Wikimat funkar som Wikipedia – den skrivs av dig och mig. Du behöver inte regga konto, du behöver inte göra nånting. Bara skriv in din favoritrestaurang och ge information om vad de erbjuder.

Sidan är nystartad och har ganska få funktioner, men jag hoppas att den kommer till nytta och användning, och att människor fyller på med innehåll.

Ja, den är inte gratis, men om ni vill ge mig hela eller delvis blir jag glad. Min nuvarande väska har efter tolv år av användning nått pensionsåldern. Den har börjat falla isär på allvar, och även om jag kanske kan fortsätta använda den ett halvår till så vill jag inte att den rasar isär när jag behöver den som mest.

(Bilden ovan är bara demonstrativ. Min väska kommer att ha andra färger och andra tillbehör)

Den andra och betydligt mer meningslösa men ändå underhållande julklappen jag önskar är ett Useless Machine-kit. Ja, den mackapären fyller inget som helst syfte, men det säljs färdiga kit som man kan bygga ihop själv, och jag hade tyckte väldigt mycket om ett sånt. Med det sagt, om du står i valet och kvalet så tar jag hellre en väska.

För en demonstration av hur oanvändbar den här maskinen är rekommenderar jag nedanstående video:

This is not a close-up shot either, I stood approx 2 meters from it, and it was maybe 1½ meters in diameter. Quite large. I tried pushing it, just to see if it was real (and not some weird-ass prop or something) and it didn’t budge in the slightest.

That was more than five years ago, and while the consoles have been frozen in time, the evolution of the PC in terms of hardware, has proceeded as relentlessly as ever. The vast majority of games these days are published for both the consoles and the PC, and for us PC gamers it manifests itself in some perks and some drawbacks.

The Perks:

The biggest perk of playing games that are also published for consoles is that since the consoles don’t have nearly as much oomph, yet get priority from developers these days means that you don’t need to upgrade your computer as feverishly as you used to. My current computer is ticking in at about a year and a half in age, and while it was a bit of a beast when I built it, it still has no problems whatsoever in running the latest games at high resolutions with all the bells and whistles. This is because the developers are forced to adapt their games to fiveplus-year-old hardware.

Running the latest and greatest games such as Rage, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and so on at resolutions greater than what the consoles can output is no problem. Had this been 2003, my computer would have struggled with then-current games if it was the same relative age. These days, not so much a problem. I doubt I’ll have to make any major upgrades to this machine for the next year.

The Drawbacks:

One of the drawbacks is precisely the same thing as above. Since consoles are less meaty, games have to be squeezed into them. This in turns mean us PC gamers have lost that feverish development pace where each year games pushed the technological envelope even further. Yes, Rage is pretty despite all it’s glitches – but it’s not up the standard I would’ve expected from iD Softwares latest game engine. Why? Because it’s aimed at consoles, with limited texture memory and limited processing power. It might look really pretty on a 360 but on a PC it looks a bit underwhelming. I wasn’t impressed. Crysis for the PC was amazing, and Crysis 2 (which had to be shoehorned into consoles unlike its predecessor) was a big flop for me. In my not-so-humble opinion the first Crysis was much prettier, and performed better. Deus Ex looks pretty much the same on both consoles and the PC, but consoles can’t manage much of the finer details such as high FSAA and texture detail as the PC can, and is somewhat hampered by the puppety-looking characters.

Another and much bigger drawback is that consoles limit the nature of games. Have you ever seen a RTS on a console? No. Basically consoles only need arcade-style games such as racers, or they work with shooters. The more subtle and refined types of games are lacking. Even shooters get dumber and dumber since consoles are limited in their controls and storage space. Add to this, my experience is that the majority of console gamers are spastic teenagers hopped up on caffeine, and generally PC gamers are a bit more refined even though we of course also suffer from the occasional twitchy teenager shouting obscenities in Team Fortress 2. But generally speaking my experience is that PC Gamers appreciate a more mature gaming experience. A while back Crytek (developers of Far Cry and Crysis/Crysis 2) whined about this. Consoles are holding PC gaming back. I agree.

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So, that was my thoughts on that. And yeah, I expect to take some flak for what I’ve written. But they’re my opinions. I don’t expect everyone to agree with them.

For the last six months or so I’ve used Skype to keep in touch with friends and family far away. It’s been less than excellent. Skype wastes ludicrous amounts of computing resources to do something fairly simple. On my little notebook, it drains the battery within an hour, and it uses 80% of the CPU to do what exactly? Nobody knows, because Skype is a large lump of proprietary crap. I highly doubt it needs 80% of a dual-core CPU to simply transmit low-level audio and webcam.

Skype constantly complains about things as well. My notebook is about 7 months old, so it’s not exactly sluggish. It’s connected to a very fast LAN, admittedly over 802.11G which gives it a meager 54 mbit/s but I still think that’s plenty enough. Yet still it complains about my network being slow, and pixellates video to the point where you’re unable to visually distinguish whether you’re talking to a person or a stack of Lego-blocks. It whines about your computer being “slow” and compresses audio so the person you’re talking to sounds more like a whale on downers than a human being.

Computers have come a long way. But Skype insists on wasting resources and being stupid and inefficient. And now Microsoft will pour their horseshit all over it and completely bollocks it up just like they did the MSN client years ago.

*sigh*

It’s even worse on my desktop. Quad-core, tons of RAM, but since I run Linux the client is three versions behind and is less reliable than a puppy on crack. And again, since Microsoft bought it, support for platforms other than Winblows will of course be de-prioritized more than they already are. In short, it sucks.

I need an alternative. Something that doesn’t jerk me around, consume vast resources of computing power, and works equally well on all platforms.

