I have been spending some time recently working on a project that has been bouncing around my head now for a few years now. It’s a very focused application in terms of what it achieves with the main aim being usability. It’s written in .NET 3.0 making it my first foray into the world of C# and WPF. And the WPF is the key reason this project is even happening at all. It’s seriously giving me unmatched flexibility when it comes to UI design, allowing concepts that appear complex in other applications to become very clear if presented well.
No planned release date yet but I am writing this post because this time I’m confident of completion unlike previous attempts on the idea. If you’re interested in testing at the alpha stage please drop me an email or leave a comment. More details soon.
I always knew Rampage could win the big one so it was great to see him finally capture the UFC light heavyweight title over the weekend. Unfortunately the result was spoiled for me before hand which I guess was a testament to the sheer amount of buzz and mainstream publicity surrounding UFC 71. In future it looks like I will need to watch more shows live or at least first thing the next morning providing Zuffa can sort out a worldwide PPV deal sometime soon. On the positive side the odds were way off on this fight so I put my money where my mouth was and made a bit of cash.
Oh and if you didn’t catch All Access Rampage last week it’s a must see.
I have been using the new graphics card for a few days now so it’s as good a time as any to post a few thoughts up.
It’s a big bastard that’s for sure. It’s two PCI slots wide, hangs over my motherboard and is heavy as hell. If you have got room for it then it’s a nice snug fit but those with smaller cases might want to wait for the lower powered cards to come out. With that said it’s nowhere near as loud as I had been led to believe even with that large heat sink. In my case I barely notice the difference when idle to my old GeForce 7900 GT, it’s only in games when the fan kicks in but if you have the volume up your not going to notice. The fan/heat-pipe kicks a tremendous amount of heat out the back of the system and is probably the most effective I have owned.
Most importantly of all though are the drivers and their stability. Using the latest catalyst drivers for Vista 32-bit has been a dream compared to the Nvidia hell I have been in for the last few months. Stalker runs great, HL2 Lost Coast looks amazing (both maxed out) and Aero performance is smooth and glitch free.
The Lost Planet DX10 demo is out there somewhere so I need to give that a try and I am definitely looking forward to playing many of the PC games I have missed over the last couple of months. Crysis looks amazing and I really feel that will be the big test for this card.
This card can also pump out full 1080p HD over HDMI with audio. That is huge. The 2400 and 2600 cards due out next month are going to be perfect media center cards for this reason alone and with the drop in CPU prices I feel a dedicated TV box coming on.
So in short - it’s nice to have you back ATI, it was a long time coming but at least you can write and maintain decent drivers.
This message has been the bane of existance for many Windows Vista users who use the Nvidia GeForce 7900GT as their graphics card.
And usually before getting this message we are greeted to a nice screen of scrambled diagonal lines! Interestingly enough it seems to be only effecting those of who use AMD processors. There are a ton of threads all over the Nvidia forums and various other forums all discussing the exact same problem.
I’ve had enough of Nvidia. Which is why a brand spanking new ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT just arrived on my doorstep. I look forward to installing it tonight.
Read this for a good rag on the UFC 72 card. Now it seems Forrest Griffin may be out too (UPDATE: He’s back on). This is the kind of card I would forget to watch on TV let alone one I would want to fly to Belfast for. It’s also in the busiest month of MMA since last month! Which would make it the busiest month ever and there isn’t even a Pride show! Spot the odd one out:
UFC 71 - Jackson vs Liddell
K-1 US - Lesnar’s debut, Sakuraba vs Gracie 2, more Carano
WEC VS - Bantam weight battles!
UFC Fight Night - Stout vs Fisher 2 (they had a great match last time)
UFC 72 - Franklin vs Okami
Strikeforce - Shamrock vs Baroni (much delayed pro-wrestling-esque feud)
UFC TUF 5 Finale - The season has been amazing so far and we get to see the coaches go at it
I don’t know what Mr White is playing at with UFC 72. It’s not worthy of a number, it’s not good enough for PPV and if on free TV its going to totally dilute the once special nature of Spike events. Just look at the ratings for TUF right now - over saturation is already happening and your burning the non-hardcore fans out. Ease up Dana.
This one slipped under the radar. Recently the Amarok team had success at porting their awesome KDE based media player over to Windows. It’s far from stable yet but this is a very promising first step that will give many current iTunes users something to look forward to rather than sparsely released, poorly written updates.
![Futurama - Bender's Big Score (with Limited Edition Lenticular Sleeve) [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61THJCbOxwL._SL75_.jpg "Futurama - Bender's Big Score (with Limited Edition Lenticular Sleeve) [2008]")
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