Dec2008 31

Happy New Year

Posted In Official |

Happy New Year to everyone -- Day 1 of 2009 has just begun. What will 2009 have in store for us all ?

Swiss pilot Yves Rossy, the world's first man to fly with a jet-powered fixed-wing apparatus strapped to his back


Check out New Year's Gallery from around the globe from news.com.au and be sure to check out The year 2008 in photographs by boston.com.

Dec2008 25

Merry Christmas to you all.


Dec2008 18

Majel Roddenberry RIP"Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and the only actor to have a role in all incarnations of the franchise, has died, the Associated Press reported. She was 76."

Not only did Majel star in the original Star Trek series as first an unnamed officer and then given the name Nurse Christine Chapel in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but she also was Deanna Troi's mother, Lwaxana in Next Gen and was better known as the computer voice in every Star Trek spinoff.

She is also the computer voice in the upcoming Star Trek reboot film made by J.J. Abrams, in which he has managed to single-handedly kill the franchise.

Dec2008 09

Douglas Engelbart"The humble computer mouse celebrates its 40th anniversary today. On 9 December 1968 hi-tech visionary Douglas Engelbart first used one to demonstrate novel ways of working with computers.

The first mouse that Dr Engelbart used in the demo at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) was made of wood and had one button.

Much of the technology shown off in the demo inspired the creation of the hardware and software now widely used."

Dec2008 06

Game on!

Posted In Events |

Today, I went to Game on! at the State Library of Queensland, which is on from
17 November 2008 – 15 February 2009, open daily 10am - 5pm.



The event was split into two levels with the more modern, console games upstairs -- teehee, you have to que up for the Wii. But, level 1 was where it was at with the highlights being the original 1965 Space Wars on a PDP-1, Stand-up Asteroids which was in impeccable condition, Berzerk (with slightly dodgy joystick), Stand-up Discs of Tron - I had the high score when we left, Missile Command - the original trackball classic (as seen in Chuck recently), Star Wars and Dig Dug.
Game on! - Outside

Pity no photos are allowed, otherwise I would have been all over this like a rash, so best get down there and check it out for yourself.

Dec2008 06

File sharing is not piracy


Courtesy of winandmac.com.

Dec2008 05





Cool Pez gifts for this holiday season 2008 from Pezcast.



I've always been a sucker for pez, not on a grand scale, collector level, I only have 3 - one at work, 2 at home, with 1 of those being a Darth Vader Giant Pez Dispenser"".



If you'd like to learn more about this delicious, tiny candy -- check out Pop a Pez.

Dec2008 03

Sapporo to offer tasting of Space Beer"Sapporo Breweries Ltd said Tuesday that it will hold in January tastings of the world’s first beer made with barley descending from plants grown inside the International Space Station.

A total of 30 couples, who have been selected through a lottery, will be invited to the events at the company’s six plants from Hokkaido to Oita Prefecture, Sapporo said."

Ah ... Space Beer ... sounds awesome.

Nov2008 27

"The crazy idea of selling billions of gallons of water in everlasting plastic bottles to people who already have access to clean water sources is turning our planet into a gigantic garbage heap.

Finally, somebody is doing something about that. Brandimage created the 360 Bottle made of paper, which is 100% renewable."

Click here for full details.

Nov2008 26

Q-Project - Credit Crunch / Just 3 ThingsSo, the financial crisis has you down ... well drum n bass legend Q-Project is back to take those blues away with the aptly named Credit Crunch 12 Inch.

Head on over to Dancenode for the full review.



Nov2008 23

Alien Shooter 3RedSpaceship's latest creation is here. "Basically the original shooter idea plus enhanced animation, parallax scrolling, extra powerups, extra enemies and enhanced enemy AI, an original soundtrack and other enhanced features!"

Click here to check it out.

Nov2008 20

L4D Weekend


This weekend, myself and others will be fighting off hordes of Zombies co-operatively in Valve's latest offering - Left 4 Dead.

The server setup is very straight forward and super easy for players to join - though we are using Hamachi, as the server only allows access to C Class (LAN IPs) addresses.

Update (23/11): The gameplay is incredible. I haven't had this much fun being overrun with enemies and had awesome co-operative gameplay in a long time, with battles of epic proportions and most importantly, L4D has longevity.

With the AI Director, which changes the gameplay every time you play and if Valve can continue to produce new "movies" for consumption, L4D will be on my hard drive for years to come.



Best of all, there is already hope over at l4dmods.com, where you can check out the latest community made content, starting with "Dead Before Dawn - Enter the Mall", which is based off the shopping mall from Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead - one of the best Zombie movies ever made.

Nov2008 19



Check out X-Play's review of Valve's awesome Zombie game - Left 4 Dead.

Nov2008 12

{mosimage}Now that Windows 7 Beta is gaining traction news-wise, as the beast at Redmond speaks, a group of us have band together to bring to the world our shared experiences about Windows 7.



