Check Your Power Requirements

This Site allows you to check your computer's Watt usage.

It says my system uses 303Watts. And that is ok because I have a 480Watt power supply.

Yahoo Bought Flicker

So Yahoo bought Flicker the popular photo blogging site (I might start using it actually) and some things have changed, including the signup prosess. It has gone from simple to horrible in one takeover. And you can read all about the horrible truth Here.

Interesting usability observations and WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING!

Google Maps Does New Orleans Disaster Area

Google Maps have added an areal photograph of the flooded New Orleans Here. And if you press the 'Satellite' button at the top of the map you can compare how it looks now to how it did look, or will look when all the water is pumped out.

That iPod Nano

I so want an iPod Nano. I have sat looking at the buy button at the UK Online Store and I can't justify the £139 price. I have an MP3 player and all I do is copy maybe two podcasts on to it when I am going someplace in the car. My current player works great and there is no way I would use even 10% of of the Nano's capacity in just using it for podcasts, but I want one. I so want one.

Purse Snatcher

This is a video of a guy TRYING to steal a girls purse.

Naruto US

Naruto is one of the best Anime series I have seen, not because of it's magnitude, but because of it's simplicity, concentrating around a few core characters with the occasional bad guy drop in. Anyway Cartoon Network recently picked the series up and I was very skeptically because traditionally American dubbing destroys the soul of the story by removing all that was expressive about the voice acting.

Well I just finished watching some video clips over at Naruto Fan and I am very pleased. It's not what I would have liked, but the way it is now has a strong resemblance to classic 80's kids cartoon series with all the fighting like what was in Thundercats and TMNT. There hasn't been anything like that on kids TV in some time. And as good as Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is, I wanna see kung fu and screaming on kids TV again. So it will be interesting to see if it is a success and possibly herald a return to those kinds of cartoons or not.

Vista Will Have Chess And Mahjong

Well I am assuming that's what This means.

Today

Spent four hours picking my Dad up from the airport today because the flight was delayed, but lucky for me I took a few podcasts along and managed to catchup some. Breaks on car are making a strange noise and I have been updating GuidWiki some more.

This is just a token update because I am SO busy.

The Best Guild Wars Resources On The Internet

Somepeople would have you believe that the best resource on the internet for Guild Wars is GuildWars GameAmp and it is great for some stuff like Elight Skills, but GuildWiki is updated by anybody who wants to update it. So if you see something that is wrong or something that is missing you can edit the information right there and then.

This means the site is a little clunky because so many people have edited the information, but it has the most information of any Guild Wars site. Simply because everybody and anybody can contribute.

The guys over there are currently building up the Sorrow's Furnace part of the site after the recent update and apart from the lack of a map, it's looking good.

This Is Kind Of Fun

Type in a word and This site will make up that word as a colash of items searched, with that word from Amazon.

What Is .Net?

A while ago I wanted to write something similar, but now there is This very simple and straightforward article telling you exactly what Microsoft .Net is.

I tried a few years ago to findout what it was, but all Microsoft says is:

.NET is the Microsoft Web services strategy to connect information, people, systems, and devices through software.

And that only makes sense if you know what it is in the first place.

Microsoft's New Mice and Keyboards

I was just wondering yesterday wither Microsoft was going to launch any laser mice products, and they are.

They have launched This Website that profiles the new products with a flash demo on the Useful Links section for each (except the gaming mouse). And out of them all, I really want That New Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard. I mean I have gotten on well with my Microsoft Natural keyboard with the split keys, but the 4000 looks like a huge improvement.

I still don't know if having the keyboard split has made a difference because I am not at uni trying to typeout a 3,000 word essay in one sitting, but I haven't had any significant pain either. I have occasionally has a soreness in my mouse hand, but I don't know wither that would be more sour if I had a standard keyboard or not.

I do take this whole computer ergonomics issue very seriously because I have had times where I have typed so much that it hurts in the morning. And I can see myself having a successful career using a keyboard and mouse. So the thought of having a medical problem caused by crap equipment is frightening.

