Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007

Well here we go
by Gabe @ 04:25 PM, EST

Looks like I lost a few entries in the move, ah well. They weren't that wild anyway. But here we are on a brand new server with a brand new hosting company in a brand new year.

Yeah, that's all I've got for now. pinnacle studio 7.0.5 key gen

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005

The Media Center Computer
by Burntham @ 04:27 AM, EST

I have been given the green light by my wife on an upcoming new computer build. No, this is not a new gaming system to replace the beast of a computer I am using now. That one will still be my top dog. This new one will be a PVR computer. Basically, I am building a Media Center PC

Some nice things about this PC is that I can build it for about half the price of my gaming PC. Also, I will be able to use some new technology that I had previously had little use for, such as AMD's dual core technology and ATI's All-In-Wonder technology. I am hoping with a dual core CPU that I can leave Kazaa running in the background while the computer is in use. With my current single core system, even as fast as it is, Kazaa bogs this baby down.

I will also be giving Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center a try. I can get away with half the RAM of my current system too. I won't even need a sound card, as the on-board audio should be sufficient. The only two things that will be costly is the CPU (about 325 dollars) and the hard drive (about 200 dollars).

It should be a great little project when I get to it. I guess it's my way of telling TiVo and Cox to take their fees and shove it. That and it is just so much freaking fun to build computers. I guess if my design career tanks, I can always build computers for a living. pinnacle studio 7.0.5 key gen

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005

What strange times we live in.
by Burntham @ 12:51 PM, EST

This past month or so, I've had three close friends go through breakups. Two were dating, the third was married. At first I had the expected reaction of "oh this is so sad." We all know I've been there and done the breakup thing, and it certainly hurts when it happens.

However, upon reflection, and from knowing all the involved parties fairly well, I must say these break ups are for the better. They always are. When one door closes, so many more open up.

The first couple to break up had what we call a rocky relationship. Lack of communication and honesty torched that boat. The nice part is my good friend from the east coast did go on to meet a new local girl and is doing well.

The second couple had been together for about a year, but the relationship was suffering from unsolved problems. Anytime she would bring something up, he would pretend everything was cool, but in the end it wasn't. It was one of those breakups where suddenly at the end, one party has various complaints and excuses for breaking up. I hate that shit. The only reason someone would do that and not work on the problems before it came to breaking up is probably because they wanted the relationship to end anyway. Once her and I had a few talks about the breakup, we came to realize that he was simply not built to handle a serious relationship. Knowing that, I think she is far better off and will now be able to find a man that is as committed to a serious relationship as she is. She is having a hard time accepting this, but it will sink in sooner or later.

The third couple to split were my good married friends here in Las Vegas. They had been together for about five years. After all this time, they finally admitted that their personalities were just far too different to sustain a good marriage. He is the sort of guy that prefers to stay in and be a homebody, much like me. She wants to go out and be a party girl, smoke, drink and do whatever the wild people do in this town. That and a few other minor complaints finally took their toll. I just spent some time with him yesterday and we talked about this. It was apparently a mutual breakup, which is good to hear. As sad as I am to see them split, I think it's a good thing. Now she can go have her fun guilt free and he can find a woman more suited to his style.

What I want to know is how did I go from being the single friend to being the married friend, and most of my dating/married friends went back to being single? The world has gone topsy turvy I tell you.

Fuck it dude. Let's go bowling. pinnacle studio 7.0.5 key gen

Friday, October 28th, 2005

Only Lara and Gabe will fully appreciate this one
by Burntham @ 04:48 AM, EST

WNOD and WCRAP: Unfinished Business.

I have found my next big project. At some point down the road, once I get ahold of all my old audio tapes from my Mom's basement, I will have to buy a Xitel INport audio recorder for my PC. What it does is allows you to hook up your stereo to your PC and record from old tapes, LPs or whatever else. Seeing as I have a bunch of old recordings I've always wanted to bring to the digital age, this is a perfect buy for me.

I did at one point make a few CDs from some of these old tapes. However, audio quality was always sketchy and the whole process took a very long time. I think this recorder will at least simplify the actual recording process. After that, it's just a matter of editing the tracks and slapping them on a CD. Plus, with all this hard drive space, I can make two versions of each recording: WAVs and MP3s. The WAVs I can burn to CD with no loss of quality, and the MP3s I can send to people (really just Lara and Gabe) as well as take them with me on my Rio.

Understand I have no intention of recording every single show we did (that's about 100 tapes). It will most likely end up being a Best Of collection, as well as the entire run of the Dan and Rob show, sans most of the music.

Between this project and my current PVR setup, I may end up builing a dedicated media PC down the road. No time soon, as we've more important things to save up for. However, at some point, I'd love to throw together a system with a low end dual-core CPU, a fuckton of hard dirve space (terabyte anyone?) and some respectable RAM. I'd put it all inside a small case or maybe one of those Shuttle PC cases (about the size of a bread box... but really, who the fuck knows how big that is?). It could be a fun little project.

More on this as it happens. pinnacle studio 7.0.5 key gen

Tuesday, October 11th, 2005

Computer Nerd Stuff
by Burntham @ 03:43 AM, EST

It's been a few months since I built my new computer, so now is a good time to reevaluate my purchase choices. After having spent considerable time with my system, I can safely say I am still quite happy with my choices.

Oh sure, there are some moments when a dual-core system would have been handy when working on some video editing. However, since I spend more time gaming on my computer than anything else, having the top of the ling single core processor is a better option.