Vista blew dog -- so, can Windows 7 prevail ? Find out more at win7beta.wordpress.com.



At the site, you can expect lots of great content, so please add the RSS feed to your favourite feeder or come by the site and drop some comments every now and then.

Nov2008 03

"Small Basic has been designed specifically for novice developers. The easy to use programming language allows beginners to get a clear understanding of the fundamentals of programming and have lots of fun on the way."

Well, that's the Microsoft blurb out of the way -- what they have done (besides releasing a product named after an existing one), is create a small subset version of a VB.net like language, that uses a very interesting "intellisense" IDE.


As an example, here's what you would type for a Hello World example:-

TextWindow.WriteLine("Hello World")

Small Basic is just that, a very simple language you could use to teach people to get into programming or to write small, simple applications. I thought it was very cool, that it comes with a Turtle object, so you can perform Logo-like operations.

Click here for the official blog and/or here for the forums.

Oct2008 28







Watch as Newstopia gives us the lowdown on the Reserve Bank -- I guess we've got no choice but to laugh.

Oct2008 27


Check out the trailer for the next upcoming paintball computer game called Championship Paintball 2009. It smells of GHTP though, I did noticed they've announced a Wii version, so maybe it'll be worth checking out.

Oct2008 22

RemoteBuddyRemoteBuddy has been updated to version 1.11.2.

Quite a few updates and enhancements in this release. It includes a behaviour for Boxee ... I just wrote one myself last night :( ...

Oct2008 21

Company says shoes can power gadgets"Tired of your iPod running out of power?

A Japanese company says it has found a way to charge portable gadgets just by walking. The shoes have a small generator attached to water-filled soles. Each step puts pressure on the soles, causing the water to spin a small turbine and generate power, NTT said.

The futuristic shoes currently generate 1.2 watts of electricity, "a level sufficient to run an iPod mobile music player forever, as long as the wearer keeps walking," said spokesman Hideomi Tenma.

Click here for more information.

Oct2008 17





"One challenge that was crazy work but worth it. In the end, we create a virtual circuit within the agency. Watch and then visit the site to create the circuit of screensavers in your company. Hosted by Intel."



Translation: Portuguese » English

Oct2008 14

Apple Special Event - MacbooksSteve Jobs revealed Apple's latest releases in the laptop / notebook space with the launch of new revamped Macbooks, which are now aluminium rather than plastic.

First up, chief operating officer Tim Cook came on stage to talk about the state of the current Mac line of computers.

He mentioned that Apple is #1 in Education in the US and then proceeded to show a REALLY old photo of a classroom of students with Macs.

Next, Jonathan Ive went on to show us how the Macbooks are made from the ground up. To be honest, there isn't much to see here. You can tell they're obviously gushing over the new processes put in place to make these Macbooks, however it's what's inside that counts.

New Speeds

A little bit faster but not by much, a glass Multi-Touch trackpad with gestures and no mouse buttons and has a new Mini DisplayPort for external connections -- NO VGA, NO DVI, NO HDMI -- don't know what Apple was thinking there, especially since the connectors are optional as well. Once again, Apple lead the way by forcing people to change.
New Connectors

Steve Jobs then handed out into the audience the shell for the Macbooks and people just looked at it and then passed it on. I was disappointed that no one just tried to bend the crap out of it. I know I would have it I was there ;)
Multi-Touch

But what baffles me the most is the pricing ... the new 15-inch MacBook Pro sells for $2,499 US, yet in Australia this same notebook sells for $3,999 AU !!! Even with the current bad exchange rate, it should be around the $3,500 mark.

Update: It was mentioned yesterday that I only focused on the Macbook Pro and whilst I am drooling over this laptop, it's also worth mentioning the Macbook (not the White one) as well. For the 2.0Ghz model with 160GB HD, you'll pay $2,099 retail and $2,549 for the 2.4Ghz model with 250GB HD.

As stated, I'm drooling over this new machine as a development machine, just looking into how I can maybe salary sacrifice at the moment ...

Oct2008 13


Bahhahha ... now that's what I call the clean version of NWA's classic "F--k the Police".

Oct2008 12



This guy has talent, plus you have to love it's AC/DC's "Back in Black".

Oct2008 09

{mosimage}



"Apple technology evangelists will soon be traveling the globe to bring iPhone application development expertise to a city near you."



Except that by the time I got the email about this event, both Australian events (Melbourne and Sydney) were full. Not even the chance to sign up and get sent the slides, when the event is over. How slack.

Oct2008 01

{mosimage}Please note, due adding many new features which have blown up the image size of FreeNAS it is not possible to upgrade to the latest 0.69b4 from previous installations if you have choosen the embedded OS/DATA installation mode. In this case you have to backup your data from the DATA partition and do a fresh installation.




