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Sony BRAVIAs are AWESOME!

Pics to follow, stay tuned!

(If you didn’t get that pun, I am ashamed.)

Anyway, here are some pics of the setup:

If you’re the kind of person who loves their specs, they are here for your viewing pleasure. It’s the Sony BRAVIA 40″ X-Series LCD TV, with 1080p, 100Hz “Motionflow”, BRAVIA Engine PRO, x.v.Colour, a 10 bit panel, 3 HDMI inputs, etc…

As for the actual TV; it’s awesome, I love it! Now contemplating purchasing a TV tuner for my Mac, in tha hopes it will be half as good as the TV 😛

Update: I thought you guys might like an explanation of why there’s a new Sony X-Series LCD sitting in my lounge room, and it’s because, well, the old TV was getting old. Besides, we wanted an extra channel to watch, as well as digital (ooh!) TV.

It’s a massive shame that I don’t have any 1080p content to stick through it, so far, 1080i FTA (Free-To-Air) is all I’ve been able to push through. Hopefully we’ll get some sort of upscaling DVD player, to upscale those DVD’s from measly 576p to an insane, mind blowing 1080p. It should be awesome. Even more awesome would be true 1080p content, but I’m too poor to afford a Blu-Ray player at the moment 😀

I’m enjoying it immensely – it is by far the best TV my family has ever owned.

Holidays are AWESOME!

Well, it’s officially the holidays now – and if you’re wondering why I just have to post this, it’s because my holidays are all set!

I’ve got three books to finish off:

  • Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, AJAX, and PHP
    I’m mainly reading this for the AJAX and PHP parts – while I have a working knowledge of CSS, I couldn’t write my own CSS from scratch. Not without a WYSIWYG editor, anyway.
    PHP is HUGE in the webdesign world. If I want to be serious, or at least semi-serious about Web stuff, I want to learn PHP.
    And Ajax, well, that’s just cool 😀
  • Physics of the Impossible
    This is an awesome book by one of my all-time favourite authors, Michio Kaku, the author that “built a 2.3-million-electron-volt betatron particle accelerator, which consumed 6 kilowatts of power an generated a magnetic field 20,000 times that the earth’s magnetic field.” – all while he was in high school!
    It covers everything from the technology that is impossible today, but does not break physics as we know it (such as force fields, death stars, telepathy and teleportation, antimatter), to technology that sits on the boundary of our technical knowledge today (such as a speed faster than light, time travel, and alternate universes) to things that are just plain impossible – things such as perpetual motion and precognition – things that violate known laws of physics.
    It’s a really good read – if you’re thinking about doing something in Physics, then I highly recommend that you read this book – you’re welcome to read my copy, but only when I’m finished with it 😛
  • Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
    Regarded as “the Bible” for Cocoa programming on OSX, for OSX, Cocoa programming is a minor hobby of mine. I started it way before we started Java at school, and compared to Java for GUI stuff, it is so much easier!
    For those special few of you that have worked with a Java GUI interface, the way that I’ve been taught it just plain sucks.
    With Xcode’s Interface Builder, I don’t have to write the code for each radio button, write yet more code for where I want it to go, or even what I want to do – all this can be done using a GUI. Easy, no? Objective-C is great.
    This book is a little hard to acquire in Australia, though, so I’d be looking to your closest bookshop to see if they can order it in. Mine certianly did, and I”m so glad for it…

Yep, I’m all set. So I might have to do a little work, but I’m cool with that, I’ve got plenty of time for that kind of stuff… Take, for instance, the Steam Weekend Deal – this week, it’s 50% of all ID games, you know, like Commander Keen, Quake, Doom, etc. I bought the super pack for $35 – you can check it out here if you have Steam and are interested.

So, what are YOUR holiday plans? Shout out in comments.

Benny’s WTF for the day…

Wow, three FOUR posts in one day! I must be insane…

Anyway – check this out! I was looking at the bandwidth that our hosting has been using (seeing as three websites are being hosted from it) and I noticed this…

Well, that’s more than weird – that’s actually impossible.

I’m fairly sure the Internet didn’t exist in 1969, and freshbytes certainly didn’t, so… CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS SCREENSHOT?!

And that, dear readers, is Benny’s WTF for the day.

Nerf gear is AWESOME!

I apologise for the second “is AWESOME!” post in a row – but there’s just so much stuff that is actually awesome… And besides, the tabs are clogging up Firefox, which is already bloated as is…

Nerf (owned by Hasbro), makers of the famed Nerf Vortex and so on, make some seriously cool kit.

For example – the Nerf Maverick:

Totally awesome. They’re pretty cheap as well, so no worries there!

I’m sure you’re dying to know more, so here’s the page for all the Nerf gear.

I know you just want the Nerf Maverick, so here’s the page for that, too!

Other notable mentions:

Nerf Elimination – just imagine two shots per gun, but once you’re out of bullets, you’re out of the game!

Nerf Nstrike Recon CS-6 – the sniper rifle of the Nerf range, it’s able to be separated into two seperate guns.

And the ultimate in foam dart warfare, the Nerf Vulcan. If only you could hook one of these babies up to 240V AC – that’d be schweet! But really – you don’t even need a description for this one. It leaves nothing to the imagination…

Google Chrome is AWESOME!