Random Nintendogs 2 Idea

I was just thinking about the possibilities for Nintendogs 2 and I came up with Yoshiogs and Pokéogs. Cats wouldn't do so well because real cats aren't that trainable, but little Yoshi's or Pokémon theoretically are, so would make an interesting spinoff.

Normally I would write this kind of idea down in my little black book, but no way will I ever need this idea for myself, so I post it.

I like the Pokémon idea the most because it would bring the gamer closer to what is shown in the cartoon series and this would be a great progression for the Pokémon franchise. I can just imagine training sessions with Pikachu striking targets with lightening. Or even an adventure mode where you take him out and go on adventures around an MMO environment with other players, battling and doing quests.

"Come here Pikachu"

"Stop that"

"Over here Pikachu"

"lightning attack"

Arrr what fun.

Workplace Stress

Job Seekers Revenge has A Great Piece on workplace stress. It categorises stress into ten causes and provides a description and solution to each. The interesting this about this (and this is mentioned on the page) is that all the causes and solutions to stress are management related.

I was looking through this and realised that when I am at University (back later this month) I suffer from #8 Pervasive Uncertainty, #4 No feedback (good or bad) and #10 The Treadmill Syndrome near deadlines.

The PlayStation 3 Incident

Not happy with this post, but got to get this off of my chest because the whole thing is looking like another Sega Saturn.

I just seen Gabe's comments mentioned on Slashdot and I jut realised that if PS3 games are not potable to any other platform because of the overwhelming differences in the architecture, then that means that titles on other consoles won't appear on the PS3 either.

So potentially the PS3 will see no multiconsole titles. And as crap as these titles usually are, that is not good for Sony.

Recently there have been comments that the blue-ray drive is costing Sony $100 per PS3. And if that is wholesale price, that is not good.

Then there was the comment from Nvidia about the graphics capabilities of the GPU bing less than the currently available GeForce7.

And in general nobody has anything good to say about the thing, not even Sony's Ken Kutaragi. He said he wanted customers to think "I will work more hours to buy one" and "We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else". That suggests it is going to cost a bomb.

As far as marketing goes Sony has been comparing the PS3 to a supercomputer and nothing else. Things are not looking good.

They only way anybody could be positive about the PS3 at the moment, is if they made a leap of blind faith and just assumed that everything is going to plan.

Gabe Newell Trash Talks The PS3

1UP have been doing some coverage of Valve and in This second part interview with Gabe, he trash talks the PS3 saying that there is no automated way to find problem code, and it is too easy to write problem code for the PS3, making it a development nightmare.

He also says a graphics driver autoupdater for the PC would be good, but as we all know, not all driver updates are good.

He also does a lot of other moaning. Surly he can't be like that all the time!?

OldBoy (Completed)

I can't remember watching too many Korean films, but I recently seen Save The Green Planet and that was very good. A Horror, SciFi, Comedy and not a black comedy either, there are very separate horror and comedy tones in that film that make it very different.

So anyway I just finished watching OldBoy, another Korean film and it is one of the greatest films I have ever seen. Korean cinema has certainly got my attention now. You must see this film, it is cinematic perfection.
5/5

First Person Creator

I know I haven't been posting much, it's not that there isn't much to post about, it's that I haven't been giving myself time to write posts.

Anyway on the 22nd this month FPS Creator will be released. I mention it in the HOPE that it is good, but logically I think it will be a pile of wank.

Learn Visual Studio .Net

About April time I really started to get into the .Net communities, learning materials and at that time I found LearnVisualStudio.Net. Essentially it is a database of video tutorials, but tutorials that are well produced and designed to get you quickly up and running with whatever the video's subject matter is. I use the site when I want to know how to use something and can't be bothered diving into my books and struggle with examples that assume that I have read the previous section.

Anyway until September the 4th (Sunday) the pricing is $29.95 for the three month membership and $59.95 for the Lifetime Membership. Then on Monday it goes upto $39.95 for the three month membership and $99.95 for the Lifetime Membership. The Lifetime membership includes access to all current and future videos.

There are a couple of sample videos on the front page, so if you think this might be valuable to you I suggest you signup now.

Random Randomness

Your Guess Is As Good As Mine, but it's still funny.