Blrg

Time flies. I really don't know what it is, but it seems I've little time for anything these days. I guess it's more a matter of prioritising things, and I haven't been doing that; Problem is, that's a task on it's own. I figure, though, people deserve an update, especially a certain someone out there who doesn't seem to be fairing too well and probably doesn't have the time to contact my directly. My heart goes out to you and I hope things get better... and yes, I'm na?vely thinking they will.

Well, let's see - my posts have been far and few between, as well as rather bare. I'm going to take what is probably going to be a few hours, and try to give some detail on what's going on. Knowing myself, though, I'm probably going to get tired of it halfway through or forget things I wanted to mention.

Continue reading "It's... been a while."

Despite having told myself I'd not spend such amounts until I've gotten most of my money into investments, I couldn't hold myself back on a few purchases recently. One such purchase was a new Kodak C433 digital camera. However, I'm curious as to whether or not the purchase was worth it; The new camera supposedly has four times the quality in pictures than my current camera (4 Mpx versus 1.3 Mpx), and has video support... but I'm not entirely convinced.

Thus, I've not only taken pictures with the new camera and placed in an album, I've also created a sub-album with comparison photos taken with both cameras.

Comment here, let me know what you think. Some of the things I've already noticed myself is that the new camera produces photos that are less "faded" (in terms of colors; I don't mean less blurry) than the old camera.

I gots m'self a Canon PIXMA iP1600 Photo Printer for ~40 CAD. Mmhmm. Ish sweet. :>
It's fast, it prints colors, and it prints in fine detail. What more could you want? ^_^

(And yes, you can tell it to only use the black cartridge and spare your color cartridge for when you really want to use it.)

Shibby shibby.
(What does that mean, anyway?)

Last night, a friend of mine and I were playing Unreal Tournament 2004 again. It had been a while since we had... and boy did I miss it. Just being in the game, waiting for him to connect, and looking at the intricate detail and amazing rendering... I miss it all. He remarked, later on when he had to go, that we had to do this more often.
Yes, we do.
Come play Invasion with us sometime, will you not?

That's the "highest" point on this post, though...
I was modding my DreamCast a day or so ago: I had ordered a transparent blue case for my DreamCast (looks pretty much like the original, but transparent blue) a week or so ago; When I got it, I disassembled the DC, and reassembled it within it's new case. At the same time, I took the opportuniy to do another mod for it: I unsoldered the power L.E.D. (orange) and replaced it with another one - a dual-color one (well, I soldered it in place to green, though it could've been red, but I don't like red).
I shouldn't have.
Seems I've fried the controller board - specifically whatever handles the controllers. Everything else in the DreamCast works just fine. The L.E.D. lights, the fan goes on. CD spins up, and the DC asks me for the date and time.
But I can't give it, because the controller has no power, no communication... I can't tell if this is due to permanent damage (honestly, I did a really bad job), or just from a "link" (short circuit) that shouldn't be there. Hopefully the latter, as I don't want to have to buy another DC just to fix this one... or something.

And Firefox is beginning to bother me. While I'm glad I can finally use the BlackJapan theme (BlackJapan theme for Thunderbird), it really irks me that it once again has decided to forget my address bar URLs. God damnit, STOP DOING THAT FIREFOX!
Another thing I've noticed is that it's got a severe memory leak, probably due to one of the extensions I have. As I write this, firefox.exe takes a whopping 129,104K of memory on it's own. My computer can handle it, but it doesn't stop me from being annoyed.

As much as I am willing to try relationships, I don't think I can handle them. Not with the way I currently am, anyhow.
She wants me to call every day. I can't even manage that... aren't I just pathetic?
I don't like subtleties either. I don't think we'll get along well, though she seems to think differently. Her language mannerisms (assuming that's the correct term for it) are annoying me, too. I've only once before thought that repeating things like that could bother me (Arkos, I'm looking at you.). I mean, I've read thing and spoken to people who would repeat certain expressions, and it has never bothered me so much before. Why, oh why, does it bother me to hear "I don't worry", now?! I wonder if it's because of the lying way she uses it.
*sigh*

My todo list isn't shrinking.

If you've ever had the "bright" idea of opening a console with the idea that, seeing how modular it seemed to be, you might be able to upgrade some part of it -- desist. While I was rather certain that I'd get nowhere, I did it anyway.

The thought originated from seeing that Linux could be run on a Dreamcast - pretty sweet, if you have any use for it. But I didn't want it for playing games or what have you; Rather, I had the intention of running a server on the DC. Hey, if it had the necessary hardware, why not? As a bonus, I could even run games on it if I wanted to. First, however, I had to check the specs - and 16 MB of (main) SDRAM isn't all that appealing, especially since my server currently needs much more than that.

But I already had the idea of running my server off a DC, since the thing could be equipped with a LAN/broadband adapter. So why not at least check? Knowing it was most likely a waste of time, I decided to open the DreamCast and see if I could upgrade it's memory - after all, SDRAM is (or was) fairly common.

(Though this is the first time I've opened a console, I have opened computer cases before, laptops included. I strongly disrecommend opening any such device on your own if you haven't done so before, and aren't being supervised, especially if you haven't bothered to read any advice and precautions.)

Continue reading "Of Linux, servers, and Dreamcasts"