Well, that's over

Awesome. My last exam is over and done. Freedom folks. Seriously, I can't describe how liberating it is to have all that over and done with. I've now got a couple of months largely focused on chilling. I still have work, but apart from Saturday's I pick and choose when to do that and besides which it pays for my stuffs.

On that note, I'm getting a raise from the 29th and possibly a 10% discount. Admittedly, I'll probably only see benefit for like a month, but I intend to make full use of them.

Of course, not all my leisure time will be dedicated to that task which, many of you are aware, I attach huge importance to (Namely, doing nothing). Nope, I'll also be kicking Multiplayer into 1st gear. Starting tomorrow with the Mac.

Oh gods how I'm excited about my gosh darn Mac mini. Seriously, I've marked out its home with my (Now) signature green felt tip. I'm not sure how that became my signature non-extended prose pen...I took ownership of it to sign people's shirts on the "last day" and ever since then I've used it for, for example, writing labels, marking positions (As mentioned) and circling things.

But I digress. The DVI cable, the keyboard extension cord and the iPod Shuffle dock are all in position for easy plugging in. I believe I've mentioned but I'll repeat the keyboard extension cord is hanging down with the bundle of wires heading onto the bookcase so all I have to do to hook it up is unplug the keyboard cable from the USB hub and plug it into that. The mouse is plugged into the keyboard as well, so that lowers the ammount of cables going in.

I'm still debating with myself about plugging the Mac mini into the monitor's audio...Okay, decision time...Yes. I will. The PC can be a headphones thing from now on. The mini will be my media box anyway (Front Row FTW).

Speaking of Front Row, I'm totally excited about the Apple Remote. For some reason, the prospect of putting the little mini to sleep from across the room by holding the play button appeals.

I'll be taking pics of the mini in it's home and the monitor showing off the Leopard goodness as well as recording the promised unboxing video. Unlike most of these unboxings, mine will be done with fore-knowledge and preparation. I'll unbox it and plug it right into it's new home. The very model of efficiency.

Anyway, in other news, I've got soem new Converse Chuck Taylor All Star Hi-Tops. These new ones are a gorgeous navy blue. They also came with a nifty "POW" tote bag. No, not John McCain, a giant explosion...Hey, Giant Bomb! Damn I love that site. Sounds like it's blowing up July 7th or 8th.

I might show you these schmexy new shoes tomorrow with the pics of the mini.

Jens Out

For now.

Erm...Well, it's 16:10 at least

Slight snag...I suspect because of the switcher. Anyway, my PC is now running at 1440 by 900. It's enough to show 720p video fullscreen, but everything's huge...And of course because it's analogue VGA it hardly looks pristine under the best of circumstances.

I really want to force it up to 1680 by 1050. I really can't see why the Switcher wouldn't be able to feed it, so I'm forced to conclude it's the computer being silly because it can't see the monitor directly.

If anyone has any ideas how to do hat, let me know. It's an ATi Card so yes, it is infected with Catalyst Control Centre...I did tell it that the monitor's native resolution (1680 by 1050) was it's maximum, but it seemed not to help. The option's still not there.

Maybe if I tell it the maximum is bigger than that...Nope, still doesn't give 1680 by 1050, though it did give one higher than that, 1600 by 1200.

Seriously...If you can help please do.

Jens Out.

Edit: On the bright side, Chicken Little is now playing the trailers and hot damn, the playback of the Blu-Ray at least looks gorgeous. And once I get my mini, that's all that will matter anyway.

HDCP is teh suck

Jeez. All I want is to watch Chicken Little on Blu-Ray. I have all the necessary hardware and software, so it should be simple, shouldn't it? Well it's not, they all refuse to play nice with eachother and the HDCP keeps failing to initialise.

And so, the PC is having it's DVI privileges revoked. With any luck, moving it to VGA will finally allow me to watch. It should, because that's what the helper suggests, but since my graphics card only has DVI, I'll have to use an adapter, so who knows.

What this means in regards to my setup is that the shortest VGA cable is now running the shortest gap, the longest by far is running the longest gap and the beautifully long DVI cable is running from the monitor to where the mini will sit.

So the Mac mini gets the best hookup. Only fair I guess, it is going to be my primary system.

