one good show a week between them. During peak season. Plus, the BBC is the only channel which sees any of the money anyway, but that's a whole failure in itself which I won't go into here.


Edit:
From the comments: http://tv-licensing.blogspot.com/

Doc Who special - Waters of Mars

Possibly a spoiler if you intend on seeing the ep and haven't yet, so stop here :-P

There are laws, there are laws of time. Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they've died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves ME? It's taken me all these years to realise, the laws of time are MINE. AND THEY WILL OBEY ME!

Need I say more? I wish they'd shown us more of this darker Doctor, but the descent to this point has (rightly) taken a long time. Sometimes we saw glances of it, sometimes he let his guard down, and sometimes the disguise just completely dropped, but I'm sure we all know it was there. Hopefully RTD will man up and make the finale worthy. But then, that's why they gave us Torchwood. Because in the end the Doctor is the hero, and he's not allowed to be badass for too long lest it confuse the kids watching.

I just want to see the Valeyard snap his (very confused) assistant's neck and go do everything the Doctor tried not to. There's a late-night spinoff for you BBC :-P

On unrelated notes, I hope everyone noticed the reference in the name of the base and the one to K-9 ;-)

STS-129

The launch itself:

(7:24:19 PM) Overlord: 4 mins =)
(7:28:31 PM) Overlord: GO
(7:28:32 PM) ***Overlord is currently listening to: Star Trek - First Contact - Magic Carpet Ride - Steppenwolf (Star Trek - First Contact).mp3 [04:25m/320Kbps/44KHz/foobar2000 0.9.6.4]
(7:29:59 PM) Kemp: I was about 10 seconds behind
(7:30:09 PM) Kemp: at least I knew it didn't blow up on the pad :P
(7:30:12 PM) Overlord: hehehe
(7:30:44 PM) Overlord: SRBs are off
(7:31:09 PM) Kemp: arced away perfectly
(7:32:26 PM) Overlord: Song's finished
(7:32:27 PM) Overlord: XD

And some pre-launch drama (for some reason Widnows Media has always Just Worked for me in Firefox under Ubuntu, never has for Person X):

xxxx: can you get me the website?
Kemp: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
xxxx: is not working on my work computer
xxxx: is acting the same as on my other computer
Kemp: you should be able to change the stream format, if one of the others works
Kemp: oh, the only other one is real, lol
Kemp: but yeah, it just worked for me
Kemp: try installing w32codecs
Kemp: should be in synaptic
Kemp: if not:
Kemp: wget -c http://packages.medibuntu.org/pool/non-free/w/w32codecs/w32codecs_20071007-0medibuntu2.1_i386.deb
Kemp: sudo dpkg -i w32codecs_20071007-0medibuntu2.1_i386.deb
xxxx: done it
xxxx: through synaptic
Kemp: kk
xxxx: nope
xxxx: still not working
Kemp: try installing mozilla-mplayer
Kemp: if it's not already installed
Kemp: and if that still doesn't work, run these commands from your home directory:
Kemp: rm -rf ~/.gstreamer-0.10
Kemp: gst-inspect-0.10
xxxx: still the same
Kemp: in firefox's address bar, type about:plugins
Kemp: and see what it says about windows media
xxxx: is all enabled
Kemp: on the page, click Other Viewing Options next to the video and check you're using windows media, not real
Kemp: if all else fails, try quicktime, lol
xxxx: quicktime done it
Kemp: that's working?
xxxx: yes

A classic example of Just Try Everything. We'd already tried some things on Person X's other computer for the Ares I-X launch, with no luck. Saved by Quicktime, who'd have thought?

Live Messenger Fail

Congratulations Microsoft. Seriously, you finally managed it. After years of using your MSN Messenger and Live Messenger clients in favour of any other (on Windows at least), you've shown me the error of my ways. I could have converted to Trillian or Pidgin and prevented myself from being stuck with ads in an interface which defies even your own GUI standards and best practices documents (not to mention interfacing with the rest of the system in a cock-handed way). Instead I stuck with it. It's the official client, that must mean something surely? Apparently not. I avoided this latest upgrade because I didn't much like the changes that had been made (every big release seems to expand the interface, soon you'll need an array of nine panels just to show the menu bar).

Eventually though you pushed the big red button and I wasn't allowed to log in unless I upgraded. Not because you wanted to force me over of course. No, this was for my protection. So sweet that you think about me. So I dutifully clicked the upgrade button and braced myself for what was to appear.... It didn't. Any attempt to log in now crashes the thing. Apparently I'm not the only one, and (being an average end-user for once) I really can't be bothered trying to apply the fixes on the off-chance they might give me another half a year before it breaks again. So now I'm using Pidgin as my sole client across Ubuntu and Windows. Something I should have done long ago.

Cutlery Madness

In my cutlery drawer right now there are 9 tablespoons and 8 teaspoons, that's a total of 17 spoons. Yet there are only 6 knives, and 4 forks. How can such inbalance exist in the universe?

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.