Majors changes:

Upgrade to FreeBSD 6.4.

Upgrade rsync to 3.0.4.

Upgrade PHPMailer to 2.2.1.

Upgrade Transmission to 1.34.



Minors changes:

Add new attribute 'Temporary directory' to UPnP WebGUI to define a directory used to store temporary transcoded files.

Modify /etc/rc.d/samba script.

Add 'Who' combobox to RSYNC client/local jobs to select user which is used to execute this job.

Add 'Enable' checkbox to RSYNC client/local jobs to enable/disable them (FR 2123243).

Add hw.ata.to=15 to sysctrl to prevent 'TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA' errors, e.g. when using APM for harddrives (FR 2101811).



Bug fixes:

Fix bug in zoneinfo port.

Remove Samba --with-utmp build parameter. It causes a crash when accessing shares (BR 2118240).

Fix bug in Samba Makefile which causes various problems, e.g. it was not possible to join an AD domain.



Permanent restrictions:

It is not possible to format a SoftRAID disk with MSDOS FAT16/32.

It is not possible to encrypt a disk partition, only complete disks are supported.

It is not possible to get seperate CPU stats per processor on SMP machines because FreeBSD does not support that feature.

Enable 'polling' on interfaces used by a LAGG interface will make it inoperable.



Known bugs:

If DHCP for IPv4 is used, the IPv6 statically configured DNS server will be override by the IPv4 DNS server.

Oct2008 01

Daily Tees

Posted In Official |

Daily TeesI'm launching a new site today called Daily Tees, dedicated to one of my secret loves and that's T-Shirts.

I love T-Shirts, I wish I could get more, but my wife makes sure I don't go overboard ;)

In saying that, my new job allows me to wear T-Shirts on a daily basis and so, my urge to buy shirts has been strong lately, though with the current economic crisis causing our dollar to crash, I've had to put a few purchases on hold.

Anyway, head on over to the site, add the RSS feed and check in daily as we'll always having something new.

Sep2008 29

{mosimage}The highly anticipated fourth studio album from Hospital Records frontman, Tony Colman aka London Elektricity is here.

Head on over to Dancenode for the full review.



Sep2008 28

{mosimage}Chase & Status have done it once again, this time with the 12 Inch EP featuring Drum n Bass soon-to-be-anthem "Pieces" featuring Plan B and the grime / dubstep "Eastern Jam".



Head on over to Dancenode for the full review.



Sep2008 11


Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld are back -- this time with another strange commercial, which once again says nothing about MS, their products or answering their critics. So, I'm still not sure what MS is trying to say ...

Sep2008 09

Steve Jobs revealed Apple's latest strategy in music with the launch of new iPods and iTunes 8.0, with it's so-called "Genius" mode. Unfortunatley, in my tests, "Genius" is dumb.

Every song that I tried in my collection (which is mainly Drum n Bass) - just said the following:-

Genius is Dumb


So, looks like it'll only work with music that exists in the iTunes Music Store, so for you Top 40 listeners, it might work for you. I did try it with some other dnb artists, such as "Sub Focus" and that returned a playlist with some Drum n Bass, but also House and Chill music. A for effort. T for Nice Try.

Genius is Dumb



On the iPod front, the most interesting thing is the new earbud headphones they're shipping. They come with the same click button as the iPhone headphones, except you can Play/Pause your music as well as adjust the volume. No more fumbling about in your pocket for the click wheel ... Awesome.

Genius is Dumb


The iPhone and iPod Touch also get an update, to version 2.1 with "a lot of bug fixes" according to Jobs. To name a few, Fewer dropped calls, Better Battery Life, Fixes for Crashing Apps and Backing up to iTunes is alot faster. This is good news, considering no third party apps will run on my iPhone at present :(.




Sep2008 07




Huh ? I don't get it. Windows is delicious now ? What the hell did I just watch ?

Sep2008 06

Michael Moore's latest documentary, Slacker Uprising, will be released for free on the web on September 23rd (US Time) via Blip.TV.


"This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans," Moore said. "The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November. I think Slacker Uprising will inspire millions to get off the couch and give voting a chance."

The film follows Moore's tour of 62 cities ahead of the 2004 elections."

Sep2008 02

Go Chroming with Google !Google has launched their forray into the web browser space with Chrome.

In the world according to Google, "Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier".

It's basically WebKit (Safari) with a newer optimized Javascript engine (turns it into machine code) -- making Web 2.0, which rely heavily on Javascript, to run alot faster. It also comes with some nice sandboxing features and pr0n surfing mode errr ... I mean Incognito mode. ;)

In my tests, I haven't had an issue with it yet and it's nice to know that they will be open sourcing it in the near future -- however, I do miss some of my favourite Firefox extensions (Web Developer, Showcase, Fox Clocks) and that's enough to keep me in FF land for the time being.