Imagine now that the board of directors in the co-op you live in all of a sudden decide that everyone living there will have to eat the same thing, every day, for as long as you live there. What that meal will be is to be decided by a majority vote, and everyone will be allowed one vote. For each type of meal, statistics about that meal will be provided. Statistics such as how much the meal will cost you, what it tastes like and how it will be delivered.

Now, of course the majority of people will vote for the cheap (or very cheapest) meal. Most people don’t have a trained palate, most people don’t require expensive dinners and most will simply be happy if the meal dimishes their hunger and doesn’t obviously taste of dogshit. This of course leaves people like you in a bit of a bind. You don’t want the cheapest of meals, you want something that tastes good – yet you have no choice in the matter. Whatever the result of the vote, you’ll simply have to adapt or move out. Eat the crappy hamburger and like it, or move out.

This is an analogy for what is happening in my co-op. It’s not the residents dinner which is up for debate, it’s their choice of broadband supplier.

In fact, there isn’t even any vote. It’s already been decided, and I simply have to like it. Whatever “it” turns out to be, since nobody seems to have any information about it other than that it’s going to happen.

You see, when it comes to broadband I’m a gourmand. I want the best and I’m willing to pay for it. Yet this fundamental power of choice has been removed from me. Come the end of the year, I will be forced to change broadband-supplier to one who is admittedly a lot cheaper than my current, but which so far has supplied me with zero specifications. It’s essentially as if someone is forcing you to buy their car, yet refuses to disclose even the most basic information about it.

In my case, the co-op is going to get what’s called a “gruppanslutning”. Roughly translated, a group-connection. These type of things are fairly popular in Sweden, and essentially it’s where a somewhat large group of people get together and solicit a service from a company. The company agrees to a lower price, and in return they get a large influx of customers. The kicker is that these types of deals are always one-size-fits-all. There is no wiggle-room for individual needs.

And this is where the tyranny of groups come in play. The vast majority doesn’t care much about what type of “broadband” they get, as long as it’s dirt-cheap, allows them to check their email and is always on. They don’t have a clue about bandwidth restrictions, throughput or any other type of variable. Yet because the majority don’t care or are too (for lack of a better word) clueless, they will force more knowledgeable people to simply squeeze into the mold. One voice arguing for a slightly more expensive solution will have no footing in a flood of voice saying they want the cheapest and simplest thing available – even when they more knowledgeable voice knows better, and knows that in the long run the cheap bullshit solution will harm the group as a whole.

Group-mentality works great for ants. It does not work quite as great for people, because people will always have different needs and wishes. Disallowing choice simply to save some money is stupid. But that’s how the tyranny of groups work. The dumb majority will always outweigh the intelligent minority.

My co-op is no exception here, unfortunately.

Such as this completely ancient Commodore Business Machines 5.25″ floppy drive. DUAL DISKS BABY!

That’s just the drives. It’s housed in some kind of metal contraption which connects to the terminal/computer. I didn’t photograph that thing. I also found the monitor for the $WHATEVERTHING and it looked basically like a 1950s style television set. No photos of that either.

Y’all need some spare parts for your Amiga 500? I gots them right here. A pile of junked Amiga 500s, no clue if they’re salvageable.

Photos below wasn’t from the storage room, but rather a HP ProBook with a snapped hinge. Quite impressive. I wonder how $USER managed to do that?

Earlier today I got news that they’ve added one of my all-time favorite games, and it didn’t take long for me to shell out the five smackers it cost. One of the nice things about GOG is that they adapt/port games to work on modern systems, and this was something I really looked forward to since in the past DK2 has proven somewhat finicky to get going on anything except a 1999-era computer. Those old machines (Voodoo graphics!) are starting to get VERY difficult procuring these days.

So I bought it from GOG and gave it a spin.

Of course it’s the same old game, so here’s some plus and minus with the GOG-version:

+ Installs really smoothly using their own installer.
+ Quick download and you get some bonus materials with the game, in this case a manual, a reference guide and a level editor.
+ Instant gratification, game starts almost immediately on a modern system.
+ Runs fine under Windows 7, in my case a 64-bit install. Can probably get it going under Wine too, with some coaxing.

- Still kind of funky settings-wise. I couldn’t get hardware-accelerated graphics going.
- Game is quite unstable. Less unstable than vanilla DK2, but still crashes quite often and randomly.

Totally worth five dollars, despite the oddities.

Well, a whole lot can go wrong apparently. What I got was a cheezy Hollywood action-extravaganza that while entertaining also was extremely annoying because it’s filled with obvious inaccuracies and clichés. Sure, I’m a bit of a nerd but I knew the movie had jumped the shark when the main nazi flew into the castle in a Bell 47, several years before helicopters where in military service and long before they saw use in Germany. Not to mention that it’s highly doubtful a nazi general would use an AMERICAN helo. Sorry. Everything after this became a long yawn.

So, I’m more and more leaning towards the opinion that when a movie is described as a classic, this is actually some kind of nostalgic gloss to cover up that it’s really a bit of a turkey. Especially when it comes to Hollywood Classics.

Really, the big problem I have with turkeys like this is when they take themselves too seriously. Compare with Kellys Heroes, which is firmly tongue-in-cheek when dealing with the subject matter of WW2. It’s hilarious, it’s fun, it’s full of action. It isn’t meant to be a documentary and no one mistakes it for such either. Where Eagles Dare sets itself up as a tight spy-type action thriller, and has very little humor if any at all. Yet it falls flat because it’s full of mistakes, goofs, flat acting and completely ludicrous twists. Had it not been so goddamn serious about itself it would’ve been much more tolerable, but as it stands it’s simply a pretentious but bland piece of action from the late 1960s.

Classic, my ass.