Author: Greg

I’m practically just back from a weekend away at the lake and now I’m off again, this time for nearly a week to Hilton Head Island on the Georgia and South Carolina border for some proper relaxation… Not that camping by the lake isn’t relaxing, this will hopefully be a different kind of relaxing.

It’s also a sort of early birthday present to me from the guys, it was originally Erika who was supposed to go, but I managed to hoodwink my way into the road trip (wooo! road trip!) and when Barry came to visit it was decided he could go to… So we leave at the ungodly time of 5:30am tomorrow (some 3 hours after Star Wars Episode III ends) in a loaded up Ford F-150 pickup in order to beat the Atlanta traffic.

So again things will be quiet around here, I might pop up from time to time on stolen wireless signals to post my usual shit… Just don’t hold your breath.

Yeah, I’ve done this before, but I’m an egotistical maniac who loves the sound (type) of his own (written) voice…

Blame Matthew…

Total volume of music files on my computer:

4383 songs, 15.16gb (12 Days, 11 Hours, 2 Minutes and 18 seconds worth)

The last CD I bought was:

Again, bought is a relative term… The last actual CD’s I bought were Bloc Party – Silent Alarm and Lucinda Williams – Live @ The Fillmore. The last virtual CD I bought off iTunes was Stereophonics – iTunes Live In London … BUT the last CD’s I got was Audioslave – Out of Exile and Oasis – Don’t Believe The Truth both of which arent commercially available til May 24th and 31st respectively. Ask no questions and I’ll tell no lies.

Song playing right now:

Mos Def – Speed Law from the CD “Black on Both Sides”

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

I usually listen on random but these are my most played…

3 Doors Down – Here Without You
Team America Soundtrack – Freedom Isn’t Free
Avril Lavigne – Things I’ll Never Say
Damien Rice – The Blower’s Daughter
The Breeders – Cannonball

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:

Hmmm… I hate passing things on to unsuspecting people, but if anyone wants to copy me, feel free to trackback…

Hot on the heels of the PlayStation 3 announcement, news is coming through about the new Nintendo Revolution…

Some news worthy bites.

New details regarding Nintendo’s next-generation console, codenamed Revolution, have started to sprinkle onto the Internet. The machine, which will be revealed during Nintendo’s pre-E3 2005 show on Tuesday morning in Los Angeles, will sport a slick, black design and a front blue light.

Revolution will be “two-to-three times more powerful than GameCube,” according to Nintendo, which also acknowledges that the next-generation race isn’t solely about new technologies. By contrast, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console is 13-15 times more powerful than the first, according to the publisher. And Sony says it’s PlayStation 3 is roughly 35 times more powerful than PlayStation 2.

Nintendo also revealed that using Revolution’s new Wi-Fi connection, gamers would be able to go online to a free gamer-matching service. Interestingly, in a move similar to Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service, Revolution users will be able to download classic and new Nintendo games over the Internet. Nintendo cited such examples as Donkey Kong and Super Mario Sunshine, which suggests that Revolutionaries could have access to games for all the publisher’s previous consoles.

First the Xbox 360, then the PS3, now this, it’s been an interesting week for video gamers…

My favourite image from the weekend at the lake. This was the Monday when a couple of ducks came to visit us, and the female duck allowed me to feed some broken up rolls to her.

Luckily Phil caught this at just the right moment, right afterwards I had to pull my hand away very quickly as a snapping ducks beak can be pretty sore on the fingers. As Erika said “We think she was fattening up in preparation to lay and sit on some eggs.”

May 2005 Gregor Feeding Ducks

Originally uploaded by WebErika.

I’m not sure how official this is, but it’s getting blasted everywhere so…

Some stats…

Product name: PlayStation 3

Logo: PLAYSTATION(R)3

CPU

Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS

GPU

RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines

Sound

Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing)

Memory

256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz

System Bandwidth

Main RAM 25.6GB/s
VRAM 22.4GB/s
RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB< 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read) System Floating Point Performance 2 TFLOPS Storage Detachable 2.5" HDD slot x 1 I/O USB Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0) Memory Stick standard/Duo, PRO x 1 SD standard/mini x 1 CompactFlash (Type I, II) x 1 Communication Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2) Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR) Controller Bluetooth (up to 7) USB 2.0 (wired) Wi-Fi (PSP) Network (over IP) AV Output Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p HDMI: HDMI out x 2 Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1 Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1 Disc Media CD PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side) DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE

All sounds impressive, shame it’s a pretty ugly piece of crap… It’s basically the same design as the PS2, just rounded off and silver, talk about progress… I hope it changes dramatically before it’s released. And what’s with the Spider-Man font?