Side Note: I reckon Chrome could be a nice fit for Haiku.

Aug2008 31

Yep it's official - Paul Thurrott is on crack.



Not only does he think we're all stupid for not using Vista (he thinks Windows XP is junk), but now he's writing a Switcher Guides from Mac to Windows. For someone who loves Windows product just a little too much, he sure likes to talk about Macs alot. Maybe he doesn't like to feel left out of it, like the guy who doesn't watch a particular TV show that everyone at work is talking about at the coffee break (watercooler) the next day.



During the iPhone launch, he wrote articles on MobileMe and how it wouldn't be good for the majority of iPhone owners, which he calls Windows users. He also says time and time again about how Windows has the largest install base, so why would you need an article to switch from something the majority of us don't use ?



You can find more of his weird logic over at his MacEnvySuperSite WinSuperSite for Windows site.

Aug2008 30

"SpicesToday, we went to the Indian Bazaar 2008 at the Mt Gravatt Showgrounds. The grounds had been laid out with a number of stalls representing Indian culture and as I hoped they were mainly food stalls :)



The lamb kebabs in yoghurt sauce were awesome, along with the samosas, bhajias and we ended up our culinary journey with hot sticky sweet jalebis. Nice.



I also picked up some wicked spices from one of the stalls, as pictured in the photos.

Aug2008 28

Check out the Mythbusters team at NVISION drawing a picture of the Mona Lisa using paintballs in 80 nanoseconds !





Aug2008 20

Beached Whale

Posted In Official |




Watch what happens when a whale wakes up on a New Zealand beach. I'm beached as bro ... Comedy Gold !

Aug2008 13





LMAO. I think I just wet myself. Those church groups really know how to get party !

Aug2008 10

Oscar-winning soul singer Isaac Hayes died in Memphis on Sunday at the age of 65.



Aug2008 04

Google has expanded it's Street View feature to include Australia. But don't just take my word for it, here's a quaint little ad.



Aug2008 01

{mosimage}"Last night Apple released security update 2008-005 although even after the update it would seem that one of the most voiced issues still has not been addressed. This update was supposed to bring port randomization to make it more difficult to spoof the DNS response.



However, in nCircle's test it seems as though this is not the case. nCircle found that even after installing the patch the client libraries in an OS X 10.4.11 still do not randomize the source port."



Click here for the full story.



Not good Apple, especially when FreeBSD 6.3 has addressed this issue.

Jul2008 29

{mosimage}"Google's web-based Calendar application should now support iCal integration, the company has announced. The feature comes by way of support for the CalDAV protocol, which in turn allows access to a calendar via WebDAV.

Users of the Google app should now be able to edit a calendar in iCal and have it sync with their online schedule, as well as vice versa. Changes are applied whenever iCal is able to go online, or a person signs into Calendar."

Click here for the full story or click here for how to enable Google Calendar in iCal.

Jul2008 27

{mosimage}Seems that Microsoft have resorted to "tricking" users into thinking they're not using Vista, in an attempt to make Vista look good.



Their thoughts are, if it's not called Vista, it won't have the same emotional baggage. However, the test won't show what REAL users of Vista would run into. For starters, the hardware that they run the demo on is a HP Pavilion DV2000 (according to HP's web site, that is a notebook, though I'd heard the test was run on desktop machines).



Also, the machines have 2GB of RAM. My argument is, you wouldn't have 2GB of RAM unless you were a high-end user (or a gamer but no gamer in their right mind is going to use a notebook now are they ?). I guess time will tell, when MS release this video on Wednesday this week.



It's also been pointed out that "if Microsoft added in, say, driver issues, compatibility issues, installation issues, and the UAC to the demo, they might have had a different result."



In my tests of Vista, installing the OS is the only painless part -- the entire experience though is terrible and I much prefer Windows XP, OS X or a pre-alpha release of Haiku OS to Vista.

Jul2008 24

ABC launches Online TV called iViewThe Australian Broadcasting Corporation aka ABC has launched an online service called iView, which allows Australian Internet users to access a fairly decent chunk of their content.

Definitely worth checking out and nice to finally have an Aussie only service for a change. Yes, I'm looking at you Hulu and others.

Jul2008 18

Now that I've been using the iPhone on a daily basis for a week, I thought it would be wise to put my review out, considering some of the misinformation I have read (and heard) elsewhere or other reviews that are written by people who don't even own one.

So, what's in the box ?
What first appears to be a set of standard earbuds is actually a hands-free device, which has small microphone, which can also be clicked. This clicking enables you to answer / hang up on phone calls.Other than that, you get a sync cable and a wall charging adapter.

iPhone - In the Box


iPhone Calls

Phone Calls / SMS
The iPhone works perfectly as a phone, as it should. The keypad is easy to use and sending SMS message has never been so easy (I'm not a fan of T9 predictive). The one drawback is the contacts on the Mac. This is the first time I've used Address Book and man, that app sucks. It doesn't even feed off iPhoto. This is how you get a photo from iPhoto into Address Book.

