One of the advantages of RSS aggerators is the ability to subscribe to relativly low activity blogs, so when they come out with something, you don't miss it.
One such blog is Michal Kordahi's blog, a Microsoft blog, who yesterday posted that AU Uni students can buy Office Ultimate for just AUD$75.
You can also buy a one year license for just $25.
Offer expires May 28th.
As he said, How awesome is that?
For my birthday, I bought myself a Creative Zen Vision:M (30gb) , a mp3 player - although these days its cooler to call them DAP's (Digital Audio Player), since they do more than just mp3's.
This thing is a direct competitor to Apple's iPod, so there are some comparison's to be made.
It looks like an iPod. At least, the white version does, which is sadly, the version I have (I wanted green :().
So, just like an iPod, it looks nice. The front is half screen, half controls, the back is a magnesium shell, which is fairly different from the ipods polished metal (aka, finger print magnet)
Its a little heavier and bulkier than an iPod, but it still fits comfortably in my pocket along side my mobile phone.
The controls….the controls take awhile to get used to. They're 'okay', but the iPod's click wheel probably wins out here.
The middle strip is touch sensative (and acts as 'up, down & confirm'), while clicking to its sides will give you next/previous
Audio on the ZVM is the best I've heard from a DAP, but my exposure has been fairly limited.
My sisters iPod Mini (1st gen) had very very poor audio quality with a fair bit of distortion if turning the volume up above 40%!
Quality is great, customisable EQ is cool, but the included earbuds are junk. I've bought some Koss KSC-75's ('clip on' headphones) and they match it well.
I've also hooked them up to my Z-5400's, and my Sennheiser HD 497's - the quality was still pretty darn good for those speakers/headphones.
Again, like the latest iPod's, the Zen plays video.
I never thought I'd be a person who'd watch video on such a small screen, but the Zen has convinced me otherwise.
I'm told the screen is brighter and faster than the iPod's, but I don't really know. The screen is very colourful (enough to watch, say…Transformers), and is an okay size if you're on the train and holding it in your hand.
XVid/DivX are supported, but its not a "DivX Certified" device, so all files won't (like, say, the Transformers Movie). Key is to make sure its stereo (or mono) MP3 audio, with XVid or DivX specific video codecs.
WMP10/11 will transcode it for you (if it detects an incompatilibity), but that may take awhile.
The best thing about the really crappy mp3 players from ebay is that they all use the internal filestructure (sometimes enhanced with id3 metadata) to sort your mp3's, meaning you can just drag and drop because they are "mass storage devices".
Just like the iPod, you can't do this with the Zen - not exactly anyway.
The ZVM uses the "Media Transport Protocol", which is introduced in Windows Media Player 10 (or 11) for Windows XP (and is natively supported in Windows Vista, since WMP11 is installed. Hrm, I wonder if MTP works under the Vista 'N' - European versions without WMP).
This means you can sync your WMP10/11 libraries straight to your Zen. Which would be fantastic, if I didn't use a decent audio player like WinAMP (there are plugins for WinAMP, which ship will the latest versions of WinAMP, that will sync playlists/libraries to the ZVM). Alternatively, MTP sets up a 'psuedo' drive in Windows Explorer where you can just drag & drop music and video onto your Zen
(two views of how a MTP device in Vista looks)
For those using Linux or Mac OS X, there are MTP implementations, but I'm not sure I'd count on it to work the greatest.
The ZVM also has a "Removable Disk" mode, where you can partition your ZVM into 4, 8 or 16gb. Files dumped on here can be accessed by any OS that can read FAT32 (so you'll treat your ZVM as a large USB flash stick, I guess), but sadly, files on that portion cannot be accessed from your ZVM.
Personally, I find this a great player, it does everything I want, has great quality, plenty of storage, and the battery life is pretty damn good.
There are a few quirks - none of which are deal breakers - but I still love it.
Between this and an iPod? I'd probably choose things because I'm a little anti-mac. If you use/like iTunes, this probably isn't the player for you. If you value FM Radio, maybe it is time to switch to a new Media Player.
I bought mine for $350, but the 'real' price is $350 + $70 for a decent pair of headphones.
As Will mentioned, I'm in the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) beta.
LOTRO is a MMORPG, and as the name suggests, is based on the works of Tolkien, created by Turbine. Turbine are well known in the MMORPG arena, as they created Asheron's Call 1 & 2, as well as Dungeons and Dragons Online. I haven't played their games before, infact, the only MMORPG I've played for much time at all has been the juggernaut known as World of Warcraft (WoW), so most of my comparisons will be that.
The game is set at the time of the war of the ring, so the events of the books unfold around you.
(Mechanics and whatnot)
Combat
Combat is like any non turnbased MMORPG, so there are no problems there, unless you're looking for something new and exciting.
I suppose you could note the differences in the naming of attributes, such as health is actually 'morale'. As a ministril (healer) class, I was confused that I didn't have any 'restores health' spell.
Crafting
Crafting feels decent, there are many 'schools' of crafting, and when you learn one, you have three different trade skills, such as tailoring, forestry and prospecting. One feeds the other which feeds the other, or something like that.
Achievements
LOTRO has 'achievments', which are…interesting. You work towards an achievement throughout the game, and at the end you get a reward.