If you don’t know what Google Chrome is, either your feed reader is broken (and you need to recompile it from scratch), or you live under a rock. Those are the options.

I’m hoping that more people will be interested in this than DosBox…

If you’re running Windows as your OS of choice, and haven’t tried out Chrome yet, I urge you to do so at google.com/chrome – hit this link.

Otherwise, if you’re running Linux or OSX as your OS of choice, read on…

I’ve found the Google Chrome – Platform Specific Build Instructions here.

Mac (I didn’t go to the trouble to go and compile it. I have no need.)

Windows (bear in mind that while they do provide binary versions of the Chrome Beta for Windows, there is no reason to stop you from download the source and compiling it yourself.)

Linux (Hardcore *nix fans will no doubt love watching the Chrome source scroll past their screen – you geeks 😛 )

Now, some extra info:

  • Google Chrome is strictly a BETA at this stage. The version number is 0.2, so make of that what you will.
  • Chrome renders webpages with the WebKit rendering engine – along with Safari. By contrast, Firefox uses the Gecko rendering engine.
  • Technically, you’re allowed to ignore the EULA if you compile the source code yourself. (via Ars Technica)
  • It’s fast. Faster than Firefox. Javascript is especially so – Lightboxes are instantaneous.

There is one feature I like particularly; the ability to give sane error messages. Take, for example, the message that you get when you type in a wrong URL into the address bar. Compare the message that you get with Chrome:

…to the one that greets you in Firefox. Which of the two would you be more likely to understand? (Granted, if you’re reading this website you can probably understand them both, but still!)

It’s the little things like that that will make the difference – everyday users are supposed to be able to USE things. Not have a masters in computer science just to operate their webbrowser. Okay, so that last commend was a little harsh – but you get the picture, usability is damned important! Chrome even provides you with a Google search (haha) to help you. I love Google. I love Chrome.

Now, if only they had a Mac version – from my initial impressions in a Windows VM, I’d easily use it over Firefox.

Web Sites I Enjoy!

MySQL was completely down on our web-hosting on Sunday (31st August) night, and so I apologise for the delay in posts! I have no idea why it was down, but it was the only thing that was actually down – Apache and all the rest of it was working fine. Since WordPress runs off a MySQL database, it also meant that both freshbytes and Benny Ling’s Bling were both down. Not cool.

In the meantime, here are some websites I enjoy on a frequent basis – if you’re like me, I’m sure you will too.

Links:

Assembles Elucidation – The Daily WTF
Right, so The Daily WTF is one of the best websites out there – completely awesome. It’s strictly for nerds/geeks (what exactly is the difference?), so those not Vitamin-D challanged need not apply.
This particular story is awesome – it’s about the manual that came with a hard drive enclosure, sort of a “lost in translation” if you will.
Error’d is one of my favourite parts of The Daily WTF – showing how dumb smart tech can be!
Oh, and before you ask: WTF does not stand for what you think it stands for; it currently stands for Worse Than Failure – because, let’s face it, nothing is worse than failure.

Fan Death – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I kid you not. Following on as a side-story from The Daily WTF link above, this particular Wikipedia page apparently describes a South Korean urban legend that states if an electric fan is left on overnight in a room where you’re sleeping, it can cause death through suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia.
It then goes on to list the reasons why this isn’t actually possible – some of my favourites are:

  • Vortex theory – in this scenario, the electric fan manages to create a vortex, thereby sucking out all the oxygen, and creating a partial vacuum inside.
  • The electric fan somehow “chops up” all the oxygen particles in the air – leaving none to breathe.
  • “That if the fan is put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, it will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing. This explanation ignores the fact that most people point a fan towards themselves when using one, which causes air to move past the face but does not change the amount of air present.”
  • The same electric fan somehow “uses up” all the oxygen in the room, leading to asphyxiation and death.

In light of these strange fan-related deaths, most fans sold in Korea now have an timer that automatically turns the fan off after an extended period os use. Apparently, this “automatic timer” is touted as a “life-saving” feature, go figure…

Opinion: How Apple can gain significant OS market share
Now, if only Apple listened to all the little people… This being one of the more recent Ars Technica articles (but quality as usual), it discusses how Apple could be even more awesome than they are now, especially in terms of OSX market share.
The product that started it all was, without a doubt, the iPod. The current popularity of Macs in today’s world is due partly to the massive hype of the iPhone – great work Apple Marketing – but much of it can only attributed to the initial success of the iPod. If people didn’t know about the iPod, they wouldn’t know about the iPhone.

Top 5 Gadgets That Could Get You Arrested
Wired is one of my favourite tech sites, apart from the legendary Ars Technica. I’m not a huge fan of Slashdot, Gizmodo, or any of those kinds of sites, and while I do enjoy Engadget every once in a while, Wired and Ars contribute more professional material, IMO.
Anyways, the top five gadgets that could get you arrested are completely awesome – I wish I had the Sonar II.
Like a commenter on that post said – why didn’t they include mobile jammers or the like? I’m sure they would get you arrested.

Hope you enjoyed the links.