Archive for February, 2006

Well, the first official day of uni started today. I had a workshop, lecture and tutorial all for the same subject, Fundamentals of IT. So far this course seems really really easy. Tomorrow I move off to Magil for Programming in Java 1 which may be a slightly harder course.

Over the last few days I haven’t really been doing much. Everything has been reasonably dead and I haven’t really been playing WoW as much as I have usually for some reason. There has been a couple of things that are sort of interested lately (mostly Microsoft things).

Firstly, Windows Vista Enterprise Febuary CTP was released to Testers on the 23rd claiming to be “feature complete”. The GUI will still be changing and bugs will still need fixing of course but the main features or Vista are all there and probally what you’re gonna expect for a final release. The 32bit version weighs in at 2.7GB and the 64bit at 3.6GB. I haven’t tried the build yet, mainly because I can’t be bothered, but most say its a reasonable improvement. I must say my enthusiasm for Vista has sorta died off again. This version carries build tag 5308.x86fre.winmain_idx01.060217-2200

The second interesting thing from Microsoft is the Origami project. It all started off with the Origami Project website which basically had a cryptic flash announcing something would come on the 2nd of March. This then lead to research and this article about Origami being a mobile communicator (keep in mind this article was dated back in 2001). Finally DigitalKitchen, one of the companies that create Microsoft promo movies let the cat out the bag by releasing their promo movie for Origami on their website. The video is sorta cool and it shows the Origami as being a Tablet PC type device that can do so many things. Media player, photo viewer, Web access, MSN Messenger, Gaming, Remote for MCE, Notetaker, Picture Drawer and GPS (just to name a few). I suppose some could say “its just another PDA” but theres something about it that I think just makes it cool. It soulds like it might be a powerful device. Check out the promo video Here (Enter Site > Work > BrandTheatre > MS Origami).

Thirdly, and not long ago too, MS officially announced the “flavours” that Vista will come in.
- Windows Vista Business (Aero (All versions have this), Searching (ORLY?!), Tablet PC Functionality)
- Windows Vista Enterprise (BitLocker Drive Encryption, Built-in Virtual PC, Subsystem for UNIX based Applications)
- Windows Vista Home Basic (Not much. “Search Explorer, Sidebar and Parental Controls”)
- Windows Vista Home Premium (“Aero”, “Search”, Media Center, Tablet PC, DVD Burning/Authoring)
- Windows Vista Ultimate (“Everything”)

Now basically the first 2 options are under the Vista “Designed for Businesses of All Sizes” section and the other 3 are under the Vista “Incredible New Experiences and Choices for the Home PC User”. I’m really really hopeing that the features of Enterprise WILL be in Ultimate and Ultimate just won’t be bloated home user crap. It annoyed me when you couldn’t run MCE on XP Pro so I installed XP MCE (which IS basically XP Pro and MCE). I will be extremely disapointed if the Built-In VPC and Drive Encryption are not implemented into Vista Ultimate, however, I have a feeling Ultimate is just going to be all the home features. We can only hope.

As for other news – not much. Today Bigpond announced their new craphole plans. Basically adding in a 10GB data usage plan with 20Mbit speed for $10 extra. They also added 20Mbit/20GB and 20Mbit/60GB which charge at $0.15c per MB when you go over the limit (instead of shaping) AS WELL AS costing more than $100 a MONTH. Seriously Bigpond, LRN2ISP. I could go on and rant about ADSL2+ being 24Mb/1Mb while being extremely cheap but I’m not gonna bother. For now I have upgraded one of my two cable plans to the 20Mbit/10GB plan just to see what the speeds are like.

I personally was thinking that they might make the 20GB/20Mbit plan about the price as the 10GB/20Mbit plan ($69.95 a month) but I was dreaming. I would have even been happy with a 20GB/10Mbit plan that was at a “non-extreme” price.

As for the 20Mbit speed, I mean who really cares. I suppose its sort of an upside for the upload. Keep in mind that you’ll most probally only be maxing out your cable on Australian sites or caching services like Akamai. 20Mbit to the US at a constant speed, well thats something I would dream of.

So basically as I was saying, I haven’t been doing much. I am however, really starting to get into the whole PodCasting thing (even though I don’t have an iPod, yet.) There are ton of good PodCasts out there, throw them together with Armin Van Buuren’s A State of Trance on Di.fm every Thursday and the occasional Family Guy/American Dad/Simpsons episode its a great way to entertain myself.

So basically, I decided I’d put together a list of my current cool podcasts.
-Diggnation
-Digital Life TV
-InDigital
-Systm
-This Week In Tech
-AvB’s ASOT
-TV Eps …well torrents duh

Well I’m done, bai.

Well, today I went into the UniSA City West campus. I must say it was a complete waste of time and the information session was useless. StudentID card maker thing was broken so I have to go in some other day. The enrol system wasn’t fully working either so I went home and enrolled online. After messing around with my timetable a lot I came up with something reasonable, but not exactly what I wanted. Monday requires me to go to City West an IT course. Tuesday and Wednesday is at Magill which is good, but unfortunatley some Wednesday afternoons I have to go all the way to Mawson Lakes and on Thursday I have to go to Mawson Lakes for Law.

About 2 weeks ago I bought a Logitech MX5000 Cordless Desktop as part of Project Halcyon’s Phase 2. It is, the biggest heap of shit I have ever used in my life. The keyboard looks flashy mainly because it comes with an LCD that changes each time someone signs into MSN or my Winamp song changes. However, each time this happens, it causes the keyboard to lag. Even if the song changes the keyboard still lags, so if I type “hello” I end up with “hhhello”. It comes with the Bluetooth version of the MX1000 which works slightly better than the keyboard, however, I think the bluetooth adaptor is faulty so its going back for a replacement in a couple of days.

Tech news I suppose has been reasonably minimal, the only thing that has really caught my eye is the public release of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2. I’ve installed it, seems to work well and its reasonably fast. It adds a couple of new features but since Firefox has extentions I’m gonna stick with that for now. You can download IE7 B2 (build 7.0.5296.0) from the Microsoft site.

Blog needs fixing.