For example, slaying X amount of spiders in Breeland gave me the title 'Spider-foe'. The interesting part is some of the achievements are how many times you use a skill (or family of skills). I only have about 970 heals left before I get a healing achievement.
Questing
Quests are very much a case of 'kill X amount of these', 'gather Y amount of those', but the story to go along with a few of them are interesting with the 'epic' (as in, the Epic of the Lord of the Rings) quests unfolding the story around the Fellowship of the Ring.
The graphics certainly set this game apart from WoW. Even lowering the detail to low or medium, the world has a lot more detail than WoW. However, to be fair, the world presented by Blizzard is much more vibrant, and seems more bursting with life (graphically), because of the cartoon-ish appearance of the game.
Brett argues that comparing WoW to LOTRO is unfair (at least graphically), because of the age of the game. I argue that WoW's graphics were outdated before it was released (as are many of Blizzards games), and that if they wanted it to be pretty, they could have released a graphical update with The Burning Crusade.
Many 'pretty' games were released in 2004 (Game Rankings, select PC, 2004, and list it to uh, 20->200), both of MMORPG and other genres, so I declare his argument invalid.
Those who argue with me are silly.
LOTRO appears very 'realistic' (about as 'realistic' as any SciFi/Fantasy game can really be I guess)
The Good
The water looks fantastic.
The character models are pretty good too.
You cannot compare MMORPG's to single-player RPG's like Dark Messiah or Oblivion, due to the 'other' loads in MMORPG's, so I simply won't.
I will, however, compare WoW to LOTRO.
WoW certainly doesn't come close to matching, let alone beating these graphics, however I still prefer LOTRO's graphics over other pretty games such as Guild Wars.
The following images compare the character models (facial), and the second image compares a water scene, both shots are at highest detail that the game allowed for each game (LOTRO may not have been at 'ultra' everything, I can't recall).
(Click for full size)
(Click for full size)
As you can see, WoW is no competition in either scene. You might think 'oh, but that WoW screenshot is taken in Ratchet, a port, where there wouldn't be any reflection anyway', but you'd be wrong. The water is the same no matter where you are.
The Bad
There are a few down points the graphics, which may or may not be fixed up by the time this is out of beta. The first is the animations. While there is a wide range of animations, and many of them look rather good, the more common animations, such as running, seem to be a little…sucky.
I mean, I'm not trying to discriminate against puppets - they have a right to work too - they just shouldn't be used for motion tracking.
Performance is also another issue, but given I'm running it on Vista (meaning nVidia drivers really suck), and it is a beta, I'm not too critical of this.
I haven't touched on the sound (music/effects, which are rather good), or on the pricing structure (founders club is…interesting, it seems like USD$199 upfront for a life time (products lifetime, not yours) account), because they don't effect me too much (beta is free, and I haven't had speakers on too much due to my headaches).
Overall, this game has potential, however I'm not far enough into it to say how long it could really last, without having 'world PvP'.
Without the constant threat and competition of the Dark Forces, it is hard to say how many people will take up this game.
However, if you're a big LOTR or RPG fan who enjoys PvE rather than PvP, this game is certainly one to keep your eye on.
That being said, many MMORPG fans have called it a WoW clone and are disappointed with the 'slaughter' of Tolkien's world.
Me? I like it. Enough to buy it? I'm not sure. Its quirks make it interesting, its pretty. It feels a little slow in combat, but every time I play it, I become further sucked into it.
I won't get to play it much because I signed up the account for Chickz0r, who loves LOTR, and her ADSL will be active by the end of the week ;)
If this is true, there is no point getting angry and swearing, I'll just post the pictures
Odd, I know I have a technet subscription somewhere
Oh, is that all? Okay!
Wait…wait…I thought I had to activate, but you're telling me I already am? eh…okay…
Phew, crisis adverted…
Lets try bitlocker again…oh…oh no…
So I bought a Zalman VF-900 CU to cool my 7900GT, although quieter than the stock cooler.
It arrived in the mail while I was out, so I get home today to check it out, and yay, its damaged.
Its not a little bit of superficial damage that I can just 'get over', fins are bent in so that the fan can't spin at all.
Although I'm not overly fond of it, its my first 'finished' Wordpress theme.
I had a few iterations, none that were very striking, so I settled on this one.
The photo in the heading was one of the first photos I've taken with chickz0rs new S3 IS that I was proud of (that is, since I'm not artistically inclined, and this is the best camera I've ever used).
There were a few more photos on that shoot (we went down part of the Lilydale to Warburton Trail) that could easily be slotted in there, if I feel like a bit of variety.
Originally I was going to use a tiled/blurred background (behind the main image), but I got impatient with it screwing up. I may fix that later.
This is the original…is missing, but here is one of the same plant (follow the link for other sizes)
After installing Vista, I thought "Some sort of Vista specific Anti-Virus software might be a good idea.
I decided to try Computer Associates (CA) AntiVirus (AKA VET, AKA EZTrust)
I strongly suggest against it, as under Vista, I'd randomly get up to 60% usage of both my CPU cores, as well as only having 40mb (out of 2048mb!) RAM free.
Explorer will show up as having 50->60% CPU usage, but its actually CA's AV.
For now, I'm trying NOD32.
CentreCom called me today, instead of shipping off my laptop, they're trying to "solve my problem".
What they offered to do was:
Well. I told mum. She uh, started getting rather angry at me, until I told her to channel her energy into bugging them