1. Find the photo you want in iPhoto.
2. Right click, Show File to display it's location in Finder.
3. Copy that file and save it somewhere else (like the Desktop) as Address Book can't delve into iPhoto's Library.
4. Then you can add it to Address Book.

That workflow sucks and should be addressed. Should be easy enough, as most other apps have a media browser. I'm curious to know what Windows users use as their Address Book ? Outlook ? if it's installed I guess.

Two other drawbacks - you can't set a custom Text Message tone or a custom Calendar Alert.

Email
On my Mac, I have my Apple Mail client setup to work with my GMail account, the iPhone just syncs up, giving me the ability to take my email with me wherever I go. Finally, I'll be able to keep my email up to date. I use to do this with VersaMail on my Palm, but it was nowhere as polished an app as the mail client on the iPhone.

At work, I've also setup my Exchange Server and it works perfectly, push email and all.

iPhone - Email


Web Browsing
Without a doubt, Mobile Safari is the best web browser on any mobile/PDA device. In saying that, it does have some drawbacks. You won't be able to play any Java, Flash, SVG or save passwords for login sites, however, it scales brilliantly and is a breeze to use. Turn the iPhone horizontal for the best web action.

iPhone - Sideways


Video Podcasts
This is definitely one thing I was looking forward to and they do look fantastic on the iPhone. However, there are issues. If you are watching a podcast and you pause it, and then your iPhone goes to sleep, when you awaken it -- your audio and video will be out of sync and as yet, I haven't found a way to get them back into sync. I'm surprised this bug is present, given Apple's history of iPods, I would have thought they would have had this nailed by now.

Also, if you watch one podcast after another and have the iPhone in horizontal mode, for each podcast you play, you have to "shake" the iPhone so it then knows it's on it side ie. it doesn't remember that it *was* horizontal. Slightly annoying.

iPhone - Video Podcasts - Loaded


App Store
Now this is both the most important update to the iPhone and the one that needs the most work. There are a number of issues with the store at present (and the apps within) such as apps that crash your iPhone, stupid, useless apps or ones in foreign languages. I'm all for foreign language apps, there just needs to be a filter for it. Much like people who's native language is not English, I would think they would want the ability to filter English apps too.

Interesting to note, Apple has managed to surpass 10 million downloads from the App Store. So, it would appear these apps are highly sought after. Also, it would appear that Apple are looking at the apps in their store. Originally, there were over 300 apps in the Entertainment section, as at today there are 121. Clearly, they've cleaned up this section and also added new sections such as Books, for those crappy AppEngines apps that were clogging up other categories.

App Store


I'm not overly a fan of the pricing that developers are putting on their apps either. For starters, you can't demo an app, so why would I put money down on something I haven't tried. Another issue pointed out by a friend of mine is, you can't get gift copies of an app for say, writing a review. I hope Apple addresses both of these issues shortly. Until then, I'm only looking at the free apps and so here's my favourites:-

Top Free iPhone Apps
1. Remote - control any of your iTunes libraries. I tested this on both my Mac and PC and it works a treat.

2. Twitterrific - nice looking Twitter client. Ad supported and sometimes crashes but still good. On first load, you get everyone's tweets, but then after you get you + friends.

3. Tomatoes - Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings in the palm of your hand. Awesome.

4. VoiceNotes - Record voice memos. I use to do this on the Palm, so good to have it on the iPhone.

5. Currency - Shows up to date Currency values. Looks good and easy to use.

6. Facebook - nice app that conforms to Apple's standards in iPhone design.

7. MySpace - Can't have Facebook without MySpace.

8. MoPhoTo - Access your Flickr account.

9. midomi - Finds music based on you singing it or saying the name. Works with commercial music -- didn't find one Drum n Bass tune :(

10. SpeechCloud - Voice-activated calling, except you need to be connected to the net in order to use it.

11. LocalPicks - Uses the GPS to find food places around you.

For Sh*ts n Giggles
1. PhoneSaber - light saber sound effects come from your iPhone when you wave it around. May the force be with you.

2. iPint - Beer-based Gaming. Virtual beer. Mmmmmmm.

3. Scratch - Scratch preset samples. Kinda works okay.

4. More Cowbell - The infamous SNL sketch with Christopher Walken. I gotta have more cowbell !

5. BMI - See your Body Mass Index by dragging out your height and weight on a Giraffe in shorts.

Links You'll Want

RSS Feeds


Conclusion
For all the issues I've pointed out, you would think I don't like this device, but on the contrary, I do. Also, I have faith in Apple. They do fix bugs. They've proved this with things like Apple TV and OS X. Other mobile vendors such as Nokia would have us believe, if you want a new feature or fix, you have to buy a new phone.