Jens Out

Live Blog: The Setup Renovation

http://www.scribblelive.com/Thread.aspx?Id=1031

Update: All finished now. The hi-fi ended up moving up a shelf. The Wii has moved about 8 inches to the right to accommodate the VGA Switcher's new home. Between them is Wii Remote Number 2. On top of the Switcher is the Mouse Dock and Wii Remote 1 in its charging station. Behind the Switcher, angled through the gap at the side of the book case is my USB fan.

Beside the Wii on the right is currently the Eee, but that gap is eventually the Mac mini's home. To the right of that gap are the Wii games. Most of the Wii Accessories moved into the Wii Games' old home, the others have entirely new homes. For example, my 3 wheels (The Ferrari multi-format one and the two Wii Remote shells - including the official Wii Wheel) are in that redundant PS2's old home.

I swapped the power strips so the 6 is at the back powering everything, the 4 now upfront for charging things.

Final big change, I moved the monitor back and the speakers forward, so there's now way more space on the desk.

It's a pretty nice setup. I'll have some pictures soon...

...Maybe.

In the Future

Well guys, since no-one seems to be reading this any more I figure it's not wasting anyone's time if I do a post about stuff I'm gonna buy and indeed stuff I have bought.

Since my PC and desk now function as my entertainment system, and I have a widescreen 1050p monitor, I decided to make use of those pixels and seriously upgrade my media centre.

Firstly, I bought a LiteOn DH 4O1S Blu-Ray Disc Reader to allow playback of the dominant consumer HD video format. It's in the system now, though I can't yet watch any Blu-Rays (More on that later).

Next, I decided to upgrade the control system. Now, I do have a wireless presenter mouse built into my desktop mouse. That method of control does work of course, but it can be tedious to mouse ball over controls from my bed.

So I got CyberLink's IR USB remote control. It works great - controls DVD(/Blu-Ray) playback, TV Centre Pro (Helpful, since the mouse and keyboards for that are jacked) and iTunes. Basically, I'm set.

Incidentally, Need for Speed Carbon (Yes, I did buy it) is great on Wii and works really well with my steering wheel shell.

For those of you wondering, my first Blu-Ray movie is The Simpsons Movie - easily one of my favourite films of all time. 2007 was a great year for movies. Bear in mind, Spider-Man 3 (Another of my all-time favourites) and other truly great films came out this year as well. Even made for TV Movies were better than expected (Yes, I do love HSM 2. So sue me.). It was also a great year for games between Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, CoD 4 and of course Portal. This year shall go down in entertainment history.

So what am I buying in the coming future? Well, first I'm going to get a Sapphire HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of GDDR4 memory. Besides bumping games performance (Like making Halo 2 at least seem playable) and providing access to recent games like Unreal Tournament 3, it has HDCP. With that, I will be able to watch my Blu-Rays (My monitor is also HDCP-compliant).

Games-wise, Medal of Honor Hereos 2 is next on my list (I'm moving to renting games unless I really want them from now on, thanks to my £10.99 per month LoveFilm account which is also supplying me with additional HD content in the form of Blu-Rays). February 8th can't come soon enough.

I'm also buying an Xbox Live Vision Camera £50 set, the one which comes with a headset, 12 months of Gold and 2 Arcade games. It's outstanding value. I more interested in the Gold subscription, games and the headset to be honest, but the camera will be nice to have.

Then, a month later, I'll be grabbing Game's £209.99 Xbox 360 Arcade Bundle and putting the hard drive from my brother's Premium in it. He's buying an Elite. The Premium will go in the living room, mine will go in the upstairs TV room (My dad won a 20" HDTV at work).

So once I have that and I can play 360 just about whenever I want, you can expect my GamerScore to go up a fair bit. Possibly I could take it to above 5,000 before we leave Cambridgeshire.

I'll also grab a GameWare Play and Charge kit as I continue my ongoing fight against Double-As.

Then, in mid-June, I will make the biggest purchase I ever have. At long last, I will be buying my MacBook. So hooray for that.

Anyway, that gives you an idea of where I'm headed in the coming months. You can probably expect me to gush at length about most of those products and, indeed, I advise you to be prepared for more Blu-Ray love than anywhere else on the internet which doesn't swear allegiance to PS3.

