Yes, yes it can! And by that I mean my new Geforce GTX 260, new OTT MSI motherboard and new 42″ Viera Plasma TV can.
I maxed out all the settings, put it on my TV and hit “Play” and it worked a charm, if not a little disorientating when the screen shakes and blurs.
It’s always the best test “ah, but can it play Crysis”? And I can very happily now say yes!
It’s been 5 days since I became ill and two days since I found out it was H1N1 and after taking tamiflu for the 3rd day now, I am feeling a lot better, it really clears up the symptoms very well; actually it just hides the symptoms like most over-the-counter cold/flu remedies but it’s stronger! I did find out after I received them you’re supposed to try and get them within 24 hours of contracting the virus as they’re most effective then, I was only 48 hours out. Annoyingly though my nose is still driving me nuts, it’s better but it’s still all flu-like – should be enough detail to explain what I mean there.
On other news, the American government, on the same day Obama stated to the UN “… Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone …” has self-declared themselves the regulators of “net-neutrality” and whatever that may mean now: more specifically, it’s the FCC wing of the government.
But what is net-neutrality now? Part of the speech yesterday actually turned into a debate about what it means; the phrase has been thrown around so much since 2006 when it was first used in the public domain that its actual meaning seems to have been lost. So much is the abstraction around the statement now that it was actually brought up to mean Apple cannot restrict apps in its own App Store.
If you’re interested in the speech yesterday, you can read Genachowski’s Net Neutrality speech here.
I hate colds, they make you feel lethargic and depressed and make you want to stay in bed for 12 hours at a time even though you spend more time tossing and turning and getting up to blow your nose than you do actually sleeping.
I’ve got a cold at the moment, I blame Dan at work, told him I’d get it on Friday but he stood over me, and now here I am, ill and moaning more than I should! Fortunately on Saturday as I was getting ill I was busy re-working our living room entertainment centre so now I can very comfortably lay on the sofa and still clearly use the PC without having to struggle as much as I used to. The re-working of the living room took about 8 hours in total, the last 4 hours of which involved excessive sneezing and burning up, I ended up finishing the job in nothing but a pair of boxers I was that hot, not due to the manual labour, that was effortless, the heat was due to the sneezing, I was burning up more and more as the day went on. The reward of being able to collapse on the sofa and watch Carry on Cabby was worth it though.
So now, stuck at home, watching Catchprase, sneezing constantly, I though I’d rant a bit on a blog about home remedies for the common cold and what I’m going to try and do to get rid of the symptoms sooner!
I watched Derren Brown – How to Control the Nation last night as I wanted to see how his subliminal video (or as he calls it, PWA) would really work and while I know subliminal messaging can be easily ignored if you expect it, I wanted this one to work (it’s always more fun when things like this work for you than to rant about how cool you are that you could ignore it – you just miss the fun!)
Anyhow, the result for me was it did work but only a little unfortunately. After the video ended and the second flash happened (don’t question the flash if you see it until after you’ve tried the video in full – just go along with it all, it’s important to the effect) I tried to stand up and it took longer than it should have done, it felt like my muscles just did not want to pull me up, very weird but very cool. I didn’t feel like I was bound to the chair like a lot of people seemed to do which is a shame, but nevertheless, actually having a response to the video at all was a great feeling and I hope many of you can experience it too and won’t be too stuck up your own to just let it happen (after the video, just search Youtube for “derren brown control fail” and see how childish some people really are.)
You can watch the video on Youtube here. Remember, go with it, don’t question anything and do as he says. If you’re with someone with a big mouth (probably your partner sitting near you right now), tell them to leave the room or stay and try it too, quietly.
Today’s work was a standard day, well except for the morning, actually no, that was a standard morning too, things didn’t work too well, they needed fixing, during which there were random jokes at Ben’s expense due to his pure love of graphs. With some help from Remo (my team manager) though, we did manage to work out some confusing MySQL queries – which as always, were actually remarkably simple, but until you see it, it’s harder than Michael Jackson visiting a pre-school (did I say this blog was probably bad for kids, fans of MJ and anyone who gets offended too easily?)
One thing I am still happy about today though is the re-write of our current tools into a tidier, faster, more usable fashion. I got more code nailed down today and the big jobs still work on a “insert only” principle with the database: there’s only one select at the start then the rest of the script does a few big inserts to do all it needs to do – and it still provides us with all the data we need for post-processing and lovely graphs (all for you Ben, all for you!)
In other news, I’ve been working for a client on RentACoder recently that has been superb for two reasons:
1) He always is clear about his needs with great spec docs, even down to the tables in MySQL to use;
2) He pays well, repeatedly.
However…the two recent jobs with him are not so smooth, I’m still not sure if it’s just me being overly blonde or he thinks I know the system far better than I do based on what I’ve worked on so far. But these two jobs are pretty much not moving as I allocated time for them tonight only to start work on them both and stop 1 hour later after spending most of that hour trying to understand both jobs. In the end though, even if the specs are lacking, I’ve only got myself to blame, I keenly accepted the jobs before checking the spec and now I’m confused and obliged to do them at a time that doesn’t suite me. Once again a case of “do as I say, not as I do” – many people will attest to my emphatic desire for very detailed spec documents before starting a job.
…but never go to the gym without some kind of energy source. A piece of advice I keep meaning to pay attention to but it’s a case of “do as I say, not as I do.” I got home from work, had a drink of juice, quickly ate a Snickers then straight off to the gym to do some light cardio followed by some heavy weights – which felt great in that gym pain kind of way – only to finish and start to feel really sick as I had a shower as my body desperately tried to find an energy source, failed, and so decided to moan at me like a child who you just tried to persuade to eat mushy peas only to regret it when your favorite shirt took on the texture and colour of said peas (no, I didn’t throw up, just felt like I was going to.)
The bright side of this is when I got home, I had some protein, informed my other half of my hunger situation and am now currently waiting for dinner to be cooked for me which I can’t wait for.
Oh and the new underwear got lots of attention in the changing rooms, lots of staring, that little bit of extra information is just for you Dan 
And just for you Ben, here’s a graph showing my hunger level vs the average rainfall in Timbuktu vs the age of a random panda.
No I don’t have a fetish for underwear, I just like to be comfortable and you don’t get much more comfortable than Aussiebum’s! We ordered some new underwear last week and after getting home from work today, it had arrived, fresh for Australia in the post. My favorites have to be the Saturate range, very vibrant, very comfortable and they attract a lot of attention at places like the gym.
An apt name for a first post by a programmer if ever I saw one.
Finally got around to started the process of building a website for my work and for my ego (it’s a website about me, there’s ego there, I can’t deny that).
Over time I’ll populate this website with stuff I find and pointless ramblings, in the meantime, you can follow me on twitter.