My iPhone is replacing two devices I use to carry around with me -- my Nokia phone and my Palm LifeDrive -- and that in itself, is definitely worth the price of admission.

The Palm LifeDrive was originally $899 AU, I got it for $699 AU on a good deal.

The iPhone was $729 AU (no plan) with a $400 credit, making it $329 AU. I'd say that's an awesome deal when you compare that with the Nokia N95, which sells for anywhere between $516 AU (second hand) to $1,448 AU (brand new).

Jul2008 14

Check out this funny Spike TV advertisement with Star Wars tie-in, of course.





Jul2008 11

{mosimage}This morning I got up early and headed off to Optus @ Garden City to get the iPhone 2.0 (which is technically, the first iPhone to hit our shores).

As we had paid our deposit of $50 to allow us 2 hour priority service, we got to Garden City early and had to walk around the center trying to find a way in, as it didn't officially open til 9am.

After finding an entrance we made our way and joined the queue. After watching the clock countdown and then waiting another 20 minutes, the line started to move. At this point, we were told that if you wanted a Prepaid 16GB, you were out of luck. No stock. A couple of people had their details taken down and then they left. Meanwhile, the queue moved very slowly.

Jul2008 10

L.A.O.S. - Helsinki / HarmonyThis week, Finnish Drum n Bass at it's finest, with the treo abraham, d-bex and JayEM, who come together to form L.A.O.S. (Large Amounts of Soul).

Head on over to Dancenode for the full review.



Jul2008 08

Google is looking to give Second Life (and others) a run for their money with a new 3D environment called Lively, which can be integrated with a number of online applications.



Jul2008 08

MS says Apple liesIn a recent Register article, "Microsoft believes Apple is winning the battle on the desktop using "lies" and "myths" against Windows Vista, and has promised to fight back."

This article hits home with "whether it's the power of the TV spot or Microsoft's own ineptitude in delivering a delayed operating system that was too bloated for most PCs already out there to handle and that lacked adequate third-party support, Apple's has grabbed 6.6 per cent of the desktop market in the US during Windows Vista's lifetime."

Look out for my Vista day by day usage report soon.

Jul2008 01

Mac RDPMicrosoft has now released the Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2, after lengthy beta testing.

You can now access more than one server at once, print from your Mac and more with this new version.

Click here to get it.

Jun2008 28

{mosimage}Updates to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare have been released. The specific changes include:


  • Fixed an exploit that allowed players to access certain console dvars during multi-player matches
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when a Chinatown Sabotage match would go into over-time
  • Fixed a bug where the MP icons (Bomb, Defend, Capture, etc) were always showing up as English regardless of the install language



You can get all the patches here (FilePlanet).

Jun2008 24




Check out this cool Quake III mod, which has an alarming amount of attention to detail.

Jun2008 21

{mosimage}The first International T-Shirt Day is an initiative of Spreadshirt. Our goal is to make the first summerday in the year (June 20th in the US, June 21st in Europe) the International T-Shirt Day."



Whilst it's strictly not summer where we are, I decided to get into the spirit of things and celebrate by setting up a Retro Gamers T-Shirt site.

Jun2008 19

Skype 4.0 Beta

Posted In |

{mosimage}Well Skype 4.0 Beta is now out for all to try, however, I would say, if you're happy with Skype -- then don't. I can sum the application up in one word ... Yuck.



It seems that the Skype 4.0 Beta has hit every branch of the ugly tree on it's way down. With it's new full sized window, which has to be THE MOST terrible idea, they could have come up with.


Not only that, conversations attached themselves to the right hand side and when you pop them out, this big ugly blue box stays there.



Back to the drawing board ...

Jun2008 17







Download Day

Firefox Pizza



"Join us in our mission to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours!" - also, some pics from our download day lunch.



Easter Egg: Type "about:robots" into FF 3 :)

Jun2008 12

London Elektricity - Attack Ships On FireTony Colman aka London Elektricity has released two wicked tracks from his forth-coming LP, the first track being the bass guitar laden, "Attack Ships On Fire".

Head on over to Dancenode for the full review.



Jun2008 09

{mosimage}Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveil the latest iPhone and it's software at this year's Apple World Wide Developer Conference keynote address from San Francisco's Moscone West Centre.


A little different this year, not only cos my mate Mojo was in the 10th row and he was at the Snow Leopard launch, but also because the first half of the keynote basically showed off, what they'd already told us before.


However, the best news was with the announcement of the iPhone 3G, which will be available here (Australia) on July 11th. I've already pre-ordered mine through Optus, so it'll be interesting to see what sort of plan (and data) they apply to it -- otherwise, I'll opt to buy it outright, assuming that option is going to be available.



Also, check out this very cool new ad.