As expected, the AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 CPU that was top of the line when I bought it was knocked down to second place only a couple of months ago when AMD released their FX-57. That is not unusual though in the computer business.

I should not analyze my choices too much, because frankly, no matter choices you make in life (be it a processor choice, choice of spouse, choice of car, etc), there will always be pros and cons to each choice. For example, I usually do a CPU upgrade about once every two years (three if am lucky or broke). I don't see the FX-55 making that time frame change. It just means in that time frame, instead of running my games at medium graphics settings, I can now run them at very high settings. So I am basically getting a much prettier experience.

On the other hand, had I opted for a dual-core CPU, my frame rates would be lower in my games, but overall system performance would have been "smoother". Also, it is theorized that having more than one core will make a system future-proof, as more and more software becomes multi-threaded. This may be true, but what happens when you start throwing a few multi-threaded apps at your CPU? Perhaps two cores will not be enough. This is why I decided to wait on getting a multi-core CPU. I want to see what the software developers do and how the dual-core systems function in a real world multi-threaded software situation.

On a side note, based on articles I have read, I can at least be sure that if I had bought a dual-core now, it would have been AMD. Apparently Intel can't built a dual-core CPU worth a fuck. They just slapped two single cores into a single CPU casing and call it a dual-core, whereas AMD built their dual-cores from the ground up to make them more efficient. Intel, you were good in your day. I sure loved that 1ghz Pentium III back in college. Those days are gone. For me anyway.

So as is, I am satisfied. My system has all the technology it needs for quite awhile, like PCIe and SATA. If I am lucky, my next CPU upgrade will not require a new motherboard, but so far they always have. This will most likely be my last single-core system, as it seems single-core processing is reaching its limits. The next couple of years will be interesting for computer users. Hopefully we will see multi-threading and 64-bit processing become mainstream. See you in two years! pinnacle studio 7.0.5 key gen

Books
by Burntham @ 03:39 AM, EST

Fueling speculation that I can, in fact, read, I've been reading more books lately. My co-workers tell me what I really need is a Gameboy. A fine idea, but frankly, I just have too many books to read.

I completed a trilogy of Star Wars books: Vector Prime, Dark Tide 1: Onslaught, and Dark Tide 2: Ruin. These stories take place 20 years after Return of the Jedi. Luke is an older guy, trying to rebuild the Jedi Order. Han and Leia are married, with three teenage Jedi kids. You think raising regular teenagers is hard? Try raising Jedi. "Son, don't levitate your sister! And stop using mind control on your teacher to get out of doing homework!"

The books introduce a new race of alien called the Yuuzhan Vong. They base their technology on organic life. Their ships and armor are all living creatures, and they hate all inorganic things, especially droids. They reminded me of the Cobra-La from GI Joe: The Movie. The trilogy was great fun to read, and gave us a lot of issues to deal with. The loss of a main character from the Star Wars movies was a big one. The different paths of the Solo children were fun to see. Seeing what Luke has to go through just to try to maintain order among the Jedi was interesting. Who knew Jedi would have to deal with beaurocrats? These were some great books, and I am looking forward to reading more Star Wars novels.

My current read is Fantastic : The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger. So far it is a bit of a heavy read, as they start with Arnold as a young boy, and give us a very detailed telling of his upbringing. It is an interesting read so far. If anything, I hope to be able to spell his last name without looking it up by the time I finish this book. I admire Arnold's perseverance, courage, positive attitude and willingness to look foolish in order to stay honest.

After all of these rather serious books, I think my next book will be the light-hearted Bruce Campbell novel, Make Love The Bruce Campbell Way. pinnacle studio 7.0.5 key gen

Tuesday, September 6th, 2005

Birthdays and Peeing Primates
by Burntham @ 01:47 AM, EST

My darling wife (who actually gets some of my humor, sometimes), turned 27 today. She looks just as young as she did four days ago.

But seriously folks... Sadly, she will be working, not only on her birthday, but on Labor Day no less. That and her restaurant just went 24 hours. So I am sure her hours are going to get weird.

She actually asked me the other day how old she looked. She was wearing sunglasses at the time and they made her look her age. Maybe even a tad older. In her case, that makes her look good, because she does have a naturally younger look. Whatever her age or choice of eyewear, she looks great. As a husband, it is my job to remind her of this as much as possible. Although in Pat's case, she makes it very easy on me.

We just bought one of those big blue exercise balls. After bouncing on it for a minute, I decided that when we get a house, we should get a trampoline. That would be awesome. In the meantime, I now have a large blue rubber ball that will surely be handy for making all sorts of off color jokes about "blue balls." Yes, I know, if I were any funnier, I'd have to kill you.

We went to the zoo a couple of days ago. It was not as gay as comedians might lead you to believe. It was a small three acre zoo, mostly filled with birds. They had some lions and tigers, but no bears. The best part for me was the Ostriches. These things were huge. Pat said that she could ride them back in Thailand, which of course reminded me of the Final Fantasy games, because that's how big of a nerd I am. However, I did refrain from calling them Chocobos.

I also got to see a baboon pee. Pat missed that, which is a shame. The baboon did it while hanging from the side of the cage. It was quite a show. pinnacle studio 7.0.5 key gen

Wednesday, August 24th, 2005

Fun with Premiere Pro 7.0
by Burntham @ 10:30 PM, EST

Go to http://www.geocities.com/burntham77/files.html

Download "The Idiot Collection"

Enjoy.

(I sure am glad 6 years of college did not go to waste.) pinnacle studio 7.0.5 key gen