Jens Out

Macworld 2008 Steve Jobs Keynote Predictions

On January 15th, Steve Jobs will be delivering the Macworld San Francisco keynote address. Last year, this address was used to unveil iPhone and to finish off the unleashing of Apple TV. Previously it has been used to announce iMac Core and MacBook Pro.

This year, I expect a return to Mac. Specifically, I expect Steve to make 2 major hardware announcements, 1 hardware replacement and at least one major software update. Further, I imagine there will be some less important accessories announced or upgraded.

Firstly, I expect Steve to reveal an ultra-thin notebook with a 13.3" screen using Solid State rive (SSD) technology in 32GB and 64GB versions. Expect Steve to show us how amazingly fast it boots. "I just press the power button and boom, it loads up. Press the power button again, it turns off. Press it again, boom. Back on. Isn't this incredible?". Possibly aluminum, colors unclear. Possibly iPod Nano colours, possibly iPod Classic colours.

And the other vital details:

MacBook Nano. Available that day or soon after. Expensive as hell. Cool as ice.

So next, Steve will want to eliminate the Mac Mini - needs to be the Mac Nano. So it'll probably borrow the MacBook Nano hardware and integrate it into a revised take on the Mac Mini form factor. Almost certainly thinner and using iPod design cues (Excluding chrome).

Mac Nano. Shipping February*. Same prices as Mac Mini for bumped RAM but reduced storage. Better than Mini at the very least.

Some accessory expectations: new Mighty Mouse to match latest Mac designs. Apple Cinema displays bumped to 1080p minimum with integrated iSights. And a curve ball purely off the top of my head...Updated Magsafe for all MacBook models, probably announced during the MacBook Nano bit.

Next, the Pros will get the new Intel processors and the Mac Pro will receive a facelift to bring it in line with the other Macs and a Blu-Ray drive.

And my last prediction, iTunes 8. Yes, I know I predicted it last time and was wrong. But come on, it has to come out now. It's overdue!

Well, to be totally accurate, I expect it will be called iTunes '08. But whatever. Movie rentals, movie store in international iTunes Stores (E.g., UK) and TV Store in more countries. OS X Mobile apps for sale (iPhone/iPod Touch SDK stuff) Integrates Front Row 2 across Mac and Windows. Available for download that day.

Anyway, there's a few things I expect to see at Macworld this year.

*Or that's what they'll say anyway

Upgrades Are Awesome

Seriously, upgrading your stuff is the best thing you can do. I've already told you about my upgrade to Vista, but today, I've done a little hardware upgrading.

First off, there's my new mouse. It's a Trust XpertClick TK-4300p. What's cool is, it's both your standard desktop mouse and a prsenter mouse.

It features a trackball for freehand use which doubles as a scroll ball when in Mouse Mode. Very nice. It also has a laser pointer and rechargeable batteries.

It's like a tiny god.

But, even more like a god is the HP w2207. It's a 22" Widescreen Glossy display running at 1680 by 1050. Damn it all, if it isn't the best screen I have ever seen. Everything on it looks gorgeous - especially Vista's smooth, glassy visual elements.

Other useful features are built-in speakers, reducing desktop clutter, and 2 USB ports which I have a WiFi dongle and (soon) a DTT Tuner hooked into - we're ditching my TV in favour of the HP. The TV in my room is dodgy anyway and this screen is just gorgeous.

As if these things didn't make today seem enough like Christmas, Apple finally added videos to the UK iTunes store. Currently, we have some ABC and Disney Channel hits (As well as Playhouse Disney shows for any of you who have kids) as well as some Nickelodeon, Paramount Comedy and MTV shows.

It's not a huge selection yet, but it's a start. It's £1.89 an episode.

Importantly, this is yet more reason to believe that Apple will be unveiling one or more new Video capable iPods at their event on the fifth.

Here are my picks for that event:

• iPod Touch - A Full-Screen Video iPod with iPhone Similarities. Double current capacities of 5G if HDD or 32GB and 64GB if Flash, same prices
• iPod Nano With Video - Refreshed, OS X-based software which works similarly to current software, but makes more use of artwork (Including CoverFlow) and uses some Leopard/iPhone style visual cues. Double current capacities, same prices.
• Increased Capacity iPod Shuffle, and a (Product) Red version, same price - maybe slightly lower
• iTunes 8 with some crazy new feature and including Beatles on the iTunes Store
  

Jens Out