Jun2008 07

{mosimage}Updates to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare have been released. The specific changes include:


  • New maps Creek, Chinatown, Broadcast, and Killhouse
  • Hardcore and oldschool server browser filters
  • Fix for a Denial of Service attack



You can get all the patches here (FilePlanet).

May2008 31

SysInternalsIf you're a Windows sysadmin or a power user, you most likely know about the good tools by SysInternals, well now you have access these tools directly from live.sysinternals.com.

You can also run them directly, from the command prompt, by entering \live.sysinternals.com ools{nameOfTool}.

How cool. But one has to wonder if someone can't use these tools for nefarious reasons.

May2008 27

Here you can see multi-touch support in Windows 7, the next version after their failed Vista version, scheduled for released in late 2009.







Once again Microsoft show us they can't innovate stuff, but they are good at copying.

May2008 23



Hilarious -- but what's with the huge white space at the bottom in the flash player.

May2008 23






Hilarious.

May2008 20

In SilicoAussie Drum n Bass legendary Perth lads are back ... back to their roots and taking it further with a more rock-fuelled dnb LP.

Head on over to Dancenode for the full review.



May2008 12

Nightlife 4Andy C drops the latest installment, number 4, in his Nightlife Drum n Bass mix series, which is one of the biggest and best selling of it's kind.

Head on over to Dancenode for the full review.



May2008 09

Wii FitYesterday, I managed to pick up the Wii Fit from JB Hi-Fi for $119 AU (EB Games were selling it for $149 AU - How rude !) and boy is it great. Very simple to use and the exercises/training games are fun to do -- I was completely buggered after doing the Short Jog :)

It's a great way to track your BMI and Weight too, as every day when you do a Body Test, it calculates these measurements and graphs your progress. You can even set goals to work towards.

Great fun and losing weight at the same time. My wife loves the Hula Hoop-ing and I'm a bit of a step master ;)

May2008 02

Technique RecordsI finally managed to get my hands on these deliciously liquid tracks from Technicolour, the 29 year-old producer originally from Luton in the UK. So, here's another one of my DnB reviews over at Dancenode.

For the entire review, click here.

May2008 01

Audio ZooThat's right, I've now stepped into the role of being the Drum n Bass aficionado for the music community site - Dancenode.
So here's my music review on DJ Clipz's latest release - "Ugly/Offline".
Head on over to Dancenode to read the entire article.

Apr2008 27

PlayazHard hitting beats are back with DJ Hazard's "Machete Bass EP".

I'm testing the waters so to speak, writing reviews for a dance community web site, so click here for my review.



Apr2008 22

Frets on Fire

Posted In Tech |

{mosimage}Yes, not only is it a Guitar Hero clone for the PC, it's Free !



If you've been living under a rock and don't know what Guitar Hero is, so in turn don't know what a clone of it would be like, Frets on Fire is "a game of musical skill and fast fingers.


The aim of the game is to play guitar with the keyboard as accurately as possible."


Apr2008 20

2008 Terminal Services WebAppWhen Windows Server 2008 was released, I was excited to test out the new features that come with Terminal Services (after all I've been heavily using TS since the NT 4.0 Terminal Server days).

Unfortunately, when I tried to use RemoteApps, I hit a roadblock, I needed to use Vista or SP3 for XP. As SP3 isn't currently available, well there is SP3 RC2 Refresh, but a mate of mine tried that and it nuked his machine, so I pretty much decided to wait ... until I saw this article where someone has taken the new RDP 6.1 out of SP3, so we can use it now.

Head on over to this site to check it out.

Apr2008 16

Check out this lame ass video by Microsoft's sales team or should I say Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band.







Now if only they could put as much work into their OS as they did with this video production, Microsoft would be onto a winner.

Apr2008 11

Design Coding

Posted In Official |






I love it. Not sure I agree about tables, I love tables.

Apr2008 06

I've been playing around with Windows 2008 and I thought I'd better make a backup (or at least try their new backup tool).


First, you have to install the Windows Server Backup. Gone are the days where NTBackup is included. So, after going to the Server Manager and adding this as a new feature, I came across this issue when I tried to create a backup job.



{mosimage}



It would appear you have to have additional local drives connected, in order to backup. No backing up a server and having that backup file stored on your network. How silly.

Apr2008 06

Armour II: Upgrades

Posted In |

"NewThis weekend I began upgrading my main PC, though there was a minor hiccup. All the DDR2 ram I had was 533mhz whereas the motherboard I’d purchased supported 667 and above. With a quick dash off to PC Shopper on Sunday morning in the rain, I picked up some ram and my rig is now in production (and gunning fools down on COD4).



I also installed this old unopened Antec PSU I had, as I was going to put this into my new server (where my old P4 mobo is going), but soon realized that it was better than the one I had in my machine and so of course I claimed it.



Click here for the web gallery.

Apr2008 05

We have a Wii

Posted In Wii |

WiiAfter much thought on whether I would get a Wii or not and then the worldwide shortage happened, I didn't put much hope that I would ever get one, however, on Saturday morning, my wife was shopping in the city and she noticed Toyworld in the Myer Centre had just got 4 in. So, being the good wife she is, she bought it with a second controller (remote and nunchuk).

Despite only being 480p and the graphics looking at little chunky on my 60 inch TV, this console is great. The gameplay more than made up for it. Having only the included game Wii Sports (and Wii Play, which is a bunch of mini-games), I can say that both myself and my wife thoroughly enjoyed the Wii.

And what a workout it was ... with the Boxing game, providing to be the most intensive and also a legal fun way to beat up the wife :P - I have to say, it's definitely not a passive experience and by Monday I know I'm going to have a sore arm from Bowling.

Apr2008 04

"When a secret government agency lets out a deadly chemo virus causing the reanimation of the dead, the first place to get hit is Rhino's, a hot underground strip club. As one of the strippers gets the virus, she turns into a supernatural, flesh-eating zombie stripper, making her the hit of the club."









OMG ... This straight to DVD release starring Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson looks like bad porn acting without the pay dirt.

Mar2008 25

{mosimage}"The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance.



Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs."



Classic. I guess our predictions now will be just as half true as what this 1968 article in Modern Mechanix proposed.

Mar2008 22

Haiku Podcast"Back once again for this episode, is Dennis d’Entremont aka TheNerd.

As usual we get you up to date on the latest Haiku news and all the major changes to our OS, Team Haiku updates, HaikuWare’s Bounties and our BeBits App of the Month."

You can find us on iTunes, Feedburner or visit us at HaikuPodcast.com.

Mar2008 19

{mosimage}Recently, I've started a new job where I get to play (work) with VMware's ESX Server.

When we were working away on ESX the other day, I just happened to blurted out, we're VMX Bandits, being a play on words of the Aussie movie BMX Bandits, which also happens to be Nicole Kidman's debut.



The site has nothing to do with the movie, I started it because I've been a VMware fan for quite some time now.



So, along with other colleagues, we'll be documenting our adventures on this site about all things virtual.



Check us out at vmxbandits.com

Feb2008 17

Haiku Podcast"This episode, I’m joined by Dennis d’Entremont aka TheNerd from sites such as HaikuWare and SaveLoad.

We get you up to date on the latest Haiku news, update you on the major changes to Haiku Inc and the OS, our usual BeBits App of the Month, and an update on HaikuWare’s Bounties."

You can find us on iTunes, Feedburner or visit us at HaikuPodcast.com.

Feb2008 02





The sixteenth episode of the GameGab Podcast is now up.


"This episode we review - City Life 2008. Back for 2008, it’s your hosts Sikosis, Oddbod, Mojo and the irrepressible Minkaman. Eazy-P has disappeared into the COD4 void, I believe.



Sorry for the delay in getting this episode out, there were some real life issues which caused delays in the post-production process.







'GameGab'



Alternatively, try our PageFlakes site.

Feb2008 02

{mosimage}Updates to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare have been released. The specific changes include:

  • Fixed server browser not showing all of the servers
  • The "hold [ ] to steady" sniper scope hint will only appear if you can use it

  • Fixed game not recognizing IWDs existing if they are all in fs_basepath and none are in the main/ folder

  • Made mod scripts able to change stats


You can download the patch 1.4 to 1.5 here (AusGamers).

Jan2008 28

Today, LEGO celebrated 50 Years of their awesome product, of which I spent many days in my youth playing with. A lot of fond memories ...





Jan2008 26

{mosimage}Looks like it's shaping up to be another hot one, but I trust all my fellow Australians will have a great day today.



So, whilst Triple J is celebrating their Hottest 100 (with not a sniff of dnb), we're celebrating our 2nd Annual Top 20 Drum 'n Bass of 2007.



If you missed, last years, then head on over and check it out.

Jan2008 23

Battlefield Heroes

Posted In |

{mosimage}They're all the rage these days ... cartoon-style shooters and here's the latest installment, Battlefield Heroes.



Battlefield Heroes is a brand new "Play 4 Free" game from the EA/Dice (Stockholm) crowd that brought us Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2.



"It's a fun cartoon-style shooter which caters to players of all skill levels – easy to pick up and play, but with deep character development." It's scheduled for released as a free download in Winter (Southern Hemisphere) 2008."

Jan2008 19

WeGame

Posted In BBQ |

{mosimage}Think YouTube for Gamers ...

Here's a video I made of some Timeshift action :)

[video]

It uses special software you download from their site to record. Pretty cool huh ?

Jan2008 09

{mosimage}"Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House ? is a children's book dedicated to Helping Your Child Understand the Stay-At-Home Server.



At first we snarked at this over-the-top marketing propaganda. But then it made us crap our pants with laughter."



Oh Microsoft ... how low can you go ?



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